By Mike Graves, Scholar in Residence
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard has an essay on worship that should have won an award somewhere along the way. In my mind it’s so important that I have my students read it in the Intro to Worship course every spring. The essay is titled “An Expedition to the Pole,” and is in her book Teaching a Stone to Talk. I should tell you up front that it is a parable, one thing compared to another much the way Jesus compared the kingdom of God to pearl merchants and women baking bread.
Only in this case it’s the odd juxtaposition (aren’t they all?) of worship services and famous polar expeditions of the 19th and early 20th centuries. In both cases, things go wrong, horribly wrong. She describes, for instance, a Sunday service when no one could find the opening hymn, not even the organist. How instead of a sermon proclaiming gospel, there were mostly announcements, including one about how the acolyte would be lighting the two Advent candles momentarily, only the candles were already lit. Dil- lard notes that high school stage plays are more polished than our church services. She adds, we are like dancing bears in the circus, clumsy and sure to fall down.
When detailing polar expeditions, she lists for example the famous Franklin expedition of 1845, which instead of bringing along additional coal should they run out of fuel, “made room for a 1,200-volume library, ‘a hand-organ, playing fifty tunes,’ china place settings for officers and men, cut-glass wine goblets, and sterling silver flatware.” Seriously? Books and silverware for an arctic exploration? Of course as readers we are supposed to imagine how churches do something similar when it comes to traditions in worship. In the most quoted part of her essay, she writes, “The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.”
Because the essay is a parable, there are lots of insights to be gleaned. For me, two things stand out. First, I recognize the craziness of this journey called worship, daring to sail toward the mystery of God; and second, still we set off each week because God has planted a longing in our hearts. Will things go wrong? You can pretty much count on it, that and the fact that God will show up as well. Hope to see you Sunday, and be sure to bring your helmet, silverware optional.”
