Embrace the waiting

St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church
Collingswood, NJ
December 19, 2007


I had visited a Seventh-Day Adventist Church for the first time a couple weeks ago, and I decided to continue this habit of going to church on days other than Sunday during this Advent season. Most churches have special weekday services during the Advent and Easter seasons, so I knew it would be easy to find something special to attend.

I looked through the local paper, and saw that St. Paul’s was having evening midweek Advent services, so I decided to attend one. My earlier accounts of visiting other ELCA churches are here, here, here, and here.

The church was easy to find, even in the dark – in fact, it’s located directly across the street from the house church I had attended earlier that year, the home of the King James Only Baptists.

I park on the street and walk in. Again with the upstairs sanctuary – I have been encountering a whole rash of these, after not seeing one for years and years! I walk up a flight of stairs, find a pew, and look around. This is an older building, and I like the slightly worn but well-cared-for appearance. There are stained glass windows, but you can’t really see them at night. The sanctuary seats about 250, I think, and there are balconies on either side that might hold more people. A lovely old pipe organ is situated in the balcony behind us, and I think there might be a choir loft up there, too.

The walls are white, and a large tapestry with blue, red, and gold icon-type images hangs in front of us. In the middle of the cloth is a wooden cross, which is shaped sort of like those starburst-style kitchen clocks from the fifties. In fact, this place has a fifties vibe, in large part because the pews are upholstered in bright red leatherette, something like you might find in a retro diner. I also see a couple of large paintings that I associate with the fifties, probably because I remember them from my childhood – the famous one of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, wearing flowing robes and long hair reminiscent of a mid-twentieth century Breck shampoo ad.

This description of the sanctuary might sound critical, but I’m not feeling critical. I like this place; it’s comfortable. I especially like the fact that the back wall on which the tapestry hangs has a few cracks and imperfections. This is how a church should look, in my opinion – sincere, somewhat humble, well-loved and cared-for, and comfortably old. (I know, I know – when I visited The Church of the Holy Trinity, I was astounded by the stunning beauty of the place. But I do like the less amazing buildings, too.)

There is a piano in the front, and an American flag, but no Christian flag. (I try to notice the flags in every church I visit, whether I mention them in these accounts or not. I have surprisingly strong feelings on the flag topic – generally opposed to both in a sanctuary – but I realize that this must be a minority viewpoint, since the flags are almost ubiquitous.)

Hey, here’s something new – a bottle of Purell hand sanitizer at the end of each pew! That is different.

The pastor enters, wearing a white robe and purple stole. He is young, perhaps in his thirties. He stands in the center aisle and apologizes for the fact that the building is so chilly tonight – he had forgotten to come in earlier and turn on the heat. (Actually, I like a cool, dimly lit sanctuary for an Advent service.) He explains the events of the service tonight very thoroughly, which is helpful for me. I wonder if he explains in such detail because he recognizes that there is a visitor in the pews -- or perhaps this is his custom.

We begin with prayers and simple singing from the Service of Light. A woman from the pews walks up into the pulpit to read the New Testament verses. The pastor begins his homily by reading a quotation from Georges Khodr, an Eastern Orthodox theologian: “We find Christ hidden everywhere, in the mystery of his lowliness.”

The pastor says that he has been thinking about this sentence throughout Advent. The idea of Christ begin hidden everywhere ties in with the idea of Advent, a season in which we wait for something we already have – two of those paradoxes that are at the heart of Christianity. He says that this is a season to embrace waiting.

He speaks clearly and easily, standing in the middle of the center aisle. He seems to have a few notes with him, but generally has the appearance of someone just speaking from the heart. He emphasizes the fact that Christ is to be found in the lowly, and urges us to seek the poor and lowly if we would find Christ.

After the homily there are prayers and a little more singing. Some of the congregants shake hands with me, and the woman in the pew in front invites me to come back for the Christmas services. The pastor shakes my hand, asks my name, and asks me to sign the guest book near the entrance. I ask him about the spelling of Khodr, and tell him that I liked the homily very much.

Outside the sanctuary, I see a book and pen on a stand and sign my name under some other names. Then I walk downstairs and see the guest book. Uh oh – what the heck did I sign upstairs? Oh well. I sign the other book. Whatever I signed, I hope it wasn't too big a mistake. On the plus side, already I have a chance to be lowly and humble, about my constant mistakes while visiting churches!

As I drive home, I’m thinking, Excellent Advent service.

Christ is hidden everywhere. Embrace the waiting.

Don't worry; I've been on antibiotics for five days

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of our Savior
Haddonfield, NJ
December 2, 2007

I'm getting lazy about choosing new churches to visit - just picking one close to home is so easy. Luckily, there are so many churches around here that I could do this for months. One thing this project has convinced me of - this country may have too many churches! Or perhaps not - perhaps it's a good thing that there's a different church on almost every corner, with a slightly different outlook and flavor and perspective. But it's hard to believe that they will all survive another thirty years, when you see how many people are sitting in the pews on any random Sunday.

