The Liturgy of Rummage

It’s getting to be that time of year when we as a church community prepare for our annual “Pay What You Can, Take What You Need Rummage Sale.” Throughout the year I hear from a lot of people from St. Paul that they are “saving up things for the rummage sale,” and are always excited to learn when those items can be brought from their homes to the church for donation to the cause (that date, by the way, is Sunday, August 25th this year). 

As I prepared the sign-up lists for this year’s sale, I found my mind wandering–pondering questions about rummage–why we have it, how we decide to rid our homes of it, and what we can learn from the process of letting go. I wondered as I typed and copied and pasted from last year’s sheet to this year’s, about the number of hands that will handle the rummage donated, how the rummage will impact the community here at St. Paul and the wider community around us. I thought about the hands that have helped with our collective rummage in previous years who are no longer with us–souls once content to rummage alongside of us who are no longer concerned with rummage at all. All of it leading me to believe that this rummage sale is about far more than just “stuff we want to get rid of,” and about far more than just how much money we make from our efforts, it’s about our collective work and the ways that collective work shapes and forms us and those around us. 

There’s a fancy church word for this:  Liturgy. Liturgy–literally translated to mean the work of the people. You will often hear me use this word when I’m looking for volunteers for worship services, reminding all with ears to hear that our Sunday morning liturgy calls for more than just one or two of us to be involved–it calls for all of us to be a part of the work and the worship in some way. The rummage sale is no different. It doesn’t happen because one or two of us bring items to donate. It doesn’t happen because a household or two volunteers to work a shift or bake some goodies to be sold. It doesn’t happen at all without ALL of us in some way, shape, or form working together. 

And it’s not just because “many hands make light work” that this is important to remember. It’s also because the work we choose to do shapes us, and the work we choose to do together shapes us together. In her book "An Altar in the World," Barbara Brown Taylor emphasizes how even mundane household tasks can become elements of our daily liturgy. She writes, “Cleaning refrigerators and toilets helps you connect the food cycle at both ends. Making beds reminds you that life-giving activities do not require much space. Hanging laundry on the line offers you a chance to fly prayer flags disguised as bath towels and underwear. If all of life is holy, then anything that sustains life has holy dimensions too. The difference between washing windows and resting in God can be a simple decision: choose the work, and it becomes your spiritual practice.” 

In other words, the work we choose to do together becomes our spiritual practice together. Sorting clothes, grouping like items, making advertising posters–all of it, when done together–shapes us and forms us as a community. As we fold items into neat piles alongside one another, we share our joys and concerns through stories, and all of a sudden the folded clothes become, as Carrie Newcomer sings, “like folding hands, to pray as only laundry can.” As we work, our relationships grow deeper. 

Over mismatched jewelry and chipped Corelle dishware, that person who sits on the opposite side of the main aisle on Sunday morning becomes someone whose name we now know, and whose struggles we now share. Our shared work shapes us into more than just people who worship in the same building on Sunday morning, but rather, an “assembly of lovers”–as our blessing and sending song reminds us each week–loving one another in the simplest of ways–bonding in the holiness of our rummage. And that kind of holy work spills over into our work with our wider community too.

So this year, I wonder if we can all make the decision to not only consider the items we will donate to the sale, but also how these items might help shape the lives of the hands that sort them? I wonder if we can consider our signatures on the sign-up sheet to be more than just “signing up for a job,” but instead, signing up to take part in something ordinary and holy–something larger than ourselves that will shape us and form us as a community here at St. Paul and beyond our walls. Something that will deepen our relationships and widen our commitment to be present with and for each other. Something like a liturgy–the work of the people–OUR people. God’s people. This assembly of lovers–fearlessly and consciously sorting and folding and organizing the stuff of our lives–on a quest to build something more beautiful together. 

Rummaging around with you,
Pr. Melissa     

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