I went home for my mother's birthday weekend this past weekend. And thus I began the experiential bits of my so-called pilgrimage to God-knows-where. I returned to my hometown, the house I grew up in, and that same Baptist church that I knew for so many years as a home away from home.
At this point in my life, my parents have surrendered their half of the battle to make me go to a Sunday school class before morning worship. This is a thankful reprieve found in the wake of countless similar visits and awkward hours spent in small church classrooms with people I don't know well and smiles that say "I'll never tell" shooting around the table. I do not blame any such pretense on the religious leanings of the people around such a table. Rather, I find that it is human nature to hold one's cards close to the chest, at least until trust is built and the fear of judgment diminished.
Nevertheless, I found myself slipping into the foyer of the church and discreetly up the side aisle to my mother's spot on the right-hand side of the sanctuary. I found her big, blue, nylon zippered study Bible on the itchy pews from the 1970's. I plopped down and made the requisite greetings to the people in my vicinity. Mom came and sat next to me for a moment before shuffling off to the choir loft.
A prelude played and then the pastor, a man in his late 50's or early 60's, mounted the platform and welcomed those congregated to the service. He asked that everyone tear out an information card from their handout, and that new visitors would put it in the offering plate when it was passed later in the service.
Next, a middle-aged man in khakis and a polo shirt got up and led the choir, musicians, and congregation in a series of hymns and more modern praise songs. The theme of the music seemed to be the blood of Jesus and the grace that it imparts to sinners, and how that is what brings us to God. The music itself was nothing out of the ordinary. A piano, an organ, and an electronic keyboard played along as the lyrics were projected onto a screen above the baptistery. However, the joining of voices was transcendent in a plaintive, beautiful, hopeful, conflicted but joyous celebration of God and the possibility of a paradise beyond this world.
In singing, my heart rose, and my voice melded with the others in the sanctuary. A tingle ran across my skin as I was swept up into the emotion and the true belief of the people there. It was such a beautiful moment. I could have gone on singing with these people, my people, the ones from my childhood and my formation. The music ended, though, and mom came down from the choir in as unobtrusive a way as she could. Normally, I assume, she would stay in her spot, but with my presence she had an excuse to come down and sit next to me. It was nice to be next to my mother in the house of worship we'd shared for many years.
The pastor went to the pulpit again and began his sermon. The subject this particular Sunday morning was the nature of faith. What a perfect start to my own escapades in what there is beyond myself. His scripture reference was from the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. This is one of the more famous texts from non-Gospel New Testament. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen..." The pastor went ahead and expounded on what faith is and is not, how it isn't a blind leap or an ignorant wandering into what we don't know, but a trusting movement into what God has promised. Without my notes at hand, I cannot be too specific (they got lost between here and there, as I drove with a hyper-active puppy and no air conditioning for a few hours on the interstate). But I remember thinking about the claims of exclusivity and supremacy of Christ. I remember why that makes total sense in this context, but why it is hard for me to swallow. It seems unfair to the world at large. Not to mention the problems of determination and free will and the God who cannot do both.
It was odd for me to sit there and think about the way that I had been so enveloped in the passion and love of the music and then became oddly uncomfortable as soon as the doctrine supposedly espoused in those same songs was made more plain in the explication of the pastor. I guess that is the point from which my journey germinates. There is conflict in this beauty. There is despair in my hope. And there is, and always will be, contrast in the grand design.
T
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