Dead Air

This past week, I was at a 3-day conference put on by the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. It is a wonderful conference, with over 500 attendees, most of them clergy; and the Pacific School of Religion is a great seminary (even if it isn't the one I graduated from!).

At the closing worship, a small choir of P.S.R. students sang during worship. At the conclusion of their song, one of the students was supposed to share a reading, but when the song had ended, she hadn't yet reached her microphone; so, there was a delay of about ten seconds while she made her way to the front of the stage. No big deal, except that the director of worship, who had been leading the choir in their song, turned to the congregation and said, "Sorry about that." I kid you not. She apologized---to the congregation---for that ten second delay.

I started to wonder (and therefore missed what came next) about why the director felt the need to apologize. Was she so used to the way modern media run their shows, that she was embarrassed by ten seconds of "dead air?" Did she feel that the worship service was a "show" put on for the entertainment of the "audience," and that a ten-second delay might weaken the entertainment factor? Was she worried about the less-than-perfect, less-than-professional appearance of a worship service that is interrupted by ten seconds of dead air?

Maybe my obsession with this is due to the fact that, at my own church, if we ever have a worship service that has ten seconds of dead air as the only mistake, then it would go down in the recordbooks as the smoothest worship service we ever had. This morning, for example, our organist started playing the wrong tune for the closing hymn. Everyone, myself included, just waited as she played one verse, and then I interrupted and asked, "Can we sing number 437?" The organist was a little embarrassed, but we carried on, sang the right hymn, and thought nothing of it. Other weeks, I'm the one who makes a mistake, accidentally skipping parts of the worship service, and coming back to them later. Things like this are normal; the people of my congregation have come to expect them. And when they happen, well, we just move on. What we don't do is allow it to disrupt our attitude of worship.

For me, that is exactly what that apology did last week. The apology seemed to say that worship is not good enough if it is not perfect. And if that's the case, then who among us is worthy to come to worship, and stand in the presence of God? None of us is perfect, but if the expectation in worship is perfection, then we know that we never can and never will be good enough. But I know that God loves me, mistakes and all, and accepts me as I am. And I am thankful to be part of a small country church where the people are not bothered by things like ten seconds of dead air. We just smile, do the best we can, and continue worshiping.