Many names, gathered into one.

I have a confession to make: I am a church junkie.

I was raised, as you all know, going to church every week, unless I was throwing up.  I was born Baptist, raised Methodist, worked for Presbyterians for three summers, and have been attending an Episcopal church going on six years, and I know that because I started attending that church in Year C of the lectionary.  I took a bit of time off in that six years, during one of my years of college, where I experimented with not going to church every week.  I also, later, experimented with “attending a church but not getting involved”.  Both of these experiments were, ultimately, failures, because I truly love going to church, to the point where, when we planned a family trip to start the Sunday after Christmas this year, I insisted on going to church in the morning.  My parents looked at me like I was crazy, so I took the car and went, not just to church, but to the EARLY SERVICE, because I am weird.

Recently, I have decided that waking up at 6am (which becomes 6:30 and, today, 6:45) to get to church before 8am for choir rehearsal and singing (and now often reading scripture and being the crucifer) at the 9am service, followed by the Adult Education Sunday School isn’t enough church for me.  Oh, no.  No, I have now added another service, an 11:15am service at another church, that goes until 12:30 or 1.  And since I’ve added on this other church, my Sunday mornings have become quite the spectrum of church-going.

The Episcopal church I’ve been attending for a while is Grace Church, on 10th and Broadway, known to NYU students as “that really pretty church across the street from that freshman dorm.”  Grace is a beautiful Gothic revival church, designed by James Renwick, who designed St. Patrick’s Cathedral, when he was 23 (I am 23 and OH NO WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?!).  That’s, honestly, why I first stepped through the door, my second Sunday living in NYC.  I was church-hopping, trying to figure out a church I could call home in NYC.  The week before I’d attended one of the few Methodist churches in my walkable range... and while it was comforting by being so familiar, it was a bit too familiar.  While they got me to coffee hour the first time I ever visited (a feat), I knew all the hymns, had sung soprano, alto, AND done liturgical dance to the anthem, and wasn’t challenged by the theology.

So I found myself at Grace, and while I continued checking out area churches, I had a good indication after that first service that this was the one.  Besides the sheer beauty of that building, Grace has a very strong music department (clearly important to me) and solid, confrontational theology.  While I doubt the Rector would himself use the word “confrontational” to describe what is preached at Grace, I clearly remember the first sermon I heard there.  It was on a section of Luke (Year C, I told you), that has since become one of my favorite Bible verses, Luke 14:26: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate mother, father, wife, child, yea, even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”  It is a hard text that most people won’t touch with a ten foot pole.  They will preach on any other text they possibly can that week.  And at Grace, they tackled it in all its complexity and difficulty, and it is that kind of delving into scripture, liturgy, and theology that I have found at Grace--they do not push anything aside because it’s uncomfortable, or dumb it down, they face it head on.  Their Sunday Forum (the adult education Sunday school) is also an EXCELLENT spot for this, for us church nerd types, often having guest speakers from local universities on topics such as the evolution of the Book of Common Prayer (actually fascinating), Ignatian spirituality, or issues of the church in society.

Grace is also a great church for an introvert.  This is not to be taken lightly--I’ve been to churches that are so outgoing that I’ve become very uncomfortable.  Grace allowed me to ease in, and slowly but surely, I became very involved.  (I also have to note that Grace is a big church in NYC, and I was a frequent but uninvolved member, and the Rector remembered my name after I was gone for 9 months in Montreat and Ghana.  I was totally impressed.)  It’s a church where I can indulge the more thoughtful side of me, that stays a bit restrained, and loves order, a classic liturgy, ritual and... Bach.  It is one of the more traditional churches, but in a very rich way.

Also WE ARE GETTING A NEW PIPE ORGAN.  NOT EVEN CAPSLOCK CAN EXPRESS HOW EXCITING THIS IS.

Recently, I have started to attend another church, a church that is, frankly, pretty far out of my comfort zone in some ways.  I am now attending Sunday morning worship at Middle Collegiate Church.  Middle is one of the Collegiate churches of NYC, that were the Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church in the good old days before the American revolution.  They are now four churches, all technically RCA (Reformed Church in America).  These Collegiate churches are essentially the REALLY LIBERAL sidearm of the much more conservative RCA.  And Middle, which is in the heart of the East Village, is one of the most diverse-- no, wait, THE most diverse church I have ever seen.  many races, ALL kinds of people... it seems like the one of the least represented groups is straight white men.  The extremely tattooed folks you see on St. Marks?  If they go to church, they go to Middle.  Middle is passionately involved in social justice efforts, they are radically inclusive, they are particularly artistic.  On any given day there might be a church choir, a gospel choir, a sermon that’s a story, a sermon told through drama, non-traditional prayer, etc. The building is basically in an Arts and Crafts style (windows by Tiffany), which is one of my favorite artistic movements.  And slowly, different parts of my life have led me to Middle.  A couple years ago, a group of my friends were hired to do theater with the children there, which got me through those doors for the first time.  Then this past summer, I found out that the Senior Minister there, Jacqui Lewis, was going to be speaking at the 2013 Montreat Signature Conference, Imagine, and when I told Pete, the President of Montreat, that I knew that church, he insisted that I go hear Jacqui preach.  Then I found out this fall that they were doing the Missa Gaia by Paul Winter, and since I love that work, I came to worship for the first time.  Due to my rehearsal schedule, I couldn’t go back for a while, but I started attending again a few weeks ago.  Then I visited Princeton Theological Seminary and immediately connected with someone, later to find out that he also attends Middle.  Today I found out that one of my teachers from when I studied abroad in Ghana attends Middle when he’s in NYC.

