From The Shooting Star, October 11, 2009. Copyright 2009, Ellen Rowse Spero. All rights reserved.
As I talked about in my sermon on Sunday, worship is the central defining act of our community. It is what makes us a religious community as opposed to a social club, a social action group, a social services agency, or a school. While what we do together includes aspects of these things, we begin in worship, "honoring and celebrating the Spirit of Life" as the first step in our covenant. All the other pieces are part of worship too: caring for one another in our joys and sorrows; nurturing all souls in our search for truth and the sacred; bearing witness to justice and peace; and being good stewards of our congregation, our tradition, and our earth.
I talked on Sunday about how we are and always have been rooted in being a religion about life. Here is an excerpt from that sermon: "The phrase, "Spirit of Life" is a metaphor for the awe inspiring, evolving, beautiful, profound, overwhelming, hopeful, eternal truth that we live; and that we live in a world, a universe alive with wonder, grace, mystery, birth, death, despair, courage, seasons, and possibilities we can only imagine. We can enter the Spirit of Life from different theological places: as the Creation itself; as the potential of the humanity or the universe to keep evolving and growing and revealing itself; as God or Goddess or the unnamable Divine Spirit that embraces us; as a Life Force or Energy that binds us all as one. Whatever our experience and interpretation of the Spirit of Life, it gives us a language to begin speaking of the sacred, the holy, that of ultimate meaning in ways that can hopefully engage us in dialogue with one another and with people from other religious traditions who recognize their own Spirit of Life. It also makes clear the ground upon which we stand. We gather to worship not in a spirit of judgment, salvation, chosenness, obedience, surrender, or separation from the world. It is one of engagement, wonder, healing, possibility, relationship, gratitude, love of the earth, hope for this life and this world."
Given that worship is important to our congregational life, we are experimenting with expanding our invitation to worship with adding Sunday evening services. The purpose is as simple as that: to offer another opportunity for worship for people who cannot make Sunday mornings or who prefer the quieter, less formal atmosphere of the evening time. It is a service for people who cannot make Sunday mornings because of other competing commitments; people who like Sunday mornings to sleep in or get things done; or people who are teaching in the RE program but want an opportunity to worship too. The Sunday evening services have the same sermon and readings as the morning service. However, they are led as circle worship services, in the chapel. While we do not run a Sunday School program at this time, there is childcare available in the nursery. And children and youth who want to attend are most welcome. Rather than a social hour after the service, we do gather for fellowship in the Alliance Parlor beforehand.
I enjoy leading both kinds of worship, with their different flavors. Sunday morning is lively, with everyone getting ready for the day. It has the full music program with the beautiful voices of the choirs and our Religious Education program. Sunday evening is really a vespers service; more contemplative and a winding down of the day and the week. I am excited to see us expand our invitation to worship and to grow in this foundational practice.
In faith,
Rev. Ellen