THE BACK PAGE
William Willimon
July 1, 1991
One fall Sunday, when the students had first returned to campus, I said, "Welcome. This is your chapel. I want you to feel . . ." What was it I wanted them to feel? I almost said, "I want you to feel at home." But I didn't. It's hard to feel that way in Duke Chapel-Gothic, massive, and dark. It makes you feel small. The organ thunders. The space overwhelms you. When I climb into the pulpit, I bolster my courage by telling myself I've only got to hang on there about twenty minutes, and that this really isn't that big a deal. It doesn't work. I still get the shakes. I keep stomach medicine in my Gothic washroom. The place is threatening. Some Sundays, even though we've got everything planned and the order of worship all nailed down, the Almighty still manages to reach in here, grab us by the neck, and shake us. It doesn't happen often. But it does happen. Knowing it can happen keeps me reaching for the Maalox. So I tell the students, "Back home, in Sunday school, they tell you about the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son and how kind and good Jesus was. But you've got to wait until you're old enough to hear a strange, dark text like this one (Heb. 12): You have not come to what may be touched but to a blazing fire, darkness and gloom, a tempest, the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg it to be silent." Such worship is threatening. It was so scary that even a man like Moses said, "I tremble with fear." I daresay that's not a common experience today. We upholster churches like great carpeted living rooms, where every hard edge is cushioned and preachers pad around in slippers lest someone be even mildly disturbed. Mostly, we exit church no different from when we entered, once again reassured that God is ...
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