Faith Matters 8: For the Gardner News September 16, 2006
“The Old, Old Story”
One of the joys of vacation for me is finding my way to churches I have never been to before. For a brief hour I enter as a first-time visitor into another community’s worship, experiencing it for the first time and seeing it with fresh eyes. I am always reminded that, whatever our differences, we are all part of one body, united in our love of God and neighbor, a love that we understand through Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah. The Christian story, the “old, old story of Jesus and his love,” as a familiar hymn calls it, is broad and deep. I n different churches that same story is told with a slightly different emphasis. But fundamentally, it is one story, bigger than any local church, any single denomination, or any one person’s telling of it. It’s a story whose richness and truth can only be fully appreciated in the diverse ways it lives in the lives and faith of men and women and children around the country and around the world.
In a small, historic Vermont church this summer I heard a fresh voice telling the familiar story. She told it in a setting and style that emphasized tradition and the church’s heritage from Pilgrim settlers and Puritan forebears. It was the same Christian story, but told in a formal, measured, “traditional” way. We sang familiar hymns, but with a slightly different cadence than I am used to and with words subtly changed. We prayed familiar prayers, but for men and women that I didn’t know by name or face. And for this one hour I was part of this faraway community, welcomed into the spiritual life and worship of men and women that I hadn’t known, yet all part of the body of Christ. In a Maryland monastery I was welcomed graciously as a stranger and invited to share in the liturgy and sacred meal that unites us beyond the bounds of denominations and organizations. The monastery was also hosting a group of women religious from Central America who brought their faith, their songs and their guitars. We sang in English and Spanish and rejoiced in the One who gathered us from around the world to this out-of-the way place. In our two languages we affirmed the presence of the Holy in our midst. And here again, the “old, old story” was told in a fresh voice and with a different accent. We sang songs I’d never heard before in a language that was not my own. And yet, in that short hour we knew that we were united in something so much bigger than any of us.
In an urban enclave of Boston I worshipped and shared communion in a lively, even raucous, church community that was so filled with the Spirit that it refused to be contained. The traditional church organ had been replaced by a grand piano, string bass, and percussion. Maracas and noise makers were distributed so that everyone could participate in making a joyful noise as we sang familiar gospel songs. The congregation is multiethnic, with many gay and lesbian couples in the mix. I rejoiced in seeing so many young men and women in their twenties and thirties filling the church. Before communion there was a procession of infants and children come to be part of the joyous feast. This is a church that tells and lives the old, old story in ways that give it new life, new vitality.
Visiting other worship communities calls us to hear the old, familiar story with fresh ears. We hear new songs of praise and familiar songs sung with new accents and rhythms. Visiting other churches and meeting our brothers and sisters in Christ chips away at the smallness of our human vision of the church. It gives us a taste of God’s vision of a world in which we are truly united by our love of God and neighbor, united by the “old, old story of Jesus and his love.”