The Optional Dinner Party
by The Rev. Hartshorn Murphy
Suppose your spouse or partner came home with a request that the two of you put on a rather formal dinner party next Friday for some important people in the company, some of whom will be visiting from back East and are unknown to you but are in a position to have a positive impact on your lives and future. You, with enthusiasm, agree and then do your best to put your best forward. But you have some options.
- The afternoon of the dinner party, you realize that the bathroom is filthy. Do you:
a. clean it thoroughly, putting out fresh soaps and hand towels or
b. lock the door, saying to each other: "They'll have gone at the hotel; we'll tell them the plumbing is on the fritz."
- As your guests arrive at the appointed hour do you:
a. leave the front door unlocked and from the comfort of your family room, shout out: "Door's open; come on in!" or
b. answer the doorbell graciously with a warm smile and say, "Hello, I'm ______, welcome to our home. We're so glad you could come!"
- You and your guests are gathered in the living room having drinks and sharing conversation. Your spouse or partner is in the kitchen and when signaled that the food is ready to be served, do you:
a. race to the table, fill your plate and yell out: "Ya'll better come on, the food'll get cold!" or
b. escort your guests to the table, giving them the places of honor and serve them first.
- Your son or daughter, whom you've bragged about at company parties, promises to be there, well groomed and well behaved. But your teenager blows it off and doesn't show up. You'll get through the evening, but do you:
a. notice their absence in passing and shine it off as irrelevant really or
b. wonder if they are O.K. because they said they'd be here
- At dinner, which is by the way wonderful, your guests clearly are enjoying their meal. Do you:
a. quickly take away the still mostly full platters and think how grateful you are not to have to cook tomorrow or
b. rise from the Table and offer your guests seconds and then refill their glasses.
- At the end of the night, relieved that all went so well, do you:
a. collapse on the couch and assume "They found their way in, they'll find their way out!" (after all, they are adults) or
b. you thank them for coming and escort them to the door with a kind invitation to "please come again - our home is your home!"
Each week, visitors come to our Sunday Dinner Party as honored guests. Our welcome, although gracious, is also compromised by a lack of hosts who give their time as greeters and ushers. During the "family meal," readers and intercessors and chalice bearers sometimes just don't show up and didn't take the time to recruit a substitute. At leave-taking ("coffee hour") we sometimes ignore our guests to visit with other family members. Perhaps we have confused "liturgy" with "devotion."
The word "Liturgy" (from the Greek words for "people" and "work") originally meant any public work of any kind, not only religious, but by the 3rd century B.C., had come to be applied particularly to services in the Temple. In particular, "liturgy" refers to public Eucharistic worship as opposed to "private devotion." (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church).
Unlike some Protestant denominations, members of the Catholic churches (Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglicans) are expected to take an active role in liturgical worship and not be observers but doers. Everyone should be doing something, whether it's reading, greeting, ushering, serving on the Altar Guild, serving the bread or wine or whatever.
Our "successful dinner party," one to which our guests will feel at home and will want to return, is dependent on gracious hosts.
Copyright © 2003 St. Augustine by-the-Sea
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