What Little Miss Sunshine taught me about Church

Marcel Proust is someone I know nothing about.  I feel like I should because he is acclaimed to be a rather well known author who wrote about memory in a seven part series, entitled Remembrance of Things Past.


In fact the extent of my knowledge of Proust is what I learned from Steve Carell's character in Little Miss Sunshine.


With that said, I encountered this line from Proust not too long ago about memory:


"(Memory) would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being".


Each week the Church gathers together for a number of things, but in part to remember.


When we remember the Story of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit, we are given once again a rope to draw us up out the the abyss of not-being.  Each week we come together to discover again, for the first time, what it means to be a "being".


While it is an interesting story, it would be hellish to never have a memory.  Movies like 50 First Dates or Memento are great to watch but I would not wish my enemy into that state of memory limbo.  Amnesia is a horrible thing to witness and if you do not believe me just ask anyone who has witnessed a loved one suffer from Alzheimer's disease.  Or just ask Clive.  


The Church comes together each week to stave off group amnesia or collective Alzheimer's.  We remember and we are pulled from that abyss.  We remember and we are once again home.  We remember and we are no longer alone.  We remember and we are found.  

Glimpse into Christmas Eve Worship genesis

Christmas Eve - Becoming God-bearers

On Christmas Eve at Grace United Methodist Church Reverend Nancy Allen and I will be facilitating worship at Noon.  For those who are looking to attend worship at that time, and even for those who may not be, I wanted to share the order of worship as well as a commentary on why we are doing what we are doing.  

The order of worship is in bold and the commentary is italicized.

***

Welcome

Simple words to remind the community as to why we are gathered.  

Word to the Order of Worship

The focus of worship this day is to embody the life of Mary, who was the original God-bearer.  The scripture we will look at today will call us to consider an episode of Mary's life in which over a short period of time she moves through a number of different postures. Today we are going to invite you to embody these postures of Mary in order to strive to teach us or remind us how to begin to become God-bearers.  

Mary Did You Know?

Sung as a way of getting us to reflect on the life of Mary.  The riff of "Mary did you know, that your baby boy" will be recalled later in worship - I will refer to this riff as "MDYK riff" 

Lighting of the Advent Wreath

This ritual is to tie us into a tradition that is much larger than our local community.  We are tied into Christians around the globe and around time.  We light the center light in order to remind us that tonight the light of God comes into the world and darkness and death are destroyed.  

Prayer

This is a pastoral prayer which calls us to peace, reconciliation, light and grace for our lives and the world.  

Worship in Songs

O Come All Ye Faithful

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear 

What Child is This?

Prayer

Pie Jesu

Scripture - Luke 1:26-38

Message - “Becoming God-bearers”

We are exploring Mary as the original God-bearer and the different postures she might have taken in hearing that she would bear God.  As you read the scripture, you can get the sense Mary might have moved through 4 different postures/mindsets.  As such we are asking everyone to also physically embody these postures in a way to emulate Mary the God-bearer.
First posture - cover head with hands - Mary felt that she was not worthy to bear God, that she was just a mortal that was not worthy of such a task.  This posture of humility will be our posture of repentance.
Second posture - open palms and looking up - Mary heard that she was not the sum of her faults or 'just a human' rather that she was a beloved chosen one of God.  This posture of affirmation will be our posture of worth.  
Third posture - kneeling - Mary heard that she would bear the son of God and that she would be called blessed for generations to come.  Mary took the time to listen to the message of God.  This posture is our posture of listening.
Final posture - palms together and fingertips at mouth as though one were praying - At the conclusion of the episode with Mary and the angel, scripture shared that Mary pondered these things in her heart.  We too will ponder what it means to be God-bearers in our time and the coming of the Light into the world.  This is the posture of reflection.  

Sharing of the Light and singing Silent Night

Blessing and Benediction

***


If you are seeking a worship opportunity that is earlier in the day on Christmas Eve that is not built around a lengthy sermon but focused on embodying the gift of being God-bearers, I invite you to attend Grace UMC at noon.  

