Practicing Our Faith

Practicing Our Faith at HomeBy Susan R. Briehl

 

Where does one begin teaching the Christian practices inthe home? How shall parents raise their children to practicelives marked by hospitality, forgiveness, healing, and Sabbathkeeping? When does a child learn to honor her body and to honorthe bodies of others? How can faith shape the daily tasks ofliving together in a household, as well as preparing the youngto practice their faith as they move from the home into a widerworld?Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends andneighbors, godparents and others ask these questions. Thissection of the Guide helps such people move toward answers thatfit their circumstances and households. It shows how awarenessof practices can help us to draw the connections, always presentbut often invisible, between the corporate worship of theChurch, the rhythm of daily life, and faithful engagement withthe world.Your home. Picture the place you live, whether it is anapartment or a house, modest or grand, on a farm, in thesuburbs, or at the heart of a city. Draw a simple floor plan ofyour home. Each person in the household could draw his or herown, or the family could make it a joint project. Add the tableat which you eat, the bed in which you sleep, the sink at whichyou wash your face each morning and brush your teeth at night. This is the place you practice your faith with your closest neighbors, the members of your family. In the ordinary fabricof your life together–the food you buy, prepare, and share, thecelebrations you keep, the stories you tell, the decisions youmake about spending time and money, and the chores you do–Godis present.Look at your floor plan as you name where and when and howyou already practice your faith in your home. Share with oneanother creative and concrete ways in which you might deepen andexpand the ways you practice your faith. You could move fromroom to room, practice by practice. For instance, you couldbegin at the door with the practice of hospitality.The door. Picture the door to your dwelling, the thresholdyou cross when you come home and when you leave to enter theworld of work or school, commerce or play. What does your doorsay about you and your way of life?Each door tells a different story. Some doors swing openand shut all day long as children run out to play, run back forjuice or mittens, run out again to meet friends, and back whensupper time or sheer exhaustion draws them in. Other doors areopened rarely, timidly, or fearfully. Some seem to welcome allkinds of people for any number of reasons, and others receiveonly those people who live behind them.During a time of persecution, early Christians marked theirdoors with a simple drawing of a fish. Ichthus, the Greek wordfor fish, also bears the beginning letters of Jesus Christ. Only those who knew its meaning recognized this sign. To every follower of Jesus this sign said, “Welcome. Here you will breakbread with those who call you brother and sister.”On the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6th, many Christiansmark their door posts in chalk with another sign. They writethe numbers of the new year (2001) and the initials of thetraditional names for the three magi who followed the star tobear gifts to the Christ child: Caspar, Melchior, andBalthasar. It looks like this: 20+C+M+B+01. To those who knowits meaning, this sign says, “Welcome. Those who live in thisplace will receive friend and stranger from near and far.”The chalk mark above the door says as much to those wholive behind the door, as to those who come knocking. Every timethey enter the door they are reminded who they are: peoplewhose faith calls them to practice hospitality. Even the smallchild can learn to “read” the message written in chalk andrenewed each year in a family ritual: “Our door opens toreceive others. This is who we are. Jesus received us, just ashe did the magi. Now we extend to others the welcome we havereceived.” During the Great Depression, men without jobs, sometimescalled “hobos,” traveled from town to town, knocking on doors,asking for food. When a man was received and fed from the tableat which the family ate, he would scrawl a form of graffiti onthe porch as he departed. Other hungry men knew what it meant: “What this household has, it will share with you.” This was astatement not only about the hospitality practiced in that home,but also about their household economics, the use to which they put what goods they had.How do people in your neighborhood decorate their doorways? In what ways might your door become an invitation to others? How could it become a reminder to you about who you are and howyou practice your faith? How might a traveler mark your backporch? Who is welcomed in your home? What gifts do they bring? How might you extend the hospitality you have received from Godbeyond the walls of your home? Who, near or far, hungers forfood, safety, or friendship? Is your “door” open to them? The table. Picture the table in your home. Where do youeat together? When? Many families live such hectic and dividedlives that table times for shared meals and conversation areinfrequent at best. Yet the table can be a wonderful place tobegin to focus the practices of the household. Christiansalways have been a people of the Table. Jesus ate not only withbeloved friends but also with sinners and outcasts, creating ascandal among some people of his day. At table with others,Jesus practiced God’s hospitality.Wherever Christians gather to break bread and share the cupin Jesus’ name, he promises to be present as host and feast. Atthe Table of the Eucharist–also called Holy Communion and TheLord’s Supper–God’s gifts of hospitality, forgiveness, andhealing are given and shared. Everyone is fed and none go awayhungry. In this, God’s household economics are made visible. At this meal, leadership is known in servanthood and thecommunity is shaped accordingly. Around this Table we share thestories of faith, bearing testimony to the marvelous acts of God throughout history and in our time. Here we raise our voices insongs of thanksgiving, lament, and hope, singing our lives toGod, even as we long for the promised day when all creation,united and whole, will sing God’s praises. Finally, we are sentinto the world to be to others the gifts we have received.Think about how your family table is like the Table of theLord. Who is invited? Do you give thanks for the food andthose who labored to bring it to your table? Who shops forgroceries, cooks, serves, and washes dishes? What does this sayabout how the