Commissioning

My friend Jeff was "commissioned" at his church today. (The best I can tell, commissioning is the low-calorie version of ordination.) We left our house at nine-thirty to get there by eleven. I had looked up the church the night before so I would know how to get there. So we got there. And we got there half an hour early. So Athanasia and I and the little boy and I kicked around a soccer ball for a little while in the parking lot. But we saw a lot of people going in and we heard singing so we figured it was starting.

As we were walking in we saw a sign that said the service starts at 10:30. "Hmmmm", I thought to myself, "Jeff said the service started at 11. That's strange." So all three of us walked down the center aisle to the front pew (Protestant churches have benches called pews, the one in the front is usually the last to fill up.) and sat down.

The guy behind us leaned forward and asked it the little boy would like to go to sunday school. We thanked him but said no thanks. Then I asked, "is this Bay Hills Evangelical Free Church?" That was met by an odd look on the man's face. "No, this is Bay Hills Community Church". Athanasia asked, "Is Jeff Miller being ordained today?" "No, I don't think so"
I looked at my wife and said, "Uh oh! We're in the wrong church!"

So we stood up and walked right up the center aisle, past 3oo people, and out the door. Wow! That was embarrassing.

Now before I write anything else, I want to make a couple of comments on the service we were in, even though it was for less than 5 minutes.
1) Pastors, please, please, please, don't wear Hawaiian shirts on the platform. It does not make you look cool, hip, real, relaxed, or with-it. It makes you look like someone who read a book about church growth. So, please be a grown up and wear a tie. Or follow your spiritual ancestor, Martin Luther's example and wear an academic robe. But please, knock off the Hawaiian shirts. If you are not sipping a pina colada and wearing sandles you should not be wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
2) 3 guitars is 2 guitars too many.
3) The band and the back up singers should not be so loud that the congregation's voice can not be heard.
4) Please, kill the PowerPoint projector. I know this will be hard for you; all the cool Protestant churches use PowerPoint now. But trust me, it's hokey. A church service is not supposed to be like a shareholders meeting or like a briefing for an Army general. The church has survived a few thousand years without PowerPoint. I'm pretty sure the Levites weren't using to project Psalms on the Temple wall. And I know for a fact that when Jesus preached he didn't use it. All he did was talk to people and tell them stories about grain, and sheep, and stuff like that. You should do that too. More talking, less PowerPointing.
5) The woman drummer was cool, though. Don't see enough chicks banging the hi-hats.

Now back to the story.

We jumped in the car, grabbed a cell phone, called 411 and got the address of the correct BayHills church. Zoomed up the freeway, woops! all of a sudden the freeway (I-880 north) dissapeard. It forked into I-80 and I-580. At the last possible moment, not really knowing which was the right one to take, I took the wrong one and very quickly found my self driving in the absolutely wrong direction. In fact, we were driving across the Bay Bridge. ARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!

After a quick turn around on Yerba Buena Island, we zoomed back to the East Bay, sped onto I-580 and drove north to Hercules. We got lost on Appian Way (The numbers reverse their order. I hate it when that happens.) but we eventually made it to the right BayHills church.

We heard the last 10 minutes of a sermon about money. Or maybe it was about investing. Yeah, that was it. It was about how to have financial security. Hmmmmm. I'm sitting there thinking, "yeah, on the terrible Day of the LORD, I want to make sure to tell Jesus all about how I got a 12 % annual return on my savings. That will really impress him. Surely, he didn't really mean it when he said the worm and rust would eat up my stock certificates. And that James, such a radical, I know he must have been wrong." Now to be fair, I did only hear the last 10 minutes of the sermon, and the preacher was right when he talked about debt and how it keeps a person from doing with their money what God wants them to do with it. Nevertheless, when I think of great saints who lived in poverty, such as St. Xenia, St. Paul, St. Anthony, St. Mary of Egypt, and even our God, Jesus himself who said "foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man doesn't have a place to put his head" - whenthink of them I have trouble getting excited about a sermon that seems to be more about the blessings of compound interest than about feeding the hungry. But again, I don't want to sound too harsh. The pastor was right about not wasting money and about not going into debt. After all, if you are wasting money or paying off debt, you can't do the good things with your money that God wants you to do with it.

Oh, the commissioning itself was pretty standard. The pastor called Jeff up to the front, he explained the Biblical authority for laying hands on Jeff, then he and several other people laid hands on Jeff and prayed for him. (They have three services each Sunday so they actually did this three times.)

An interesting personal story: It was seeing deacons ordained at PBCC that really drove home to me that I was no longer a Protestant. I had just finished reading the works of the second century bishop St. Iraneus of Lyons (in present day France). And as I was watcing the ordination I remembered something St. Iranaeus said about some heretics of his day: "Who laid hands on them?" (okay, yes, that is a very rough translation.) And then I thought, "I wonder who laid hands on these guys ordaining the deacons?"

One cool thing happened today. As we were doing all of this driving, the little boy was sitting in the back seat reading the new book his mother bought him. And just as I said to my wife (We were on the Bay bridge at the time), "God is doing this to us because he does not want us visiting any heretic churches!! "(I was near to angry.) I heard my little boy singing the Trisagion Hymn. It made me very happy. I'd like to say that was enough church for me, but for the Orthodox, as long as there is the possibility of more there is never enough. To quote Bishop Benjamin of Berkeley, "If one 'Lord, have mercy' is good, why not three? I three why not 12. If 12 why not 40? If 40, why not 144... FOUR TIMES!!!" I guess what I am saying, is that yes, I'm happy for my friend Jeff. He has worked hard for this. But I wish I had been at Holy Trinity today. But even that would not have satisfied. Someday, in Heaven, it will all be all Liturgy all the time. But instead of men carrying the incense to the altar there will be angels doing that job. Instead of Bishop Tikhon (Many Years!) presiding over the liturgy, Christ our High Priest and the Lamb will be presiding. Instead of mystery there will be revelation. All the doors will be open. We will see face to face. Every day, every second will be Pascha.