When the Homily is about Immunology

The Zoo and the Museum

At our now traditional Tuesday lunch today (the three Orthodox SCCA amigos, the catechumen Michael, and the temporarily absent Paul) we meandered our way into the topic of "field trip" visits to Orthodox Churches. I am sure this is something nearly every Orthodox parish has experienced in some way or another...and truly it is a strange phenomena.

Sometimes it is a music class from the local Pentecostal Bible college (which I used to attend), the worship team from some mainline protestant denomination, or perhaps a church history class from one of the numerous Christian colleges in the vicinity. They come to see what it is we do – perhaps to get a feel for how the church used to do things? I can vividly recall one such visitor telling me that they wanted to get a taste of how the church used to worship, to which I responded: “What do you suppose we were doing up there today?” Anyway, in our conversation today analogies of field trips to the Zoo or Museum were not left unused.

I suppose in some way we might be tempted to view this sort of “field trip” as condescending (“Hey, let’s go and look to see what those wacky Orthodox are doing!”), but in my experience these visitors are warmly received and very often leave with a lot to think about.

A visit to the local Zoo? Sure, why not! It must be one helluva zoo because inevitably some of the field trip participants find themselves so impressed with the Zoo that they decide to make their home inside the cages.