community of your family is shaped? Is there timeto tell and hear one another’s stories from the day? When mightthese become testimony? What does the food you eat say aboutyour household economics? How might your table practices extendto a world where many are hungry? Do your household economicsreflect a longing for the healing of creation?The bath. Besides singing in the shower, you might wonderhow this humble room becomes a place for practicing your faith. Yet we are a people of the Bath as well as of the Table. Thegreat bath of Baptism is the source of our identity and ourentry into the Body of Christ. Water is a sign of God’spresence and promises. The sink, the tub, the shower are placesof cleansing and renewal. With a little help, children can makethe connections between their daily washing and God’s refreshingand renewing promises.Besides the mirror above the sink in one family’s bathroomis a sign: Remember you are a child of God. The morning ritualof washing their faces becomes for the members of this household a baptismal reminder, a declaration of their identity and a callto cherish themselves and one another because God has declaredthem to be precious. What a powerful message. It counters theother voices in a child’s life, voices that tell him that hisworth is measured by how he looks, what he owns, and how heperforms.Perhaps in this room above all others a child learns tohonor her body and to have her body honored by others. How ababy is touched and bathed speaks of how his body is cherishedand honored. When bathing is a time for playfulness and joy,for the sensual feeling of warm water and soft towel, a childcomes to know how precious is this body. Here a child learns tocare for her own body for the length of her life and to treatthe bodies of others with care. How we treat our own bodies aswe age, as well as those who are frail and infirm among us, mayfind its root in how we were treated as children. Later, privacy appropriate to the child’s age and needshonors the child’s body. Rites of passage often are associatedwith the bathroom: a boy’s first shave, a girl’s firstmenstrual period, the physical changes the mirror reflects backto each of us. These changes can be celebrated simply andpowerfully, when you connect such milestones with growth infaith, discernment, and responsibility.The bathroom is also a place of healing. Any parent whohas knelt beside a sick child in the middle of the night knowsthis to be true. Anyone who has locked the bathroom door toweep in private when her heart is pierced by grief or guilt or shame knows this to be true. Washing the tears from your owneyes or wiping another’s feverish forehead with a cool cloth,cleansing the scrapes and scratches of childhood, anointingwounds with healing balm, removing slivers and bee stingers: all of this happens in the bathroom. Such common acts take ondeeper significance when they are woven with prayer, the layingon of hands, and anointing with oil, for these are signs thathealing is more than the body’s route to recovery, it isbringing the peace and power of our suffering and healing God tothe whole person.The bed. “Now I lay me down to sleep.” Many childrenlearn this prayer at an early age. It speaks a simple truth,not only to children, but to adults as well. Falling asleepmakes us vulnerable. We need others to watch over us throughthe night. We sleep best, as we live best, embraced by God’spresence. Inside this embrace, our beds become places ofprayer, rest, and healing. For the same reason, they often areplaces of struggle and discernment. When the noises of the dayare quieted, we can hear the deepest questions of our hearts. Steeped in a lifetime of nighttime prayer, we learn to listenfor the voice of God from the sanctuary of our beds.Sometimes beneath the cover of night’s darkness we canspeak of things to one another that seem impossible to say byday. Siblings who share a room and spouses often have theirmost intimate conversations after the lights are turned out. Tucking a child into bed can become a time of testimony as thestories of the child’s day are met with the story of God at work through Jesus Christ. Bedtime stories can be biblical stories,as well as historical, cultural, and familial stories of faith.These stories bear witness to God’s faithfulness in the past andGod’s promises for the future, thus tucking the child inside theembrace of faithful love.The bed is a place not only of intimate conversation, butphysical intimacy, too. Think of the loving and tender touchesyou share in your home. How are rocking a baby to sleep,kissing a child good night, and snuggling on Saturday morningexpressions of love? Sexual intercourse between faithfulpartners can reveal the life-giving love of God. In bed, whentrustworthy touch honors our vulnerable bodies, we are remindedthat God knows us in our nakedness and loves us still.Nighttime also can be a time for confession, which isanother kind of nakedness, the bearing of our wounded hearts. And the forgiveness that follows is a powerful form of healing. Making a space for apologies, reconciliation, and sharingChrist’s peace can be part of the regular rhythm of sayinggoodnight. You can make a simple ritual woven of silence andword and gesture. In this way, parent and child, sister andbrother, husband and wife all are granted a time before sleep tolet go of the hurts and angers of the day and to committhemselves and one another into God’s keeping.Perhaps the practice of forgiveness at twilight could giveus the courage in the light of day to create simple rituals forreconciliation in our relationships at school and at work. Howmight a family that practices forgiveness in the home effect such healing in other places? How has unresolved conflict withsomeone in your family spilled over into your otherrelationships? When have you experienced forgiveness at home? Forgiveness is one form of healing. Often when we are sickand in need of other forms of healing, we long to be at home inour own beds. Families and the community of faith gather aroundhospital beds to watch and pray during sickness and when deathdraws near. Many of us hope that when death comes, we will besurrounded by the people, the practices, and the promises thatspoke life to us throughout our days. The practices of our faiththat help us make the twilight transition into sleep each night,help prepare us for death, the death of those we love and ourown. Dying well is learning to fear the grave as little as ourbed as we let go, one last time, releasing our lives into thearms of God, saying “Now I lay me down to sleep.”