Honesty is the best...

I was paging through a book of prayers yesterday (as I'm sure we're all wont to do from time to time) and came across two prayers by Harry Williams that I had to spread to the wider world. I'll post one today, and one later in the week.

Harry Williams, the book tells me, was Dean of Trinity College, Cambridge, in the 1960's where he "gained a reputation for his radical political and theological views. . . . His sermons at Trinity College, which attracted a large student congregation, contained snippets of prayers, in which God is addressed with naked honesty." Williams became a monk in 1969 and died in February of 2006.

Here's the first one, titled "Coming Into Church":

"Hello, it is me, your old friend and your old enemy, your loving friend who often neglects you, your complicated friend, your utterly perplexed and decidedly resentful friend, partly loving, partly hating, partly not caring. It is me."

I'm listening to student sermons on the Psalms these days while preaching (re-preaching, actually) a series on prayer myself. In the sermons I preach and in the ones I hear, there is a call to remember that our God wants the whole of us--the messy, lamenting, crazy, sad, joyful, despairing whole that makes up each one of us.

I often think that we should really go to church in our Saturday lawn-mowing/snow-shoveling clothes. We should go unshowered, with baseball caps on our heads and holes in the knees of our jeans.

I grew up in a tradition where "church clothes" were worn on Sundays. The cars were washed on Saturdays. Hair left straight every other day was curled for Sunday morning. Yes, yes, there is good in this: special preparation for a special day. But I wonder about the pastoral theology at work: if we work so hard to look so good, what else are we working to hide?

And who, really, would be offended if we came (visibly) messed up and stanky to church? I'm going to guess there are human beings who would take much greater offense and God would be delighted to see us get out from behind the masks and worship him in spirit and in truth.

Same goes for crying in church, laughing in church, clapping in church, sitting angrily in church, not singing in church, singing with your hands raised in church, and, maybe, sitting in the waaay back of church so that you can leave as soon as its done.

I think preparing for worship is important, yep, and attire may well be part of that. But I wonder how many of us would find relief in coming just as we are, without one plea?

When I worshiped at the Catholic Chapel on the campus of my grad school, I could do this. A few people knew me, but not many, and those who knew me didn't care if I came with a baseball cap on or dressed to the nine's. Didn't matter to them. Didn't matter to the priest. And I'm pretty sure it didn't matter to God either.

"Hello, it is me, your old friend and your old enemy, your loving friend who often neglects you, your complicated friend, your utterly perplexed and decidedly resentful friend, partly loving, partly hating, partly not caring. It is me."