Wrong anthem

As I sit here on Sunday morning, Sept. 28, 2025, listening to my local classical music radio station, which plays music reflecting the day’s Common Lectionary (selection of scripture passages used in many churches), I just heard “Poor Man Lazarus,” with its refrain:

I’m tormented in the flame!
I’m tormented in the flame!
Dip your finger in the water;
come and cool my tongue,
’cause I’m tormented in the flame!

It is based on the parable Jesus tells in Luke 16:19-31, one of today’s readings.

Some years ago, when this same passage was also used, a small choir of which I was a member, sang a song recounting John 11:1-44, in which Jesus is said to raise his friend Lazarus, brother of Mary and Martha, from the dead. Same name, but one was a character in a story Jesus fashioned, the other real person. Different stories, serving different purposes.

I didn’t realize we had prepared an anthem about the wrong Lazarus until I heard the day’s scripture read that Sunday morning. Our director, bless his heart, had seen the name Lazarus and then had chosen the song.

I sent a group email that afternoon pointing out the faux pas. The director admitted it was embarrassing. Another member, though, who as I do, holds a Master of Divinity degree, somehow found a way to see it as OK.

Why did/does it matter to me? Well, besides my OCD tendencies, I think that the more the music and liturgy directly support the day’s scripture, the more meaningful the worship experience can be.

A million-dollar experience I wouldn’t take $2M to repeat

As the sign came into view, “Entering Forsyth County,” one of my colleagues exclaimed, “Yay, Forsyth County!” It was maybe a little over the top but mostly amusing. She attended Wake Forest University, which is in that county.

There were four of us. Each attended a different college. No one put another’s school down, but none of us hid our pride in our own. This was just another example. It was all in good fun, much more positive than some of our interactions.

We had been chosen and put together for this summer project. Our primary role was to spend a week each in various churches, interacting with youth, leading in worship and presenting two plays. There was one other team like ours. A couple of times, with neither team booked in a church, we were together for other activities.

During one week when we were a group of eight, we had a meeting that departed from the good-natured banter described above.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a guy on the other team criticized me for talking about my school, UNC, and the town in which it is located, Chapel Hill, more than he wanted to hear. My team members, who had spent a lot more time with me, didn’t seem to have a problem with me on this. (But, as we’ll see in a moment, they did have other problems with me.) I tried to say I thought I was joining in the rah-rah banter, maybe as much as but no more than everyone else. If I’d had more presence of mind, I could’ve added that for the past three years, I had spent most of my days there. UNC and Chapel Hill provided the context for much of what I had to say.

He didn’t indicate he had a problem with anyone else sharing their own campus experiences. Ah, but what was different was that he had wanted to go to UNC-CH but couldn’t swing it financially. When others mentioned their schools, he didn’t feel envious.

It was unpleasant, but much worse was to come.

As if interpersonal issues weren’t enough, we also had to deal with a number of external challenges, including a drowning at a swim party and a serious accident during a fellowship event. One day, our supervisor received a letter from members of one church, complaining about our time with them, though the feedback had seemed quite positive while we were there. Late in the summer, we performed the play “In White America” in a town that had just been ordered (finally) to integrate their schools.

Each person had a specific area of responsibility. These roles were team coordinator, music leader, recreation and discussion leader, and preacher. I was designated the preacher and worked up a sermon to give each Sunday. The other guy was assigned recreation and discussion. The older of the two young women was named coordinator, the other given music responsibility.

That seemed good at the start, but circumstances blurred some lines. Because we traveled in my car, it was necessary for me to do some coordinating. Because my guitar and I accompanied our singing in the productions and sometimes in worship, I was de facto music leader at times. Of lesser note, but notable, I was passably athletic while the other male student was not athletic at all. This may have affected our relative roles in some recreational activities.

Even if you don’t intend to usurp some of other people’s authority (and even if they let you), doing so can engender resentment. And I presented them with other issues as well.

