You Would Be Welcomed In So Many Ways

I’m still held in thrall by the “ministry of encouragement” and by the challenge to envision what a Church that includes full priesthood and leadership of women might look like. I know many have talked and written of possible visions, but I’d like to add one from a church already functioning. Of course, yes, it is a Protestant Church with a woman minister, but, albeit with a few tweaks, it could be an inspiring, refreshing, renewing Catholic one – with a woman priest, of course – as well.

In the November/December 2017 issue of Spirituality & Health, Rev. Mary Lee-Clark intriguingly titled her article, “If You Came To My Church…”.

Be prepared to be envious:

“If you came to my church, you’d see the banner out front with the silhouette of the Holy Family escaping to Egypt, with the words over it, ‘Immigrants and Refugees Welcome.’ You’d come in either beneath the rainbow-colored flag out front, or through the garden with the Peace Pole and the prayer ‘May peace prevail on earth’ in eight languages, or from the back parking lot, where you’d get a good look at the solar panels on the roof.”

At least three people would welcome us, she promised, in person and with the statement: We are an Open and Affirming, Green Justice Congregation of the United Church of Christ. We welcome to our work and worship all people of faith, or in search of faith, without regard to age, race, economic condition, disability, or sexual orientation, and we seek to care and advocate for the earth and its creatures.

Nikki McClure, “Equal”

The service would begin in song and prayer, and then continue with their version of the kyrie eleison. This would be a silent time, a time for people to look back over their week, to contemplate where and when they have contributed to the world’s sorrow, or their neighbor’s, or their own. “We think of it as telling the truth about how we’ve been alienated from God and our true selves, knowing that we are all ‘made in the image of God’.” Then they would all thank God “for the opportunity to begin again”.

After the Biblical readings, the pastor would not only ask her own questions about the texts but invite the members of the congregation to do the same. Even in the homily itself, nothing would be presented as staid or formulaic: “You wouldn’t have to simply believe or take literally what the Bible passages say, but you’d be given ways to understand their context and setting, and you’d explore how our understandings may have evolved and been given new images and metaphors for the Divine Reality”.

How refreshing it would be to have a priest sharing context and descriptions instead of proclamations and prescriptions!

And then there’s this: “If you came to my church, you wouldn’t have to say the Creed…” A creed can present, she concedes, valuable “snapshots” of beliefs through the centuries but her church prefers to affirm that God is, in fact, “still speaking – in words, in events, in nature. She punctuates this idea with a famous quote to live by: “Never put a period where God has placed a comma.”

How good that is to hear when we are in a Church that, let’s face it, is way, way too infatuated with the period!

She then closes by saying: “If you came to my church, you just might have to rethink your impression of who you thought Christians were and what ‘going to church’ is all about. And you’d be welcome.”