Little Church, Big Church

I am at my church at one of my favorite times of the week: early on Sunday morning, with no one around. Early light filters through the quiet from the stained glass windows. Birds outside, passing cars, the murmur of an air conditioner are all you can hear.

The church has been made ready for our celebration of Christ's presence. Bread and wine are prepared, to be ceremoniously placed on God's table. Polished silver and spotless linen rest under silk brocade. Candlesticks are placed just so.

We Episcopalians are all about reverent preparation for worship, and care in carrying it out. We concern ourselves with niceties about the exact position of creases on ironed linens, the order in which candles are lit or extinguished, the precise moments at which the Sign of the Cross must be made.

I'm calling this precisionism about worship "Little Church." Not "little" because it is insignificant, or even because our church building is of modest size. It is "little" because it is contained, of manageable size and duration. We know worship takes about an hour, and we know the order and most of the words we will say and sing. This weekly encounter with the uncontainable majesty of God allows us to think for a few moments about who we are as God's children, and what God wants us to be.

"Little Church" is really preparation for "Big Church:" the great world outside the walls of the church building where we find ourselves day to day. It is not ordered and neat like "Little Church." It is a messy chaos of emotion, politics, hard decisions, encounters with injustice and suffering. 

"Big Church" is God's House as much, if not more, than "Little Church." God dwells in the broken and suffering neighbor, in the challenges of living in community, in the decisions we make about how we use our time, our money, our bodies, our minds. 

I performed many acts of worship in "Big Church" this week. I paid a water bill. I shared coffee with friends. I brooded about the actions of my elected representatives. I saw a stage performance about personal growth, love, and self-awareness. I discussed the meaning of scripture passages about same-sex relationships. Amen.

Later this morning, I will tell my congregation to "go in peace to love and serve the Lord." That's when the worship at "Big Church" begins.