Essays on Eastern Orthodoxy
A Tale of Two Dinners, pt 2
Essay on the St. Thomas Sunday
April 30, 2006 (posted May 4, 2006)
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This is an essay about two dinners. The first dinner is the St. Thomas day picnic at the cemetery. The other dinner is the semi-annual Syrian Dinner, which is the major fund raising event in our local parish. It is a wonder that people are willing to work as hard as they do on those two weekends of the year. All the food is prepared from scratch. Even the bread is baked by church members on the Saturday before the dinner. The meal is served from noon until 6:00 p.m. The church has a professional kitchen in order to facilitate these two huge annual undertakings. Because the dinners bring in many thousands of dollars, it is argued that the congregation cannot survive financially without these two events.
Another positive thing about these dinners is that it brings people loosely associated with the parish out of the woodwork. People one doesn’t see for the rest of the year (except baptisms and funerals) come to work at the dinner. I’ve been told that it’s a way of keeping these people connected to the life of the church.
While it is undeniable that they show off the remarkable work ethic of the congregation, are an opportunity to remind the city that St. Thomas is in town, and bring otherwise inactive people back into the orbit of church life, I think the dinners, as they are done at St. Thomas, are more problematic than helpful. The fact that the Spring Dinner fell on St. Thomas Sunday, making it impossible to observe the Eighth Day picnic, simply put an exclamation mark on the unease I was already feeling about this state of affairs. (And it should be said in fairness to this parish that the Eighth Day picnic is a Slavic or Serbian tradition, and therefore not native to the Antiochian congregation of St. Thomas. It is not so much a conflict in reality as it is a conflict of principle.)
There were only thirty or so people in worship on St. Thomas Sunday. There were only eight people in the choir. Everyone else was in the basement preparing for the dinner. Even some of the choir members were flitting back and forth from choir loft to basement taking care of the oh-so-important business of the dinner. Ironically, one woman's Roman Catholic parents and aunt were in worship while she and her husband were in the basement working. This would be a less significant issue, something I could dismiss as a cultural difference in a culturally diverse church made up of Syrians, converts, and a handful of Russians, except that Jesus spoke very clearly to this issue and in so doing warned the church about being seduced by such things.
The story is familiar. Jesus is at the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. Mary is soaking in the teaching of Jesus in the living room while Martha is busy in the kitchen. Finally Martha complains; but Jesus chides her, saying that Mary had chosen the better thing. Hospitality is good, but it is secondary to being in Christ’s presence (and worship, where we primarily experience Christ’s presence in our time between Christ’s Ascension and Return). Running away from worship in order to make a few bucks for the church treasury at the dinner is especially aggravating in an Orthodox context because the Orthodox claim they have the true form of worship. (And I believe this; it’s the primary reason I became Orthodox.) As the hymn following the communion of the faithful says it: “We have seen the true light, we have received the heavenly Spirit; we have found the true faith, worshiping the undivided Trinity: for he hath saved us.”
But not today Lord, We’re busy cooking Kibbe and cabbage rolls. I’m sure you understand. After all, we need the money. Maybe we can even use it to feed the poor. (I think one of your disciples said something about that not too long before your death.)
If it were Protestant worship where, as a Presbyterian pastor, I used to follow the general form of worship, but also made stuff up as I went, hoping that God would like what I stirred together today, it would be different. A church dinner to raise money was probably about as good as some of the stuff we did upstairs in the sanctuary on any given Sunday. But this isn’t the Protestant Church and what’s going on upstairs is the Divine Liturgy which was shaped out of the Jewish worship that God gave to Moses. It is the worship that is described and interpreted by the Apostle and Theologian John in the book of Revelation. It is the thing that Christians do every Sunday morning, gratefully offering back to God that which God has given us and asked us to do. To forsake this for a church dinner is particularly egregious.
Turning our backs on the excellent, on one of the things we are specifically commanded by Christ to do, in order to do something which is good (in distinction from the excellent) so that we can meet the budget is particularly insidious, and I believe this is why the incident of Mary and Martha was recorded so prominently in the Gospels. We all know the danger; it is memorialized in the old canard, “The path to hell is paved with good intentions.” Getting us to do the good instead of the excellent is one of Satan’s favorite tricks. It is precisely what made Judas’ complaint, about the ointment being used on Jesus rather than sold and put into the treasury, sound so reasonable. We are attracted to the good. But when the good usurps the excellent; when our good intentions and charitable actions undermine Christ’s command, the good itself has become a tool of evil to distract us from our calling.
I have to confess that I have a personality disorder (grin) that causes me to dislike church dinners. I am therefore quick to recognize the problems of church dinners. One church I served had their big fund raising dinner on Friday night so that it would not conflict with Sunday worship. I like that idea much better than a dinner that conflicts with worship. Another member of St. Thomas (with similar misgivings to mine) told me about their church dinners which were strictly community fellowship events rather than fund raisers. They were held on Sunday but did not conflict with worship. By taking the fund raising piece out of the Sunday dinners, it was easier to keep a proper focus on things. Making sure that there is no conflict between worship and eating is precisely the point of what Jesus told Martha. But when a large percentage of a congregation is forced to choose between making the budget by preparing for a dinner or going to worship, there’s an insidious and unfortunate problem.
And church dinners are good. If we understand the book of Acts correctly, they are even necessary. And this is precisely the point of the Eighth Day picnic on St. Thomas Sunday at the cemetery. Everyone (both living and departed) should not only gather for worship, they should gather for eating and fellowship. But I’m pretty sure it is quite un-Orthodox to make Christians choose between the two.
But life here on earth is not perfect. Certain commitments (or lack thereof) lead to certain consequences. Eventually we force ourselves into situations where we think we have to choose between two good things; in this case, worship or preparing dinner. My hope and prayer is that we’ll figure out a way to avoid this dilemma, but this year, I had to wait until St. Thomas Sunday evening, when the church kitchen was all cleaned up and everyone had gone home exhausted, to crack open my easter egg and proclaim, “Christ is risen! (and so have the parish coffers!)” Thanks be to God that his grace doesn’t change even when we don’t get it all quite right.
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