Sunday, November 4, 2012

Trinity Lutheran Church


This experience of church-hunting in the Inland Empire has turned out to be more personal and introspective an undertaking than it was in Hollywood. The first church I selected was one frequented by friends. The second church I selected was frequented by my mother and father. So it seemed fitting the third church would be the one I best remember from my own childhood: Trinity Lutheran Church in Montclair, CA.

My first church-related memories are of Trinity. We attended until I left the 8th grade and my family left Pomona (adjacent to Montclair) and relocated to another town in California. This was in the late 1980s. Between then and now, the only other time I was there was for my brother's wedding in the mid 1990s. Since I'd been a member, Trinity added a new church building, the old sanctuary remains and is presently being used by another congregation. Much of the original exterior of the facility is exactly as I remember it. The playground area has the same swingset. There is still a giant iron mailbox in front of the old building. But this was my first time inside the newer part of Trinity.
A nice thing about the new building is the one interesting architectural element -- the stonework at the front of the church -- prevents any PowerPoint presentations, not that such a thing would be considered. The building might be new, but little else is. People in the congregation remembered my family, if not me. My former pastor wasn't there, he retired, but the current pastor was old-school. In the pockets of the pews were the exact same hymnals and songbooks that I used more than 25 years earlier, as well as -- praise God -- copies of the King James Bible. When I was a child, the organists were family friends whose organ playing abilities could best be described as "well-meaning." The current organist also means well.
The order of worship had been trimmed considerably. Not a lot of standing compared to the old days. The demographics of the place skewed much older, so I'm not sure if that connects to the lack of movement during worship. There was a handful of children in attendance, but none of them the right ages to be an acolyte, so an elder lit the candles on the alter. As the opening hymn played, the pastor did a one-man processional to the front of the church, we confessed our sins, there was a brief children's message, then the scripture readings, a creed, another hymn, and the sermon.

The sermon made me smile, which was odd considering the topic was more than a little somber. The thrust of the pastor's message was that life sucks. To use his words, "Life is hell, but then you die." Prejudice, poverty, and pain all exist on Earth. It is, frankly, a Buddhist approach to life, which is odd to hear inside a Lutheran church. Using the book of Revelations as his basis, the pastor posited that life in Heaven would surely be better. I sincerely hope so.

Like many Christians, I am not an avid Bible reader; it is not a book I could curl up with beside a fire. It is not a fun read and, at times, is is a very hard read. One book I have attempted over the years is the Revelation of John. It is just so dark and mysterious and off-the-charts strange that I find it compelling. I've read it, read the writings of others who have studied it, and watched documentaries about it. I've reached one inescapable conclusion: We have no idea what it means.

To my non-believing friends, assume for a moment that the future was revealed to a man. He saw the world end. He saw things and people and creatures from far into his future. And then he was tasked with writing it down. Let us assume that is exactly what happened. Put yourself in John's shoes. You're living in the first century A.D. and the sky opens up and projected before you is... something. And then, later, you have to put it into words.

The words aren't there. How could the words possibly be there? For instance, let us say John saw an F-14 Tomcat screaming through the sky, its pilot clad from head to toe in a flight suit. Or he saw people milling gathered inside the Burj Khalifa. Or he saw people riding inside a Toyota Prius. Using the available language of John's time, describe those things. While not impossible, it seems more likely that more representative descriptions would be used. Do I think four horsemen will bring about the destruction of the Earth? I think that is one possibility, but another equally valid possibility is John witnessed someone or something riding atop something, and since in his universe such a person is typically called a horseman, that's the word he ascribed to what he saw.

If you ever read the ultimate book of the Bible, and if you see a word like dragon, think about the vocabulary of the time. If John saw a modern-day tank spewing fire missiles and fire from its canon, would he have called it a dragon? And think about how someone 500, 1000, or 1500 years later might have translated such a word. Assuming John saw what he saw doesn't mean we have a clear idea of how the world will really end or what heaven is really like. It is a mystery, and as a favorite author of mine once wrote, "And I am both terrified and reassured to know that there are still wonders in the universe, that we have not yet explained everything."

Trinity was the church of my childhood, but it is not to be the church of my adulthood. I could try to describe the way I remember the church as I was growing up, the smell of the coffee in the hallway after worship, the sound of metal chairs scraping on the linoleum in the fellowship hall, the pictures of former pastors that used to hang everywhere (some friendly and welcoming, others stoic and even unsettling). I'm not sure I could put into words all that I saw when I was there, and that is just looking into the past. Were I to look into the future, the result would probably be even more confusing and unclear.

Despite having a communications degree, I don't always express myself as well as I could. I don't think any individual can accurately express who he or she is, a lifetime of memories and experiences and emotions. John remembered something he felt and witnessed, and he tried to communicate what he saw, the end result being we really have no way of knowing what he saw. I think we can all relate to that. But when it comes to learning what happens after we die, I don't think it brings us any closer to knowing. Still, it does make me wonder, which is both terrifying and reassuring.

Amen.
______________________________________________________

Sunday Scorecard:

What is the contact info for the church?

Trinity Lutheran Church
5080 Kingsley Street
Montclair, CA 91763
http://www.trinitymontclair.org/

What was the denomination?

LCMS Lutheran

What Bible verses were referenced?

Revelation 7:9-17, 1 John 3:1-3

What are the demographics of the congregation?

A small congregation of mostly seniors, a few families

Was the atmosphere formal or casual?

Formal church environment

What was the music like?

Organist who gets an A for effort, but didn't really inspire a joyful noise from those in attendance

How was the use of PowerPoint?

None at all

No comments:

Post a Comment