1 Samuel 1:4-20, Canticle of Hannah, Hebrews 10:11-25, Mark 13:1-8
Wars and rumors of wars, nation rising against nation, earthquakes and famines. It was the story then and it’s the story now, the same old story and the story of our lives. Buildings built up and buildings demolished. The post-war order coming down, the President demolishing our moral structures, the Roman Catholic hierarchy in self-destruct, earthquakes in Indonesia and famines all around. It is the over-arching story of humanity, with an ever new cast of characters, including us who live within it.
It’s a true story. It’s not fake news. But it’s not the only story that is true. There is another one, an alternate story, and just as true. The alternate story is harder to believe, so it’s considered a delusion and a fairy tale. It’s the story we tell in church, the alternate story of the world. It too is an over-arching story with countless characters and ever new details, and we who tell it are also in it.
The alternate story is never separate from the same old story. It keeps arising out of it and turns back toward it in grief and hope and love. It is always coming to birth in it, and the pain and stress we feel who tell it are the birthpangs of the gospel story being born again within our dying world.
In our gospel lesson the Lord Jesus told the disciples that when the Romans, being Romans, would inevitably demolish the Temple, the looming agony of Jerusalem would be the labor pains of something more wonderful and universal in the ever-developing story of God’s love for the world. But for all its promise there would be some loss and grief and that was hard for them to hear.
The same old story is in the Epistle lesson with the daily sacrifices of the priests that can never finally take away our sin, the old story of religion as guilt, of some people pure and others not. But out of this arose the alternate story: the good news of the Lord Jesus who offered himself once, for all of time, to break the grip of guilt and sin. We tell it not as a theory but as a story, especially to our children, because even children can recognize the love in it and we all can imagine the hope in it.
The same old story is in the Old Testament lesson in the jealousies and competition in the family of Elkanah. How typical and conventional. But the shame and despair of Hannah gives birth to the gospel of her praying and her blessing. She offers up her first-born son to God, just as the Lord Jesus offered up himself. So the alternate story challenges you too to offer your life, the good news makes a claim on you, it challenges you to bless you. Yes, you too want to offer your life for your part in that story that both challenges and blesses the same old story of the world.
The interplay of these two stories is in the Canticle of Hannah that we just repeated, the winners and losers of the same old story upended by the alternate story of the gospel. The weapons of the mighty are broken, but the weak are clothed in strength. Those once full now labor for bread; those who hungered are now well fed. The childless woman finds her life fruitful, and the mother of many sits forlorn. God raises the poor from the dust, and lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with rulers and inherit a place of honor.
Is this true? Is this at best a fantasy, a fairy tale? Doesn’t it always go the other way, the old story just grinding on? Yes, it does, the dreary news is not fake news, but the alternate story is also true, and it gets more true the more you believe it and repeat it, as it inspires you to love instead of domination, and good deeds instead of power. So let us hold fast to the confession of our hope, and encourage one another by keeping the alternate story in the telling, as we have been doing for the 364 years of our congregation. Which is not very long in the universal scheme of things.
In 1664 the alternate story led our deacons to a good deed of encouragement when they bought four dairy cows to farm out among the poor to provide them with free milk. 348 years later the story led you to start a respite shelter for homeless men, and then the Hurricane Sandy Relief Kitchen that made 200,000 meals. I’m telling you your story as part of the larger story to encourage you.
You can see the story there on the table. That’s one of our two communion beakers from 1684, crafted in silver for a rustic village church, a thirtieth birthday present from a woman named Maria Badia to a poor congregation too poor to afford its own pastor.
Think of all the different hands that passed that cup along and all the lips that drank from its silver brim. Well-to-do and poor, Dutch, French, English, German, Canarsie Indian, free African, but also the African slaves of the Dutch and the French. From the same old sinful story we drink the alternate story of grace, and the work of human hands is the vessel of a miracle.
On the surface of that cup has been reflected the lost interiors of four church buildings. Five times now the stones were built up and four times the stones thrown down. Our first building was square and squat and ugly. Our fourth building was a grand Greek temple, the largest of all, but we used it only fifty years before it was demolished.
The demolition is the judgment that breaks down the stones, but from those same stones we built new houses of reconciliation, and so the alternate story keeps rising up from the old, the story of judgment and death for resurrection. How long will this fifth building last, these loftiest stones of all? How long will our part of the story go on?
We have been awarded a $250,000 challenge grant by the Partners for Sacred Places from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. There are many beautiful churches in America, and many churches doing marvelous ministries, but they recognized in us the special combination of four factors: a culturally significant building, an expensive need for restoration, a vital congregation, and a commitment of service to the larger community as a public good. That combination is special.
In these four factors I can recognize our new draft mission statement: “we are a community of Jesus Christ for Brooklyn, offering a space of unconditional welcome, a practice of worship and service, and a vision of the kingdom of heaven.” That’s our particular application of the alternate story, the story of the kingdom of heaven that makes upon the earth a space of welcome, a welcome that can be unconditional because of the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus, whose offering encourages us to good deeds of worship and service unselfishly for the public good.
Unsaid within our statement but assumed by it is the mission of every Christian church, which is to tell the alternate story to every generation. A community of Jesus is that community that tells the story and is always being shaped by the story that it tells, and then is being stimulated by that story to express it in love and good deeds and mutual encouragement.
We are used to thinking of our congregation as small and poor. That’s the same old story. But Partners for Sacred Places is trying to show us the alternate vision of ourselves and of our mission, a vision of abundance born from within our scarcity, a cultural significance we have not dared to recognize, and our church as a public good beyond our estimation.
Yes, we know our steeple is a landmark and our sanctuary is extraordinary, but we are being encouraged that our congregation is fully capable of living out our vision and fulfilling our mission with generosity and with joy. And that’s right—the alternate story, for all its judgment and its challenges, is a story of confidence and joy.
You are a part of it. The story of your own life is part it. Your needing a space of unconditional welcome is part of it. How you always have to live within the same old story, and you hope that you can trust the alternate story to encourage you, and you hope that the pains in your life are the birthpangs of the better you that you long to be, who are not finished yet.
And in that interplay within you of the same old and the good news is how you best contribute to the mission of this church, how you encourage one another, and share with one another in good deeds, and always trying love. Your contribution of your love and your good deeds to this community strengthens and sustains it for its mission, a mission as expansive as our sanctuary and as intimate as our old communion cup.
What was Maria Badia thinking to give this gorgeous gift to our poor congregation? I can see on its lovely surface a vision of gratitude and love, that she would drink her sacred wine from this same cup with all these rustic people. Her gift of love expressing the love of God. The great story that we are commissioned to tell is the story of God’s love.
Copyright © 2018, by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.
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