Annual Meeting faux pas

Jun 13, 2009 by Daniel Ross-Jones

I’m currently at the 2009 Wisconsin Conference Annual Meeting. (Click for official AM blog.)  Some people would describe it as a sort-of family get-together, others would compare it more to a professional conference, and I’d agree in part with both of those descriptions.  Basically, for those who are in church denominational structures, the annual judicatorial conference makes sense, because they are all the same just with a different title attached.  For those who aren’t, there’s no adequate description that makes sense, because it just seems to be a bunch of old church people looking for an excuse to drink coffee and eat ice cream and fight about… something.  (And, for the record, that description is partly correct, too.)

This is my first UCC Conference Meeting, and for the most part its been fun.  I’ve enjoyed making new connections and getting to know more people in this adopted church of mine.  People have asked me how I’m liking things, and I’ve usually responded, “A church meeting is a church meeting.”  But I’ll admit to being a little bit of a junkie for things like this and letting my extroversion combine with a complete dorkiness for church polity.  My confusion about UCC structures still abounds, but its nice to see that I can hold my own as I get closer and closer to that 2011 prime time.

I did, however, commit a little faux pas yesterday.  As one enters the meeting space, there is a giant ceramic bowl filled with water, to call us to remember the waters of our baptism no doubt.  As a sacramentalian, even with a memorialist theology, I was overjoyed to see it.  There’s a comfort in ritual for me, and I always whole-heartedly support ways to keep the sacraments front-and-center in all forms of our worship life — and, as we’ve touched on slightly, all of life is worship.

I was excited.  I was comforted.  And then I did it: I dipped my fingers in the water.

And I crossed myself.

What normally comes with a feeling of humility, a reminder of my lowly place in the grand scheme of things, of a connectedness with millions of people throughout the ages and spaces of time was instead a grand recognition of where I was at that moment, caught with wet fingers and spots on my church in the crosshairs of death stares from some of those in one of the most low-church, non-liturgical Christian traditions.

What did you just do? was the question from their eyes.  Do you think we’re Catholic?

But do you know what — I was a communion server, and noticed a couple of people cross themselves as they partook of the elements.  Body of Christ, given for you takes on a different meaning when coupled with that simple forehead-belly-chest-chest-heart action.  Its not a meaning of the substance of the elements, at least not for me.  Its a meaning of ritual, of remembrance.  Its a meaning that, no matter how many times I try to rationalize my mind away from Bloody Jesus of Substitutionary Human Atonement, the cross is still an unimaginably brutal form of capital punishment.  Its a meaning that, no matter how many times I try to rationalize my mind away from the re-creation of that sacrifice for salvation and the idea of real presence in the meal, that this celebration is more than a snack of grain and fruit.

And without that cross, the meaning of the ritual would be irrelevant.  It would be simply water in a bowl, perhaps some sort of consecrated water for ritual washing, but plain old tap water in a bowl nonetheless.  The actions and meanings of our ritual matter.

But even beyond this, the promise of the United Church of Christ is not alignment with a heady, cold, militant, imageless Protestantism of the Reformed tradition — though certainly we owe a great deal of our heritage to that tradition.  The promise is to be a place like the American concept of a melting pot, a place where a variety of theologies, doctrines, and practices can find support and people don’t need to check their minds or their Christian practice at the door.

So even though I know I committed a certain faux pas, I do not apologize, and even though I’ve been trying to “de-liturgize, de-Lutheranize, de-formalize” myself in order to fit in this new church family of mine, I’m not going to try to do so as much anymore.  (Though to do this I’m going to need to instead work on “de-self-consciousizing” myself.)  I’m going to cross myself, both at the font and when partaking of communion.  I’m going to say “sins” instead of “debts” in the Lord’s Prayer.  (I already do most of the time anyway because “debts” just feels so awkward still.)

That’s supposed to be the promise of this church of mine.  And, if anything, it provides just one more avenue of opportunity for conversation and engagement, to meet more people and create more connections in my adopted church family.

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