In many ways Middle is ideal, for that social justice bent and inclusiveness, but in many ways it also makes me uncomfortable... particularly in worship style.  For those of you who know my church background (particularly those who know my mother) know that I actually really like a certain amount of tradition in my service.  I don’t like boring, but I love richly traditional, and there are some “rules” that are bred into me, and some things that because of parts of my past, make me a little queasy.  I don’t do well in Pentecostal churches, or churches highly focused on emotions, because I have been emotionally manipulated by worship services before and let me tell you, that feels awful when you crash from it.  My denominational background is all in traditions that don’t really talk, that might give an appreciative “hmm” after something particularly moving, but otherwise, we are composed and orderly.  Middle is not.  Middle is loud and sometimes people stand up and sometimes people hold their hands in the air and sometimes people dance and often... people... clap.  Not just clapping along with songs (which thank GOD, this is my first time not being in a congregation of rhythmless white people, it’s awesome), but... when things are done, people... applaud.  (Mom I’m so sorry I’ve been applauding in church please don’t disown me please I promise I’ll always say “een” not “in”)  Furthermore, one of the longest parts of the service is the Passing of the Peace, where people get completely out of their pews, cross the aisles, sometimes even travel around the entire church saying hello to people.  It’s an amount of extroversion that makes it difficult to hide, which is good, but also scary for some of us, and I don’t think I could do Middle without the counterbalance of Grace.  Grace fills me with spirituality for myself, Middle fills me with spirituality for the world.

So this morning, I went to choir at Grace, where we joked about not being able to say “alleluia” even though Sundays aren’t a part of Lent, and lovingly made fun of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”, then we sang in the service--the first Sunday morning service completely done on the partially-finished new pipe organ.  I went to the Sunday Forum, where we had a lovely session about Mary Daly the radical lesbian feminist theologian, where the person leading the Forum passed around the course offerings booklet for Union Theological Seminary (which I have in my apartment, since I’ve applied there).  Then I headed over to Middle, where the sermon was a collaboration between Jacqui and a Rabbi friend of hers, talking about Exodus and liberation and Black History Month and how none of us are free until everyone is free.

Are any of these styles of worship better than the other?  No.  Not at all.  I am so glad God is big enough for all of them to exist.  It’s like last week, in the Sunday Forum conversation about the Book of Common Prayer, where I was torn about which was better: having one liturgy that you can delve deeply into over years, or having different liturgies enriching the service with new ideas every week?  The conclusion I came to was that I was glad that both of them exist in various churches.

Here is something that I started writing during one of the anthems at Middle’s service, based on this, based on the Sunday Forum and Mary Daly trying to find alternate images of God, and on ideas of God as “unchanging” that I encountered in a systematic theology class at Princeton:

I praise an ever-shifting God,
who slips through the fingers of any hand that tries to grasp it and pin it down.
My God is found in silver croses and pipe organs,
in long robes and candles--
and my God is found in drums and clapping and dancing and loud “Amen!”s.
My God forgives debts, trespasses and sins,
whether you believe in One God or God the Father Almighty.
My God sings through raised soft palates
and speaks in tongues.
My God penetrates the words of the great theologians,
and lifts up the voice of the testimony,
and sparks the questions of the doubting.

I worship the God of the mountains; majestic, eternal, unchanging.
I worship the God of the sea; unfathomable, unknowable, unpredictable.
I worship the God of the desert; harsh, purifying, searching.
I worship the God of the city; vibrant, busy, colorful.
I worship the God of the home; comforting, intimate, warm.
I worship a human God, who laughs and weeps as all humanity does.
I worship a separate God, who sees what I cannot.

And I sing to a God that left the church’s doors
to weave in and out of all the world
to appear in blue jeans
and on cardboard signs begging for money
a God that found its way into the synagogues, the mosques, the temples, the yoga classes,
who appears to the churchfolk through the voice of the atheist
who finds a strain of love in the world
and wraps itself around it, multiplying its light,
for my God is everything and anything that is based in love.

My God dances away from my reaching fingertips
but is somehow in my hand.
And I spend my life trying to glimpse it,
only to hear it laugh and say, “I am right here! Open your eyes!”

If your God is an idea you can easily grasp,
a one-gendered, unconfusing, comprehensible idea that seems to hold much power in that simplicity,
I would like to challenge our Gods to a duel.
For how could my big God lose against your tiny one?
For if we believe God is all-powerful,
how dare we restrict God to one image?

