World Communion Sunday

Since my foray into a fully Arabic speaking congregation here in Bethlehem on World Communion Sunday, I’ve been musing on the nature of worship. In many ways, all Christian worship has the same elements: prayer, singing, reading the bible, preaching. But for me, the differences are what got my attention. That language barrier is in my face every day here.

This got me thinking about how churches in the US speak different languages, express their devotion in different worship styles, and have very different approaches to biblical interpretation. On most, if not all, Sundays, I’m not paying a bit of attention to all this diversity going on around me. And if I did, I’m quite sure that I wouldn’t give much thought to the diversity of Christian traditions. When was the last time that I envisioned World Communion Sunday as a celebration alongside my Eastern Orthodox, Armenian, Melkite, Coptic or Catholic brothers and sisters? Instead, I generally think of this particular Sunday in terms of nations and continents. In our church, the words of institution are recited in multiple languages but never have we considered an alternate liturgy from another Christian tradition. 

My experience of this small Presbyterian enclave in Bethlehem reminded me that all of us enter into worship from a particular cultural and religious point of view. On Sunday, I felt like an outsider of sorts.  I understood very little and was not understood at all. As I sat and stood, read and prayed, listened and communed, I realized that worship was deeper than comprehension and contribution. The community of faith is not a function of familiarity. It is about giving voice to the wonder of who God is, celebrating the good news of God’s love for us, and being molded more into the people God wants us to be. 

All of that happened for me on Sunday in part because I was unable to follow along or be understood. The service required that I be present to God and God’s people at deeper level: to be responsive to the Holy Spirit with cries too deep for groaning, to invite the Holy Spirit to pray through us, to allow the music to wash over and through me, to muse and meditate on the scripture text, trusting that what the Spirit was saying through the preacher was somehow in sync with what I was discovering for myself. 

And when we received communion, I was overwhelmed with affection for my brothers and sisters sitting around me. We were all receiving from the Lord a great gift of grace. I felt a kinship that each of us share in and through Christ. The conflicting expressions, the different languages, the complicated history faded as the reality of being one in Christ became more concrete through his body and blood for me, for us. It was worship.