a piece from last night’s service.

A great bit of Capon:

And the mission of the church is not to be humanity’s bad cook, pushing at it the lumpy mashed potatoes of morality or the thin gruel of spiritual uplift; the mission of the church is to be the Lord’s own conspirator, sneaking to the world the delectability of grace, the solid chocolate good news that God, in the end, has a sweet tooth. Our joy as the stewards of the mystery is to have been in on the joke that God is just a big, bad boy. He doesn’t really care a fig for teaching the world lessons about what’s good for it; he only wants to make it smile.

benediction

We’ve been ending our services a little more intentionally lately, using prayers and benedictions that I’ve collected over the last few years.

A couple weeks ago now, I challenged myself to write a benediction as Peg and Dave were teaching, and spent the whole time scribbling around ideas and phrases that struck me, and then working them into a piece to share. It was pretty nerve racking to share something that hadn’t had the benefit of a few days (or even hours) to congeal, as it were, but it was neat to be able to close with something so tailored to the service we had just experienced.

Anyway, the teaching was about the parable of the King, about invitations to the party – an interesting distinction was made between showing up to the party and being dressed for the party. Can we really say we’ve joined in the party, that we’re living in the kingdom of God, if we are still dressed in clothes of the kingdom of Man? It got me to thinking about the difference between how I think of the kingdom of Man, and what I used to refer to as ‘the world’. I think that’s what brought out the first part of the piece, about loving the world. In hindsight, I did a much poorer job of connecting the two ideas than I thought – perhaps there are seeds here for two different pieces in the future.

Here’s what I shared:

may you learn to love the world
with all your heart
with all your soul
with all your strength

the world with all of its pain
with all of its learning
with all of its carnality
with all of its beauty

may you learn to accept the invitation
not once, but always
wearing the clothes for the occasion
leaving behind the clothes of contempt
of superiority
of discontent

instead, embracing grace
and wearing authenticity
may you engage with the kingdom of god,
with the created world
and with the life you were created for.

amen.