Volley #64

Time and Place

Yet another quiet revolution is happening all around us. It impacts us directly and seriously, but most of us are at best barely aware of it. The revolution is in the attitude we have toward time and place.

Why, we moderns ask, do we have to be at a particular place, at a particular time, in order to experience any kind of exchange of information involving sights or sounds (and why should we have to pay for it)? Why can’t we download life from the Internet or Tivo it for playback at our convenience—for free? If we want to listen to all the week’s lectures at 2:00 A. M. in our jammies, what is the problem with that? If we happen to be working during the week’s big game, why can’t we watch it later, as if it were just happening? If we suddenly hear of a book or article we’d like to read, or a recording we’d like to listen to, why can’t we have access to it right now, in our own home? If we have to change clothes, drive to the Mall, enter a store, and buy the thing, we’d just as soon do without—our attention will be on something else by then, anyway! And what is this fixation the church has on 10:30 Sunday morning (or 8:00, or 9:00, or 11:00, or any fixed hour), during prime sleeping time (it’s always prime sleeping time for somebody)? Sure, I should say my prayers: but why not say them when I feel like it, and where I happen to be? Does God show up at one location at a certain time once a week with hearing aid in place?

Because, one may respond, the Church is Ecclesia, “the gathering.” We aren’t like Hindus, for example, who can show up at a temple, any convenient temple, at any convenient time, or even use the one we’ve set up in our home for that matter, to offer our sacrifice to the deity. We say our private prayers, of course, but they are just that—they are not liturgy, not worship, which is something the gathered community does together. We need our private prayers, but we need Common Prayer, as well.

These are two ships passing in the night, I fear. They are heading opposite directions, and they have no means of communicating with one another. It is no good telling a prevailing culture, which does not understand our quaint language, and which is not listening anyway, how it ought to be. If anyone is to adapt, it must be the one who actually desires to be heard and understood. That would be us, since we do hope to continue to proclaim Good News to a world which continues to suffer brokenness.

Try to get that world to sit down with us on a hard pew and sing unfamiliar songs just because it’s 11:00 Sunday morning!

We’ll never get around to “worship on demand,” not in my lifetime. We need to think of ways we can accommodate worship at more accessible times, though—not so the same handful can be guilted into attending more services, but so that more of the church—and people not yet of the church-- can be gathered for worship sometime. Why not consider a Saturday evening alternative, or Sunday late afternoon? God is awake then, too.