August often seems like the longest and shortest month of the year to me. Growing up, I always loved the heat that would come with the final month of summer. It meant more days at the public swimming pool, more days riding my bike through the dusty streets of my small hometown, maybe even the annual trip to pick out new school supplies. What can I say? I am one of those kids who loved school. Loved learning. Loved the surprise of a new teacher and the new possibilities that seemed limitless each year. For some of you school probably felt like a prison or punishment. Let me just take a moment now to honor that. No matter how you felt.
I never wanted August to end. The long hot days stretched and stretched themselves out like a cat in a patch of warm sun. The days went on and on. August meant the county fair. It meant one more cool dip with my family in the river. It meant that the corn and watermelon were still sweet to the taste.
But even as the days were long, seemingly endless, they passed quickly into September. Into the new school year. Into earlier sunsets and cooler nights. Into the first turning of the leaves and yellowing of the grasses.
And time continues to pass more and more quickly, the older I get. I hear it all the time, “Can you believe it is August ALREADY?!” or “I don’t know WHAT HAPPENED to July!” As if the month has somehow sneaked past us and escaped out the front door when we weren’t looking. Maybe you feel this way too.
It is easy to lose our sense of time. Or our proper sense of time. We live in a culture that is always looking ahead. The internet, our news cycle, advertising seems to speed up year after year. They almost seem to say, “Why worry about the current events of today when you can worry about things that are happening TOMORROW!”
It’s true. It might seem ridiculous, but it is true. Our modern lives are so very fast, that we rarely have time to see things in their proper perspective. Don’t believe me? Just think about Christmas! For all of the cringing you might have just done, stores place Christmas decorations out earlier and earlier each year. Last year Loews had their aisles set up in September. SEPTEMBER!
We have become so used to anticipating the future, that when it comes, we are often done thinking about it. We are over it. We may even find a sense of relief that Christmas or whatever we were celebrating is finally over. We spend so long in anticipation of a thing that when it arrives, we are sick of it. And who can blame us?
Two months of Christmas carols on the radio before Christmas makes a miser out of almost everyone (except maybe my mother who is a Christmas fanatic.) ((Don’t ask.))
So, what does all of this have to do with time? What does it have to do with our lives during the pandemic? How does this have anything to do at all with God? Am I just wasting our time?
Well, August is the time when many of us are traditionally away from our churches on vacation or with our extended families or at a friend’s wedding. It is that lazy or busy time of the year when we spend the least amount of time in a building on Sunday mornings.
September means the start of a new church year, new church programming, the start of Sunday school for kids. Or at least it used to. The pandemic has changed our lives dramatically. Most of us don’t worship face to face. Most of us aren’t going very far at all on vacation. It can be hard to tell one day from the next if all of our days are spent at home.
While we were attending church face to face, maybe we took those Sunday for granted. Maybe they felt boring. We worshiped in roughly the same way each week. We sang. We read scripture. We broke bread. Those were the outward, visible, routine actions we took together.
t underneath all of that, another kind of time was happening, a Divine time. The Holy One was in the mix, working behind the scenes. At the reading of the Word and the breaking of the Bread, the Loving One was breaking through the ordinary, revealing the extraordinary underneath.
When we worship together, it isn’t just about who is in the pews (or on the Zoom screen), it is also about the surprise of the risen Jesus. The son of God who looked and lived just like any of us, who was killed, and who rose from the dead. And who continues to break through all boundaries. Life and Death. Living and Dying. Mundane and Mystery.
As Lutherans, we claim that communion is an act of consubstantiation. This means that symbol becomes fact. This means that Jesus’ presence is present alongside the bread in wine. But how that happens is a mystery.
Just how Jesus comes alongside us in our present lives, often feels mysterious and mystifying. It doesn’t make any rational sense. It is extremely hard to explain. And yet, I know it is true. Maybe it is the same for you.
A new friend was reading an essay I had to write for my seminary application. In it, I talked about what I called “a moment of radical grace” that reshaped the entire course of my life in 2009. She said, “Can you tell me more about that? I would LOVE to know more.”
The truth is, I can’t explain it any better than I did. I just don’t have the words for what happened to me as I was wandering through Grace Cathedral in San Francisco as a tourist. Nothing special was going on. I hadn’t been to church or identified as a Christian in more than ten years.
Nothing was expected, but everything was given.
In a single, ordinary moment, something extraordinary took place, but my life didn’t look much different from the outside. It would take years and years for me to see how that moment unfolded.
Even looking back, I can’t tell you what happened. I know the moment it did, but not how to tell you about it.
But today, I know when I am present enough. When I am still enough. When I think to listen enough in the moment (right now as you are reading this even) I find those same words to be true. The Holy One, who is everything, is waiting there (here). At this moment, and the next (now) and the next (now). Ready to receive me. Ready to impart grace and blessing, if I can only hold still long enough to notice.
So, it is with us and our worship. Even if we are just going through the motions. Even if our lives are so radically changed at present. So, take a moment now. Just a single moment. I promise you there is blessing there. Here. Now. For you.