To find me in the theater is rare these days with two young children.  When I do watch movies, they’re  usually the likes of a Disney cartoon on our weekly family movie nights.  (Just the other day, we got our  fix listening to an animated version of Hercules serenade us, sounding more like, to quote my husband, “a  gay hairdresser.”)

But I always make an exception for James.  Over the last decade I have faithfully and eagerly greeted the  latest incarnation of Bond in front of a full screen.  The suspenseful car chases and ridiculous stunts, silly  puns and beautiful people in a world far removed from mine are such a pleasurable escape, best  experienced in a theater.

The other day I visited a new church: the cinematic thrills were not quite the same but they had a similar  effect.  There was the dark, cavernous feel of a movie theater on steroids, with a large stage and big screens.  The good-looking preacher with the sexy “down-under” accent in his designer jeans, whose conversational demeanor assumed an almost spooky level of intimacy with the crowd of several thousand people.   The worship band that under strobe lights crooned so loudly and in such well-synchronized performance that I felt like I was at a rock concert and could not hear myself sing.  The well-manicured, pre-recorded testimony clips from the attractive, well-coiffed people about to be baptized- (and in some cases, by the way, re-baptized, to the horror of my Presbyterian sensibilities), who in just a few cookie-cutter sound bites advertised the importance of a personal relationship with Jesus.

In those moments, I, like May, could feel the grease on my fingers: I became conscious, maybe even self-conscious, about all those places where the often gritty, confusing, mundane, and sticky places in my walk with Jesus were not squaring with the slick and exciting presentation on stage.  I felt out of place. Disconnected.  Alternately intoxicated and repelled by the artificially enticing suggestion that worship could be easy and exciting entertainment- maybe not unlike how James Bond and his fourteen Barbies in the bubble bath would have us imagine sex to be.

I left that day yearning for a realer, more fully embodied, deeper connection with Jesus and those around me- the kind that is “incarnational” in the full sense of the word.  Real, imperfect people fully engaged in real, imperfect worship.  Less thrilling, perhaps. More mundane.  Like a simple meal of bread and wine shared between broken people.  Like the old, familiar hymns, hymns like “Amazing Grace,” sung out of tune but at the top of our lungs.  Like the prayers of the people that remind us who our neighbor is in the pew next to us and across the world.

From now on I’ll stick to watching Bond only in the theater.