Precious memories... unseen angels

We pulled up into the back drive of the old school... Big Cove School in Big Cove , Cherokee, North Carolina and my heart flew back forty three years ago to the first time I saw this old building. It has changed some... now home to a Nazarene mission church, painted a different color, a day care center built beside it and a fire station behind it... but inside it looked and smelled the same as it did all those years ago. We walked into the school kitchen where some of our crew were sitting around the table finishing lunch. Hugs all around, food passed around and homecoming was in full swing. All afternoon as others came, some from far away, the laughter and tears, hugs and pats, continued as the Spirit that binds us together did her holy work among us. As we gathered for supper, our conversation included those who were unable to join us this year... sickness, job changes, parent care... and our hearts turned towards God as we held them close to us in our prayers.
I was a rising college junior, a Baptist Student Union summer missionary, chosen to come help build a church on the reservation with other college students from the state of Georgia. Walt and Mary Lynn led our noisy band with flair, dedication and mighty fine food. If Claudie wasn’t nice to Tommy, he couldn’t have the VW keys to drive to town. If the boys complained about their underwear getting mixed up when they were washed, the next week they came back dyed pink and yellow and blue and green. That led to the Pink Grits Episode the next morning.
There were three duties Walt took seriously and required our participation in each. We were required to work, not slack off, whatever our job for the day. We were required to go to church on Sundays and be prepared to provide special music, or teach children, or lead a Vacation Bible School in a front yard if needed. We were required to show up for the family meeting each Wednesday night for sharing time and study time. If you “had ought” against anyone in the family, you could speak it and it would be resolved. Kitherine, who was not a morning person, had ought with me because I woke up whistling and singing each morning. It was the first time anyone ever spoke directly to me about being angry with me. I was mortified and crushed. Walt helped model for us how to deal with differences and conflict without damaging relationships. The second part of our family meeting was book study, “Your God Is Too Small”. As Walt led the often loud and spirited discussions that followed our reading, my child like faith and image of God began to stretch in some important ways. My faith thinking eyes began to see all the wonderful colors and shades of gray, white, black that are a part of a mature faith... an impressionistic rendering of God’s faces that began my adult love affair with God.
Saturday we returned from a hard day of work tearing out and replacing a termite ridden wall, scrubbing and painting the exterior of a house to find an angry letter resting on the kitchen table. Written by the woman co-pastor of the Nazarene church, it was a blistering, shaming missive that told us to remove our wine and beer from the premises immediately because they were Christians and did not drink alcoholic beverages. I was the first one to see the letter and was surprised by the intensity of my reaction. It was an emotional, visceral, gut wrenching response fueled by earlier life experiences with fundamentalism that stole my Baptist birthright from me. I wanted to go find her and in Christian Love, remind her that our Lord changed water into wine and even Paul, the old reprobate, advised a little wine for the stomach’s sake. In short, I wanted to wipe the smug smile of religious certainty from her face and give her a dose of my righteous indignation.
And then I came home to a phone call from a church friend wanting to know what had happened... why had we left FCUCC... the pastor had told her it was a shift in the balance of power and we left because of that. She couldn’t understand. Again I felt the anger rising. I had so hoped to be able to leave this congregation I loved for thirteen years quietly and with some dignity. I had chosen to send only a short letter to the choir, where we had been a part of that small community, dealing with only one of the reasons for our leaving. To have the past two years of soul searing searching wrenching grieving reduced to a simple phrase... a shift in the balance of power... ripped open a wound I thought was healing. I left for many reasons.
I left because I felt hemmed in by a new liberal orthodoxy that discounted and dismissed faith language from the past. I could no longer hear the affirmation “Jesus is Lord” in worship or the words “This is my body, broken for you” in communion. Genderless descriptions for God were the norm, neither male nor female pronouns could be used without complaints to the worship committee. When Michael was asked to read from the Cotton Patch Gospels in worship, he received a call asking him to rewrite the language to make it inclusive. This version of the Gospel was written in the southern vernacular by Clarence Jordan, a man who laid down his life in Americus, Georgia for racial equality. He walked the walk most of us just talk about. Somehow I felt we had lost the ability to claim the good from our past, hear the language of Zion and appreciate the gifts the saints of old gave us.
