April 26, 2010
Went to church yesterday, and it wasn’t that bad. Services started a bit late, which I’m sure had the more punctual of us glancing at watches, then looking about and wondering just when things would finally get underway. Years ago I helped with a junior high school retreat and when we arrived at the camp the first thing we did was collect all time pieces, which was easy then, there were only watches and alarm clocks to consider. But for the whole weekend, no one knew what time it was. A few folks kept anxiously asking if it was time for dinner, or time to go to bed; but most found our at least temporary liberation from the preoccupation with punctuality rather refreshing. The pressurized time of minutes and seconds gave way to leisurely time for whatever was happening or might arise. And this is precisely the function of the Prelude, which the organist played masterfully on Sunday. The Prelude is meant to lead us out of concerns with chronology and carry us into that leisurely time we need for worship to happen. Worship can’t be forced, nor programmed, and it can’t tell time. Worship is time. And time can be worship, if we’ll look beyond our wrist watches and cell phones to what is happening and might arise.
But the Prelude’s holy invitation to release our time anxieties and come into worship, is not its only function. It also provides an inspired cover-up for the temporal sin of pastoral tardiness. And what was it this time? An unscheduled return to the office to grab the forgotten bible? Had we had another robe malfunction? That happened a couple of weeks ago, when the pastor came bounding up the steps, late as usual, and caught his shoe on the front of his robe. We’ve all told him it’s too long and he should have it altered, but he says he oly has to wear it once a week and why bother. Now he knows why. He ripped the hymn, or rather the hem, right out of it. Fortunately, there was enough duct tape left on the roll we’d used to tape down the cords to the microphones for outdoor Easter sunrise service, and we got it fixed up pretty fast.
Every week something happens right at 11 am, and it isn’t the Call to Worship. This week, that chatty Barbara Jean had the pastor’s arm in her vice grip and wasn’t letting him loose till he’d heard all her news from last week’s doctor’s visits and the particular state of her digestion last Wednesday night which would explain her absence at Bible Study and Prayer group.
So, the organist got a workout. And we, if we’d but allow God’s grace to trump the hands of time, might have gotten a little less worked up about the delay and actually worked into the sacred timelessness of worship. For six days most of us bow to the goddess of our age, Efficiency. Maybe God knows we need a long Prelude to release us from her tyrany of timeliness, and be set free to commune with the One who is, who was and always will be.
Next time you see the organist at church, thank him for setting you free from idolatry to the Efficient, and the prideful punctuality that raises its ugly head when even slightly offended. Thank him for the Prelude, that musical vehicle of God’s grace. Then, well, just let him wonder what that was all about.
