THE ENGLISH CHURCH HUMORIST David Walker has a cartoon in the first person beginning with the title I HAVE, followed by four figure drawings with captions reading “I have evangelized with the Evangelicals,” “I have crossed myself with the Anglo-Catholics,” “I have worshipped with Charismatics,” “I have questioned with the Liberals.” The cartoon finishes with a British cultural humor, “I think now I will stop and have some tea.” Walker in short form encapsulates the worship experiences out there in the church today, and then brings it home, humorously reminding us to not take ourselves so seriously and give it a break occasionally. Good counsel, and well delivered. For more of the same, visit Walker at http://www.cartoonchurch.com.

We’ve lost our focus in worship lately and gotten things a bit backwards: many in the church today are coming (if coming at all) not for worship that transforms lives and empowers social action, but for worship that confirms selves and approves social action already taken. True worship transforms us, making us living self-icons of God, drawing us ever closer to God, keeping us on task and forward moving. Many instead want worship that transforms God into their own image. They go church shopping not for a sense of the holy God, but for a sense of the wholly Me.

I am reminded in this of a parishioner years ago, in the throes of evangelical renewal proudly declaring, "When I pray to God I imagine I'm a little girl crawling up into Daddy's lap and just talk to Him!" Well, I have a daughter, and as a child when she sat with me, I was putty in her hands. A God relation that is subject to our whims and desires would not be in God's image, but in our own image. Help us to grow in your image, O God, and yours alone.

The church over time has explored many forms of worship. Some of these experiences out of our living laboratory of love have been developed into Christian liturgy because the things done and discovered in the experience lend themselves to a higher order of faith. This is not to say all forms of worship have been accepted into the life of the church. Early on, the Old Testament people of Joshua, while taking command of the Promised Land, realized for example that Dionysian temple worship simply wasn’t going to work for the people of the God of Abraham. Instead of orgies, we now have coffee hour. Don’t ask me to explain, it just works better for us this way. My point is, this very Episcopalian behavior has an origin that is deeply layered in the historical decision-making of the church, how we order our spiritual life over time.

21^st century Christians take all these things, chosen or preferred, abhorred or rejected, as part of the faith discovery process. Live and learn, as they say. Live, learn . . . and lead others into all righteousness. Mind you, I did not say into all self-righteousness. No one order of faith discovery is absolute. Just as no one person can know all things, do all things, meet all needs, redress all wrongs, express all feelings. This would be divine, or said in different words, this would be the reign of God on earth, a now-not-yet reality made present but not complete in the person of Jesus Christ in the First Coming. We are not God, but we are God's people and this matters.

We are human, and with being human there is the need to pick and choose albeit imperfectly among all things humanly possible. In this picking and choosing we have our own special needs when it comes to worship for just as there are several different kinds of intelligence and not only one having to do with analytical and complex reasoning skills as once thought (thought that is by the very people who possess such intelligence), so too there are different kinds of worship to suit our several personality types, hence the Evangelicals, the Anglo-Catholics, the Charismatics, the Liberals, et al. Walker gets this in his cartoon.

Much of what transpires in the way of controversy today seems to be premised in these prior conditions of human need. What makes church life problematic is not so much the presence of evil and suffering in the world today. This we can deal with, for God is with us. What makes church so difficult is when any one order of worshippers asserts the need to be right and therefore everyone else must be wrong. St. Paul has a lot to say about the contentious spirit, none of it good. Given the history of cooperation among Christians, or lack thereof, Paul was spot on in belling this beast. There are too many contending voices in the church today wanting to be right, to have their way and their way alone, kids really making a very unpleasant experience for the rest of us and needing a time out.

All I ask of any worship experience is that it somehow takes me out of myself and reminds me of who I am and whose I am ultimately, assures me that I am not alone in this great adventure, brings grace and consolation to my own life experience and those for whom I have compassion or care, and hooks me up with others to do the things that I alone cannot do yet when done bring meaning and purpose to my life. In a word, I want a worship experience that brings me closer to God, in an effective ritual that I can come back to, again and again. I want this because I need this and God commands it. The rest is my business to do out there.

But first I think I will stop and have some tea which itself of course is a uniquely English form of worship in ritual behavior that would do all those things as well, though at a lesser and less intense altar. Come to think of it, we may need more tea rooms as much as we need more worship, whatever the flavor of our preference may be . . . this and a bit more self-reflective humor in our time.