"Diggin' Up Bones"

In 2012 Randy Travis wrote and recorded a song titled “Diggin’ Up Bones.” Yes, I have long listened to that genre of music. It is what I was raised on, payed on radios at home and jukeboxes in taverns and bars. Travis' song is about a guy grieving a relationship which has died. Here is the link to the song on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6M2YuAVxuQ. Here are the words of the refrain,

I'm diggin' up bones, I'm diggin' up bones
Exhuming things that's better left alone
I'm resurrecting memories of a love that's dead and gone
Yeah tonight I'm sittin' alone diggin' up bones

One of the things I catch myself doing is "diggin’ up bones" of the church as I once thought it to be. I grieve its loss. I think many of us do that. It doesn’t matter if we are teaching elders (ministers), ruling elders, or members. Many of us who have a length of tenure in the church have a tendency to dwell on former years and experiences in the church. Today, compared to the former days, feels like a dearly held love which has left us alone.

We walk past the rogues’ gallery of portraits of former pastors, and sigh thinking how good things were back then. Somewhere in a classroom or on the walls in the basement are pictures of the men’s Sunday school class fifty plus souls strong. In a display case are the trophies from the church league softball, volleyball or basketball championships our folks won. Our hearts grow sad as those days have blown away like late Autumn leaves skimmering across the road, except in the memories we cling to while hoping beyond hope for their return.

We gather in naves built for two or three hundred or more worshipers and can still imagine seeing Aunt Minnie and Uncle Al Hoppe where they used sit, sometimes their ghosts appear occupying the pew. But the thirty of us who now come continue to sit in our usual places where our families used to fill a whole eight foot pew. On Christmas and Easter we sometimes took up a pew and a half, or had to sit on folding chairs in the aisles. Now, we feel so damn alone. Great voids of space exist between us another worshiper. The minister once joked that she felt the need to wear sunglasses on Sunday during worship so as to not be blinded by the shine off the varnish of the empty pews. That was cruel, and she didn’t need to say that.

Honestly, we spend a lot of time “diggin’ up bones.” We sit entombed waiting for Jesus to call to us, “Lazarus, come out!” and to give instructions to others for our unbinding. Maybe what is keeping us from finding new life is our propensity for “Exhuming things that's better left alone, and resurrecting memories of a church that's dead and gone.” The way it used to be is not the way the church is going to be. Can we dare bury the portraits, the pictures, the trophies of yesterday to make room for what the Spirit may be creating for tomorrow? Can we give up our sacred pew spaces to gather into a more critical mass as we pray and sing? Are we willing to clear out the reminders of yesterday for new treasures today and tomorrow? Or are we content to sit alone “diggin’ up bones?”