Friends,

It’s strange how things can be perceived.

Lately, I have been on a burrito kick. I never start the day intending to eat a burrito for lunch, but after I race to get everyone ready, drop them off, and manically work for a couple of hours, I cave and order a burrito to feed my body and soul. Yesterday, my burrito arrived minutes before the noon Eucharist and promptly disassembled itself all over my clothes. A great benefit of being a priest is that it really doesn’t matter what I wear, because whenever I do something public-facing, I am typically in my vestments. Rather than racing home to change, I just left my black cassock on all day.

I received a lot of comments on my cassock. People asked if it was a special religious holiday. Others said I looked especially “epic” or that my cassock reminded them of the outfits from the Matrix. Clearly, everyone thought there was something sacred and esoteric behind my outfit, and with each comment, I confessed, “It’s nothing special, I just have burrito all over my clothes.”

It cracks me up that my unusual behavior is translated to something serious in everyone’s eyes. There was a similar situation in my former Church. In Henry County, Virginia, very few people are familiar with our type of worship, and making our liturgy accessible to the general public was a priority. Part of our liturgy is kneeling for the confession, and I would invite everyone to do so at the correct time. A newer member who was incredibly well-versed in Christian history and worship promptly scheduled a meeting for me. The meeting was to notify me that part of an ancient council was a declaration that kneeling was no longer mandatory in worship. He felt strongly that this posture was incorrect and wanted permission to stand. He apparently let others know his views as well, and a small, but dedicated group was waiting with bated breath to hear my response.

“Sure! I don’t care.” I really didn’t. I am going to stick with the rubrics of the prayer book, but if someone else wants to vary from them, fine. From that moment on, standing during the confession was a subtle sign that you were in the know. Their variance from the status quo marked them as experts, untethered from the bonds of clerical instruction. A few months after this near-controversy, a woman came to the Church for the first time and sat on the front pew. Like the other experts, she stood during the confession, and I commended her on her liturgical know-how during the peace. The problem was that she was completely unaware that everyone else was kneeling during the confession, considering she was in the front pew. She was no expert, but someone who was curious and had never worshipped in a church like ours before.

I had about thirty seconds to unravel the wave of nervous energy that came from this poor woman before the peace ended. She assumed she was outed as some sort of liturgically illiterate impostor, despite my assumption that she was part of the expert anti-kneeling minority. Her ignorance was perceived as expertise. Unfortunately, we never saw that woman again.

When I reflect on these two stories, I have two clear takeaways.

The first is:

THIS STUFF DOES NOT MATTER

Wearing a cassock all day can be perceived as something profound when in reality, it’s just covering up some mundane mistake. When we gather to do our principal task as a Church, which is to worship together, the same behavior can be a sign of extreme knowledge and conviction, or of ignorance. There is a profound discrepancy between intent and perception. Why not just be honest? Wearing my cassock to hide the burrito stain was about maintaining a façade and not really accomplishing anything. Why go to Church and hide the fact that we don’t know what’s going on? If that was the expectation, how would anyone ever find their way in at all? When it comes to liturgy, I doubt that Jesus cares if we deviate from the status quo, regardless of whether it is done out of conviction or ignorance.

When it comes to the performance of Church, it objectively does not matter.

My second takeaway is:

THIS STUFF MATTERS

Abandon the performative aspect of doing Church. If worship becomes an exercise of doing all the little things in sync, then we are more of a performative arts troop than a worshipping body. Priests should not care if people stand, kneel, or sit when they will, and no one should be made to feel inferior if they find themselves doing something different. With that being said, I honestly think how we worship matters; I just think worship is meant to serve the people and not the other way around.

When we abandon the desire to worship correctly for the sake of conformity, then we can consider the weird little quirks of our service as tools rather than objectives. When you kneel, see it as an invitation to consider what should be confessed. Unburden your soul with simple honesty, even if for right now it is just between you and God. When you sing the hymns or listen to the prayers, consider the possibility that they are lending you the words that you didn’t know you needed. If I come into Church looking for an epiphany, I will never find it. It is a line in a prayer I’ve heard a thousand times, or a piece of music that I notice for the first time that surprises me with the sense of the Holy Spirit.

Stand during the confession this week. I dare you.

Blessings,

Nick