my e-mail is down.

so i guess that’s why i’m writing. not that i wasn’t looking for an excuse to detach from work today. i’m feeling pretty exhausted from a full day yesterday - early morning corporate prayer, work, and a baby shower. i ended the night with a thick slice of banana bread, several scoops of chocolate almond ice cream and a sizable glass of red wine.

okay, so maybe i am pms-ing.

this morning, jon & i met up with anne and her daughter, dena, who were in town for spring break on their way up to the dells for a waterpark vacation. we met at lazy jane’s, because there’s really no better restaurant “fit” for anne than this one. lazy jane’s has a hippie, old-school (as in, antique-y old school), laid back (duh, it is LAZY jane’s), come-as-you-are vibe. minus the old-school descriptor, the place kind of describes anne. you’d never guess to meet her that she grew up in the chicago ‘burbs and now works for a prominent, shi-shi private day school.

it had been nearly 2 years since we’d seen each other, and even dena had to ask her mom before we got there what i looked like (i suppose 2nd grade does seem like eons ago to a 4th grader). i loved having breakfast with them, but i’d have loved to sit and talk with anne all day about her life. she’s one of the more thoughtful & welcoming people i’ve ever met. i miss her again already.

actually, i’ve been missing regular people a lot lately. in my pms-y mindset last night, i wondered aloud to jon if church - as in, the sunday celebration worship time definition of church - is really supposed to be a glimpse of heaven. because just one day of it makes me really tired. i want to hole up by myself for a long time afterwards, glass of wine in one hand, the bottle in the other.

wow, that sounds more dramatic than even i intended. sorry.

anyway, i wonder why people come on sundays so often. maybe i’m the only person who wouldn’t come to church every week if it weren’t mandated by her job. i mean, i know there are some people who LOVE sundays. just yesterday afternoon before the 4:30 service, one 4th grader whose family i know well, was talking about palm sunday with me.

leah: “i know [palm sunday] is supposed to be a sad day, but i don’t think i can feel sad today.”
me: “what do you mean?”
leah: “well, like, in the morning, everything is good because jesus is on his way to jerusalem, but then at the end of the day, things get really sad when he arrives. and i just don’t feel like i can be sad, because i always feel happy when we go to church.”

ugh. i am turning into a glass-half-empty person. gross. i mean, i just deleted an amnesty international email with the subject heading, “stop possible execution of an innocent man.” seriously, do i even have a heart??

(okay, so as soon as i deleted it, i actually removed it from my trash and signed the petition, which you, too, can do here.)

i guess i’m tired of celebration. because what are we even celebrating? okay, christ died for our sins. but the weekly celebration feels so self-indulgent, like we come because we like singing, we like hearing a good speaker, we like seeing our friends. but where’s the storytelling? where are the people who weekly are out sharing the good news, bringing justice to wicked places, moving towards reconciliation where there is only hurt and anger, caring for the widow and the orphan?

i’m tired of the do-nothing. in fact, i think it may come to quitting our small group. i don’t really want a weekly activity where we hang out for dinner before reviewing the highs and lows of the past sunday’s sermon.

lo and behold! it’s no joke that this quote from erwin mcmanus on why churches are in decline just popped up on my screen:

“My primary assessment would be because American Christians tend to be incredibly self-indulgent so they see the church as a place there for them to meet their needs and to express faith in a way that is meaningful for them … I think the bottom line really is our own spiritual narcissism. There are methods and you can talk about style, structure and music, but in the end it really comes down to your heart and what you care about.”

boo-yah. spiritual narcissism. so what would the church really look like then? would we celebrate weekly? probably. but what would our celebration look like? are we taught how to celebrate? i mean, when we’re kids, we learn how to celebrate a birthday. but are we taught how to celebrate christ’s death & resurrection? do we know how to focus on Him when we gather together?

imagine being invited to a surprise birthday party held in your honor and then no one brings presents or hugs you or offers a birthday cake or sings to you? instead, they all gather with you in the same room and talk amongst each other, every now and then nodding in your direction, talking about you, but never to you.

is that what our worship services look like from god’s perspective? are we so self-indulgent?

this morning at breakfast, anne and dena told us all about celebrating purim at their synagogue (a venue they share with their good friends, the presbyterians). purim, for those of you who don’t know, is the jewish celebration of the liberation of the jews from near execution by the persians; it was through the bravery of queen esther that the jewish people were saved.

so anyway, it’s traditional for jewish children to dress up as characters from the book of esther, but, nowadays, many families choose to celebrate purim as a jewish alternative to halloween. so anne and dena, along with the rest of the community, donned all sorts of outfits - including a family who arrived at the synagogue dressed as a mexican mariachi band, singing jewish songs in spanish. later, during the service, all were asked to shake their cans of dry foods (which they were asked to bring to donate to a local food agency) and cry out, “Boo Haman!” whenever the evil Haman appeared on the scene.

the community foundation for jewish educationwrites that, ultimately, purim has a distinctly religious purpose - “to celebrate the unseen presence of God who saved the Jewish community in Persia thousands of years ago.”

weekly, as christians, we gather to celebrate god’s victory over sin & death. but is this the celebration god intended? could we learn something from our jewish friends? can we celebrate, too? or are we stuck in our self-indulgent ways, committed to our own ideas of heaven?

i just wonder if the church is missing out.