I do own some of the blame for intra-team friction. I had strong ideas about many things and could be short on tact. I had mental health difficulties I had only begun to address, though it turned out I wasn’t the only one on the team wearing this tag. Nonetheless, I felt then and still feel now that the amount of criticism leveled at me, as compared to what others received, was excessive.

That I was less conventional in my appearance and approach to life was a problem for the others from the beginning. Yet before the summer started, I had shaved off my then-full beard. I got my hair cut shorter and neater, though since it still touched my ears, it was too long for my teammates. Less superficial were the adaptions I made conversationally. I made sure my language was less “colorful” than was the norm among my college friends. Just as significantly, I began peppering things I said with theological words and phrases, something I had pretty much abandoned as a college student.

I felt I was compromising — moving closer to being like my teammates. I made changes to be less different from them. But I didn’t become exactly like them, and they discredited or disregarded the changes I had made. It wasn’t all; so it was none.

We had a weekly meeting that including the chance to air concerns — i.e., a gripe session. I seemed to be the primary object of the aired concerns. There was one week in which the two females had done something that the other male told me he was going to criticize in that week’s session. But it was held after we’d led some activity in which everything had clicked. My compatriot was in too good a mood to complain during the session. That was the closest we came to having one of those meetings in which I wasn’t the focus.

Things boiled over in a team meeting one night with our supervisor. The other guy on the team went through a long spiel about his growing dissatisfaction. He said he didn’t think he could continue to be on the team. His biggest issue was that there was one person he just could not work with. And that person, he revealed (though everyone already knew), was the person now writing this piece. Among other things, he criticized my hair. That didn’t surprise me, but I was taken aback when he also said the sermon I had preached most Sundays wasn’t any good. That was the first I’d heard of that. Some helpful suggestions early on might’ve been nice.

Before he officially quit, he got a chance for a repeat performance. The next week, we were again together with the other team at a weeklong youth conference. There was a meeting one night of both teams with our supervisor and his supervisor. My colleague repeated his soliloquy for a larger audience, with the same buildup to leveling blame on me. The first time, I had tried to offer some personal defense for my alleged transgressions. This time, I said nothing.

Accommodations were made for us to operate as a team of three in the last two or three churches. Despite this person’s growing resentment toward me, he had freely used me as a sounding board for his personal struggles. Not many days after he had left the team because he couldn’t work with me, he called one morning to the home where I was staying that week, because he just had to talk to me about the latest things with which he was dealing in his personal life.

The summer provided growing experiences, and not all of them were negative. Our highest highs weren’t as high as our lowest lows were low. But there were a lot of highs. Many joyful moments. A lot of intensity, often good, at times not so good. I can’t say I’m sorry I went through it, but by the time it was over, I was more than ready to go home.

After the goodbyes at the conclusion of a meal following the Sunday morning service in our last church of the summer, I got in my car and headed southwest. In Durham, on I-85, I reached the exit with the sign saying:
U.S. 15-501 S
Chapel Hill

Tears flowed.

Something I’d never worn to my home church before

A few years ago, I wrote about the changes in what people wear when they go to church. As I noted in that post (and as you likely know), when I was growing up, males always wore a coat and tie.

Our church building wasn’t fully air-conditioned in those days. As I recall, a system circulated air freely but didn’t cool it. Since we were in the mountains in a time when the Earth was less heated, this was not a problem except for a few Sundays in the summer.

I remember a congregational business meeting in which the possibility of upgrading the system to cool to full AC was debated. One woman said, “If the men would just leave off their coats in the summer, we wouldn’t need it.” I doubted I was the only one who agreed with her.

In fact, a number of my peers did agree. Eventually, we did something about it. The sermon took up most of the second half of the service. It was preceded by the offertory (passing the collection plates) and a congregational hymn. When I was in high school, some other guys and I decided that at the conclusion of that hymn, we would take off our coats and be more comfortable, sitting for the duration of the sermon.

We got some questioning and maybe less-than-approving looks from adult males. But, in time, many of them were doing the same.