Is it not the gravest sin to limit this lively, playful, mysterious, abundant, loving thing we call God?

Mea maxima, maxima culpa.

In case anyone missed the memo, I have a minor obsession with the musical Sweeney Todd.  I have tried to articulate why many times, but nothing quite hits the mark.  It has to do with when and how it came into my life and the effect that had (aka: it's why I do theater), it has to do with what I knew of musical theater before and what I know now, it has to do with my music taste, it has to do with the breadth of emotion, it has to do with the brilliant use of the traditional Dies Irae theme… and I think I'll never be able to quite pin the attraction down, much in the same way that lovers can't quite articulate why they are in love.  But Sweeney and I have been going strong for 11 years now.

The thing I usually say is that I fell in love with the characters.  Every single one of them I could identify with and love.  Each flawed, each struggling, each trying, each with something redemptive inside of them.  While the joke(/truth) is that I'm most often like Toby, I feel for all of them, am like all of them, and adore all of them.

Even Judge Turpin.

Judge Turpin is the closest thing we have to a true villain in this show.  Many people act despicably, but it's Judge Turpin that is the "bad guy" throughout the show, and many known productions (and the movie) keep it that way.  But there's a song, written for the original production but left out-- it was performed at the first preview but didn't fit within the director's vision for the show and was cut.  It has since been restored and though it's not in the 1982 DVD with Angela Lansbury and George Hearn or the Tim Burton film, you can see it on the 2001 San Francisco Symphony concert DVD with Patti LuPone and George Hearn.  (or you can watch one of my favorite versions here... except it's in Catalan.) The song is the Judge's "Johanna".

It's the most awkward song to talk about, and I probably won't ever be able to use it as a sermon illustration.  (Though I did write a paper on it in high school.)  For those of you who are unfamiliar with Sweeney Todd, 15 years before the show, the Judge, coveting the wife of a simple barber, Benjamin Barker, has Barker sent to a penal colony on a false charge, and takes the wife by force, who then poisons herself.  In a moment of guilt and mercy, the Judge takes in the year-old, now orphaned daughter as his ward.  In the timeframe of the musical, however, the girl is now 16, and the Judge begins to lust after her. The song begins with the Judge singing a "mea culpa", and throughout the song he both prays for his deliverance and practices self-flagellation, which only increases his lust.

There are two major schools of interpretation of this song.  One pushes the Judge further into villain category, interpreting intent from the beginning of the song as using the scourging for pleasure.  The other realm of interpretation is that he begins this song truly repentant, but the act of his self-punishment turns on him, despite his good intentions.  This is the school I subscribe to, because it's much more interesting and paints a far more human picture.  Also, if you look at the Christopher Bond version of Sweeney Todd (the version that was the direct source material for the Sondheim), there's a monologue corresponding to this song that is pretty directly connected to this line of interpretation.  This monologue includes what I think is the most heartbreaking line in the entire play: "Heaven mocks my penitence, and turns my one good act into mockery."

Today is Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent, a season of preparation looking forward Easter.  While Advent, our other main season of waiting (before Christmas) was marked with anticipation and hope, Lent can seem a little less magical.  Lent is described with words like "self-denial" "fasting" "repentance".  Lent is like getting kicked in the spiritual behind.  For 40 days.  And we plunge into it by being visibly reminded of our mortality and our sin.  The tradition of the imposition of ashes (being marked with a cross of ashes on our foreheads) grew out of several traditions regarding preparing people for baptism, and atoning for sins.  It is now common for churches (not just Catholic churches) to begin Lent with these symbols.

Of course, the ashes, crossed onto our foreheads with the words, "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return," are a reminder that we are mortals, doomed to sin and death.  Ashes are also the remains of the "sackcloth and ashes" tradition, where people would wear course clothing and ashes in times of mourning or deep repentance.  But what you may not be aware of if you don't step into the church on Ash Wednesday and hear the reading, is we are sinning THROUGH the practice of Ash Wednesday.

Our lesson today is from Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21:

"Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.  And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.  Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Oof.

So on the day where we as a church get together to repent by bearing our sin on ourselves, publicly… we are told we should instead be doing this in secret.  On the day where we disfigure our faces, we are told not to disfigure our faces.  Even in our trying to repent, we sin.  Just like Judge Turpin.  All those theological quandaries about the human condition, the fall of man, total depravity, are summed up in this liturgical act: how we sin even in our repentance.

So where do we go from here?

What breaks my heart about Judge Turpin is he gives up.  He finds a legal loophole, smooths away the problem by pledging to marry Johanna in order to "sanctify" his lust.  In the Bond, he says, "We must be what we are.  I cannot change."  It is the easy way--finding some way to smooth over our imperfections, finding some logistical or practical or (dare I say it) even theological way out.  It is easy to simply continue coasting along, instead of traveling down the difficult road towards change.  Towards the cross.  That's the road of Lent.

Lent, simply speaking, is a time where we take stock and see that we are so far from perfect it seems foolish to try.  But we are fools, striving towards perfection, and we will walk together along this impossible road, working to become as good as we can.