I don’t know if it’s a function of my age or a real feature of the age we live in, but time seems increasingly to be in short supply. There never seems to be enough of it to get done what needs to get done. Or at least what I think needs to get done. And there are so many demands on what little time we seem to have. For children, the demands of school and extra-curricular activities often leave little time for anything else. Parents of school-aged children are inevitably drawn into their children’s activities, compelled to fit them into their own already-busy schedules. The world of work can easily become overwhelming if you let it, and there usually seems to be much more work to do than there is time to do it in. Even retirement these days, I’m told, can be a busy time, with so many opportunities to volunteer, travel, or, in some cases, even start a new career.
In the midst of our busy lives, church can seem like just one more thing we have to fit in, one more demand on our time. But I think that this is a matter of perspective. Church should rather be viewed, I think, as a “time out,” a weekly scheduled break from the rest of our busy lives. (I’ve been told that in the Middle Ages some people believed that while you were in a worship service you didn’t age, that time effectively stood still for you—but I haven’t been able to find a written source for this yet.) In this way, our weekly gatherings around Word and Sacrament are not unlike family dinners at home. Families that regularly eat together do not do so by accident. They do so because they have made an intentional, conscious decision that this is important to them. It becomes an expectation, “what we do.” It is, in some sense, a discipline—time carved out from the busy daily and weekly schedule, time set aside to “be” family. And in such families it is not something that individual family members do only when they feel the need, or when they find some compelling reason to attend, such as a favorite dish being served. They come because they are a part of the family. They are expected and they are needed, and without them the family dinner is incomplete.
Each year in Lent we carve out additional time each week to be the family of God in this place. We gathered on Ash Wednesday to begin our Lenten observance, and then each Wednesday in Lent we gather for soup suppers, Taizé Evening Prayer, and meditation on our Baptismal Life. Finally, right at the end of the month, we have set aside three evenings in Holy Week – Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil – to ponder and celebrate the central mystery of our faith, the passion, death, and resurrection of our Lord, and to be empowered for the resurrection life that God intends for all of us. There is a place for you at the table. Come and be family with your brothers and sisters in Christ at Grace in this season.
+ Pastor Repp
