Maybe that's why?
Today's sermon made me roll my eyes. I wasn't enraged, just annoyed, the way I was by the way Legolas kept rescuing Tauriel in The Hobbit. I found it frustrating that every time the pastor came up towards a call to do something about a social justice issue, he pulled up and diverted, almost without segue, to talk about some bland uplifting issue from his career or a book he read. (I missed last Sunday when everyone wore black for Black Lives Matter because I covered a shift for a coworker. This happens a lot. I can't be there every week.)
After service, I stood around talking to my dad and another friend much older than myself. I said "this church isn't a good fit for me," because it's not emotional, it doesn't dance, it doesn't clap along, and although there's ample opportunity for social justice networking in the committees and small groups I don't have the schedule to attend, the sermons themselves are not calls to action. But I keep showing up, and it's not just because I'm fond of the people and the rituals. I get something I need out of showing up to church that I don't even really get from the Solidarity Sing Along and the song circle. Not community, then.
In the car on the way home, I told Carl about my frustrations, and he told me about a talk he went to on campus, where the speaker's main point was that anger and hatred are bad organizing tools, and the trick of the organizer is to convert those immediate, emotional reactions into positive enthusiasm for a course of action--grief over dead youth to the energy to stop prison construction, for example. I want a church that does THAT. That starts from "here is this thing that will make you angry," and instead of pretending you're not angry or that anger is somehow wrong or un-Christian, turns that anger into the resolve of utter conviction that has the power to move mountains, that no longer hates, that feels compassion for opponents and tries to convert them because only doing the right thing matters anymore.
And you know... although I dislike the emotional pacing of this particular preacher's sermons... I'm pretty sure that's what he was trying to get at. He's just so deeply privileged and Midwestern that validating anger in order to transform it is rather foreign to his practice.
Which maybe is why I have that feeling I got after I watched The Hobbit--the THIS COULD HAVE BEEN SO AWESOME feeling. It's enough to keep me showing up.
After service, I stood around talking to my dad and another friend much older than myself. I said "this church isn't a good fit for me," because it's not emotional, it doesn't dance, it doesn't clap along, and although there's ample opportunity for social justice networking in the committees and small groups I don't have the schedule to attend, the sermons themselves are not calls to action. But I keep showing up, and it's not just because I'm fond of the people and the rituals. I get something I need out of showing up to church that I don't even really get from the Solidarity Sing Along and the song circle. Not community, then.
In the car on the way home, I told Carl about my frustrations, and he told me about a talk he went to on campus, where the speaker's main point was that anger and hatred are bad organizing tools, and the trick of the organizer is to convert those immediate, emotional reactions into positive enthusiasm for a course of action--grief over dead youth to the energy to stop prison construction, for example. I want a church that does THAT. That starts from "here is this thing that will make you angry," and instead of pretending you're not angry or that anger is somehow wrong or un-Christian, turns that anger into the resolve of utter conviction that has the power to move mountains, that no longer hates, that feels compassion for opponents and tries to convert them because only doing the right thing matters anymore.
And you know... although I dislike the emotional pacing of this particular preacher's sermons... I'm pretty sure that's what he was trying to get at. He's just so deeply privileged and Midwestern that validating anger in order to transform it is rather foreign to his practice.
Which maybe is why I have that feeling I got after I watched The Hobbit--the THIS COULD HAVE BEEN SO AWESOME feeling. It's enough to keep me showing up.