The Nelson Family Indonesia

I haven’t belonged in a church in nearly three years.

That’s a strange feeling, to be a wandering worshiper without roots in a congregation. It’s acceptable and I can deal with it. Our whole family has to varying degrees. God the Holy Spirit is good and his love remains palpable even when we aren’t firmly connected to a particular part of the Body of Christ. But it’s not the best way to live for long.

But last night I sat in the darkness and let the last words from the cross wash over and through me. I heard preaching and sang the old, familiar hymns of sorrow and celebration, woe and wonderment, with probably two hundred other people, the vast majority of which I didn’t know but knew we shared a fundamental theology, faith and savior.

The experience brought back my time as a pastor, leading my mostest favoritest service of the year – Good Friday Tenebrae. It brought back the preparations I would go through to try and make it memorable for my members. More than just words, something appealing to as many of the senses as possible so when the Word came it might be lodged deeper than the ear.

As the Via Dolorosa was played on the piano, I could hear the voice of Lois, as I had for a decade, singing that soulful song as I waited in the pastor’s sacristy to execute the strepitus near the end of the service. As I sat in the growing shadows I was kept company by more than my family and this particular Lutheran congregation, but the congregants I ministered to for years before. It was a beautiful experience. Painful as a study in all we have lost as God’s creation, and all that will be restored and renewed. Hopeful, as the dim but still-burning Christ candle re-emerges in the dark of the sanctuary, foreshadowing the blinding light of Easter morning that stretches across the world and throughout time from Eden to Zion.

It was good to be home liturgically even if it wasn’t my congregation, and I wasn’t their member. It was good to be accepted there in the shadows because that’s where we all live, waiting for the light together.