Call them "Chuggles"?

This past week I finally fulfilled a long overdue date with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I got the book for Christmas two years ago, but I knew once I started reading it, I would not be able to put it down, and I just haven't had that kind of time, to disappear into Hogwarts for 48 hours, until just a few days ago.

I already knew who was going to die, as a confirmation student accidentally blabbed that info to me before they realized I hadn't yet read the book. But I have to say, I'm still kind of in shock over who killed the deceased - I don't want to say more, lest I accidentally ruin the details for anyone, but suffice it to say, I am still disturbed and brewing over how that all shook down.

And I also find myself, as I do after watching the Star Wars saga, somewhat jealous of the characters' abilities and gadgets, because in many respects I think we have similar callings. Ok, granted, I do not personally face immanent mortal peril nearly so often as Harry or Obi-Wan, but I do still deal with matters of life and death on a regular basis. And we are all three of us stewards and ministers of a powerful and mysterious force that holds the universe together; we are all three of us constantly on the frontlines of the battle between good and evil (and most often employ sacrifice and love as our weapons of choice in that battle). And like the Jedi, pastors are called to a certain Zen-like detachment from particular places and people in order that we might better love all of God's children and be free to serve the universal church.

So we're all basically fighting the good fight, but they get such way cooler perks - a lightsaber, a wand, a flying broomstick, the ability to move objects or even themselves with their trained mind. . .I get health insurance and a pension plan.

(which, especially in this day and age, I'm certainly grateful for, but they don't hum when you wave them around in the air, and on most days, don't seem nearly as useful as the ability to apparate)

But I digress.

The "chuggles" in the title above is inspired by reading Harry Potter just a few days after Christmas - just a few days after the "C&Es" (short for "Christmas and Easter Christians") have made their annual or semi-annual pilgrimmage to church.

Now, perhaps I am lacking in my sympathetic imagination here, but I suspect the people who only show up once or twice a year come more for the sake of grandma, or nostalgia, or tradition, than they do out of any expectation of encountering the divine. Which is just weird to me, because my understanding of worship is that it's an intentional encounter with God in a place where God has promised to be found. And I'm not just blithering around up front, going off on my own opinions, or giving a nice speech, or trying to uplift or edify the people - I'm charged with both the burden and the gift of bringing the good news, I'm (hopefully) handing over a word of life from God that you can cling to in a world full of death. And I fully believe that the Word of God, though it may travel a wide and circuitous route, always, ultimately, bears fruit, it never returns to God empty. So, I'm just kind of confused by people who don't share this understanding, who don't come to worship with these same expectations to encounter God and the living Word - and I find myself wondering what they do expect, and why they bother coming at all?

(I should clarify at this point, that I'm not trying to pick on C&Es - I have met plenty of people who are regularly in the pews, and sadly, even a few colleagues, who also seem to lack any expectations of an actual encounter with the divine through the Word and the Sacraments - and I often wonder the same things about them)

And I also wonder, then, what these folks day-to-day lives are like. Because if you don't expect to meet God in a place where God has promised to be found and where you have actually bothered showing up - do you honestly expect to meet God anywhere at all? Again, I could simply be lacking a charitable imagination here, but I suspect the answer, for most, is no. Which is, again, just weird to me, whose world is infused with the divine, who sees God on the loose as much in the New York City subway as in the purple mountain's majesty, as much in a Puccini aria as in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

So, I'm thinking perhaps a new sociological category is in order, dubbed "Chuggles" - people who claim affiliation with the Christian faith but who are as void of any expectation of meeting, as oblivious to the actual presence of, the divine, as the muggles of Harry Potter are to the magical.

The good news is, I don't think it's a doomed "once a chuggle, always a chuggle" situation. I think people can learn to expect to meet God in the places God has promised to be found, I even think they can have their hearts and minds and ears and eyes broken open to see God running loose in all sorts of unexpected places in the world.

The question, the great challenge before us who steward such immense mysteries, is HOW? How do we de-chuggle or un-chuggle a person? And how much more fun would it be if lightsabers or flying broomsticks were involved? :)

Peace,
Catrina