Dear friends:
In his book A Room Called Remember, Frederick Buechner writes, “There are moments in the depths of each of our lives that give us an echo of a wild and bidding voice that calls us from deeper still. It is the same voice that Moses heard and that one way or another says, “GO! BE! LIVE! LOVE!”
Buechner muses that the reason why churches exist, the reason that you and I keep getting up week after week, dragging our children out of bed and pulling up our computer screens (now that we no longer have to put on our Sunday best) to engage in a holy waste of time is that something extraordinary took place on that piece of desert long ago and is taking place still.
I like the way Barbara Brown Taylor writes about God’s call to Moses in her book An Altar in the World. She argues that what makes Moses unique is not his personal search for Christ, his wits, or even his religious qualifications. What makes him Moses is nothing other than his ability to hear God’s call and to be crazy enough to trust and to follow.
It requires a sense of reverence and trust. In fact, I believe reverence belongs on the list of important spiritual practices right beside prayer, rest, worship, generosity, friendship, service, or Bible reading for that matter. If we don’t view God with reverence, chances are we can’t view our neighbor with reverence either. And if we can’t view our neighbor with reverence (no matter how much we might disagree with them), it’s pretty certain we won’t really view God with reverence either.
We’ll talk about it this week and let it frame our celebration of communion. I hope you’ll prepare your own ‘holy ground’ for communion, make plans to join us, and invite a friend.
Peace,