I visited the church of my youth recently. I saw few coats and no ties. I wore my usual “Sunday-go-to-meeting” black jeans and open-neck shirt. That was quite different from how I’d dressed growing up, but I’d dressed similarly for visits in recent years.

I did, however, wear one thing I’d never worn there before. See, it’s been 60 years since I was an adolescent, daring to take off my coat. Thus, for this visit, I wore to that Sunday morning service something my adolescent self never even imagined wearing to church — hearing aids.

A sermon I won’t get to preach

One time, long ago, I was asked to preach at my church. It was a small church at the time with co-pastors, both of whom would be gone. Being the first Sunday of the month, the service normally would’ve included communion. But it was skipped because I was not ordained.

I had led communion in small-group situations a few times in the past without any lightning bolts reigning down, but the book would be followed on this occasion.

I’ll never get to preach a communion sermon, but sometimes I think about what I might say if I did. Several experiences, some more directly associated with the celebration of communion than others, come to mind. Here’s a draft of a communion homily.

As a young minister, I was helping plan a weekend retreat, along with a senior minister and a facilitator who was a graduate student in psychology at a nearby university. Though it would be consciously unchurchy, the other minister and I suggested we conclude the weekend with a communion service. The facilitator balked at this. A few minutes later, I suggested our last activity could be sitting in a circle, listening to music and passing around a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine. He thought that was a great idea.

Sometimes words aren’t needed.

Yet often we do rely on words, and they can certainly get one’s attention. Another time when the bread and wine were passed from one person to the next — this time in what was consciously a religious observance — my seatmate went off script. We were to say some simple phrase about the body/blood being symbolized as we offered the cup and loaf. Most of us repeated familiar words. My neighbor, however, said, “This is the blood of Christ, who was murdered for your sake.” That surely got beyond the usual ritual and down to the nitty gritty.

The elements are powerful symbols.

But do they have to be bread and wine? At a communion service during a student retreat when I was in college, the minister leading it used potato chips and orange juice. He explained, “Jesus used what was on the table. This is what I found on the table today. Jesus took ordinary items and touched them with significance — just as He touches you and me with significance.”

For that matter, are they merely symbols?

At one time many years ago, I was a member of the same church as the well-known theologian Harvey Cox. Harvey preached one communion Sunday. He reminded us that as Protestants, we see the bread and wine as symbols, while Catholics believe Christ to be present, the elements literally becoming His body and blood. He suggested they were right that Christ is indeed present, though not in the bread and wine themselves, but rather in the act of sharing them with one another.

One last anecdote doesn’t come from a communion service, but from what was nonetheless a communion experience.

Our community and the world were reeling from the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. A large auditorium on the University campus was packed for a memorial service. As I was leaving I spotted a friend through the crowd. He was one of two Black (a term a few of us were beginning to use at that time) students with whom I had lived in a house during the previous spring semester. My white guilt made me try to be invisible as I slipped away along the edge of the crowd.

He saw me and called out. It was a short hi-how’s-it-going exchange that concluded with his saying, “Well, stop by the house some time. We still have parties.”

I felt he was saying, You are welcome at the table.

If speaking from a pulpit, I would conclude with an invitation to the table, attempting to tie together themes drawn from these anecdotes. In other contexts, I would and do offer no liturgical words, as special people and I partake of whatever food is on the table and in our sharing of it are touched with significance.

Before offering the elements, I would share this story:

In 2010, my wife and I saw The Passion Play in the German town of Oberammergau, where it has been presented every 10 years for nearly 400 years. The dialogue, of course, was in German, and we were given English scripts to follow (and tiny flashlights to make this possible). I relied on the translation most of the time, though for longer soliloquies, taken from familiar Biblical passages, I just watched and listened. I knew what the character was saying without understanding the specific words. I just wanted to get the feel.

I had adjusted to the German dialogue by the time we got to the Last Supper scene. Then, as Jesus blessed the bread and wine, the words were familiar. Why did they suddenly insert English? No, wait, that’s Hebrew. The Last Supper was a Passover seder. The blessings Jesus offered were the same I’d heard at many seders over the years.

