Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
April 3, 2022
5 Lent C
On July 15, 2020 our vestry met in the old Parish Hall with
a major decision to make. The pandemic
was raging. Vaccines were still in the early
development stage. So, the vestry
gathered masked, with the chairs set a full six feet apart, and with none of the
normal catching up and chit chat that comes at the beginning of a
gathering. Prior to the pandemic, we,
collectively, all of us, had done the work of dreaming about our future
together as a church, running a capital campaign, and making our pledges. Smaller groups of parishioners had worked
with the architects and construction engineers to come up with a plan to
transform our functional but awkward gathering space and restrooms into space
that was both elegant and worthy of the 21st century. Now the vestry needed to decide whether to
move forward with the project in the midst of a global pandemic or wait until
the pandemic was over.
The point of the proposed project was not just to create a
beautiful and more functional space for our use. Christ Church is something of a community
center with many groups gathering here for a variety of purposes, from AA to
Job Search to Boy and Girls Scouts and a whole host of others. We wanted to create a space that was not the
only indoor path from the church to the chapel and our offices, a space that
was warm and welcoming to others, and a space we would be proud to call home
well into the future.
The vestry met that night in July 2020 and heard the
reports from the architect and construction engineer. Then they left and our discussion began. On the one hand, we were in the midst of a
global pandemic and we had no idea how long the pandemic would last- although
clearly none of us thought it would last this long. We did not know what the effects on the
economy would be, whether we would all be able to pay our pledges over the next
three years, or whether the labor or supplies would be available. Had our common sense completely flown out the
window to even consider moving ahead? How
could we look to the future with such a major undertaking when the present felt
so uncertain? On the other hand, the
building was not being used because of the pandemic, making tearing the place
apart much more convenient. We had
dreamed the dream, made the pledges, come up with a plan, and now was the
time. There was also the fact that
Christ Church is a church that tore down the original 1840’s church and started
work on what we now call the chapel in 1929.
This is a church that has survived challenges in the past that could
have slayed us. So against all of the
reasons not to move ahead was a clear knowledge of all that God had seen us
through in the past. That knowledge
propelled the vestry into taking a bold risk and moving forward.
This morning we hear God say through the prophet Isaiah “Do
not remember the former things or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs
forth, do you not perceive it?” The
people to whom Isaiah writes are in exile in Babylon, longing to go home, and
afraid that God has forsaken them.
Earlier in this very passage, God has reminded the people of the Exodus
and the way God made a way in the sea for the Israelites to escape from the
Egyptians. So what could God possibly
mean by “Do not remember the former things?”
God just reminded the people of those very former things!
The Exodus, the delivery of the Hebrew people from Egypt,
was in the DNA of the people. They owned
that story as the powerful way God had worked in the lives of their
ancestors. The story told the people of
their special relationship with God. The
temptation was to think that God is a “one and done” God and to hold onto that
story as the way God had worked in their collective lives. Today we hear God tell the people not to hold
onto the story of their deliverance so tightly that they cannot see the new
thing God is doing in their midst now.
Do not look backwards to the Exodus as if that is the only thing God can
do. Use the story of what God has done
in the past to see what God is doing now.
Have faith that God will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the
desert now and in the future.
This morning we also hear the story of the dinner party
Mary, Martha, and Lazarus gave for Jesus.
Lazarus is newly raised from the dead. Martha is serving as usual, and
Mary pours out a pound of costly perfume and anoints Jesus’ feet. We are told that the house is filled with the
scent of the perfume, giving us an image that tantalizes all of our senses from
the taste of the dinner, to the sight of friends gathered, to touch of Mary’s
hair on Jesus’ feet, to the smell of the perfume. The sound, however, comes from Judas’ voice
protesting that the perfume was a waste of money that could have been given to
the poor.
The anointing of Jesus’ feet with the costly perfume is an
act of extravagant love. Like the
perfume, once that love has been poured out, it cannot be put back in the
jar. This is the same extravagant love that
God poured out when God led the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt, and that
God pours out to make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. This is the extravagant love of God we hear
about in the words “For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only
son…” This is the extravagant love of
Jesus when Jesus says “Love one another as I have loved you.” Love is what Mary poured out over Jesus’
feet, the abundant love of God that is not meant to be hoarded but poured out
and given away.
As we move into Holy Week, God calls us to remember the
extravagant love that God has poured over us in the past, in scripture and in
our own lives, both individually and as a church, so that we can experience the
extravagant love God is pouring out now and trust that extravagant love in the
future. But God also calls us to be that
abundant love as God’s people in the world, poured out just as extravagantly
and boldly. When Jesus says “you always
have the poor with you, but you do not always have me,” that is not a call to
accept poverty, whether physical, spiritual, socio-economic, or in any other
form. That is a call to be the abundant,
extravagant love of God poured into the world, for all who are broken or
marginalized in any way, remembering all that God’s love has done for us in the
past, looking for what God’s love is doing in the present, and trusting that
God’s love will meet us in the future, whatever the future holds.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment