The Joys of Sitting in the Pew: A Sunday Reflection

St. Peter's Lewes

This morning, Sunday February 13th, I was free to simply come to church, having led Adult Christian Education between the services and having the evening Eucharist to celebrate. 

Knowing that The Rev. Carlyle Gill was preaching I got over to the St. Peter's just as the Gospel was being read. The sermon was a rouser on the very difficult part of the Sermon on the Mount read this Sunday.

There were almost 200 people in church, with all the pews filled and people in extra seats in the back. I sat on one of the usher's benches for the sermon but then gave that seat up to a mother and daughter who came in from Sunday School and stood for the remainder of the service. The sunshine, all that rare this bleak winter, was pouring through the stained glass window behind the altar. 

Everything about the service was affirming of the church that cradled me, affirmed me, confirmed me, ordained me. The service was filled with the easy dignity of people who know what they are singing and praying, who follow the service not from the book or the leaflet, but from the heart. Two nine year old boys were working with adult ushers to help take up the collection and bring forward the elements, and when they returned to their posts at the back of the church, I could see them singing the Sanctus from memory, with full clear voices. I looked at the father of one of the boys and said, "Listen to that," and he said, "if he gets it now he will never forget it."

Young Jesus

The mother and daughter who took the place on the usher's bench became my family for the moment. When we passed the peace I noticed that the daughter had a home made valentine for her mother. I asked if she had made it, and she nodded, smiled at her mother proud and happy as could be. 

At St. Peter's we all join hands to say the Lord's Prayer. The girl, her mom, and the couple next to me were all linked by hands. We were linked to all the rest of the folk in church - the visiting couple next to them, the Vestry member and her child, the widow, two gay couples, a single mother, a whole Filipino family, and on and on into the mass of people there. We were a people gathered for Thanksgiving. It is a small but very real wonder.

In all the flurry, muttering and wringing of hands about the Anglican Communion and The Episcopal Church and other such grand things, my suspicion is that sitting in the pew (or in my case standing in the back of a very full church) we are mostly surrounded by the kind of family that a parish offers us - a community wonderfully blessed by common prayer and common praise.

Sometimes in the clergy thing I forget just how wonderful it can be to be part of rather than leading worship. I could drink deeply from the beauty of holiness and the joy of companionship in Christ. I could be with the children who know their prayers and the elders who are losing their hearing, with adults who long for blessing and infants who, burbling along with small cries and sounds, are a blessing.

I came away refreshed and immensely thankful that I was part of a worshiping community doing what it does best. It was a joy to be in the pew.

My sense is across denominations, across the divides in Anglicanism, across the divorce between TEC and ACNA, across the islands of division, there are people doing this stuff of breaking bread, saying our prayers and engaging in the apostles teaching and fellowship. I would do well to remember that at its core we are always local, always a little people gathered in the midst of a wider world, always a fellowship, a koinonia - and we are often uncomplicated and true to our calling.  Perhaps dear reader you might remember this too.