Eleven Things About the Episcopal Church (A continuing article)
Continuing the Ben Irwin article about the things he found significant
regarding the Episcopal Church: this is Part 3 in the series.
5.
How it makes room for those who’ve been burned out, worn out, or
otherwise cast out.
I love how one of my favorite preachers, Jonathan Martin, describes what
drew him to an Episcopal Church:
I went out of sheer, bold-faced desperation for someone to preach the
gospel to me, someone to lay hands on me, and someone to offer me the
Lord’s Supper. There was no motivation more noble than hoping to not
starve.
A lot of us have burned out on our faith at some point – or been cast out.
Maybe it’s because we grew tired of always having to pretend we have it all
together. Or maybe someone’s gender or some other part of their identity
excluded then from service. Maybe we were told we had to choose between
science and faith. Or maybe we were just beaten down by the relentless drum
of condemnation.
The Episcopal Church is a refuge, a respite, a place where we can come
as we are and learn to receive grace again.
6.
The way you can simply be, if that’s all you can do.
You feel it sometimes when you visit a new church. The hungry looks,
sizing you up as another potential cog in the church wheel. The pressure to
join this program, sign up for that group, volunteer at this event… all before
anyone’s even learned your name.
I’ve been part of two Episcopal churches now, and neither one has been
like that. They’ve given me space to just be. They’ve let me move at my own
pace. To quote Jonathan Martin again, they’ve been places where “I can love
and be loved as a human being, without my gifts or my life being commodified in
any way.” Or as Lindsey Harts put it, “It’s the only place I’ve ever stepped foot
into that didn’t seem to expect something of you.”
It’s not that the Episcopal Church won’t invite you to become more
deeply connected. They will. But they seem to get that each person is different
– and, more importantly, that people are not commodies.
(That said, if you hang around long enough, watch out. They might ask
you to join the vestry when you least expect it.)
7.
The Way their worship can be deeply moving without resorting to
emotional manipulation.
When the church tells me how I should feel (“Clap if your excited about
Jesus!”), it smacks of inauthenticity. Sometimes I don’t feel like clapping.
Sometimes I need to worship in the midst of my brokenness and confusion –
not in spite of it and certainly not in denial of it.
In contrast to the standard worship formula of so many churches, “The
liturgy does not try to coerce everyone into the same emotional experience,” as
Jonathan Martin writes, “but in its corporate unity strangely creates space for
us all to have a very personal experience of God.”
Sometimes when you stop trying to manufacture a particular emotion,
you stumble into something even more profound and beautiful than you could
have imagined.
[To be continued…]