Proclaim!. Marcus George Halley
the Holy Spirit” (BCP, 856). The distinction is key. To pray—publicly or privately—is to take on a new identity, to walk in a new world, and to affirm a whole new set of allegiances and perspectives.
At its heart, our desire to pray to God in private or worship God in the context of Christian community is Jesus’s very desire to commune with the Father. To pray as a Christian is “to let Jesus’ prayer happen” in us (Williams, Being Christian, 62). It is finally saying “yes” to the desire that is present in each of us that otherwise manifests in workaholism, greed and acquisitiveness, and busyness, namely, the desire to fill the God-sized hole in each of us, the parts of ourselves that need that which is beyond us to give us meaning.
We might like to think that it is something more than this, but our worship—whether set rites and rituals or not—is to God as a boat is to a raging sea. It is the only thing keeping us afloat in the middle of what would otherwise overwhelm us and yet, as scripture narrates for us in the story of Peter’s brave journey on the sea, sometimes simply settling the spray of the crashing waves is not enough. Sometimes, we must step outside of the boat and allow the love of God to lap at our ankles as we wonder what in the earth we’ve gotten ourselves into. Other times, when the storm is fierce and frightening, all we have to do is remember who is in the boat with us, that God is not only expressed in the crashing waves, but also in Jesus asleep in the prow.
People who are hungry for revival need only pay attention to the ways the Holy Spirit is alive and active in our world and the ways in which our communal worship, though deceptively tame, is actually holding us afloat amid the powerful and overwhelming tide of God’s grace that is transforming our world before our very eyes.
I was glad when they said to me, *
“Let us go to the house of the LORD.”
Now our feet are standing *
within your gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem is built as a city *
that is at unity with itself;
To which the tribes go up,
the tribes of the LORD, *
the assembly of Israel,
to praise the Name of the LORD.
(Psalm 122:1–4, BCP)
FOR SOME, CHURCH SMELLS LIKE THE STRONG ODOR of slightly bitter church coffee. For others, it is the smell of burning incense. For much of my life, it was the smell of spray starch mixed with the sweet scent of pancakes that reminded me most of church. Sunday mornings throughout my childhood were for church, but even before we joined with the other saints who were “glad to be in the House of the Lord one more time,” there was a whole process of preparation.
It was a liturgy of sorts.
It began the night before when we’d set out our clothes. In my younger years the outfit was always a pair of khakis of various shades, a white shirt and tie, or a polo in the summer. The dress code relaxed a bit as I matured, for which I was grateful. While I am quite sure my brothers were dreading the next day, I was anticipating it. I fell in love with the whole idea of church and spirituality at a young age for reasons I am only now able to name. It might have something to do with a spacious “interior life,” which I actively cultivated as an escape from the complicated emotions of growing up with few models for vulnerability and the fear of being different.
Sunday mornings always came quickly. They still do.
My mom and I would rise early, shower, iron our clothes, and head to church while the rest of my family slept. After the first “traditional” service, where the hymn choir would intone plaintive renditions of “Father I Stretch My Hands to Thee” and “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah,” we would come back home to retrieve the rest of the Halley clan, luring them from their beds with fresh pancakes (and sausage links if we were feeling fancy). They would rise, often begrudgingly, and perform the same ritual my mom and I had hours before. After ironing clothes and eating one too many pancakes, we’d load up in the family car and head to church for Sunday school, followed by worship, and then stay for lunch.
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