For Wilshire Baptist Church
Sunday morning, we visited The Episcopal Church of Saint Thomas the Apostle for a discussion about sharing faith through fiction, and then we stayed for worship. It was a rich and warm experience, and I especially liked the moment when the rector carried the Gospel Book from the altar down the aisle into the center of the church. Everyone was standing and turned to face her, which meant that as she read the day’s Gospel, we not only were seeing her but were looking beyond her into the faces of one another.
I don’t know the full meaning of this, but I found it to be a beautiful symbol of how God through Christ brought the word to us and we are invited to gather around it and live it in a personal way with each other. That idea was heightened by the Gospel reading from Matthew 5: “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”
As we heard the Gospel, I could almost see the words of Jesus illuminated in the faces of those listening across from me.
Compare that with what I experienced Tuesday morning at the county courts building. Sitting toward the back of the central jury room, I looked out across a sea of hundreds of fellow citizens, all facing forward. No eye contact, no visible expressions. We all had been summoned there to serve, but we were reticent, private, sleepy. We were hiding our lights.
That changed when they started calling jury pools and we were sent upstairs to wait outside our assigned courtrooms. There, sitting on church-like pews and facing each other, the darkness began to dissipate. People began to smile and to chat quietly as people do when bound together by a common experience.
The light began to shine more when we were called into the courtroom and one by one were asked questions – serious questions – that would help determine if we would be asked to serve. It was a DWI case, and potential jurors shared their personal stories of tragedy and weakness. In that room, there was no more hiding our light – especially as we faced the judge, lawyers and defendant, and as they faced us. They were reading our light, and we were reading theirs.
I don’t know if these two moments – one in church and the other at the courthouse – have so much in common, but it does seem to me that we are better people when we live face to face and when we look for the light in each other’s eyes. I believe the gospel is stronger when we don’t just read it but see others through it. And when we’re called upon to judge our neighbors, it’s good to do it face to face. We don’t have to see the gospel light in their eyes. We just need to have that light in ours.