Categories: uncategorized
Date: 05 April 2006 11:04:59
I took part in an extended alternative worship service.
We began at an uncertain hour with a meditation on Easter Saturday and Christ lying in the grave. This is a part of the gospel that often seems to be skipped over in the rush from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, so we spent an extended period lying down contemplating Christ's body lying there in the grave. After several hours we eventually emulated his getting up, although this was taken at a more circumspect pace, with a fair bit of yawning. At this point in the service it was decided to break for coffee and breakfast.
After breakfast there was a time of confession where, in a sense, we gathered up our sins and put them in a sack. To symbolise this, we gathered up our dirty washing and put it in a laundry bag. We then took the laundry to the laundrette just as we take our sins and give them to the Lordrette. With the bags on our shoulders we walked the long slow walk to the laundrette meditating on Jesus' long slow walk to Calvary with the cross on his shoulders. At the laundrette we selected a hot/warm/synthetic cycle on the washing machine each according to his/her own particular sinslaundry.
While the machine was doing its stuff (hallelujah), we made a chronological leap back to the garden of Gethsemane. For this we walked to the nearest thing to a garden locally - a bench looking over the Baltic. We stayed there and prayed, just like Peter and the Sons of Zebedee stayed and prayed in the garden, following Jesus's command. And just as they fell asleep, we too fell asleep in the warm spring sun.
We awoke with the guilt that is perhaps special to those who fall asleep during worship services, but also with the concern of those who have left their washing in the laundrette.
Upon quickly returning to the laundrette we found that, sure enough, our sins were white as the snow outside (well, a little cleaner actually, with less dog poo), which is to say that our laundry was clean. However, we observed that just as we can be cleansed of our sins and yet not fit for anything until we feel the warmth of God's holy spirit inside us, so our laundry was clean but not yet fit for anything until it had been through the tumble-dryer. We prayed over the washing in the dryer and, sure enough, in being filled with the spirit it fell over. And over, and over, and over, although we didn't watch it rolling over for the full 90 minutes of the cycle.
With our bodies and laundry cleansed and filled with the spirit, we proceeded to the teaching part of the service. Here, through the wonders of modern technology, curate Robert Smith gave a multimedia presentation. Although not a biblical exegesis in the strictest sense, he covered a range of topics relevant to the Christian, including the question of war, with reference to the old testament battles and the moral implications or not of killing an arab or not, and the subject of emotionalism, and whether it should be a concern that, generally speaking, boys don't cry.
After this the service drew to a close. Amen.