Sarah

The church of my youth is gone. Not just closed, but demolished. Former congregants have been posting videos over the last few weeks of excavators literally tearing down the walls of Grace Conservative Baptist Church in Nanuet, N.Y.. 

Scrolling through the pictures is heartbreaking. I was never a fan of the postmodern architecture, but what our church lacked in aesthetics it well then made up for in enthusiasm. From what I can tell, the education wing, with classrooms that once accommodated up to 300 children, was the first to go. In later pictures, I can still see the giant map that graced the inner wall of the sanctuary. That map used to twinkle with dozens of lights that represented the missionaries we were supporting all over the world. 

Through the jagged edges of broken stained glass, I can see what’s left of the balcony where I used to sit with my mother and my sisters, sucking on Werther’s Originals to keep our stomachs from growling when the sermon went long. 

If I close my eyes I can still remember the smell of the pink soap in the green tiled bathroom. I can still hear the mighty sound of the organ that rattled our bones up in the choir loft. And I can still see the faces of all those people who watched over me and taught me and loved me as I grew into my conservative Christian faith… before I finally grew out of it. 

My last Sunday at Grace was a communion Sunday, but I left before the bread was broken. I was 21 years old and home after my first year of Divinity School. As my faith was expanding I was devastated by the way my church’s faith was narrowing. It seemed that where once we may have been able to tolerate disagreement over the roles of women in the church or the teaching of creationism vs. evolution or even the acceptability of Disney movies, there was now a hard line that determined what was right and what was wrong, who was in and who was out, who was saved and who was damned. It was a line influenced more by the Religious Right than scripture, but there was no way to cross it and still remain within the church.

I remember that my youth pastor was presiding that day. But rather than invite everyone to the communion table after his sermon, he led with a warning. He warned us all that if we dared to take the elements with unrepentant or unbelieving hearts that we would be in danger of being struck down by God with sickness or even death. “No,” I thought, “this is wrong.” With apologies to my mother, I walked out of the church and I never returned. And I wasn’t the only one. 

That sanctuary that once held upwards of 500 worshippers on a Sunday morning gradually emptied out as the rules and regulations that dictated what it meant to be a good Christian grew tighter and smaller and more controlling. Their obsession with trying to do the right thing in the right way while condemning anyone who disagreed, slowly but surely choked the love, and eventually the life, out of my childhood church.

Anna

 This is not an isolated story. Whether our childhood churches are physically being torn down or not, many of us have stories that point to the decline of churches in our communities. Some because of the doubling down Pastor Sarah describes, and many others because though the faithful kept showing up week after week, the body as a whole grew stuck or stagnant, entrenched and tired.  The data outlines it, the stories show it, the mainline church in the United States is not the cornerstone of communities that it was a hundred years ago, certainly not the overflowing pews and classrooms of 60 years ago. And, as much as we long for it, it’s not the church even of 5 years ago, in those “before” times. 

The church is changing, because the world is changing, and while we may have some big feelings about it, (because who doesn’t have big feelings about change,) it is not inherently bad or wrong. In fact, change is one of the few things that ensures us of the possibility of a future. Change, when we are holding it with intention, is that which is generative, and moves us forward.

Last summer we did something rather radical at St. John’s. We moved the pews. Yes, you heard that right. This almost 200 year old (I know, I know, we’ve got nothing on you dear congregationalists down the road)  congregation of Episcopalians took the pews that have been arranged in nice straight lines since they were first brought into the sanctuary generations ago, and moved them into a circle. Why? You may ask.

In the Episcopal tradition we talk a lot about how our praying shapes our believing. How liturgy, in definition, is “the work of the people, together for the common good.” How when we come together on a Sunday morning to pray, and learn, and sing, and share at God’s table, it is more than entertainment. We believe, as I know you do too, that we are shaped by our collective prayers. We are changed by our shared rituals and sacraments. There is an active correlation between what you believe and how you act. Because what happens in our sanctuaries, in our hearts, in our small groups, in our churches, matters. Why does it matter? Because we are part of a living, growing, changing, evolving group of people who are committed to being part of transforming our communities and changing the world. 

So our liturgy, the prayers we pray matters,  how we gather matters, the way that we interact with one another matters. When we moved our pews, our orientation changed. We moved from all the important people being up front, far away and performing to an audience, to being a gathered body together. All in it together. 

I know many of you here at First Churches describe a similar experience, gathered around the tables in Lyman Hall at Common Ground Dinner Church. 

We are all a people who are shaped by our practices, our rituals.  And so when I lift the bread in our sanctuary, when Pastor Sarah lifted the bread in the circle around the table, when we lift the bread this morning together in worship, we are changed. 

Because when you look up and see the body of Christ up as we bless it, you look up and you see Christ in the bread, and then you look and you see the body of Christ in all the other people who are gathered around God’s table, and that very act transforms us.

