When I leave a party, I always look for the host: I want to thank them. It seems respectful. It also gives me a sense of conclusion after the party. I say to myself “OK, now it is OK for me to leave.”

This isn’t the only way to leave a party. The more social among us need to announce to everyone within earshot that they’re leaving. The less social just slip out because who really wants to say goodbye to me anyway?

And some stick it out to the end and enjoy the afterparty.

 

One of my favorite experiences in seminary was the gathering after the gathering, the treat that went into the retreat. Up too late, with all the sensible people in bed, we could be more honest, ask each other more personal questions, and not fear what might come up. Because this group has a bond.

I’ve been all of these people. Many of us have.

Of course there are others whose appearance and departure affect the party. The drank-too-much, the over-sharer, the room-clearer, and the it-ain’t-a-party-till-he-shows-up. The wallflower, the devoted-friend, the wingman are there too. And many others.

How we leave is important, though. And I think radically underdeveloped as a part of our experience.

The Rituals

When we start worship we have cultural norms and traditions that affect our experience of entering worship. For many Episcopalians, we are taught to pray quietly in the silence before worship begins. But this isn’t universal or even denominational.

For many, our sense of ending matches our sense of beginning. We walk out the door we used to come in. We know that way. We don’t know the other doors or where they lead. I know where that exit is.

We also look for markers and indicators for when we’re supposed (or allowed) to leave. As a kid, it surprised me that in my Aunt’s Roman Catholic church, the final hymn began and the people were filing out of the pews. The room was nearly empty by the time we got to the third verse.

In some of the churches I’ve served, we’ve worshipped candles. Nobody gets up until the candles on the altar are extinguished. That was their cue. It always strikes me as odd, like waiting for a host to turn out the house lights before putting on our jackets and saying “well, it’s getting late…”

But we do seem to need help knowing when to go, when we should go.

The Dismissal

I find the most diversity and local custom in the final moments of a service of any part of the liturgy. How churches end is not the same, thought the sequence of elements is similar. This is mostly true because of how we choose to sing and leave. And if we haven’t done them earlier, whether or not we’re doing announcements.

The primary liturgical elements: a postcommunion prayer, blessing, and dismissal are nearly always present (often the blessing and dismissal are combined into a single benediction), while a closing hymn or music is shoved in somewhere.

The Dismissal is supposed to be our cue that we’re done. We say something like:

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord!

And the people respond

Thanks be to God!

The implication really can’t be any clearer: go!

I’ve discovered, particularly at funerals, that I need to direct people before we get to the Dismissal, so they understand that it means we’re done here. If we are processing out to our cars to head to the cemetery, I tell them that we do that after we’re dismissed. I’m not going to referee you and keep talking. When I say “Go!” I mean it.

We shouldn’t expect people to understand this, of course. We shouldn’t expect people to understand anything. But there is something at work here that troubles me: inertia. And I wonder if there is something about our worship that encourages people to not hear go out and do! as anything but words.

Balance

We are lulled into a sense of security in our worship. We think that it will be balanced and easy to get into and out of. Like slipping into a party and leaving when we’re ready to go home.

We walk in and prepare for worship, the music begins, we stand and we open with prayer. Then we do our thing. When we’re done, we sing and we are dismissed and we walk out. Perhaps we are compelled by the sermon to do something. Or maybe the prayers remind us of a friend who needs our attention. Or perhaps an announcement of mission or ministry need has provoked us to act. But does our worship propel us through the door to love and serve?

I grew up seeing the church as an event, not as a powerful inbreaking of the Holy Spirit, but as a concert with some spoken word and poetry pieces in the middle. I felt like I was in the audience of a performance too often and my presence was unessential. I certainly didn’t feel like it was our work to gather in worship.

Read more on liturgy and the work of the people and Spirit.

And I wonder if we are lulled into this state by our need for symmetry, order, and conclusion. Do we need to feel like this concert is over before we can get up and leave? Do we even recognize the prayer we pray after communion is about serving and loving and going out into the world to do the work of Christ? Do we hear the direction to Go and serve! or is that simply a cue to leave? How much of this is a function of our liturgy? And how much of that is a function of our expectation?

