On Christian Complacency

               I went to an Eastern Orthodox monastery at the very beginning of this month.  My experience was very, very wonderful and it will be something that I will always look back on and be challenged by.  I must admit that this experience changed me in a way that I didn’t quite expect.  I came back a different man, so to speak, and I now see Church and “doing Church” differently than I did before.  There were many wonderful aspects to the monastery that were very significant to me, such as the gorgeous scenery, the wonderful hospitality, the great conversations, the deep times of prayer, and the overwhelming sense of peace.

                However, I am still trying to pin down what it was, exactly, that impacted me so deeply, what it was that changed me and my view of things, what it was that has now made it extremely difficult for me to participate in the worship services back here at home.  Perhaps this is the best place to begin in trying to articulate what it was that changed me:

                “One of the best known of the Desert Fathers of fourth-century Egypt, St. Sarapion the Sindonite, travelled once on a pilgrimage to Rome.  Here he was told of a celebrated recluse, a woman who lived always on one small room, never going out.  Skeptical about her way of life—for he was himself a great wanderer—Sarapion called on her and asked: “Why are you sitting here?”  To this she replied: “I am not sitting, I am on a journey.” 

                                                                                                                -Kallistos Ware

                What moved me so deeply was the notion that the monks that I encountered at the monastery in the middle of the desert were also on a journey.  And from my conversations and experiences with them it was evident enough that they had traveled quite a ways. 

                This brings me to my point: there was a seriousness in their prayer life, in their love for one another, and in their worship that, for me, could not be paralleled by anything I have ever seen with my own two eyes.  They had an evening service each day that lasted for 2 hours and a morning service (starting at 4am) that lasted for 3 hours.  It was during the morning service that I especially was overcome by the notion of, “I am so weak.”  My body was literally fatigued from the fasting I had undergone the day before, from standing for 2 straight hours on a tile floor during the worship service the night before, and from having to get up at 3am to go to a 4am worship service!  It was also at that point that I realized that I come from a Christian tradition that is very weak.  Oh, how frail we Protestants are!  To many people today, just the thought of a 3 hour long worship service each and every day sounds ridiculous to them, especially one that would start at 4 in the morning!  If you add the evening liturgy each day as well, you are looking at a solid 5 hours each and every day for worship services alone.  Most Protestants would laugh at such an opportunity thinking it to be ridiculous but those monks cherish it more than anything on the face of the planet. 

                Oh, how weak we are.  We’d much rather comfort ourselves rather than challenge ourselves whenever it comes to our worship styles and habits.  Worship has become something that is solely bound up and focused upon our comfort in our churches today.  We have to make sure we have a snack bar.  We have to make sure we have coffee.  We have to make sure we have comfortable seats (the monks stand the whole time, by the way), we have to make sure the music is to our tastes and likings (without ever asking: “What music honors God the most?”).  We have to make sure the sermons are catered to us.  We have to make sure that we are “seeker friendly”. 

Who are we coming to worship again: ourselves or God?  What is the point of worship again:  to be comfortable or to be transformed?  It seems to me that we do our very best to further enslave our people to their passions rather than seek to liberate them from them.  We cry and we wonder why Christians today are so egocentric.  It is because our “worship” feeds their egocentricity.  Worship for us is me, centered.  To prove the point…when is the last time you sang a song not just about, but to the Trinity?  How many Trinitarian songs do we sing in our churches today?  When is the last time you sang a song that just had to do with God and not how you feel and how you are saved? 

We wonder why people aren’t making “the journey” towards God and His Kingdom.  It is because our worship doesn’t take them on it.  Perhaps, instead of saying to our visitors and congregants, “Come and be comfortable,” we should be saying, “Come and die.”  Which is more Biblical in your mind?