Thanks Methodist Jesus

Back when I graduated from undergrad I made the decision to attend another church/attempt to attend another church. After graduating I knew I had a disdain for church because I didn’t like Pentecostalism. It was the only thing I had known for what had been a decade. And honestly the people left me jaded. I wanted out and I felt as though that when I graduated from undergrad that it would have been as good a time as any to make the life change fall in place with every other life change that was going on at the time. If I wanted to walk to the Methodist church that I lived by then I could do so. I don’t think I would want to do that but it is an option. The day I walked into the church for the first time ever, and it being my first time ever being in a UMC location, I knew I had to try out something entirely new. The contemporary worship music was replaced with worn hymnals, pages aged with fingerprints of saints and sinners past and present. Removable seats replaced with pews whose wood was held up with the faith of the people that sat in them. The pews all placed to where the altar can be clearly seen and the speakers there can be clearly heard. It is a large church and as it turns out it is a very different congregation as well. I only ever knew church through people my age. I don’t know what it’s like to not go to a service with people my age (four kids I went to youth group with are my best friends now). This congregation has memories of Jimmy Carter’s first day in office. At the time I was 22. Needless to say there was a gap that I couldn’t traverse. I didn’t know how to do so then and I still don’t know how to do so now. The intergenerational gap is intimidating and pretty disheartening but through no fault of their own. I made it that way, for better and worse I think.

I had just begun a job with Fedex at the airport (because being on airplanes is actually pretty fun once you get past waking up at 3am too regularly for your own good) and I work early on Sunday mornings. It’s exhausting some days and then you clock out and right after your shift is when the service starts. I’d usually have to go to work with only me changing my shoes out sometimes. Small and nagging cuts from brushing against loose pieces of metal on the containers we move on the planes, bruises everywhere you can be bruised because you bump mindlessly into thing that you forgot existed because you’re too tired to think, dirt on your hands and clothing because that’s the nature of the job, and there’s always someone bitching about something so you’re annoyed or feeling bummed because you want to do a good job but someone is always bitching about something absolutely miniscule and it’s not even your boss that does the bitching but someone else who is either the same position as you or still not your boss. And then you go to church. Tired, hungry, discouraged, easily irritated, dirty, injuries building up in your joints and tendons because everything you move is heavy, wearing clothing that Goodwill won’t take, and then you sit in the pews. They’re supposed to be the great equalizer. They’re not.

This congregation is located in a city (Cary) that is upper middle class. Nice cars are in the parking spaces and everyone is wearing clean clothing and their appearance doesn’t make you think they work a job like mine, families together, and then there’s me. The odd one out. While you may not make much out of the whole socioeconomic gap that exists in church then you’re not being intellectually honest with yourself. I always pictured Anglicanism and Episcopalianism and Methodists as white collar Jesus, Baptists and Lutherans and Pentecostals as blue collar Jesus, and Catholics and Orthodox as wild card Jesus because they can be rich or poor depending on the list of circumstances present there. I shouldn’t be able to draw lines in church based on how much money you make. The body of Christ wasn’t supposed to be divided by income tax bracket. But He is and we’re in that system and I hate it because these people probably don’t have to worry about the things I’ve worried about. They don’t have to wake up as early as I do to make a paycheck that will probably leave my hands as soon as it goes into my hands. They have the cars I can only dream of getting and probably live in the houses I think look amazing and have all the stories that I want to tell one day to people that don’t care enough to listen. I’m not in their shoes and I know they sure as hell don’t want to be in mine.

This sermon was the Sunday before Thanksgiving. It was raining and I had actually sacrificed time to go back home and go change into something that was comfortable (not soaked in rain and exhaustion). I get to church late and miss the liturgy which by the way I still don’t know how to maneuver through a hymnal. I sit in the very back because I don’t want to draw attention to myself. I don’t recognize the face of the minister but that’s nothing new because I just don’t recognize faces in this church for some reason. And he goes something like this:

“What’s the biggest difference between the Saturday and Sunday liturgy? (he goes off on a quip about how one of the fellow ministers will say “there’s 200 differences between the two” and refer you to dozens of different authors but said minister isn’t here today) The main difference is gratitude.”

Now keep in mind I’m writing this in June 2017 when this happened in November 2016 so I’m going to do my best to paraphrase as accurately as I can here. When he said the word “gratitude” I did the Protestant shuffle. I crossed my right leg over my left, leaned forward in my seat, and narrowed my eyes (You know the look). It’s the shuffle every Protestant does when they know they’re going to hear something they believe is going to be good.

“You’re going to be around your tables this coming Thursday. The right people somehow never make it at the right time or at all. The wrong people somehow always make it. But when you’re at the table with the family members who wear the Clinton-Kaine hat or the Trump-Pence hat or that weird uncle with the Johnson-Weld hat, put the differences aside....We do communion here every week. A lot of the other churches, when we meet together for the general assembly (or whatever Methodists call it) the other churches ask “Why do you do communion every week? That’s so uncommon.” Because being grateful isn’t something that we do it’s who we are. That every prayer of thanksgiving is an extension of the prayer Christ gave over the elements; that every table is an extension of the table where He ate with His disciples. When He gave thanks and gave the bread He gave His disciples a job. ‘Take this. Now go do the same.’”

After this sermon, I wasn't Mike Tyson. I was that poor man's chin.

“The right people somehow never make it at the right time or at all.” The voices that filled the house and the voices you look forward to hearing when you were younger aren’t there anymore. For whatever reason, good or bad, there’s always a spot at the table or in the kitchen (I’m Hispanic so there’s literally always someone in the kitchen doing something and it’s almost always washing dishes) that is vacant. But then there’s those people you wish didn’t show up for whatever reason, good or bad. But even in that being grateful isn’t action but agency. It’s what we’re supposed to be. 

And that following month at work was the most exhausted I had been in years. It’s hard to want to be thankful when you’re waking up at hours unsuitable for reasonable people. When you’re broke or rich you’re called to be thankful. So yes I’ve tried to go “well I have this thing (whatever the hell it is) for now, so I’ll try and be thankful”. I’m not convinced that God is calling someone to be thankful and sincere with it. God isn’t an idiot. He’s well aware that we say things to hopefully put us into the sphere of being the thing we’re talking about. Just because I say thank you doesn’t mean I’m thankful. But it’s a start in the right direction. And it’s the best this sermon told me that I can do.