meditatio at the water's edge

The Church around the Table

When my family gets together for Christmas, all my aunts and uncles bring food--and I mean good food!--and presents and we laugh and play and talk about what's going on in our lives. When we sit down to eat, we enjoy what each family brought. My aunt Linda usually brings scalloped potatoes, my Grandma always brings homemade bread and bankett, my uncle Chuck brings a Honey-Baked ham, and the rest bring their specialties. It is an incredible feast. I love it.

What if, one Christmas, everyone started reading "Martha Stewart Living" and began believing that it wouldn't be an incredible feast without a Maple Roast Turkey with Riesling Gravy, Elms' Root Vegetable Red Flannel Hash, Cranberry Orange Relish, and Laurel and Holly Wreaths hangin on the walls? What if no one was able to make such exotic dishes? We would all feel like Christmas was a failure. We would all feel a little hollow inside, like our Christmas together just didn't measure up.

Thankfully, my family doesn't read Martha Stewart Living--at least they don't admit it. Unfortunately, our churches have bought into the idea that Christmas isn't Christmas without Elms' Root Vegetable Red Flannel Hash. I mean to say that our churches have bought into the idea that church isn't church without a dynamic preacher, a wicked good praise band, custom-fit self-help programs, expertly taught bible studies, and whatever else. So we look beyond the people in our group and bring in some outside help.

"We want someone who can fold napkins into a bird of paradise and crochet baby booties out of lambswool." "We need to hire a dynamic preacher," etc. Somehow we have come to believe that the people with whom we are in community are not enough to make us a 'good church.' Why don't we say, look, we are who God has given us right now, so let's make what we do a reflection of who we can be rather than who some magazine or book tells us we should be?

Until recently, our community has been without an instrumentalist. Now Kyle is playing guitar for us, and I am thankful for it. But I wonder if we didn't fall prey to the idea that we were something less than church when we were singing along to a CD. Now it is about facilities. What's next? All I am wondering is this: if we guage what 'church' is by what some book or cultural assumption, will we always be looking beyond the people we are today--and will we always be reacing to be something we are not?

If we would stop lusting through the pages of Martha Stewart Living, maybe we will realize the incredible feast God has provided for us in the people who are with us today. Yes, I would love to adopt more people into the family, and as my younger cousins grow up, they are bringing their spouses to the dinner and we are getting more food--some better, some not. Maybe someone will learn to make a Maple Roast Turkey with Riesling Gravy and fold all our napkins in interesting shapes, but it will not be less of a feast without it because we take the time to appreciate the people who come to the party and share in the food they do bring.

I hope to see our churches do the same.