Of course, that’s what he would say. That’s what everyone says in a seder, regardless of their own language. Of course, that’s what it means when it says, “Jesus blessed the bread and the wine.” He didn’t wave his hand over the elements in some act of hocus pocus. He recited a blessing.

Then, when I said, “Jesus took the bread and blessed it,” I would pray:
Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz.
In like manner with the wine:
Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha-alom bor-ay peri ha-gafen.

The English translations could be spoken then or could be in the bulletin:
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.
Blessed are You, God, Ruler of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine.

Then we would be ready for the further words of institution — the symbolism of the body and blood of Christ, who would be present in our sharing of the elements.

I’m glad I went

It was a milestone celebration at a church a plane ride away from my home. It’s an outstanding church, and I was part of it a long time ago. The church has long been known for its active involvement in social justice. Sunday morning is big, but it’s a seven-days-a-week church. It contributed to my theological education for two years.

Part of my role was on-the-job training in campus ministry at an adjacent prestigious university. More visible to the congregation was my guitar playing regularly in “folk worship” and occasional other times. One Sunday a month, the Sunday worship service was one I helped plan. Two other musicians — a pianist and an upright bass player — and I led it. I also participated in myriad meetings, retreats and anti-war protests. I think I was a brash enough young adult to speak my mind in most gatherings. Shortly before I completed my degree and moved away from the area, I preached there one Sunday morning. My “License to Preach and Administer the Sacraments” was granted by that congregation.

I enjoyed the recent celebration. It was good to be back in the building. The liturgy and other activities were appropriate and meaningful. As the history of the church was recounted, a good chunk of it was presented by some of the very people with whom I have a history. They covered a lot of that shared history.

At this point, the cynical reader might expect the insertion of a “But.” Not here, though. It’s more of a “That said. . . .”

I went with hope but not delusion. There were several people still in the church that I remembered from my time there. It would’ve been great if many/most (all??) had greeted me like a long-lost friend. Yet I had visited a couple of years ago, and only two of those remembered me. One was someone with whom I had been close. The other was someone I knew, though not as well as a couple of people who seemed to have no recollection of me. I expected it would be the same this time, while holding out hope that the occasion and my being there for much of the day would jog some more memories.

It was as expected. Everyone was friendly and welcoming. The same two seemed to be the only ones who remembered me, though when I spoke to others, I made a point of saying when I had been there.

Countless times, I’ve heard someone say about some service opportunity in which they’ve participated, “I got more from them than they got from me.” I guess I always realized this to be true about my time at this church. I just wish the score hadn’t been so lopsided.

I knew going in that I was at most a blip on the screen in the long history of a church filled with dynamic individuals. I had just thought — wished rather — that the blip were less imperceptible. It wouldn’t be honest not to admit to feeling some disappointment, yet I wasn’t blindsided.

Still, it was good to be in a place with a lot of great memories. To see faces still recognizable despite the years, even if mine wasn’t recognizable to them. To recount the illustrious history of the congregation and to see that the characteristics that drew me to them are still at work today.

I enjoyed the personal memories that flashed through my mind. I was able to share a couple of these verbally with one person or another. Yet feeling more like a welcomed guest than a returning family member, I found I was taking in the festivities primarily from a third-person point of view. I know and appreciate that for many there it was first-person.

To resort to an overused cliche, it was the hand I was dealt. So I played it. I was just glad to be in the game. It was a learning and a growing experience.

_______________
Note of possible interest: This is the church to which I referred in “Wearing Your ‘Sunday Best’” when I said, “I was a young adult, in a church where people wore anything from jeans to suits or dressy dresses, when I realized that one of the negative things about Sunday morning in the past had been the hassle of getting dressed up.” For this recent occasion, I was the most dressed up I have ever been in that church building — dress pants, button down shirt and sports jacket, along with my black sneakers and, of course, no tie.

