An Observation From My Recent Worship Wanderings

These past few months I have been ‘visiting’ many different churches, thanks to virtual or YouTube’s worship services and the requirement of not gathering because of COVID. I must confess that I like visiting various Churches of different denominations and experiencing their worship styles. This ‘visiting’ practice has greatly enlarged my sense of worship. I have never considered myself a great preacher or even a student of great preaching. Nevertheless, there is one thing that I have noticed in my recent worship wanderings. It is difficult to find sermons that have a primary focus on national, social, or cultural concerns or what I would call the peace and justice issues. Things like our anxieties of the gay and transgendered issue; cultural or systemic racial prejudices; our anxieties about the foreigner or immigration policies; etc. The sermons that I have found seem primarily focused with personal or individual issues such as: hope, peace, forgiveness, redemption, joy, etc. There is nothing wrong with these issues. Who does not want these qualities? However, these qualities are also related to our larger world; not just me, my family, and our well-being. We are connected to each other. When one of us is hurting, all of us are hurting. The answer to the Biblical question, “Am I my brother’s (and sister’s) keeper?”, is “Yes.” Unfortunately, I have not yet found much of this from my recent ‘worship wanderings.’ I think it may have been William Sloane Coffin, former Pastor of New York’s Riverside Church, who said that he would stop preaching about social issues when politicians stopped making laws that affected God’s children. I believe in the separation of Church and partisan politics but not a hard separation of Church and State because we are in this world together.