One of the things that Liz and I decided to do while I had some extra time on sabbatical was to go to Disney World, a place where Liz and I had not been ourselves in almost 20 years and our three girls had never been. As you well know, Disney’s way of talking about this experience is to say that their parcel of Orlando is “the most magical place on earth.” And to be honest, they do a pretty good job of making the magic happen.
As you may know, during sabbatical, I have been bouncing around different churches in order to observe how they worship. The most impressive parking lot crew certainly goes to City Church, but they’ve got nothing on Disney parking. The friendliest church I visited has been Incarnation, but they’ve got nothing on the red carpet roll out that the Disney princesses gave my daughters. And there are certainly enough people that we have witnessed at Disney who have been committed worshipers (not to mention the amounts they drop in the Mouse’ ‘offering plates’). Much of my continuing education reading has been about how to understand communities of faith, and I think under some frameworks – the Magic Kingdom might be able to apply for 501 c 3 status as a church.
But still, when I think of “the most magical place on earth,” it’s not the Magic Kingdom or even Epcot. Instead, I’m reminded of what I say most Wednesday nights at University Lutheran. At the end of the evening’s programming, I say something like, “thanks for coming out tonight, you can leave if you want to, but if you stick around, that’s when the magic happens.” And it does. The magic of the fellowship between believers rivals anything the Mouse has to offer. Even on this trip we were able to reconnect with some University Lutheran alumni like Deb and Angel Buenrostro and Emma Register.
The “magic” is there in the fellowship we share, not a fellowship in a theme park, but a fellowship in a new life given to us by our Savior, Jesus Christ who centers us around Himself in Word and Sacrament. There are many “magic moments” we will have in our lives, some of them even mediated by Disney, but let us not forget the enduring “magic” of our salvation that will center us together around our Savior for eternity, because when we remember that, “that’s when the magic really happens.”