Rev. Molly Phinney Baskette ~ First Church Somerville
Sunday, June 8, 2008 ~ Fifth Sunday in Pentecost
Genesis 12:1-9
"Mothering Fathering"
My father George, a carpenter, was working on the Duhamel Hall renovation project this week with Barbara and Dick Huber's son Keith. They tore up the white oak floorboards of the stage, one of these (set it up). Underneath, they discovered a whole nother set of floorboards, essentially, a second stage made of this Southern yellow pine (set it up), wood of a kind that hasn't been seen since the 30s. And then they tore up that stage only to discover, underneath that, another stage, half its size, tiny and perfect. This stage probably dated to the original building of the church. If all the world's a stage, then First Church has worlds within worlds.
Truly, we do. There are a dozen people here in worship today who could tell you just what the world of First Church was like in 1920, or 1940, or 1970, and how different it is to be here today. This church is 134 years old, and even though it's said the church doesn't change easily, they will tell you otherwise. They've seen the church, some of them, through women's suffrage, the Great Depression, the rise of the automobile, the rise of Hitler, the GI bill and the building-out of Somerville. They've seen it through countless waves of immigration, racial desegregation, racial resegregation, and white flight; through the rise of technology, the decline of the mainline Protestant church including 4 Somerville Congregational church closures and one merger; they've seen it through 5 women ministers in a row, and the Open and Affirming process. All of these things have changed the church.
This is a church that knows change, and is comfortable with change. God doesn't change but calls us to constant change and renewal, and we do our best to keep up-not with the times, but with that holy calling. So we nod with wry familiarity when we hear a story like that of Abram, the one called the Father of Many Nations. "The Lord said to Abram, Go you forth from your land, from your kindred, from your father's house." And Abram was 75 years old when he went out of Harran.
You know how hard it is to pick up and move at the age of 75, because many of you have done just that. You sold your homes and went to assisted living, or nursing homes. But even then, at 75 years old, many of you were still active-still patching plaster, building furniture, painting walls, painting landscapes. You know that 75 is the new 40. And even at 80, or 85, or 90, I hope and pray that you know that if eyesight dims and synapses fail, God is not done with you, as surely as he was not done with Abram. Abram didn't finally father Isaac until he turned 100. Our Opal Gray just passed the century mark. Somebody better warn her.
But in this chapter Abram's a mere 75, a spring chicken, and he's too immature to be a parent yet, so God has him take a trip instead. God sends him out, with his wife and nephew and all the people they had made their own, and God blesses him on his way. The first thing that Abram did when he got where he was going, was to set up an altar to the Lord. I daresay that this is the first church referred to in the Bible. Might we then call it First Church? What Abram called the place was "Beth-El," or, "house of God." It was no cathedral. But it was a place to start.
Taking our cue from Abram, our job is to keep up with God's calling. God never calls without offering a blessing to go with the calling. But the blessing comes with a caveat: God says to Abram: "I will give you blessing and make your name great-BE a blessing!" The only reason to want God's blessing is to turn it into a blessing for others. We can't let it end with us.
There is a relentless echo of two promises in the book of Genesis: land, and people, land, and people. From the moment Adam and Eve lose the garden, and both of their sons, God is trying to restore them. Land, and people. All hopes hang on Abram and Sarai, this septuagenarian patriarch and matriarch. It's no wonder they named their son "laughter."
But we know that what God's gonna do, God's gonna do, no matter how unlikely things look. There is a facebook floating around this church from the mid-80s. There are a lot of gray hairs in that facebook, and not a lot of children. It doesn't look promising for First Church Somerville.
But I am here today to say that God has made good on the promise of land and people, for First Church Somerville. We are grateful to you, our matriarchs and patriarchs in the church, because through you God gave us land. And God has allowed you to father and mother this multitude-not the traditional, biological way, but through adoption. You made the space for this to happen, you set the stage, with your willingness to teach young leaders, to honor and bless them, to lead the church through change and keep saying, even if you didn't always agree, "this is MY church, and it is YOUR church, too." There are many grateful people here today. They were wanderers and strangers, and here they found friends and faith, they found comfort and correction, they found belonging, they found apartments and jobs and block parties and plays and babysitters and catsitters. And at the heart of all of these things, they found the Lord. They received the promise of land, and people. You have succeeded in passing on the blessing.
It says in scripture that "Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his nephew, and the persons whom they had made their own in Harran." When I first read this phrase I assumed it referred to slaves, but when I read the note on the verse it explains that they brought their co-religionists on the journey with them. These were the people they had "made their own," the people who had taken up with the same God, the one known simply as the Lord.
Look to your left and to your right. Crane your heads all around this congregation. It may be that there are a lot of people here you don't know. You may wonder "is it still my church?" It is your church. The moment these people who look unfamiliar to you took up with your God, they took up with you. These are the people who have made themselves your own, whether or not they know it, whether or not you know it. We belong to one another now.
Some of you may die without land. You've sold your homes, they're gone. Some of you will die without posterity, you leave no children behind. But I tell you today that here you have both land and people. This is your land, and we are your people.
Any distinctions between us are false dichotomies. There are not, among us, old people and new people. There are not laypeople and clergy people. John Bell says that worship is not a show where the choirs and preachers and prayers are the performers, and the congregation the audience. When we gather here of a Sunday, we are all the performers, and God is our audience. We are all God's people, sharing the same stage.
Underneath the white oak, the yellow pine, the hemlock; at the heart of all of the stages in Duhamel Hall was a 2X4 like this one, rough and unplaned like all the boards of yore. It formed the foundation of this church, built 96 years ago. What is at the foundation of our church?
Besides the church's one foundation being "Jesus Christ her Lord," as the old hymn goes, here is one plank from the platform we rest upon. History repeats itself. I gleaned this from the church history published on our website: "In the midst of [post-war political corruption and financial panic], 52 people gathered to form a church...There was not a wealthy man or woman in the group."
But I beg to differ on one point. We are wealthy. We have land, and we have people. I feel the hand of God upon us, blessing us into a holy future, a time of growth and laughter and argument and action and calling and beautiful human drama unfolding on this stage. I give thanks for the many men and women not currently in this room who turned God's blessing on them into a blessing for us. I pray we may in turn be a blessing to the people God sees fit to make our own.
