After the Easter Sunday service I suddenly realised that I missed the physicality of worship: the sitting, the standing, putting my hands out to pray or up to offer a third person plural invitation or peace.
There is so much for which to give thanks in Zoom church, starting with the very fact that it allows us to continue to meet and to worship together. It has enabled people who would not normally be able to join us to be part of our service as they log in from the maternity hospital, from France, Belgium, even Hong Kong (you know who you are!). Where a handful of people would have had time for Good Friday meditations before lockdown, the combination of working from home and not having to travel to church allowed far greater numbers to mark that most sombre and holy of days. Bread Church would not have been possible in our building but worked just fine from my kitchen. Mission seems more alive than ever: is it easier to invite friends to zoom church than to a building? We are certainly catching up with at least as many people in break-out rooms as we do over actual tea and coffee after the service. We're able to have multiple voices for readings and intercessions and the music (especially those parts our director of music and choir contribute) remains beautiful.
But it's a learning curve, and initially it was a steep one. And one thing I learned this Easter Sunday was that I must guard against the passive consumption of worship that follows so easily from sitting and watching something on my screen. We are creatures of flesh and blood and our faith is an embodied faith about the divine embodiment. Christmas celebrates the incarnation (en-fleshment) of God as a human baby. This child grew up and 'lived among us' (John 1.14): he walked the dusty roads of Palestine, slept and wept, ate meals with friends and strangers, laid hands on people, rubbed mud in their eyes, took bread and blessed it. And when the time came, his body was tortured, damaged, broken, died. The miracle of Easter, that this fully human God-incarnate cross-dead Christ Jesus rose from the dead, is no less embodied. Put your finger in my side, he says to Thomas. Let's have some grilled fish, he says to the disciples on the beach.
In the same way, we express our faith in and with our bodies. The two Sacraments commanded by Jesus are profoundly physical experiences. Our baptisms tend to be fairly tame experiences: cool water trickles down the head. But traditionally (or think Jesus being baptised by John) one experienced the full plunge: dripping hair, new white clothes stuck to the body, heavy with what's just happened. And coming up out of the water where breathing is not possible - the little death of baptism - there is a massive intake of breath, the first breath after re-birth.
And listen to the verbs of the invitation to the Lord's Table, and how embodied they are:
Draw near with faith.
Receive the body of our Lord Jesus Christ
which he gave for you,
and his blood which he shed for you.
Eat and drink
in remembrance that he died for you,
and feed on him in your hearts
by faith with thanksgiving.
In taking Holy Communion we both express our faith and receive the grace to express it.
Afterwards we are sent out to put flesh on our beliefs. Jesus has no hands but ours: our faith is embodied in part in the service of others in his name. For what has he called us to do?
"I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me" (Matthew 25.35-36) Every last one of those an embodied activity that responds to a physical need.
With that as the water in which we swim, the wisdom of the tradition that our worship is likewise physically expressed becomes clear. Our faith does not reject the body but embraces it as the means by which we receive God and engage in his work in the world. In some traditions people cross themselves, bow their heads, beat their breasts, kneel for prayer; in others they raise their hands or fall on the floor. It doesn't matter. There isn't a wrong way to do this. And beauty of being in your own home on zoom is that no one can see what you're doing so you can express your faith physically in whatever way seems right to you. All together in church a certain peer pressure exists to do things 'the way we've always done them' or 'the way we do them here'. Zoom frees us from those constraints. The great loss would be if we let this opportunity pass us by and treated Zoom church like a show on Netflix, lying on the sofa and offering the occasional comment. So here are some things you can try (offered tongue in cheek!):
So this post is to encourage you to sing along, and to stand up when you do it. Put your hands out in prayer. Or kneel. Make the sign of the cross, bow your head, or raise it intentionally. Embody your worship in your living room or kitchen or study. As we sang on Sunday, our God is everywhere. I wonder how we would worship if Jesus was in the room (and on Zoom) with us?
My God is Everywhere (Nick and Becky Drake):
Image by Vickie McCarty from Pixabay