Oh well - I chose a nearby church today not just out of laziness, but also because today is the first day of slightly bad weather since I began this project seven months ago - that is an impressive run of good weather. And this is not really VERY bad weather - just a slight dusting of snow and a hint of iciness on the roads. Still, no sense driving a long distance today unless I really need to.

ELC of our Savior is in a quiet residential neighborhood. There may be a parking lot, but I don't see it, so I park on the street. Inside, I walk up a short flight of stairs, and someone hands me a bulletin when I reach the top of the stairs.

The sanctuary is rectangular, with a large raised altar. The interior is white (or perhaps light grey) with wood accents. There is a white and gold cross on a white background against what looks like a wooden grill covering the organ pipes, and the cross features red alpha and omega symbols. The baptistery is a large copper bowl on a marble pedestal in the center of the entrance to the altar area.

The sanctuary windows are clear glass  - a nice change from stained glass. (Readers may have noticed that I'm not a fan of stained glass in general, although I've certainly been wowed by some exceptional examples during these visits.) This is the first Sunday in Advent, and there are Christmas decorations on the window sills, and an Advent wreath hanging from the ceiling - it looks difficult to light way up there, but they must have some way of doing this.

A man in a robe with a blue stole greets us, urges us to sign the guest book if we are visitors, and makes a few announcements. The church furnace needs a new hot water boiler and repairs to its fire alarm panels.

The service begins with confession and forgiveness, a hymn (or Gathering Song, as they term it in the bulletin), and then the Blessing of the Advent Wreath ("as we light this candle, kindle in us the fire of your justice and righteousness"). Yes, they have a special long-handled lighter for reaching the candles. Looks a little tricky.

I think the sanctuary would seat at least 400 people, but only about 60 are here for this 8:00 service. The number might be a little low because of the weather, and perhaps the early service is the one fewer people attend. (The church was later featured in the "Your House of Worship" section of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and they claimed to have exactly 1, 243 members, so this level of attendance really is low, compared with membership.)

The sermon, by Pastor Wayne Zschech, is twelve minutes long. And - okay, here's where I really fall down on the job. I can't remember what it was about. Something related to Advent, of course. My notes are blank, except for noting the length. I apologize, Pastor Zschech. This omission says more about my attention span than about your preaching.

So what do I notice? The hymnals have very nice colored leather bookmark strips, five per hymnal, for keeping track of all the hymns and readings. However, the part of the service that makes the biggest impression on me is when Pastor Zschech begins Communion by assuring everyone, "Don't worry; I've been on antibiotics for five days." That gets my attention, and not in a good way.

His statement is the opposite of reassuring, even though I know perfectly well that people don't get sick from communion chalices. We germaphobic Americans would know if people were getting sick from taking communion. It just isn't happening.

Nevertheless, even though I know that no evidence exists linking illness to the common communion cup, I have an irrational dislike of them. Neil's first church after seminary, Alexandria Presbyterian, had an intricate tiered wooden communion set with those little glass cups. I thought it was lovely, and was interested to notice one afternoon, while we were washing the cups in the church kitchen, this logo on the underside of the lowest tier: Sanitary Communion Company, 1922.

That date makes sense. Sanitary individual communion sets must have surged in popularity after the terrible influenza epidemic of 1918, which killed more people than World War I. The introduction of individual communion cups began in Protestant churches in the late 1890s, at the urging of health and sanitation reformers. The idea spread rapidly, overturning almost two millennia of tradition about this most central of Christian rituals. And I like it. I even like the introduction of disposable plastic cups, because I worry about improper washing of the glass cups. (Interesting side note: when they were first introduced, some church members objected to the individual cups because they look a lot like little shot glasses.)

In churches where people drink from a common chalice (actually, usually they use several common chalices, in which case the word common has undergone a bit of a modification, if you want to get technical about it; using four or five chalices does not seem to me all that different from using one hundred), the server often holds a napkin with which he or she wipes the rim after each person drinks.

I'm sure this is intended to remove saliva, lipstick, etc. - but it actually emphasizes the ick factor for me. I suspect this might be a reason so few Catholics drink from the chalice; at every Catholic service I've attended fewer than half the members take a complete communion - many skip the cup. (This is okay according to the Church, but a partial, choose-the-part-you-like  communion seems more than a little odd to many other Christians.)

Also, after each service in a Catholic church the priest is required to eat all the remaining communion wafers and drink all the remaining wine; Neil mentioned once that he had assisted at a few big services, and that it sometimes seemed to him that what was left in the bottom was about 50% saliva and 50% wine, which really, really ups the ick factor.

So - not the most spiritually uplifting reflections this morning. Not the fault of the church or the pastor, but I'm not inclined to feel very guilty myself, either. It happens. I'm sorry to spend the first Sunday of Advent thinking about spit and germs, but perhaps that is because I am so very . . . . incarnational.

Nah - I'm just being human. Let's see what the second Sunday of Advent brings.