Friends,

Something I harp on constantly with anyone that I might feel is uncomfortable in Church is the two rules, which are:

1. Whatever you are doing, do it slowly.

2. Pretend like you know what you are doing.

There are additional rules that, like, “if you see someone doing something wrong, don’t say anything, unless someone will get hurt.” But even most of these are variations of the first two. If you call out a Eucharistic Minister for standing in the wrong place during the Sanctus, then you’re making them break rule #2, which is distracting to everyone. It’s best to let them continue to observe the first two rules, despite their minor infraction.

With newcomers this is especially appropriate, because it demonstrates that we care more about welcoming them, than their observance of the proper way to bow or kneel, or whatever. When people get comfortable, they start to relax and notice what others are doing around them, and they’ll adapt it as their own practice if they want to. If they are constantly in their own head nervous about messing up, then they will just be a ball of nerves, learn nothing, and not get close to an experience that feels like worship. First and foremost, we want people to relax, so they can hear the word of God, experience the sacrament, and feel closer to God, and you cannot do that when you are nervous.

Generally, I like my two rules, and until just now I assumed they were universally good. Moments ago, I witnessed the most expertly executed expression of the two rules, and I feel like my whole world has turned upside down.

A man parked his car in front of the triple doors, and looked at me expectedly as if he were meant to be there. He was in no rush, perfectly calm, but you could tell he was waiting to be let in, so I got up and greeted him. He gave me a nonchalant greet in turn, walked in like it was his own home, and proceed to throw away a bag of dog waste in the bin in the narthex, turn around, and leave. He was so confident, that it left me speechless as I witnessed this odd and gross behavior. Surely, with that amount of confidence, I must be the weird one, right? NO! I should have stopped him and politely asked him to dispose of the waste somewhere else, but his extreme observance of the two rules left me in a state of self-doubt as I witnessed this dissonant example of confidence and odd behavior.

This led me on a chain of thought about the two rules. I realized I had never taken a moment to consider that my rules, like any tool, can be used for great good or great evil. They are great at putting acolytes, new members or anyone doing something new at ease in worship. I would even go as far as to say, it’s generally good advice for anyone going through a major transition in their life, but it has the tremendous power to make something bizarre fade into the background, so that it is just part of the noise.

The practice of slavery, voter suppression, segregation, domestic violence, pushing drugs and many of the other sins that have been mistaken for virtues all were able to exist for so long, because they felt normal, and they felt normal because they were often carried out using these two rules. It often took wars, protests and civil upheaval for societies to finally open their eyes to the terrible things that they were complicit in, that just felt normal. William Porcher DuBose was a chaplain for the Confederate Army, and became a famous theologian after the war. In a famous paper he argued that slavery was always a sin but it was one they were blind to, and could not be guilty of, much in the same way that polygamy was always a sin, but one Abraham could not be guilty of. I fundamentally disagree with DuBose in one part of his theory. I believe that we can be guilty of the sins that we are blind to, which is why grace and redemption are so incredibly central to our faith. We need that grace, because we will always be blind to something egregious.

The two rules, as they exist in the liturgy at St. Luke’s, is just something that I made up. If used properly, they can help our community worship more authentically without fear or shame. When used recklessly or wickedly, it can make something fundamentally sinful or just plain weird (in the case that I witnessed today) feel completely normal, then we all become complicit.

One of the reasons that I love scripture and our way of doing Church is that it gives comfort to the uncomfortable, and disquiets those who are a bit too comfortable. On Ash Wednesday in particular, we are face to face with our fallen nature and invited to consider the possibility that we are wrong. It is a profoundly honest time, and it can disquiet the most confident members of the congregation, while reassuring those who recognize their need for redemption that it is freely given.

I have no qualms about coming up with my own little rules and whatnot for how to do Church, as long as I don’t take myself too seriously, but at the end of the day, I must always be ready to throw that stuff on the periphery out the window if I find that it is not following the foundations. What are these foundations? Jesus had his own two rules:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments
hang all the Law and the Prophets.

If any of our rules or the rules of others break this foundation, feel free to throw my two rules out the window. Get noisy, find your inner prophet and tell the truth.

Blessings,

Nick