Worship and Ordinary Life: Flipping our Perspective

Finishing my bike ride one Saturday in June, I saw the artist making a portrait on a utility box at one corner of Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward neighborhood [See Photo].  Did he paint black stripes on a white background, or white stripes on a black background?  My knowing the answer doesn't make much difference; but the question flips the way I see the picture.

Father Daron Vroon has a penchant for flipping our perceptions of familiar doctrines and parables.  Preaching recently at the Episcopal Church of St. James, Marietta, where he's associate rector, Fr. Daron pointed out that a shepherd would be insane to leave the ninety-nine in search of the one; so Jesus doesn't mean "I am like a good shepherd," but -- flip! -- that a really good shepherd should be like Jesus. Explaining that the twenty-five Sundays after Pentecost, being counted by "ordinal" numbers, are called "Ordinary Time," Fr. Daron preached that our scripture selections in this season concern how we live with the Spirit after the miracle (the Exodus, the Resurrection), making this season -- flip! -- Extraordinary time. 

The common idea of worship needs flipping, too, writes Fr. Daron in our church newsletter (The Word, May 2018). We commonly think of worship as a retreat from real life, where we "recharge" before we go back into the fray, or as "nourishment" to fill us up for our real missions.  That's what we pray just before we "go into the world … to love and serve You with gladness and singleness of heart."

But Fr. Daron digs into the church's ancient history to find that worship was considered to be participation in God's foundational acts for the universe.  "Everything that happens outside of worship," he writes, "takes its meaning from worship."

So we think of worship as the black stripes painted on the background of real life.  Fr. Daron tells us -- flip! -- worship is the base; other business, the overlay.

The periodical Forward Day by Day presented the image of wedges - worship wedged into the day.  Fr. Marshall Jolly writes how his days at monastic retreat were punctuated by worship  at sunrise, in the morning, at noon, at sundown, and at night.  "Ordinary life is wedged into the space between my prayers" at the monastery, he writes. At home, "I spend my life trying to wedge prayer into the spaces between ordinary day - to - day moments."  (FDbD June 14, 2018).

The conflict between daily work and daily worship resolves in accepting that we participate in God's works of creation and salvation both by our business and our worship; worship is the context for the business.