Wearing your “Sunday-best”

On Easter Sunday, the newspaper had a feature story on “Sunday-best” clothes. An on-line search reveals that it is a popular topic. It was especially appropriate on Easter because of the tradition of getting and debuting new “church clothes” on that Sunday. The article discussed this tradition, bringing back memories for me.

Our family tradition included picking out our new clothes some weeks before Easter, then putting them on layaway. For any not familiar with the phenomenon, layaway meant the store set the clothes aside for you until you made enough interest-free payments to equal the total cost. This allowed someone on a tight budget to spread the payments over more than one paycheck. Or for those tight-fisted with money, it eased the pain of parting with the whole sum all at once.

In those days, it was important to dress one’s best for church, and a little more so on Easter. That has changed in many circles, notably in those of my experience. I still see some individuals dressing a little better on Easter. I used to have a green sport coat I wore only on Easter — because I got tired of being asked if I’d won the Master’s every time I wore it on any other Sunday. When I got one of those comments even on Easter — to which I’d said, “No, it’s Easter. New life and all” — I stopped wearing it then, too.

I was a young adult, in a church where people wore anything from jeans to suits or dressy dresses, when I realized that one of the negative things about Sunday morning in the past had been the hassle of getting dressed up. And the discomfort of being dressed up. Now I could throw on whatever in a couple of minutes and not be distracted from the spiritual experience by itchy pants or choking ties.

I rarely wear a tie for any occasion. I do wear a sport coat to church and certain other places in the cooler months. It’s not so bad without a tie, plus I like having all the pockets. I generally wear my “dress jeans” — i.e., they are black — and my “dress sneakers” — also black. (I have always hated shoes. I prefer to be barefooted. So I wear the least uncomfortable possible.)

It’s just a personal choice, but I don’t wear shorts to church. I have no problem, though, with others who do. Similarly, I do not wear sports team clothing to church. Some people do. That’s their prerogative.

When I appeared as a choir member in a Playmakers Repertory Company production of “The Christians” in early 2018, we wore robes, making pants leg + shoes visible to the audience for only the two or three steps between the stage door and choir loft on our entrance and exit. Our costuming instructions were “Wear church clothes. No jeans or sneakers.”

I was amused, since my church clothes include jeans and sneakers.

Characters as humans

Early in 2018, I was a supporting character in a Playmakers Repertory Company production of “The Christians” by Lucas Hnath. The drama is set in a mega church, complete with choir, which is on stage for about 2/3 of the play. I sang in the choir for 10 performances.

There are five main characters. As created by the playwright and presented by the actors, they are all full-dimension human beings. I found in each things with which to agree and to disagree. All were sincere individuals struggling with their beliefs.

Some people who saw the play missed a lot of what it offered because they chose to see the characters as flat.

The action centers around some changing beliefs about heaven and hell that the church’s pastor shares from the pulpit and the fallout therefrom.

For one friend, generally open-minded about most things, mega church means religious right. He wrote the pastor off as “a Billy Graham,” showing little (or no) interest in what happens to him and those around him. There’s some irony here in that the new theology the pastor espouses is not something Rev. Graham would believe in. Also, Billy Graham was never pastor of a mega church. But such distinctions don’t matter when one deals in stereotypes.

Another friend, who is Jewish, dismissed the whole play with “I’m of another persuasion.” It angered my wife, who also is Jewish, to hear this. This same man, I am sure, would never, ever dismiss a drama about African Americans because he’s not of that race.

The theological themes raised were not issues that only Christians ponder. Further, one doesn’t have to focus on the theological questions. They play works as a study of relationships and personal issues. Some who have little or no use for religion may have tuned out a compelling human drama.

During some performances more than others, there would be those in the audience who would laugh at lines that were not funny. Did they just not get the seriousness of what was going on? Or did they not care to? This was during a time when the pastor is being taken to task. Perhaps some in the audience figured, “I’m glad to see this Billy Graham mocked.” Maybe others, conversely, held on to the conservative view from which this man departed and thus were glad to see him put in his place.

In either case, they were flattening his character and that of the person questioning him.