Day One
After a long journey from Fort Wayne, I arrived in Atlanta (North Buckhead for the purists) in time to register and relax for an hour or so before the opening worship and lecture. The journey was made a little easier with the company of a friend and fellow preacher, the Rev. Greg Enstrom, pastor of First Wayne UMC downtown Fort Wayne. The hours flew by as we discussed our churches and General Conference and the Festival, listened to recordings of old Joke Shows from the Prairie Home Companion and half of the musical Hamilton. Before you know it, here we are.
I always wonder halfway down why I come year after year, it’s a long journey, a pretty big expense and inconvenient scheduling (almost always means I miss Maddie’s birthday - though we celebrated with her and Joe (don’t ask) yesterday) and I miss being home. I’m tired from driving or navigating air travel and somewhere along the line I wonder why I keep coming. Then I go to opening worship and I remember.
I love the Atlanta venue because it is based out of Peachtree Road United Methodist Church, the closest to a cathedral that we have, I think. An amazing facility and gracious hosts and the constant reminder that here in the buckle of the bible belt the church is not only still hanging on, but vibrant and alive, at least for now.
I found a place in the sanctuary, toward the back, cause I’m a United Methodist, and waited for worship to begin. There were the usual welcomes and announcements, the official count (around 1,200 preachers (which is way too many preachers for one place - I try to keep my distance because of the warping of the space-time continuum) and then a pause while the organist and brass ensemble got into place (yes, the brass ensemble). And then worship began.
It was Easter again, after some glorious prelude music we began with Wesley’s “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” - six verses of it, brass and organ and bells and a choir that processed. And kept on processing. And kept on processing. A bit slow, I must say, but majestic, glorious. “Love’s redeeming work is done, Alleluia!” I found it hard to breathe for a moment as we sang, 1,200 preachers who got to experience a festival worship celebration we didn’t have to plan! “Once he died our souls to save, Alleluia! Where’s thy victory, boasting grave? Alleluia!” I found tears filling my eyes as I realized how much death, of too many kinds had occupied my soul, pushing out life. And still the choir processed, white robed, candle bearing, cross proceeding, down the magnificent aisle that must cause bride’s knees to wobble. “Hail the Lord of earth and heaven, Alleluia!” I couldn’t sing, just listened holding my breath. No, holding on to the Spirit that filled us, filled me, like a kid with a helium balloon, or flying a kite that threatened to take us up into the winds along with it. “King of glory, soul of bliss, Alleluia! Everlasting life is this, Alleluia!” Yes, that’s it, a taste of everlasting life, filling the room, filling my hungry soul. “Thee to know, thy power to prove, Alleluia! Thus to sing, and thus to love, Alleluia!” Why can’t worship be like this every week? Why can’t we enter into the moment, with joy and anticipation, sitting on the edge of our seats, leaning in, wanting more? I wondered if I was letting my congregation down, my people down, by not bringing them to this kind of experience, this kind of lifting. I felt inadequate somehow to the task I have too often taken for granted. But the kite kept tugging, lifting, raising. I finally found my voice again at the end, the choir had assembled into the loft, the chancel was full of robed preachers and liturgists and the Atlanta Brassworks blowing for all their worth. “Soar we now where Christ has led, Alleluia! Following our exalted Head, Alleluia!” We soared, 1,200 voices and hearts, 1,200 egos used to center stage and now content to sit in a middle back pew holding on to the kite string, we soared, we rose. “Made like him, like him we rise, Alleluia! Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!” Ah, yes, the cross, the grave, we are so full of that, aware of that. But the skies, Charles Wesley told us, don’t forget the skies. Alleluia!
The opening song was over and still we soared. Christ is risen, we were reminded, Christ is risen indeed. Then the Gloria Patri, and we stumbled a bit on that. Too many versions, too many traditions we weren’t together, the kites sagged and dove, but we pulled together, got on the same rhythm and same notes - well more or less, and we continued to soar.
We were prayed for, we prayed together using the words we had taught and led week after week, now we followed. Then the choir sang over us “The Gradual” it was called, “This is the day that the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad therein. O give thanks to the Lord, for he is gracious and his mercy endureth forever.” I was like melted butter poured over us, like warm oil soothing our souls, they sang and we soared. Then we sang again, and there was another procession, the bible, no the Bible came down the aisle surrounded by bells and candles and the processional cross. A cantor led us in Alleluias, then the preacher read the Word, from the floor at the head of the aisle, so that she disappeared and there was only her voice, only the Word ringing out the familiar words of John chapter twenty, when Mary came to the tomb, weeping and Peter and John had a footrace and then ducked in the empty tomb and ran back home, while Mary stayed with new worries to weep about, until the gardener became her Lord and the whole world changed. Then we Alleluia-ed again and sat down. And I didn’t even realize I had been standing all that time, because I was held up by the kite string I was clinging to.
