My wife had a dream about a church last night. She was in Hagia Sophia, just outside of Asheville, and the service began in the orthodox way: a procession of astronauts swinging incense and swaying crossiars, singing a happy tune. Let's say it was Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines Tight Like This. And all went as usual - nothing out of the ordinary. Emendations to last week's rail road tariff for cotton from Chattanooga to Biloxi were read; commercial jingles from the 1950s were sung. Finally things went strange when time came for the Gospel. Antonin, ascending the pulpit, found a variety of Bibles up top. He stumbled and thumbed through them until he found what he thought was the right passage: John 17. So he's reading and it becomes apparent that he's inadvertently opened to the apochryphal John 17 (who put that there). He's going on about Kahrwl [sic] Marx being a disciple and how some other disciple had to be crucified as well.
When Erasmus came up to the pulpit, without notes - he seemed stumped about what to say. This wasn't the text he'd prepared for. He didn't do well. There was no crescendo to a point - no quoting Browning. You could tell he was upset. And then a very tiny Vietnamese woman spoke. She was hunchbacked and crawled up to the pulpit.
After the service, there were recriminations among the leaders. The people in the audience, seemed to get something out of all of it.
Odd how the Church may be all right - the Spirit works, even as we over scrutinize or over script what must happen.
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