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Worship as protest

Worship as protest

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For many years, it was my job to go to church. But now that I am retired from active ministry, I still make the choice to get up on a Sunday morning, as many of you do, put on some decent clothes, as many of you do, and go to church, as many of you do.

There are a variety of reasons we choose to go: for the experience of community, to see friends, for comfort, for edification, out of a sense of duty, out of a desire to express to God, to demonstrate to God, our gratitude. And by going, we serve a variety of purposes: maintaining an institution that serves us and the public, nurturing and strengthening that sense of community that we desire and so many need, helping to motivate and mobilize our communal mission, and honoring God, simply honoring God by our worship.

But as I drove home from church on Deer Isle a couple of Sundays ago, I thought that, regardless of what I might get or of what I might give, the simple act of going to church, by itself, is a powerful act, an act of protest.

Worship is an act of protest, an act of civil disobedience, protesting, disobeying, defying the “rules,” the laws, written and unwritten, that form the basis of accepted social norms and expectations: more is better, stronger is safer, the will of the majority is primary.

When we go to church, we go to hear and to declare allegiance to a gospel that turns these norms upside down! We declare that our love for God, our allegiance to God, supersedes all other loves, all other allegiances: to party, to creed, to nation, and even to family. We will do will of God, not the will of the people, not bend to the pressure of popular opinion or pledge allegiance before all else to a flag or a president.

We declare that one matters, any one, even the tiniest, weakest, poorest, sickest, “most expendable,” even the one who is our enemy. Especially the tiniest, weakest, poorest, sickest, “most expendable.” Especially the one who is our enemy.

And we declare that power, true power, is manifested, not by overcoming, but by serving, not by securing borders, but by welcoming the stranger, not by protecting our future (as if we could!) but by taking risks to live fully in the present.

We live in a tumultuous and perplexing and scary time, in a world torn apart by division and conflict, by accusation and recrimination, by bitterness and fear, all seemingly ruled by the law of self-protection, self-actualization, self-aggrandizement, self-entitlement. When we go to church, we register our protest. We say, “No!” There is a better way to be. There is a better world, envisioned in God’s imagination and now in ours, a world that not only could be, but will be.

Your will be done! Your kingdom come!

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“We’re issuing a new executive action next week that will comprehensively protect our country.”
(Donald Trump at a February 16 news conference)

I was glad, so glad that the judicial system stayed the first executive order on immigration and refugees, so glad that our system is still capable of exercising checks and balances, so glad that such an ill-conceived and ill-intended and, frankly, cruel blanket ban was seen for was it is, or rather for what it is not — not us, not who we are at our best, not who, it is my hope, most of us want to be.

But this administration is determined to get its way, which means that advocates for refugees and advocates for a just America and advocates of compassion must remain vigilant and vocal! We must protest, not stand by quietly while people’s lives are disrupted and upended. We must continue to stand not against, but stand for — stand for compassion, stand for the protection of  people at risk, stand for welcome and acceptance and affirmation of people not like us. Or better, stand for defining “us” to include people who are not just like “me!”

It is difficult to keep on speaking up, difficult to keep on protesting, difficult to sustain energy and will and engagement, especially when protest seems futile, when it seems not to make a difference. I do believe voices of justice and compassion can make a difference, but I was reminded that protest is not merely about effecting change, but also and especially about integrity and about faithfulness, faithfulness to the core values that make us who we are. I was reminded by this quote from Wendell Berry headlining the current edition of the The Weekly Sift:

Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protesters who hold out longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal. If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance. History simply affords too little evidence that anyone’s individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.