It’s curious how we have come to use the word “anxious” in two different ways. We might say, “I’m anxious to get started on our presentation, so please send me your part of the project soon.” As such, we use “anxious” to mean, “ready” or “eager.” Or, we might say, “I’m anxious about this presentation.” In that case, we’re not expressing eagerness but “apprehension” or “reservation.” Isn’t it weird that a single word can lean in two very different directions, of readiness to go and dreading to go?
To wit: “I’m anxious to get back to in person worship” and “I’m anxious about getting back to in person worship.” Both of those comments are true for me. And, please note that what follows is an intensely personal perspective. When we get back to in person worship is a matter that our session will decide, not your pastor or staff. I am only disclosing my own reflections with that caveat in mind.
I’m anxious to get back to in person worship. I miss you, I miss your faces, and even though I am more of an introvert than an extrovert, our gatherings on Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings are very meaningful to me far beyond the personal experience of praise, prayer, and preaching. I am getting my fill of praise, prayer, and preaching through our virtual worship services. It’s not the same as how I’ve been doing those things all of my life, but it is actual praise, actual prayer, and actual preaching – things that I thirst to offer as my response to God’s grace. Even so, while we have praise, prayer, and preaching, we’re missing ‘people’ (I decided to keep all of these descriptions in the ‘p’ family.) One day our praise, prayer, and preaching will be a people event. And I’m anxious for that day to happen.
And I’m anxious about getting back to in person worship. Every physician, nurse, epidemiologist, or hospital technician that I know is deadly serious about the real and present dangers of COVID-19. The persons whom I know who have lost family members to this pandemic are crying out for people to take it seriously, to listen to experts, to attend to safety precautions, and to act accordingly. And, to be painfully candid, it seems that Orange County has long cultivated a “You’re not the boss of me” attitude of individualism that makes it challenging to respond to a virus with the kind of concern for communal well being that is required. Even churches have tried to baptize this individualist perspective by painting themselves as oppressed and forgetting the Apostle Paul’s warning about harming our neighbors by turning our liberty into license. I am anxious about getting back to worship for both sheer safety reasons and because I don’t want to play into the hands of those who are ignoring or demeaning the concerns of public health.
So, I am torn between the two differing modes of the word “anxious” when it comes to in person worship. I suspect that we all are, to one degree or another – just as we are when it comes to attending any public event; visiting parents, grandparents, children, or grandchildren; attending school in person or remotely; even hugging people whom we love.
I wish I had some kind of magic answer to how we resolve these competing forms of anxiety. It seems that we may have to simply fall back on the virtues that we’ve always known were required for making community – love, listening, patience, honesty, and at times deferring our own desires for the sake of the common good.
When the time comes that the session is ready to resume in person worship, you will – of course – have the final say over whether you will attend. That is a matter of your conscience over which God alone is the judge. So, you will not be judged one way or another by us. Rather, we will try to ensure that we can honor both definitions of what it means to be anxious for in person worship.
Mark of St. Mark
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