I left because I no longer knew or trusted most of those who had joined our community. After three years, our congregation had many new members who had replaced many who had left, a revolving door that brought new folks in as others slipped out. Without programs to help us get to know each other, we became a community of strangers, ripe for disagreements and ought against one another because there was not enough trust. Untrained deacons trying to do pastoral care, loss of community building conversations and meals, pastoral conversations that erupted into intense confrontations over many issues... all took their toll on my soul. By the time some of the community building activities began again, I was burned out and lonely.
I left because I no longer trusted the organizational structure of our church. It took three years and two committees to write a set of by laws that now need a third committee to correct them. There were no regular reports of money taken in each Sunday with the corresponding amount of money spent and money needed. The business and ministry decisions of the church, handled by the Executive Board, often were not translated in a timely fashion to the congregation at large.
In the heart of our struggle to discern whether to stay or to leave, we requested a meeting with the Staff Parish Committee. This committee was established during an earlier crisis with staff as a way to mediate and mend broken relationships between pastors and members. It was envisioned as a way to model Christian behavior in the midst of discord and strife. When I called to request a meeting, I was turned away because the purpose of the committee had been changed after training from the national UCC staff. These changes had not been made public nor had the congregation even been asked if they wanted these changes. I literally wept as the chair of the committee told me I could not be heard. They were not equipped or prepared to help me deal with this broken place. I pushed back, hard, and four of us were eventually granted a hearing with the understanding that it would only be that, a hearing, nothing more. We were asked to not speak of the contents of that meeting, to hold confidentiality and until this day, I have done so. We left that meeting after speaking our hurt and anger with no follow up calls or pastoral care from deacons, staff or committee members.
Two different bodies of Christ... two very different faith traditions... Nazarene and United Church of Christ... each more alike than they know. I am choosing to hold fast to the precious memories of joyful hard work growing the body of Christ at FCUCC. I remember and give thanks for all those who welcomed us, the strange Southern Baptists, into the fold of Yankee Congregationalism. The children’s Sunday School classes I taught for years, the service on the Executive Board and as a deacon, the two years serving on a committee to search for land for a new building as we outgrew our first home, the wonderful opportunity to participate in a capital campaign that raised over a million dollars in a congregation that was just over one hundred strong, the affirmation of our church as a welcoming congregation to all who sought God regardless of race, gender, age or sexual orientation, the connection with the elder ones in our church who were a part of the beginning of our denomination, funerals, weddings, banner making, altar creation, worship committee, teaching Vacation Bible Schools, helping create an intergenerational arts camp for families at church, choir and singing my souls’ heart... all a cause for rejoicing. All things can work for good if we but do our part.
Last night I lay in bed praying, “Jesus Christ, have mercy on me” as a mantra to help me move past my hurt places. And then I prayed, “Here I am, Lord. Send me.” As these prayers became a part of my sleeping consciousness, I was granted a great gift of grace. I no longer need to shame or judge either the Nazarene church or FCUCC. We all do the best we can in the gift of the time we are given. When where we are is no longer able to fill our cup, Jesus tells us to move on, shaking the dust off our sandals. As I age, I know there are never any simple answers to any question of faith. We can never know all there is to know or experience the fullness of God because we all see through the fog of faith. And what we see, what we need, is shaped by all of who we have been, where we have come from and where we are going. So I will pray for that little Nazarene mission and the husband and wife who are its co-pastors. I will pray for FCUCC and the band of believers who will continue to search for God’s will in their downtown home. And I will pray for those of us who are on the pilgrimage again, raising our tents, carrying our Ark of the Covenant into the Cloud of Unknowing that we might finally rest in the loving arms of the One who first loved us. May it be so. Amen.