I frequently hear people attributing a statement to Einstein which goes something like this: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting it to work when it never did even once. That's how I've come to feel about attending services at a congregation of the PCUSA in Forest Hills, MI, although I have posted about what might be considered at least one positive experience there.
But the first Sunday in October was the last straw. I'm never going back there again, not even in a box.
For what seems like the umpteenth time now, the service advertised as "traditional" was anything but. This is a TINO church, Traditional In Name Only, hoping to lure in some poor suckers so that they can enlighten the darkness of their hapless souls with a sentimental gospel of Christian unity, narcissism and multiculturalism.
I'll never forget the time I looked forward to "Holy! Holy! Holy!" as featured during this nine o'clock hour, thinking I'd hear the beautiful old-timey version with its full organ and worshipful, drawn-out tempo. I'd heard such hymns before. Instead we were treated to a staccato version accompanied by enormous African bongo drums. Gee, what would the contemporary rendition sound like at eleven, I wondered?
Or the time the men's chorus not once but twice in the same service performed numbers which would have been completely suited to their beautiful male voices, but NO! Someone decided they should sing arrangements which would have been possible only for Die Wiener Sangerknaben. They looked and sounded absolutely silly as they strained at the notes, which I'm now sure was the whole point. That they didn't understand the joke being played on them made the scene all the more pathetic.
On this most recent Sunday, for the traditional service, the choir sang hymns in untranslated foreign languages. Boy, was that edifying and meaningful.
The liturgy was a cut and paste affair from liturgies used by sister congregations from all over the world, including a benediction from South Africa, which acknowledged that God created us human. Was that ever in question, except perhaps in Winnie Mandela's necklacing neighborhood? The invocation was from Zaire, which asked God for strength to find that obedience which creates unity. I couldn't imagine that there's ever been an historical example of such obedience. Obedience always creates division. Just ask Korah. In point of fact, an obedience which creates unity is no obedience at all. Oh, at the last day there will be unity, yes there will, and every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. But close readers of the Apostle to the Gentiles know what follows after that.
The children's message featured a show and tell of examples of communion ware from Malawi and Nicaragua and two other countries I cannot now remember. There were fewer than eight children up there. Eight. The sanctuary must seat 300 if the day and night are 24 hours long. Where were the children?
And the sermon, celebrating something called World Communion Day, concluded that the church is really what it is supposed to be, more than at any other time, when it celebrates this sacrament and we all participate and mystically become the body of Christ manifested in the world. The Body of Christ! Was I in a protestant reformed church? Why not just join the Catholics and sacrifice the Mass each and every day?
Well, for just a moment there, I almost thought I was listening to President Obama saying "We are the ones we have been waiting for."
Ye shall be as gods!
There they stood, the celebrants male and female, intoning the words of institution and proceeding to feast first upon the elements like the fat cows of Bashan they are. At least in the Lutheran church the celebrants first served the congregation, and symbolically communed last, as servants and good shepherds might do.
Next they distributed communion to the secondary celebrants, one of whom, a single fellow, had hair which looked like he had just crawled out of bed, and another, a female in pants, who was dressed in an outfit reminiscent of a Federation officer from a Star Trek episode, flared capri pants, boots, and all. She even wore a sling for a tricorder. Whereupon the lowest orders of the hierarchy were reached and the cattle filed up and were fed, one after another receiving with hardly a pause and chewing away as they walked back to their seats.
Who-eee, can you feel the mystery!
Speaking of which, our irregular presence in this church was once the occasion for a member to come up and ask me as we were leaving "What brings you here?" ("A Honda," I answered). At the time I did not realize that the question was meant more rhetorically, as in "What are you doing here?"
Because you see, in nearly two years of albeit infrequent attendance at this church not one effort was ever made to contact us at our phone number or mailing address. There has not been even one word from a pastor or elder or any other representative. Nothing. We might as well have not ever attended.
We do not exist.
And the reason? I finally figured it out today. Call me slow. Although this congregation does not appear on a certain gay friendly church list with other PCUSA congregations in our area, you don't see many young people with kids there. And you don't see many young women either, sitting alone in the pews. But you do see a fair number of unattached young men. The Presbyterian Church USA, you see, welcomes sexually active gay people.
But not us.
Free at last! Free at last! Thank God, Almighty, I'm free at last!
