Ephesians ; John
August 3, 2009
I had two recent occasions to reflect on worship and why we “do what we do” here each Sunday. These conversations took place in different contexts, yet both, interestingly, included talking about the passing of the peace during worship.
The first conversation came during our most recent worship committee meeting. We are preparing for a worship service in September that will intentionally explore the question of “how we do what we do” on Sunday mornings. There are an infinite number of ways we could design our Sunday morning service, and this church has chosen a particular design, style, and format for our worship service here. Much thought has gone into this over the years, but congregations change and the context in which we worship changes, so even if our mission stays the same, how we do it might change as well.
The committee is examining each part and asking if there are other ways we might “do” them in order to enhance the worship experience for people. But, there is little point to evaluating or changing the “how we do what we do” before talking about “why we do what we do”. In other words, if we want the “how” of worship to reflect our understanding of the purpose of worship, we need to keep reminding ourselves why we worship – what is the purpose. Then we can look at how each part serves – or is no longer serving – that purpose.
So, we were looking at each part of worship and at the point in our discussion when we were looking at how our congregation passes the peace each week, we found ourselves floundering a little bit in trying to describe the purpose of this part of worship. You might think it is obvious – the purpose is to “pass the peace” to each other. But when we thought about how we here at First Pres do this part of worship, we wondered if there weren’t other purposes being served.
There are many possibilities of “good” and “meaningful” purposes accomplished in this the passing of the peace. As an example, we have a value of welcoming people into our congregation and specifically into our worship service. Using that time to greet people – especially visitors – would serve that purpose of welcoming. It enhances community acknowledging that we are worshipping here together.
But we are explicit about using the word “peace”. The question is whether that has significance beyond welcoming people or greeting people. If we took the word “peace” out of that time – changed instead to inviting people to turn and welcome one another, would that change anything?
Maybe you don’t know. Maybe like the worship committee, you would need some time to reflect on what that part of worship is about. Or maybe you would need to start at the beginning. If we wanted to actually “pass the peace” to each other, we might do well to define, or at least try to define, what it would mean to “pass the peace”. Obvious though it might seem, the conversation in the committee meeting convinced me that it is not actually obvious at all.
Then I read this passage from Ephesians and it revealed to me the importance of passing the peace each Sunday morning and the purpose of it: what it means for a faith community. Paul is writing to the Ephesians: a worshipping faith community themselves. He’s writing about how to live a life, as he says, “worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” And in order to accomplish this worthy living, he begs them to live with humility and gentleness and patience. Which is fine enough. Each of us as individuals can probably work on these. I know my own worthiness is in questions at times. But then we get the reminder that he’s not writing to them as individuals. He next tells them to make every effort to “maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.”
Peace is something that can exist within each of us, but – more importantly for Paul – it can exist between us as well. Peace, in Paul’s thinking, is what holds us together as a community…binds us to the Holy Spirit and to one another. A bond of peace is a strong phrase – conjuring up images of giant cords stretching from my heart to yours – forming a web of cords between us – a web of peace. Peace makes us one cohesive unit. And being one in the spirit is a big deal for Paul.
You can hear it all over this passage: “One body, one spirit, one hope, one calling, one lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, unity of faith, whole body, joined and knit together.” All of these phrases are in this one passage. This unity, or “oneness”, is a big deal to Paul. And the key in maintaining the unity is the bond of peace. I suspect the passing of the peace – which was a part of the worship liturgy for those very earliest Christians – was a big deal to Paul as well. And it wasn’t about greeting or welcoming people, important as those things are. It was about creating this bond – tying us to each other with the energy of peace. Skipping that part of worship would, in Paul’s mind, undermine the entire worship service.
Which brings me to the second conversation I had recently about worship. I was talking with a friend who attends church regularly. I was asking her what it was in worship that most connected her to God as she understood God. I honestly expected a fairly individualistic answer because I know she doesn’t necessarily feel connected to people in her church by common theology.
But her answer was that passing the peace each week is probably the most significant reason she goes to church. Paraphrasing, she said that it creates an atmosphere of peace in church, even with people she doesn’t know very well and are who different from her in many ways. This gives her hope that such an atmosphere can extend beyond the walls of the church. But being united – brought together – around that peace in church is essential if it’s going to have a chance out in the world.
There is a connection between what we do here and what we do out there, including what we do out there as a church together – what we “look” like to others. If we look like a community of peace, not just a place where one can find inner peace, it shows others that such communities are possible…unity through peace is possible even when we don’t all know each other very well. Even when we have differing theologies and ideologies.
