“Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.”
John 4:23, NIV
In every community there develops and exists a culture of traditions, rituals, and social nuances at least a little unfamiliar to those on the ‘outside’ of that particular community. I love sweet tea, Sunday afternoon naps, and cold mountain stream trout fishing. ‘Yankees’ may never understand sweet tea. Football fans may not understand Sunday afternoon naps. Few people really understand why anyone would brave the frozen temperatures of Appalachia in February to hike miles uphill only to wade around frozen waters and touch slimy fish. However, within the community of people with whom I share these interests there exists a unique culture that we all completely understand.
Often the first things to spark discomfort in the visitor, the ‘stranger in a foreign land’ to your particular culture, will be the things that are almost familiar but slightly different from their experience. The traveler will step off the bush plane in the frozen tundra to find a village of people who exist far differently than life back home, yet the animal hide clothing and igloo habitations are not what spark discomfort in the visitor. Rather, it’s the slight difference in the seasoning and substance of foods, the subtle differences in expressing emotion, or the length of the days, uncontrollable by any human preference, in this foreign land that stretch the traveler’s comfort.
When visiting a new church, we often seek comfort in the familiar. Walking through the door, there’s a certain smell in the air of most churches that instills some familiar comfort. Usually this smell is a mix of various colognes and perfumes with a hint of aging furnishings. There is often an usher or greeter shaking hands at the door. Though the specific smells and handshakes may change, nearly every church has these things generally in common. The discomfort comes when the visitor begins to hear language and witness ritual unlike their previous experiences. I know how this feels first hand - and it can be a strange feeling to navigate.
I grew up attending the same small, country United Methodist church my father was raised in. I was baptized as an infant and found myself in a pew next to my grandmother, great-grandparents, great aunts and uncles, my own aunts and uncles, parents, and all the rest of our community of faith each Sunday. We sang hymns from an old Methodist hymnal, we celebrated Communion with grape juice and bread, we observed Christmas and Easter and had plenty of fellowship meals in the basement fellowship hall. In the fall, we’d have an apple butter churning in large copper kettles, canned and sold to the community as a fundraiser. When I was a teenager, I was invited to visit my friend’s church. His father was the pastor at this particular Pentecostal church. I was excited to see how another church worshipped on Sunday mornings. I was not prepared, however, for the type of music, the style of preaching, the lack of any bulletin or pre-determined order of worship, and especially for the speaking in tongues and interpretation I witnessed that morning.
I remember thinking in the moments, days, and weeks following that experience that these were NOT my people. What I had experienced didn’t seem at all like the worship I was used to. What I had witnessed seemed like an entirely different world, let alone church. Yet, as I have come to understand and know, these faithful people simply have a very different culture of worship traditions, rituals, and language than I had grown up experiencing.
Later in life, after I’d been a Presbyterian youth pastor for some time, my brother married into a Roman Catholic family and subsequently converted to their faith. When his father-in-law passed, I attended the funeral to pay my respects. I knew most of the hymns, and I’d even had enough experience with High-Church worship to know several of the responses. I did not expect, nor do I understand to this day, the use of incense. There are probably a few other aspects of that service that left me feeling a little on the ‘outside’ of the community. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that feeling.
Communities develop to cultivate one another’s gifts in service to and thanksgiving for one another. Traditions don’t fall out of the stars and randomly land on certain sets of people. Sweet tea has been the table wine of the South since long before Housekeeping in Virginia posted the recipe in 1878. The same shipping trade routes responsible for the scourge of slavery also brought green, and later black, teas from the orient and sugars from the Caribbean to the Southern United States. The native mountain trout I search for in the coldest months of the year in the highest streams in Appalachia have been fare and fun for natives, settlers, and visitors to these hills since humanity first encountered the area. Sunday afternoons are sacred, like sweet tea and mountain trout, and for me they include a nap. I’ve yet to watch a football game that airs before 5 p.m. on a Sunday. I have people in my circle of influence who behave in the same ways. We are a community, a culture. We have particular gifts, and we thank God we can use them to serve one another. We recognize that Northerners have to enjoy their beverages their own way. We understand some folks would rather watch football than nap. We know there are those who will never know the beauty of a native Brook trout in it’s natural habitat. Though we pity them, a lot, we know that theirs is a culture with merits of its own. We don’t need to understand or practice each other’s cultures, traditions, and rituals to appreciate that they exist for others’ benefit. We don’t need to appropriate or impose our culture or theirs. We can worship in a way that suits our people and our God. We can let others do the same.
When you come to visit me, don’t expect me to explain everything I do all at once. Don’t expect I’ll understand the ways you do things. And don’t try too hard to assimilate. Watch. Listen. Pay attention. You’ll find we have more in common in the long run. You’ll likely find some beauty in how things are done around here. I know I have when I visited you. And I can’t wait to visit again.
In Christ’s Great Hospitality and Love,
J.D.
But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, […] as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord”
Joshua 24:15, NIV paraphrased