The preacher was Anna Carter Florence, one of my very favorite preachers. She teaches preaching here in Atlanta. She preached us a sermon about how we don’t always recognize resurrection when it happens to us. And how God uses the least likely to proclaim resurrection. And how we ought to pay more attention, how we ought to stick around a little longer in the graveyard, but at the same time how we ought not cling to Christ as if we could possess Him, as if He was our personal possession and not at loose in the world, loving even those we have trouble loving. And that maybe this week would be a good week to turn around and tell the story as if for the first time.
We proclaimed our faith, we gave an offering for the poor of Atlanta while the choir sang again and ministered to our souls, to sang the doxology, then there was the recessional. “Rejoice, the Lord is King! Your Lord and King adore; Mortals give thanks and sing and triumph evermore.” Triumph? It was a challenge to me personally. I haven’t felt very triumphant lately. “Lift up your heart, lift up your voice; Rejoice again I say rejoice.” Can we? Can I? With so much wrong, with so much falling apart? Lift up. I clung to my kite string and thought it might be possible. “The Kingdom cannot fail; He rules o’er earth and heaven; the keys of earth and hell are to our Jesus given.” Ah, not to me, but to Him. It is not my hand that determines success or failure, but His. All I can to is to stay faithful and hold on to my string. “Lift up your heart, lift up your voice; Rejoice; again I say rejoice.”
A benediction was given, the winds of the Spirit blew strong and steady. We sat for the postlude, Toccata, Symphony No. 5, by Charles-Marie Widor, a very familiar piece if not by name then by sound, but this time organ accompanied by brass, it was glorious.
What I could hear. See, postlude, which means get going, move out, pack up. Preachers. One thousand two freaking hundred preachers turned from the glory to the mundane. The buzz began to rival the organ pipes, the guy in front of my was complaining that the scripture in the event program was different than the one in the worship bulletin. Someone else was worried that they were going to run out of the free water bottles from the Lutheran Insurance company out in the narthex, others wondered if they had the stamina for the next speaker, and on and on and on.
I felt the string slipping from my grasp. I frantically tried to grab it as it fluttered up and out and away. I leaned in to hear the music over the buzz, I closed my eyes, I tuned out. But had to sigh as it was lost. They applauded when it ended, for music the didn’t hear as more than background to their own conversations. I wept for the loss of the moment. Then decided to hope for more. A week lies ahead. I’m ready.
After worship there was a jazz quintet, they started with “Come Sunday” that amazing Duke Ellington offering that is actually in the United Methodist Hymnal, but not congregation I know can sing it. But these guys did. And did it gloriously. Then they sang a scat version of “Now Thank We All Our God” which was amazing and fun and hinted of that Spirit yet again.
This was followed by, not a preacher, but a journalist, Leonard Pitts, who spoke on “With Apologies to the Least of These...” He started by saying when he was invited to speak he had never heard of the Festival. And didn’t even know what Homiletics meant. Looked it up and said, oh, a conference of clergy. Then he spoke out west and was chaperoned by the chaplain of the university. When he told her he was speaking at the Festival, he said her eyes lit up like Cinderella’s castle at Disney World and she said, “that’s like Woodstock for preachers!” Now I know, he said, now I know.
He spoke of the era of anger in which we live in this country, even though violent crime is the lowest it has been since records were kept, even though unemployment is lower than it has been in 20 years, even though the budget deficit has been steadily reduced by almost three fourths, even though our troops deployed overseas in war zones in steadily shrinking. We are angry. He said it is anger like the 1950's when civil rights was a hot and bloody issue. And then anger like the 1850's when slavery was dividing the nation and about to lead us into the most devastating war this nation has ever seen. We are facing today an emotional secession. Dividing, hating, drawing lines, pointing fingers, calling names.
He contrasted this with the world’s reaction to the new pope, Pope Francis, who caught the attention of the celebrity world and the secular world at large. And he said, you know what he has done to receive this wondrous amazement? He acted like a Christian. Pitts went on to say that too often the faith community has shown up to apologize for old prejudice. That some of the Christian right have confessed that they were late to war on AIDs because they thought it was a disease of the gay and drug using community and that they had less compassion. Hear that, he said, the followers of the one who said love one another as I have loved you, love the least of these, had less compassion for those who suffered.
It was a wake up call. Like Pitts, I am tired of Christianity as defined by Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, by Pat Robertson and that ilk. Maybe that explains why so many are saying no thanks to the Christian faith. If that’s what it is, I don’t need it, I don’t want it. We are losing a generation who doesn’t want to be defined by what we hate. Maybe it is time to walk with Christ.
The quintet came back and ended the evening with, Just a Closer Walk with Thee.
Me, I wandered out into the night wanting to grab the string again. Maybe tomorrow.
Shalom,
Derek
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