I think what Paul knew was that if our unity in peace increases in real and noticeable ways in this space, that unity can become a witness for the world, a seed of peace that we extend to the world. Ultimately the goal is to reenact this three minute ritual of passing of the peace out in the world in much larger ways. What is the equivalent in the world of getting up from our pews and moving into other spaces in the sanctuary? What is the equivalent of saying “the peace of Christ is with you in our multi-faith world?” What is the equivalent of looking especially for the visitor in our midst and in addition to welcoming them, creating a bond of peace with them?
Every element of worship should serve to build us and form us into the community envisioned by Paul. And so in every element of worship we should practice humility, patience and maintain the unity of Spirit in the bond of peace. And in fact, if you think about our worship service, we do practice these things. We humbly confess, we listen patiently for God’s word, and we pass the peace.
But if “how” we do those things in our worship is getting in the way of serving why we do those things then we want to explore why that is and what might need adjusting. If the words of the prayer of confession, for example, which are chosen for everyone, evoke resentment in anyone instead of humility and openness to forgiveness, then this part of worship is not serving to build up the body of Christ in this space.
While we rightly strive to accomplish all sorts of things in our worship service – welcoming people, comforting people, challenging, providing sanctuary – it can never end at being about individuals. Worship is not solely about making people feel good so that they want to come back. It must always serve the larger purpose of building up the body of Christ. Obviously, these are not mutually exclusive; it merely points to the need for both in order to fulfill our mission.
The author of the gospel of John also has some helps for us in understanding the purpose of worship and our peculiar practices. In this passage – which is so well known – John inspires us to evaluate another part of worship – a central part of worship…the sacrament of communion.
In John’s understanding, Jesus is the bread of life. But that’s not all. When we remember that this passage immediately follows the one from last week where Jesus feeds the 5,000 with bread, we see that Jesus’ relationship to bread is two-fold: First, he gives bread to the hungry, literal bread feeding the physically hungry. And second he actually is the bread of life for the spiritually lost and hungry.
Jesus chastises the people for thinking that the community Jesus seeks – the kingdom of God – is only about meeting material needs. In last week’s passage we saw that they wanted to make him a “king”, and he recoiled at the idea. A king’s job, if they are a good king, is to provide for the material well being of the people. Jesus wants the people to understand that in the community of the kingdom of God, our spiritual needs will be met as well. A king cannot offer people meaning and purpose. A king is not interested in the people’s unity beyond what is politically expedient. A king seeks to control – keep the peace by the treat of violence, rather than free people to create true peace – the peace of God. The peace that unites us to everyone. A peace that can never be kept by force.
Communion encompasses both the physical and the spiritual bread. We use material elements, representing the feeding of people with actual bread and literally sharing a cup with people who are thirsty. If we are joined and knit together with people who are hungry, we will all suffer until they are fed. Sharing these elements here inspires us to reach out to those members of the human race – our brothers and sisters – who have basic, material needs. We reenact that part of communion when we feed the hungry and give water to the thirsty.
At the same time, in bringing us all together at the table, joining Jesus there, we are fed with the Bread of Life: With meaning and purpose and hope. We are united together through Christ in mission. And as with the passing of the peace, we are to go and reenact this part of the ritual in the world as well. It begins here, but it certainly is not complete here. We come together in unity, but we then go out into an incredibly disjointed, fractured world.
The symbolic movement in communion is from brokenness to wholeness – the body of Jesus, representing all of humanity, is broken, which partly reflects what we know of our world. Then, in coming together, each of us parts of the body of Christ – a body that is broken when we are not working together united in peace – when we come forward as a congregation, we take that brokenness and make it whole again. In this way we reflect all the places in the world where peace is what binds people together. And those places exist, but they are still partial and only fragments of humanity. In this ritual, we also create a glimpse of what is possible for all of humanity.
Reenacting this part of communion in the world involves reaching out to each person and inviting them to the symbolic tables in society. Sharing what we have because we know there is enough. It means being united with people who are radically different from us, not just those with whom we share a lot in common. It means recognizing that every time we look at any person, they have unique gifts that are not only welcome in the body of Christ, they are essential. The body is incomplete and fractured without them.
It matters what we do here each week, and it matters how we do it. What we do here will inform what we do when we leave. What we do here will determine how we are formed as a community…a congregation. What we do here will help us lead lives worthy of the calling to which we have been called. What we do here is just the beginning…but it is where we start. When we turn to one another and pass the peace, we are affirming the peace already among us, we are nurturing that peace and deepening it, and we are setting the stage for us to pass the peace to everyone. Because the peace of Christ is with us … ALL. Amen.
