“Worship is thus our whole life– our breath, our food, our work, our play. It encompasses human being: birth to funeral, night and day, inhale, exhale, rise and fall, black, white, and with all the shades of the rainbow, solitude and multinational conversation.”
~Pamela Ann Moeller

This morning was one of ‘those’ mornings, a morning when I couldn’t quite get my spirit to haul my body to the office right away. On days like these, I sometimes do what we call in my family an ‘RDS’. These three little letters stand for ‘ride down Summit’, Summit being the avenue that moves past some of the most beautiful homes in St. Paul. These mansions built by some of the city’s wealthy founders continue to impress decades after they were built. At this particular point of springtime, it is a breathtaking drive. Lilac bushes send forth their sweet, fragrant flowers lining long sections of the drive. Well manicured lawns and professionally planned gardens make for show-stopping scenery. For a prescription of healing beauty, it can’t be beat.

There are many churches that line this avenue. Most are as immense and eye-popping as the neighboring houses. I have been keeping an eye on House of Hope Presbyterian Church as they simultaneously do spectacular stone repair and plant a community garden. For some reason the juxtaposition of these two activities makes me laugh and fills me with such hope.

But it was a sign in front of another church that caught my attention. “Experience God Service”, it read. I did a double take to make sure I had read it correctly. Much as some churches advertise a ‘healing’ service or a ‘recovery’ service, this one was inviting people in to an ‘experience God’ service. What a concept!

Driving on down the beautiful avenue, I began to think what might happen at this service. Of course, those of us who plan for worship each and every Sunday do so with the hope that each service is one in which people experience the Presence of the Holy. We choose all the words we think are fitting, carefully pour over what music will lead people into hearing the scripture of the day in illuminating ways, fashion prayers to be read and make a special spot for the sermon. But the question always remains, did anyone one experience God?

As I think of the many times when I have had an experience of the Divine, it has only sometimes been in a church setting. When I have been in places when people have described their own experiences of the Holy, my memory is that the stories they tell are more often about something that moved them while in the woods, at the ocean or as a wind brushed past their face in some remote and wildly, beautiful place. No one was at work fashioning any kind of liturgy or carefully preparing words to provide the environment for this to happen. God just showed up in surprising and transforming ways. All these thoughts have led me all day to wonder what it is we are really doing when we create worship.

My biggest wondering became thinking that perhaps our real work, those of us who have given our days and our lives to this thing called church, is to provide a container, an open, gentle container. A container into which those who wish come to find home in community. Into this container we pour enough space, enough silence, enough breathing room for people to slow down and remember their own bodies, their own heartbeat, their own deepest longings and most passionate hopes. Are not these the movement of Spirit in each of us? In that spacious, loving container we name as sanctuary, we all wait and listen for ways we can then go into the regular living of our days, our daily walking in the world. Perhaps it is in these Monday through Saturday places that are the ‘services’ in which we will truly experience God.

I can hear many of my colleagues arguing with this idea. And I am not completely sure about it either. But on this day, which was one of ‘those’ days, the idea just wouldn’t leave me. And perhaps that was an Experience God service, too.