Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!
A View From the Pew
by Ken Rummer
Recently retired pastor, Ken Rummer, notices that without a sermon to prep, Sundays do not loom as large in the week. Photo Credit: K.Rummer
Sundays feel different, in retirement.*
Without a sermon to deliver (Will I lose my notes? Will I lose my place? Will it make any sense at all?), without arrangements to arrange (Will the liturgist show up? Is the air conditioner working? Is there water in the baptismal font?), without the weather to wonder about (Will the snow shoveling person have the walks in shape? Will the tornado watch turn into a warning? Will the day be so nice that everyone goes to the lake?)—without all that and more, Sunday isn’t the same for me.
When I was pastoring, the shadow of the coming Sunday fell back as far as Tuesday. That was the day I would try to begin the sermon process, usually by translating the chosen passage from Greek or Hebrew. And all through the week one thing was certain: Sunday was coming.
Even if I got the sermon written early (I think Wednesday was my all-time record, though Saturday was common and a few sermons were finished with a nod to the timing of the Easter story in the Gospel of Mark: “very early on the first day of the week” (Mark 16:2 NRSV))—even if I got the sermon done early, I was still thinking about it through the rest of the week, still feeling the weight of Sunday-next.
The nervousness was familiar from violin recitals growing up. At one performance my knees started shaking and I couldn’t get them to stop. People tried to help. “Just remember, the audience is more nervous than you are.” “Being nervous means you’ll play better.” In recent years I tried to tell myself, “You’re not nervous. You’re excited.” It almost worked.
Now, in retirement, I am experiencing going to church without stage fright, praying without scores of people listening, and hearing Scripture without wondering how to preach it.
Being in the pew, sitting with my wife, seeing the bulletin for the first time as I arrive—it’s a different experience.
I try not to go with my critic hat on. “I’m here to worship,” I say, “not to evaluate.” But it’s hard to turn off the part of my brain that notices things. “Wow, that’s three different people who spoke to us—good welcoming.” “The pastor’s voice sounds a little echo-y. I wonder if the mixer could be better adjusted.” “That hymn number in the bulletin matches the slide on the screen but not the page in the hymnal.”
There have been positive noticings, too. How that line in the song, about grace bringing me safe thus far, brought my tears to bank full. How the roiling clouds behind the clear windows around the cross really fit the mood of the Maundy Thursday service. How the sculpture of Mary Magdalene, pictured on the screen at Easter, has stuck with me ever since.
I don’t think I’m needing lots of words in worship just now. It’s the non-word parts that seem to connect: the young woman giving the children’s sermon who used to come up for mine, the multi-string chords in a modern harmony from a haunting cello solo, the hand of my grandson in mine as we go forward to place our palm branches on the communion table.
It feels like I’m seeing worship from the outside after seeing it from the inside for many years. I’m trying to lean into the difference, at least for now, to see if I can remember who I am in worship when I’m not up front, and to see what I can see of God from out here in the pews.
*I know, “Sundays” can’t “feel” anything and “different” should really be an adverb. But “I find that my post-retirement experience of Sundays differs in significant respects from the way I experienced Sundays prior to retirement” seems too academic and formal for a blog. So, hoping for grammar grace, I write: Sundays feel different.
P.S. The house is finished, we have just moved in, and we are waiting (Sightings 5/05/17) no longer.
Ken Rummer, Teaching Elder PCUSA, Honorably Retired
Ken Rummer writes about faith and life from the middle of Iowa by the High Trestle Trail.