Call to Worship (based on Luke 5:1-11)
Here we are – hearing, here we are.
Some of us here, wearily, as if, why not
we have tried everything already and nothing has worked,
Some of us here, warily, feeling not good enough –
Surely there’s been some mistake –
Or else not ready
For how this could change us … will change us …
Some of us here willingly, mostly,
But hearing, and somehow answering, here we all are …
Now, Let us worship God!
On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet gloves to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.
Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk. Harper and Row, 1982
[and thanks, richardlfloyd, for the citation of what is lots of people’s favorite Annie Dillard quote]
Image: “Winter Landscape with Braband Church” (detail), Christian David Gebauer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Matters of Interpretation 
One response to “Fifth Sunday after Epiphany (C)”
That Annie Dillard quote is one of my favorites. I love how she calls worship “our dancing bear act.” Seems so appropriate sometimes.
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