We keep coming back around God’s table together, to be fed, yes, but more than that: We come to be changed. We come around God’s table to see the face of Christ in one another, so that when we walk out of these doors, we remember to look for the face of Christ in the next person we meet. 

We circle around this table and we eat together with housed and unhoused, wealthy and poor. We have different colored skins and faith backgrounds, we are little toddlers and white-haired great-aunts. All of us come together not because of what we have in common, but because we’re all being drawn around God’s table to be changed into people who see the face of God in all of creation, and a people who challenge ourselves to expand the table wider and wider and wider, because that’s what following Jesus means.  As my mentor the Rev.  Paul Fromberg says, "The surest sign of Jesus' real presence in the Eucharist is when someone completely inappropriate is at the Table." 

Sarah

Which brings us to our scripture for this morning. Take a moment and think about the sort of person you wouldn’t want to break bread with.

For me it’s the sort of Christian I grew up with; the sort of Christian who wouldn’t want to take communion with me now because I’m too liberal. 

But hey, they started it. 

That’s on them, not me. 

They’re the ones being exclusionary. 

They’re the ones who are wrong. 

They’re the callous, narrow minded, reactionaries I want nothing to do with because they’re just …so …judgmental. 

Yeah.

Turns out that judging people for being judgmental is… um… kind of counterproductive. It’s actually what you might call hypocritical. And wouldn’t you know it, judgmentalism and hypocrisy are not only the issues at the heart of Jesus’ teaching for today, judgmentalism and hypocrisy are the easiest traps for us to fall into as religious people…not because we’re religious, but because we’re people. 

This is actually a really tricky passage. On the surface it looks like a bunch of conservative religious men - the Pharisees - are giving Jesus’ friends a hard time because they’re disrespecting their elders by not following the rules of Judaism and in response Jesus is telling them that the rules of Judaism don’t really matter. Mark even goes so far as to say that Jesus used this as an opportunity to declare all foods clean and negate the rules around keeping kosher that had enabled his people to set themselves apart as a holy people for centuries. 

Well, as much as it pains me to say this, Mark was wrong, probably because Mark was in pain, but I’ll come back to that in a minute.

You need to know that Jesus was not taking issue with the rules, the laws, or the traditions of Judaism in particular or religion in general.  What Jesus was taking issue with was the fact that this particular group of Pharisees were pointing out the rules to Jesus and his disciples in order to shame them rather than help them, without realizing that they themselves fell short of keeping the rules in other ways. 

As I understand it, all of the rules, the commandments, and the traditions that make up our faith or any other are useful in so far as they shape us into more just and generous, humble and compassionate people. 

Religion is meant to make you a better person, not a person who thinks they are better than other people. 

The problem for the Pharisees and for us as religious people, creeps in when the practices that were meant to help deepen our faith become the measure by which we judge one another rather than the door through which we invite each other to come on in and do better. 

Because, you see, no one is perfect. No one gets it right all of the time. No one even knows what is right all of the time. So if we use religion simply as a measuring stick to judge who is righteous and who is not, eventually everyone will come up short. If we reduce our beliefs to a litmus test in order to determine who is right and who is wrong, we’ll simply rule one another out bit by bit, until there is no one left. We’ll judge and exclude one another until the religions that were meant to open our hearts up to one another in mutual love and service become the driving force that keeps us apart.  

That’s what happened in the first century and that’s what is happening even now as our churches and our country become more polarized. 

As I alluded to a moment ago, the gospel of Mark was written at a time when the followers of Jesus were being cast out of their synagogues. It was a painful time, which is why the gospel writers can come across as so dismissive of Judaism even as they are trying to create a new faith that welcomes all people. 

Like many of you, Anna and I were hurt by the churches that raised us which is why I (you might be better about this then me) I know I can come across as dismissive of more conservative Christians even as I try to continue this faith that at its best should welcome all people. 

This isn’t easy…

Anna  But it is possible, and dear ones, I see it happening here in our communities. And here’s the terribly kept secret around here… our churches, you our dear First Churches siblings in Christ, and you my precious St. John’s community, our churches aren’t dying right now. Our churches, by the grace of God and the faithfulness of each of you, are bucking the trends, welcoming new members, having hard conversations about what welcome really means and requires. We’re taking two steps forward and one step back, wading through the messiness that change requires and gratefully receiving the Spirit’s breath of life.  And we, my friends… are changing. And we are being changed.  And we’re doing it together.  And what a beautiful gift that is, to be in it together.

The past two years, our congregations (along with some of our neighbors) have had the joy to join together for an Eucuminical Pride Service.  We’ve heard powerful sermons, been moved by beautiful music, and celebrated all kinds of people coming together around God’s table for sustenance and healing. 

