What does the Church do? We worship, we learn, we reach out – and we care for one another. Most churches excel at this. It’s harder, the larger the church – but I hear from our people that we do well at showering our people with love when we know they’re treading through a rough patch, or have been knocked down. We pray. We write notes. We call. We visit. We show up with flowers, or fresh baked cookies. We have Stephen Ministers who listen and love. Pastors pastor.

I’ve always thought Jesus and his Church, instead of having just two Sacraments, Baptism with water, and Holy Communion with bread and wine – we could add and celebrate a third: the casserole. The abounding love of God and of the family of God, all stirred up and deposited in the casserole dish, baked, covered, and delivered. And such courteous, non-invasive gift! You can eat it now or later, all or some. Or none: often people plunged into deep grief simply aren’t hungry. But the uneaten casserole is nevertheless a sacrament of love, tangible, visible. You can smell and taste the love.

We have prayer chains and prayer lists. They can be a little gossipy… but we quickly get past learning the low-down on someone and offer them up in prayer, and by doing so, sharing in their sorrow and difficulty. I love what my lay leader in Davidson would say when people joined the church: “We’re gonna love you. We hope you’ll love us.” We love.

There’s (hopefully) an unconditionality to the love within the family of God that is a Church. We never judge. That’s how we practice our skill of not judging outsiders; there are no outsiders!

I’m proud that our church over several years now has focused on mental health and being a safe place for people who struggle. When we started, I pointed out that if someone has cancer or there’s a death, we fly at them with our prayers, notes of sympathy and casseroles. But if someone is bipolar, or in a profound depression, or suffering from and acting out extreme anxiety, we don’t know what to say. We try to be polite – and the sufferers suffer in silence and isolation. Church is the place, on a par with the therapist’s or doctor’s office, where we can openly share and be who and what we are, and there’s so much love.

Of course, people are people… and a lovely gift the Church provides is your opportunity to love people who are difficult when you don’t have to. You’re not stuck with them like you are you’re your family. But in church, we really are stuck with one another. Thankfully.

Kathleen Norris asked how she could bear going to church with hypocrites. Her reply? “The only hypocrite I have to worry about on Sunday morning is myself.” “I am always grateful to the hypocrites around me, imperfect strivers like myself.”

“I think of my own inconstancy in prayer, my own hypocrisies that I know are among the reasons I go to church: to burn them off in singing hymns, and in listening and responding to scripture.” And then, when we’re done singing, you’re around the others – but they look different now, don’t they? “Even when I find church boring, I try to hold in mind that love can be at the center of all things.”

Norris also admires, as I do, what Rev. Cecil Glide, a pastor in California, has said many times: “We don’t ask people if they are Methodist, or atheist, or Buddhist. We ask them what their names are and how they’re doing.” I’d emend that now to say We don’t ask people if they are Methodist, or conservative or progressive, or about whom they love or if they’ll be contributing members or even where they live. We ask them what their names are, and how they’re doing. And then the love begins. The prayers go up. The casserole is in the oven.