Alfie Doolittle got it wrong

We've been moving at Spirit of Joy. As in relocating. We're settling in to our summer home away from the mold of our Lakeville building. It's made me keenly aware of the difference between going to church and being the church.

When you "go to church," you've decided that church is a place. It's a location, an edifice, a building, a destination. Like going to the grocery or to the hospital. "Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and look at all the people." I bet you just put your hands together and acted it out.

Alfie's got to be there in the morning. But it's just to receive a service he isn't really sure he even wants.

Trouble is, when you're moving out of your building because it's making people sick, you realize that buildings only define us at our peril. Buildings express the intentions, the theology, the self-understanding of the communities who build them. Form doesn't just follow function, it expresses identity.

Still, we know which came first. And it wasn't the building. Church is something we are, something we do, not somewhere we go. Church isn't a noun in the end. In the New Testament, the word is ekklesia, from a verb that means "called out."

That's what I'm becoming aware of. We've been called out together into the community, out into the neighborhood, outside our walls and beyond our parking lot into the streets. As church, we're not a location, not a destination, but a people sent on a mission. But never alone, always at least two by two.

Thanks be to God!

Blessings and Peace,
David

Fingering chart for the Spirit

During Taizé prayer this morning, I happened to glance at my recorder right before we entered silence. Specifically, I noticed the thumbhole.

I'm sure you remember how this wind instrument works. You probably played one in elementary school. It's a bit like a long whistle with holes up and down the front and a thumb hole high on the back. Depending on which holes you cover and which ones you leave open, you play different pitches when you blow through the mouthpiece.

Spiritually speaking, none of us stays open all the time. Likewise, none stays perpetually closed. But the Spirit still blows. And depending on who is open and closed at a particular moment, the Spirit's tune changes.

How important it is that we each are open and closed at the right times — to the Spirit, each other, our own ego, will, desires, and distractions. When we are open and closed at different times of our lives, the Spirit sounds different. As I close down, you may open up, and that changes things. It's, well, dynamic.

When we each open and close in the right proportions and rhythms  throughout the church community, the Spirit makes beautiful music, not just spiritual noise.

My insight was that we don't all have to be open at once. Lower notes require more holes to be covered. And there is even one note that requires all holes to be filled. It's hard to play, but occasionally the music calls for it. And as important as that one note is, there's not much worthwhile music written for one note alone. The Spirit uses our emptiness and fulness alike to sing God's song.

If we ever become a one-note church, or if one of us never opens up or never shuts down, the song won't be as beautiful as it can be. We'll get anxious, bored, frustrated, or tired. We need all of us, working in concert, open and closed, empty and full, to become the song the Spirit wants most to sing.