In the Name of the Father
In the name of the father, let us pray: Church brings families together. Or, rather, parts of families can come together in the name of religion while completely alienating everyone else.
My father was raised Catholic. My mother was raised Episcopalian. By the time I came around in 1990 they had become established members of the St. Nicholas Episcopal Church in Scarborough Maine.
On the Catholic side of my family, the story goes that the evil powers of the Protestants had coerced my father over to the other side and probably kept him under control with satanic powers. The Episcopal side of the family just smiled.
Every Sunday morning our nuclear family would pile into the Volvo station wagon at seven AM and make the 45 minute drive to worship at St. Nicks, schmooze during coffee hour, and make another 45 minute return drive home.
My brother, two years younger, and I were raised with the weekly pilgrimage as a hallmark of our existence.
As is often the case with religion, the finer points of the experience would inevitably lead to conflict.
In early 1999 I was eight years old. My brother was six. That was an important year for family development as it was the first time I came to see that my brother was not just an enemy with whom I was competing for resources, but instead a valuable ally.
Where before we would devolve into a boxing match rather than talk, my brother and I found ourselves beginning to collude, planning in secret meetings how to best gain our parents favor, and choosing what our next target would be. This is much the same way most gangs are formed.
At this point in time St. Nicholas, after failing to pay rent at their normal facilities (the treasurer had absconded to Aruba with the coffers of the church), decided to construct a new building for worship. It would take five years to build the new church. That meant the congregation needed a space to gather in the meantime.
After a brief and clearly halfhearted search, a fleet of green plastic lawn chairs were assemble and services were held in what had until recently been a hot tub dealership showroom.
It was around this time that my brother and I began to take church less seriously.
The name St. Nicholas literally references Santa Clause, less reverent than jolly. I always half expected to see the pastor handing out cookies and milk rather than bread and wine during the Eucharist.
It was an odd time. The smell of old chlorine mixed with potpourri was confusing.
I frequently felt that many of the parishioners has wandered into the building hoping to find an eight-seater hot tub, two naked women, and six rounds of mojitos. Clearly they were operating under some delusion that this church service was some sort of extensive vetting process for prospective buyers.
So, on a cold morning sitting in two green plastic lawn chairs listening to a sermon, my brother and I decided to break what had become an increasingly tedious cycle of standing, sitting, singing, and occasionally praying, by having fun.
The church currently prioritizes “fun” as ranking just below self flagellation and crucifixion of your friends in the list of “Top 10,000 ways to Spend Your Sunday Morning” (soon to be available in hardcover from Penguin Books).
As any ten year old in a fully buttoned oxford and a tie could tell you, the Christian religion has simply not been designed to entertain or engage. The reason most pews (lawn chairs) get filled is out of parental guilt (holy daddy issues) and not because there is no other place the parishioners would rather be (football).
The situation this Sunday was particularly unique. My brother and I had recently been introduced to Star Wars by Nana Barbara, our mother’s mother. We had quickly developed a fascination with blasters, light sabers, and the various dialects of the Star Wars universe.
With my brother on the end of the aisle, I sat between him and my father. Though sitting well within the “disciplinary range” of Frank the Tank, we elected to start the Nicene Creed as it would have been recited by Darth Vader, perhaps on a particularly raspy day while explaining to Luke their (spoiler alert) family ties. It was as disruptive as we could muster.
When you compare them, though, the themes of the Bible and Star Wars are not all that different. The ultimate power of the Father, the sacrifices of the son, and the affirmation of a set of beliefs. Good versus evil. Jedi versus Sith. It all checks out.
Jesus probably had some pretty heavy questions too when God asked him to “Join me, and together we will rule the universe.” I’m paraphrasing, but mostly because I don’t speak Aramaic.
I can’t imagine there were no second thoughts or even some arguments or denials when Jesus found out the crucifixion his “all loving” father had planned. We don’t have much information beyond the Garden of Gethsemane but I think most of those fights happened between Jesus’s birth and age 30. One of the reasons this era was conveniently ignored.
Jesus would have perhaps been a less inspiring figure if a good portion of his story was him asking for a better explanation of how him getting nailed to a tree was going to do jack for anyone salvation.
Pretty much anywhere falls under gods “disciplinary range.”
God is always there, always watching. Jesus was probably scared shitless to try turning water into wine before he was 21. An omnipresent father?Helicopter parenting, amiright?
And so, in church, my brothers voice and mine mixed in with the congregation as we recited the Nicene Creed together in a shared affirmation of faith. “Eternally begotten of the father (KO-bahh) God from God, light from light (KO – bahh) Luke, I am your father (KO- bahh).
In hindsight, use adding the last line during a period of complete silence was probably what tipped off Papa Bear. We each got a resounding smack on the back of the head, which only managed to stop our laughing temporarily. As the laughter continued, our parents mortification increased. With one of us under each arm, Frank had us out the door before communion.
We learned a very important lesson that day: getting out of church was just a matter of having enough fun that it was no longer acceptable for us to worship in the hot tub store. And so it became a game.
Classic favorites included the use of accents, singing the prayers and speaking the hymns, and racing to find the best “that’s what she said” joke in the bible (Psalm 81:10: “I am the Lord thy God, open thy mouth, and I shall fill it.”)
My brothers and I versus my parents locked in the battle of “Is it worth it to go to church today?” would become epic and occasionally way over the top. The new routine was consistent, but created a divide. By 2004 my brother and I had recruited our youngest sibling whom we now deemed old enough to join our sacred sacrilegious covenant. It want easy to keep him in the dark anyways – he was six years younger than me and ended up being a valuable addition.
The baby of the family has powers that no other sibling can rival. A youngest brother is like a super powerful Jedi. Puppy eyes are a mind trick neither of us older brothers could master. He was a prodigy. he brought balance to the force. He could whine, take the blame for anything, and completely get away with it. Frank only had two arms to carry away misbehaving boys. Three was a magic number. My parents seemed oblivious to how quickly he was becoming a refined version of his older brothers.
That third member of the team turned out to be too much for the parentals. It was only shortly after the youngest became an active participant that church became an optional activity.
That was the way our family started going to church without any shenanigans. Once religion became an optional activity we started to appreciate it more. We could go when we wanted, or spend the day at home creating mayhem there.
After the new church was constructed we started dressing nicer, appreciating the process, and maybe even making an effort to pay attention.
There is a lesson there, perhaps about Stockholm Syndrome or maybe reverse psychology, or just the value of religion and family, but I’m going to actively choose to ignore it.
