GOLDEN SUNDAY THOUGHTS

"Your golden Sun will shine on me!"

May Day a golden sun shined through a cloudless sky onto crepe myrtles that shimmied to the rhythm of the breeze. The official trees of our city are in full spring green leaf. Soon the myrtles will burst up and out with colorful blooms like flaring fans in Flamenco dancers’ hands.

Wearing capri blue jeans and a brown knit shirt,  I  prop up my sneakered feet. It’s 11 a.m. on a Sunday and my laptop clicks on my lap.  I should be dressed smartly with a church bulletin open.

Such was our family’s Sunday custom-- to dress up as well as my late Daddy insisted his family be at church or in the public eye. Oahu born he’d cringe at the Hawaiian Shirt Days some workplaces now permit.  His brothers used to tease him as he ironed his blue jeans for plantation work. On the mainland my father went to work in a white collared shirt that demanded cufflinks, a smart thin necktie, and a perfect dark suit.

During the 1960’s dapper Daddy drove his decked up family to weekly Mass. Sepia snapshots show his gals lined up in black patent Mary Jane shoes and folded over white anklets, edged in lace. Mommy tailor cut and stitched the flared dresses and lined coats. Our hands in white gloves and our heads under straw hats, we sisters could have bested the smartest females attending the wedding of the Prince and Princess William of Cambridge.

But on this peculiar Lord’s Day I remain au casual at home. You see the 11 a.m. service we usually attended has been folded into the Saturday evening service. Our service had contemporary songs while theirs had Lutheran hymnody. The new music, which yours truly helps to lead, we pray will be a sweet worship offering, pleasing to God and to the joined congregants. So it seemed this first Saturday.

I reminded MBH that we worshipped on Saturdays in Nepal. The Asian attendees come to worship in their best dress, perhaps the single good outfit each has. The men wear pants and shirts, the women, short-sleeve blouses and yards of cloth wrapped around their waists, the last yard pulled across and over their shoulder. Cotton saris swirl in patterns and neon hues, a garden of visual delights.

In confessional prayers, men bow their heads. Across the aisle women cover their heads with the sari or shawl. They heed God's word. As they sing, hands lift up and out to the Lord.

Each Sunday or Saturday we believers willingly pause our week. We join the local church family to let Word and Sacrament shine God’s Son on us, through us, out to others. God’s Son absolves us, sanctifies us, refreshes and empowers us to relax in Him. . . for the rest of the week.

These weeks after Easter, just keep coming. BTW no new sari or hat needed.