This last year after the service one of you came up to me and spoke about how meaningful it was to be part of the service and named some of these things. And then, you said something that has really stuck with me. You looked me in the eye and said, “I had no idea there were this many progressive christians in this area… as a progressive I fit in Northampton in general…but I often feel alone as a person of faith… I now realize that I am not alone.”

We are not alone. We are not alone as people who care about the dignity of every human being and want to do something about it. We are not alone in wanting to be part of a mutual and messy and interconnected community. We are not alone in believing that being rooted in the teachings of Jesus means longing for and working for a world that is, as Bishop Michael Curry says:  “less like the nightmare that it is and more like the dream God has for it.” 

Intrinsic in the possibility of transformation, is teamwork and collaboration. It is in the coming together, as all different kinds of people, that God’s dream starts to take shape. Pastor Sarah and I are not alone in saying that the future of progressive church is ecumenical, but so is the future of America, the future of our city. God throughout time makes it clear that the dream is not siloed groups, basking in their rightness. 

The dream is a big, messy, overflowing table of grace, where we all show up together, we question together, we weep together we laugh together. And we proclaim the good news as we understand it because it really is good news for all.  

Being deeply rooted in a faith community is more important than ever. We can’t do this alone. We need a power greater and more persistently loving  than we are and we need other people. On the days when we’re ready to give up, rather than tossing in the towel, we need to hand the baton to our neighbor. Following Christ is not something we do alone.

Public theologian and Womenist minister Jennifer Bailey puts this in context for us when she writes: “You are not alone in your quest for understanding your place in the world as it is evolving. At times it may feel like the earth is literally moving under your feet as you attempt to step in one direction or the other. That’s because it is.”

She goes on to write: 

The enormity of the plight we face can be solved only by harnessing the ingenuity and creativity of the communities to which we belong and are accountable. This season will require us to recover ancestral wisdom and practices that we lost or undervalued, repair the deep breaches in our interpersonal and communal relationships that replicate patterns of harm and destruction, and reimagine the possible by stretching ourselves to see beyond the realities of our current circumstances and daring to dream something different into being.”

Daring to dream something different into being requires our willingness to change, to be changed by one another, to be transformed by and in community. 

I shared earlier about our journey of moving our pews up at St. John’s and how it continues to change us in relation to our tradition, challenges us to see one another and connect to one another differently, and offers us that glimpse of what the kingdom of God can be. And we have been changed by that. Deeply. 

But there’s one other thing that I would like to share with you about this process this morning. And I think it’s part of the reason why it’s so important that we are all here together today, blessing our shared and collaborative ministries and looking to one another around God’s table. 

This moment happened at the end of the summer, as we gathered together as a congregation to reflect on what we had noticed, what we had learned, and what we wanted to take forward. When we got to what we had learned, there were a lot of specific things, tweaks that could be made, improvements to think about and then, one of our wise elders said, “I learned that we, as a church, can change.” The room went silent as people nodded and pondered the power of this simple statement. And then a younger (well, younger than the elder who spoke) person got up, and said, “I am realizing that I have been holding back on my willingness to change out of respect for my elders. Now knowing that they are willing and wanting to be part of changing, I’m ready too.” 

Sarah

I actually learned something new from one of my elders just recently. John Dorhauer, former president of the UCC, was leading chapel out on Star Island the week I was there. He invited us all to the table for communion and something about his invitation enabled me to hear the words of Jesus in a whole new way. 

Now I have presided over communion more times than I can count and I always begin - as I will now - by saying that all are welcome at this table. Be you a friend or a member, a believer or a seeker, a saint, a sinner, or a little bit of both, all you need to be, to eat here is hungry. 

Then I say the words Jesus said when he broke the bread and I say the words he said when he offered them the cup, and we remember him - his words and his actions - as I repeat them. 

But John did it a little differently. He did it like this:

“Jesus said, ‘remember me when you break the bread.’”  

“Jesus said, ‘remember me when you share the cup.’”

“‘If you want to remember me, set a table where all are welcome.’”

“What set Christians apart,” said John, “what made them radical, was that in a time of intense political, social, and religious division, they set a table where all were welcome.” (And I understood then as I hope you understand right now, that the remembrance isn’t actually in the bread or the cup or the words said just the right way.) The remembrance is in the welcome, remembering Jesus gracious welcome to anyone and everyone and doing likewise. 

When we stop judging one another but instead set a table where everyone is welcome - whenever we do that, however we do that, with whatever we do that - that is when we remember Jesus the way Jesus asked to be remembered.  

Anna: So come now, for all has been made ready. Come for there is enough and some to share. As the ushers come forward to help us, know that all the bread is gluten free. There is wine in the big chalices and grape juice in the little cups. Come, you who have much faith and you who would like to have more, you who have been here often and you who have not been here long, you who have tried to follow and you who have failed. Come, for it is Christ who invites you. Dear Ones come, that we might all be fed at the table of grace.