The Down Ending

Like many of my friends, I’m a big Star Wars fan. And there is no doubt, no question whatsoever that Empire Strikes Back is the best of the bunch. If you don’t think so, then you haven’t actually watched them. It had the best script, the best director, and the most compelling story in the bunch. It also had what they described in Clerks as “the down ending.” It ends with a somewhat uplifting moment – it isn’t a true cliffhanger – but also a great sense of dread and loss.

This is relevant because throughout our history, many of the faithful have embraced the down ending. The Gospel According to Mark ends with a down ending, for instance. We can embrace the down ending, and have since our Hebrew roots, because we know the end isn’t really the end. The story keeps going. Even after Jesus dies, the story continues. After Jesus is raised and ascends, the story continues. After the apostles die, the story continues.

And here is where the medieval church understood something we don’t. I have very little love for the medieval church, but this is something truly powerful. Common practice was to end starkly and asymmetrically. After communion was over, the priests would leave in silence. Worship was over. Sort of.

Perhaps they understood our important connection to that sense of completion. Or they loved the theology of the down ending. Either way, they didn’t ever end the service! Why?

Think about it for a second.

What are we being told about the table, about our gathering around the table, and what we’re supposed to do with one another? What are we supposed to do from the table?

What do we do instead? We load up the last 5 to 10 minutes with a prayer, a hymn, maybe some announcements, a blessing, a dismissal, and a postlude.

Then where do most of us go? Where do we not go?

Restructuring

This is why I find the idea of placing Announcements at the very end, after we’ve said our dismissal and shown our thanks to GOD, ready to go out into the world, only to have the presider say “please be seated” to be the most heinous act of liturgical abuse. Right when we are primed to go, out, we’re being called to sit and stay. Listen to this. It doesn’t interrupt the service, but it undercuts it.

I’m not a fan of announcements to begin with, but this is the place I refuse to put them.

Read more about announcements and how they function.

Here, unlike the rest of our liturgy, I think our local customs and the liturgies themselves drive us away from their intention. Our exit is overloaded and too embraces our need for completion. It entertains the pleasure centers of our brain rather than disturbing our “keep aware” centers.

I truly don’t believe we can build that sense of service we are taught is embodied in our table fellowship and in Holy Communion without manifesting some of that change in the form of our worship. We truly need to alter and restructure the way we end – and the expectation for what we do after we are finished.

We’ve altered our liturgy before when we created that symmetry. We also altered our liturgy to become asymmetric. This kind of restructuring of our liturgy is not a forgone conclusion or alien to our character. We are just loathe to make that change.

Many have come to find great inspiration for service without regard to this form, or in spite of it. Nothing today prevents us from going from worship down to a soup kitchen or to a homeless shelter or to pick up trash in the park. Nothing prevents that.

But many things intentionally impede that work. Fancy clothes and brunch. Coffee and donuts. That general sense of satisfaction and inertia from doing some good, affirming church!

The exit is part of our problem, but it isn’t the only thing. We certainly need to keep deconstructing our exit from church and our entrance into the world. To do that, we may need to start a bigger project while we’re at it. We’ll need to deconstruct Sunday.

Ask Yourself

When I am most compelled to serve, what provokes me? What gets me started? What sustains me?

What takes me from sitting there to opening my wallet or volunteering to pack food into boxes? What have people said to me? How have they said it? Where was I? Did I need to see the problem myself?

Bill Gates tells the story of reading a magazine in the bathroom and coming out shocked to find the extent of global hunger. He thought there must be an extra zero or two on the totals. So he had a researcher look it up to confirm it for him. He was oblivious to the poverty and the extent of poverty in the world. He was moved by the data. What am I moved by? Is it the personal story? My personal experience? Through stories (fiction and nonfiction) of challenge and adversity? Is it the knowledge of injustice or the horror of the extent of that injustice? What gets me to see the problem? Or the extent of the problem?

What gets me to act on it?

In what ways do I need to hear the instruction to “go in peace to love and serve the Lord” to know that it is for me?

 

[This is Day 31 of How to start deconstructing church. To start from the beginning, read the introduction here.]