passing the peace

 passing the peace 

Roz has difficulties, as she puts it, with the “technology” of The Book of Common Prayer. So, she doesn’t often come to church with Uncle Albert and me. True, she doesn’t often come to church anywhere at all. She did come with us this past Sunday, though, because, she said, “I’ve been up for a long time. I need a break.” She hadn’t slept well. “Tell her church will be a good place to catch up,” Uncle Albert said when I called to tell him we were on our way to pick him up. “Or, it would be,” he said after a moment’s hesitation, “if we didn’t keep moving around all the time.”

     We do: We stand. We sit. We kneel. We wander around passing the damn peace.

St. Jude’s has a new rector. She came in June. Susan. A former Miss Virginia, a dozen or so years ago. (She’s in her middle thirties, I’d guess. Her husband, who must be at least 15 years older, is a former state legislator, congressional aide, and lobbyist, who works now for a liberal think-tank with an office in Seeville. He’s an expert on U.S.- Scandinavian and Finnish relations. They don’t have children.)

     She conducts the service very formally, but she preaches informally as if from notes on the back of an envelope. This Sunday’s sermon (from Matthew 21:23-32 - the chief priests and the elders ask Jesus about his authority, so he asks them about whether the baptism of John was from heaven or earth; then he tells the story of two sons) - the sermon was about how little those that must know the most about religion know about Jesus; then, it was about how for Jesus knowing has so little to do with what you can say and how much with what you are already doing.

     Uncle Albert agreed - both with the sermon and with Jesus. I agree - with Uncle Albert, the sermon, and Jesus. But both Uncle Albert and I are more knowers than doers. We’re in church, aren’t we? at eight o’clock in the morning. (Granted we go at 8:00 because we also agree that it’s good to get our religious obligations out of the way early in the day so we have the rest of it to do other things.) But, for whatever reason, we’re there as we have been many, many, many times before, thinking we’ll discover something we need to know. It’s sad.

We went out to breakfast after the service. Uncle Albert treated. We took him home. We went home. “What did you think of the sermon?” I asked Roz. She hadn’t weighed in at breakfast.

     “I didn’t think anything,” she said.

 10.02.17