Ragtime Church

I do three things on summer Sundays in the place of winter. None of them is go to church.

What is left of my colon following cancer surgery, my semi-colon, won’t let me leave the house until close to five hours after I get up. The latest worship service here, of any congregation, is 9:15. Yes, I could go to bed at 8:30 on Saturday night and get up at 4:30. I don’t.

So I do three things instead. I pray for all the churches of which I have been a part, I pray for all my preaching friends, and I listen to ragtime music.

Bob Butts and Kathy Roberts and Helen and I went to the beautifully restored Crystal Theatre in Crystal Falls, MI to hear Bob Milne, the renowned pianist. He explained to us that “ragtime” is a shortening of the insult that “real” musicians said about Scott Joplin and his kind of music: “The timing is ragged.”

That is why it speaks to me in place of worship in the years of winter. Like everything else about me in these years, my hearing and seeing and breathing and wearing, my soul is ragged. The timing of my life is ragged.

Ernest Gordon, the Chaplain at Princeton U after WWII, was a POW in that war, in the camp that built the bridge over The River Kwai. They were not allowed to have a church, but they had one anyway. They would gather in the middle of the compound, and sit around. Someone would recite a passage he could remember from Scripture. Someone would sing a song. Someone would say words, like a preacher. Some would come and stand on the edges and watch for a while. Someone would come up to get some fire to heat water to wash his socks. Gordon said: “You never knew exactly where the church ended and where the camp began.”

The best churches have ragged edges, they live in ragged time, where you don’t exactly know who is in and who is out. I’m in that church this morning. May the peace of Christ be with you.