Unique worship does not dismiss tradition

It might be assumed that if you create new worship experiences then they will dismiss tradition.  This happened with the "seeker-sensitive/contemporary" worship movement.  There was a strong effort to remove a lot of Christian language and make it easy on the ears for those who might be seeking Christianity as a faith to live into.  So contemporary worship, generally, does not have things like creeds or liturgies or litanies or the like.  As such when people think of new worship many people think that this new worship will be anti-tradition.

And when you value being efficient over being unique then that may happen.

This is not the case when you value unique over efficient.

The worship services that are truly unique are those who are able to root themselves in the past while introducing something new.  Unique worship services are difficult to replicate and in many ways are often "one and done" worship experiences.

If you have ever seen "Glee" then you know what I am talking about.  This show takes the words from common songs but puts them to new music and then you can instantly sing along.  You can instantly join in a tradition while at the same time that tradition is brought to life in a different way.

Take this clip for instance.  Notice that they build on the tradition of the song and yet bring it a new breath.

 

If you like it or not this is not the point.  Not everyone likes Glee (I do not), Glee is a community (Gleeks) and the music that is created speaks to the Gleek community.  Yet, this community, while creating unique music, it is rooted in a tradition that is much bigger than the community.  They do not betray the tradition, rather they take the tradition (in this case a Christmas song) and "Gleek it up" to be an unique expression of that tradition in the Gleek community.  

Notice that a worship community does not have to be original to be unique.  In fact, it is a bit arrogant to think that you can be original in a world of 7 billion people.  Rather, worship that values unique over efficient identifies where their community fits into the larger whole while at the same time striving for uniqueness.  

In all the efforts to make worship attractive to people, faith communities across the nation have created tract worship experiences that appeal to a broad audience but are ubiquitous and generic.  So back to the original question, "What would worship look like if it were driven by millennials and the creative class?"  

It would look unique but not original.  

It would be ancient and future.  

It would be remix and mash up.  

It would be culturally located and not difficult to replicate in other locations.

It would connect with a tribe or community but not everyone who encounters it.

It would be something that I could not wait to participate each week.  

Unique/Efficient tension

Last post ended by asking, "Should we not instead look to create a local, homemade, authentic, unique worship expression for this context?  What would a worship revival look like if the Millennials fueled it?"

I hinted at in the last post that many "contemporary worship" services look similar to one another. I used the metaphor of tract homes to describe the amount of variety among "contemporary worship" services.  There is some, but they all have very similar structure.

Millennials and the creative class are people who value the unique over the efficient.  Tract homes and contemporary worship are efficient but rarely unique.

Take music for instance.  Contemporary worship will take a tune that is common and write new words to the song.  Much like what Charles Wesley did in his attempt to take pub songs and change they words to be more "godly".  This is an efficient way to make that which is old new again because it is easier to rewrite the words than to rewrite the musical score.

In contrast, the music in a worship that values unique over efficient will sound differently.  It will sound different but you can sing along almost instantly.  How?  By changing the tune and using common lyrics.  This gives rise to the mash-up and the remix.

Notice in this mash up that many people can begin singing right away even if you have never heard this song before.  Yes, it is not the best song that will appeal to the masses - but that is not the point.  The point is the uniqueness is values more than the repeatably.  You may think the scarf your friend knitted is less quality than the nice store bought one, but you might just treasure it more because it is unique.  Likewise, mash ups are generally deemed as less quality but unique.

Take the remix as another example of unique over efficient.  Remixes are usually take a good amount of time to put together but are not really able to be used for long periods of time.  Remixes are current, culturally relevant and quickly fade.  Remember this little gem?

Sure you do, but it is no longer what at the level of relevance it once was.  It was great for a period of time but now is kinda annoying.

In worship, when we value unique over efficient then worship looks different but not that different.  It changes yet there is always something that stays behind to connect or root us in the past (tradition).

The next post will have concluding remarks on this topic.