Sermon for October 17, 2021 - The Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost, Year B, The Rev. Jeffrey W. Mello

Click HERE to view The Rev. Jeffrey W. Mello’s sermon from October 17, 2021

How often do you get to build, or re-build a church? In this part of the world, in this part of the country, most of the churches we drive by date their cornerstones to the 19th, or 18th, or even the 17th centuries.  The suburbs are sprinkled with some mid 20th century edifices, but few of us sitting in this room have been part of any laying of a cornerstone, defining the mission and architecture of a congregation from the ground up.

If we have been, or if we had been, a part of the discussions we would have had would have centered around what we understood to be “essential” in the church community we were building.

We would have considered what it was that was going to make-up the character, the ethos, the essential core of this new church of St. Paul’s in Brookline. 

Some of you may remember a moment akin to this in St. Paul’s more recent past.  When a fire destroyed the sanctuary in January of 1976 leaving only the exterior walls still standing, the gathered community, a church already in progress, needed to have many difficult and honest conversations about what it would mean to be St. Paul’s going forward, if they were going to go forward at all.  

From the stories I have been told, everything was on the table.  From that discernment, three things -- connection with the community, support of music and the arts, and outreach through a percentage of our income to work beyond those fire licked walls -- came to the center of St. Paul’s identity.  These ideals became part of our newly adapted DNA and continue to guide our decisions and inform our mission to this day.

Of course, there have been more times in our history for adjustments, for reshaping and re-focusing.  Each new rector called, each Capital Project completed, each new ministry began or ended has been an adjustment in how we have continued to be a “church already in progress,” trying to hold fast and build up what we have come to understand as essential in our life together.  

But none of us were prepared for the foundation-shaking events of the past eighteen months.  Few of us were praying to do church online before we were forced to.  Even the introverts among us were not hoping there would be an extended time during which we could not gather together, could not shake hands at the peace, offer a hug to a friend at coffee hour, or share the cup at communion.

These past 18 months have forced us to consider, over and over again, what is essential to how we are being called to be God’s church in this world.

As we begin to gather again, we are wondering how to piece our community life back together.  We are asking, once again, what is essential to being St. Paul’s?  What is essential to being church in this time and place to which God has called us?

We did not shrink in this pandemic time.  We adapted, and in some cases we grew.  Our Racial Justice Ministry took on new shape and continues to ask new questions in our pursuit to create Beloved Community here and in the world.  You will receive a letter from me in the next few days outlining the multitude of ways we have stretched, adapted, grown and challenged ourselves to meet the demands of this new day.

And we have grieved, and we are still grieving, and we will have more grieving to do as the toll this pandemic has taken on us begins to become more fully known.

Two of the members of this community who we lost during the pandemic were Ken and Maureen Carter.  Ken and Maureen met each other in Sunday School here at St. Paul’s and spent the next seventy years in each other's lives.

Ken and Maureen were two of the many great pillars of this community.  I used to love to hear them talk about the changes they had seen in their time in this space.  How many times the liturgy changed, the “new prayer book” and rector after rector after rector.

And I can still hear Ken describing to me what it was like to stand across the street and watch the church they knew and loved burn to the ground before his eyes.

And they, with some of you present here this morning, took what was essential about St. Paul’s, brought it with you to the chapel that is now our Great Hall, and continued to be a church in progress while also asking hard questions about what St. Paul’s would be.

Thanks to Ken and Maureen, and the others of you who were a part of those conversations, we are here this morning.  We are so different from the St. Paul’s of 1976 when the fire struck.  And, yet, what was essential remains.  What is essential endures.  What is essential thrives.

So, here we are, in 2021, returning to a church many have not stepped in for almost two years.  And we are wondering, what will be the same?  What will remain?  What needs to change?  All of that is to ask, “what is essential?”

I have, over these past 18 months seen how St. Paul’s is essential in the lives of so many; both members of this worshiping community and beyond.

I have seen how the skills and talents you have offered to this community have been essential in our ability to continue to be church.

I know that your financial generosity in this time has been unwavering -- essential gifts to keeping the mission and ministry of St. Paul’s going and growing.

But, simply put, you are the essential gifts, each one of you.  First time here this morning or if you pre-date the fire, you are an essential gift from God.

You are the essential gifts that St. Paul’s needs to grow more fully into who it is God is calling us to be, and to leave behind what no longer serves us in our pursuit of God’s dream for this world.

You are an essential gift, simply for being the beloved child of God that you are.

And your skills and interests and questions and hopes are essential gifts the church needs to do the work God gives us to do in this time.

And, frankly, your financial support of St. Paul’s is an essential gift.  

Whatever the amount, every dollar you give to the work of this place, of our shared mission and ministry makes possible things we are incapable of doing on our own, it makes possible our transformation into being who we simply cannot become on our own.  We do all of this with God’s help, and with each other’s.

I can’t tell you today how this pandemic will change St. Paul’s for the long haul.  God’s time will show us that.

What I can tell you is that we have ambitious hopes and dreams for the possibilities this time might hold for us.  We want to invest in our children and youth in innovative and exciting new ways, we want to continue to center our Racial Justice work both internally and as agents of justice in our community and the world.  

I am  excited and a bit overwhelmed by the possibilities that lay in front of us.  And I know that none of it, not one bit, will be possible if we do not, in whatever way we can, to the fullest extent that we can, all offer our essential gifts to the shared purpose and work of being St. Paul’s, a community seeking to follow Christ, to love God and love one another, a church already in progress and yet somehow brand new and never before.

Your essential gifts are what is needed to become a brand new church already in progress.

Essential Gifts are what each of us have been given, and what each one of us has to offer in return.

An essential gift is what you are.

AMEN.  

© 2021 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello