October Post by the Interim Rector

Several weeks ago, while at the wedding of my nephew in Pennsylvania, I had a pleasant

conversation with a couple I had never met before who were friends of the bride. Despite my

efforts to stay incognito, my vocation got out of the bag. Often when that happens, people feel

the need to tell me why they don’t go to church. Sure enough, almost on cue, the couple

admitted they were members of a church but don’t attend much because, as the man said,

“Christians can worship just as well anywhere by themselves.”

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard some version of that comment. There

is a grain of truth in it. Christians can – and hopefully do! – lift their hearts to God in praise and

thanksgiving wherever they happen to be. I have experienced a sense of God’s presence in the

fierceness of waves crashing on the rocks, in the soft caress of a breeze through a mountain

pass, and in the stillness of the desert at night. Many Christians have formal rituals they do on

their own. Some maintain a practice of centering prayer. That’s all great. We no doubt hear

God’s voice in a variety of ways. But that variety of prayer and religious experience is not a

substitute for gathering together as a community on the Lord’s Day.

Why is that? Because what we do in church on Sunday is not about enhancing our

individual prayer life or putting ourselves in a position to have a memorable religious

experience. Those benefits may come our way in church on Sunday morning, but they are not

the reason we gather.

The Eucharist is the Christian community’s primary witness to God’s grace. It’s about

making manifest a vision of the Realm of God. After the confession and absolution, what do we

do? We pass the Peace, we proclaim shalom, a word that connotes not simply the absence of

conflict, but a final wholeness, a vision of all things coming together in God. On Sunday we

affirm what can be affirmed only in the context of the gathered community: in God’s Realm we

are at peace with one another and with God through Christ’s reconciling death and

resurrection. The communion we share is the communion of the Body of Christ. In that sense,

we not only proclaim the Good News through the Holy Eucharist. We become it. We become

the community of reconciliation we already are in God’s eyes.

I didn’t say all that to the couple. I mostly listened. But I did suggest that they might be

missing an essential element of Christian life by substituting a lone walk in the woods for what

Christians can do only in community.

“Thanks,” the man said. “You’ve given us something to think about.”

I hope so.

Peace,

Fr. John Nieman