The Best Church Service I Have Ever Been To

"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines
of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Yesterday, I was grateful to find more uplifting quotes from Dr. King on Facebook than invective language toward the president on the day of his Inauguration.  As I sat reading them, I was reminded of the best church service I have ever been to.  When I was in Seminary, I had the privilege of participating in a Fall Break study trip that took us to various Civil Rights museums and places of importance all throughout the South.  We visited Dr. King's boyhood home in Atlanta and sat in the pews of the church he grew up in. We listened to the stories of a man who also grew up in that church and who was sitting in one of those very pews listening to Dr. King preach on the Sunday that 4 little girls were killed by the bomb that went off at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.  He told us that Dr. King was a peaceful man, but that on this Sunday he was outraged and distraught that 4 more innocent lives had been taken as he pounded his fists upon the pulpit.  We visited a small non-federally funded museum in Selma that had notes taped to a wall from those who came through the movement together.  There in the middle was a crumpled paper with words scribbled on it, signed by Rosa Parks.  In the back room their were police uniforms behind glass still stained with blood from what had occurred there years before.  We marched across the bridge in Selma together, hand in hand.  Our last stop was Birmingham. We attended church at 16th Street Baptist and went to the Rosa Parks museum.  It was the week of the anniversary of her death.  We were invited to a coffee house that night for an open mic tribute to Rosa Parks.  This was not on our itinerary but we decided it would be well worth it to go.

Upon our arrival, we were instantly aware that we (the other white students on the trip and myself) were the minority in this particular setting.  At first, it felt like a bit of an intrusion on our part...that we were participating in something that didn't belong to us.  We sat and listened to a band sing songs of freedom, a young woman shared in spoken word her thoughts about the Civil Rights movement and Rosa Parks, a team of guys shared a dramatic pantomime, and on and on throughout the night.  Before the night ended, one our guys...a white guy, made his way to the stage.  He sat behind the keyboard and began to play and sing.

Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found; was blind but now I see...

From this he moved into "My Chains are Gone" and even Mary Mary's "Shackles off my Feet."  Slowly, someone from the crowd joined him on the guitar, and then the bass, and then the drums.  They played and sang together and the crowd had suddenly gone from us and them...to a single body swaying together to what felt like the tune of freedom.  In that moment, I could see through the tears in my eyes the Kingdom of God.  That was the BEST church I have ever been to, and it wasn't on a Sunday it wasn't in a building with a steeple.  It was in a small corner of the world, and nobody else even knew it was happening.  It felt like I was a part of something important in that moment...something that I will never forget and because of it I am eternally changed.

I'll close with this excerpt from Brian McLaren's book, which I am currently reading/listening to.  He sums up far more eloquently that I ever could:

As Douglas Wood’s profound children’s story Old Turtle and the Broken Truth makes clear, “God loves us” is only a fragment of the truth, a dangerous fragment, in fact; it must be reunited with “God loves others too.” We live within a relationship of diversity without division: we are made on the same creation day as the reptiles and cattle, for example, and we are formed from the same dust. All living things are different but related; distinct but united. Similarly, male and female are not two warring factions; one is not superior and the other inferior: we are different but related, distinct but united. This creation, then, is a garden of harmony, not a war zone of hostility. It comes equipped, not with oppositional religions that divide, but rather with a naked spirituality that includes and unifies all things in one fabric of creation. Trees and rivers, sky and stars declare God’s glory for everyone; exclusive temples and members-only cathedrals are unnecessary. And so, according to our doctrine of creation, we are created by God to live in harmony with God and with all creation in all its wild diversity. We are created for harmony with one another, meaning “one with the other,” male with female, us with them, in dynamic unity without uniformity— different but not divided, distinct but related and unified.

McLaren, Brian D. (2012-09-11). Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World (pp. 103-104). Jericho Books. Kindle Edition. 

Love God...love others.