Why Church Matters to Me (Or, A Letter from a New Bedford Hospital)
- Details
- Created on Sunday, 01 March 2009 00:00
- Written by Jenny M. Rankin
{player 2009-03-01-9am-sermon.mp3}
A sermon in absentia
Even now, the old routine lingers like the scent of a fresh-cut flower:
Hunting for our Sunday clothes in the laundry room,
A last-minute flurry of face washing, shoe shining, ribbon tying, or
arguing over the hairbrush.
My parents signaling time has run out like referees and bustling us out the door and into the car for the ride to Tremont Street.
There were squabbles and stress, but somehow we made it there.
Not every week, but many of them.
I took the routine for granted, the way a child does.
It wasn’t until a long time later that I recognized it for what it was—
a “habit of being,” as Flannery O’Connor might call it,
a gift to me from my father and my mother.
I remember when this dawned on me.
I was at a memorial service at this same church years later.
A heart attack had killed the Reverend Charles Forman,
A beloved minister at King’s Chapel—
one of those deaths that shock you by daring to come far too soon.
People came in droves to say goodbye.
There I was, standing at the back of the King’s Chapel with the other clergy, waiting to walk in together,
me and these black-robed colleagues who at that moment—
and in others before and since—became a kind of distant family to me.
I remember looking at the tiles of the stone floor beneath my feet
They were granite, a kind of slate-grey with a shimmer to them
That stone beneath my feet was so familiar to me
It felt like I was home
The familiar smell of the sanctuary came to me,
musty but sweet, and I could see,
even with my eyes closed, light pouring in the high arched windows.
And I saw, in a flash, how thoroughly this place had seeped into me
Over the years and years of coming,
as a child and teenager,
and later, in the years after college, at a time of distress.
I went though some uncertain, trying times in those days,
when career plans and relationships went away,
leaving big holes in my life,
when I faced my infant and childhood grief at losing a mother,
It was a time when my sense of self,
always so sunny and sure,
suddenly dissolved into something shadowy.
Time moved slowly in the fog of those anxious, uncertain days.
Weekends loomed like continents of unstructured time.
And so one Sunday I went back to church
just to have something to do for an hour or two.
And then I went back , and went back again.
I found comfort there.
I don’t really know why.
Maybe because people asked about what was going on with me.
Or because they named that suffering was real, that it could seem endless at times.
It was part of the vocabulary of their faith, and they shared it.
And they shared something else: hope.
I wasn’t in a place of hope yet.
I couldn’t trust in it. I didn’t trust in it.
But a deeper part of me heard those words of consolation and hope and wanted to go towards them.
It wasn’t easy.
The inclination to despair kept dragging me in the opposite direction.
Yet I would inch back,
somehow “rowing toward God,”
in the image of a favorite Anne Sexton poem.
I remember that didn’t think I was getting stronger, even though I was.
Then I began to wonder, almost secretly, if I was. Soon I knew it was true.
And so, as a young adult, I returned to church in a larger sense – not only to King’s Chapel but to divinity school and the Unitarian ministry.
When I look back,
I see myself on the edge of a black river of grief and confusion
Water, with a dangerous tide.
And I see how that community helped ferry me across,
somehow got me to the other side.
It had been the same community
I realized, that had ferried my family across the stormy sea
When my birth mother died
When my father was left with a baby and toddler
And then when he and my mother were beginning a new marriage
With two little kids and another on the way
That stone church with its hymns and Bible stories and coffee hour,
And people that cared,
It was that community that had been so important
In helping them make it through
To the next new stretch of life
Where the water was calmer
and healing and growth were real
I have been ordained for 20 years now
I have watched people come in our doors and the doors of other churches I have served,
And I have watched them leave.
I have heard stories of how being part of a community mattered—
and I’ve heard stories of how a community let them down, hurt or angered them.
The child in us longs to believe otherwise, but we know there is nothing magic about a religious congregation or spiritual community.
They are part of real life, with all its flaws and foibles,
And they take work.
But magical things can happen, do happen, in faith communities like ours -- redemptive things, healing things.
That is why, despite the real difference in our stories, so many of us come to a place like this one.
I have told you one story of why church matters to me.
There are others I could tell you
And know that each and every one of you has your own story.
I wish I could hear them all.
I hope we find more ways to share our stories with one another.
Church matters to me.
Because in my life it has literally been life-saving
It has been a place of grace
It has helped me and my family to navigate through times of profound disorientation and loss
It helped me to reshape a new sense of identity,
It was a context in which I heard the call to ministry and was able to answer “yes”
The context in which I heard the call to motherhood and was able to answer “yes.”
I believe that First Parish in Concord can be a haven for us in stormy times
It can be a place where we come to gather up our courage
Where we find the tenacity and grit we need to do whatever life asks of us today
I believe this community can be a place where each one of us grows into being more,
into being that person we truly want to be but aren’t yet
I believe this community can be a place that harnesses all of our energy so that we can go out into the world
And do good, new, bold things
In a world that needs us now more than ever.