It's also true that because our food pantry is not run by church people -- it's run by poor people, who have their own desires about how to run it -- we're incredibly organized and efficient. It's not some big hippie anarchic mess. We actually get 600 people in and out of here in two and a half hours on Fridays -- and give away eleven tons of food. And we have live accordion music, and birthday cakes, and flowers. We have a blast.
Almost all the volunteers are people who came to get food and stayed to help out. But that's exactly who I am. I really understand what that's like, to come in shame and fear to some church and be fed -- and then want to stick around to help others. And people want to give something, so much. They wind up giving to people who aren't like them, or who irritate them, or people they adore.
And it's funny, the desire of churches to make it into a social service program is so profound -- like we have this idea that to be really professional you have to imitate the DMV or the post office, something like that.
And in fact we're not professional. Instead we get to participate in the gratuitous nature of creation, which is an amazing thing. And you try to organize it in a way that works well, which is what liturgy is. How do you express and respond to the ridiculous generosity of God's love in a way that's beautiful and pleasing and runs well and opens people to new life?
So that's why worship and service are both liturgy, people's work at becoming God.
This article originally appeared at Religion Dispatches, a Patheos Partner, and is reprinted with permission.
Lisa Webster is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and the senior editor at Religion Dispatches.
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