A New and Ancient Thing

September 20, 2015

To the church at Clarendon in the year of our Lord, 2065: grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus, and greetings from 2015.

I’ll confess, to begin, that if, against all odds, I should live to 2065 I will be only slightly less surprised to find you still living here. At least, that is, if by “still living here,” we mean a congregation in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as we have come to understand such institutions in the past one hundred years.

Oh, I do hope that you don’t become a row of townhomes or macmansions, but if, 50 years down the road, you are no longer gathering at 10:00 on Sunday mornings in the grand old building our forebears built, that will not necessarily be a bad thing.

We are and always have been a resurrection people, so if the kind of gathering and worship and institutional life that we, in 2015, find comforting and sustaining to our faith and inspiring to our lives, then I hope you have let it die to bear witness to a new thing that God is doing in your midst.

For that is what we have always believed and experienced. God is always doing a new thing. After all, this is the Holy One who brings life out of death, so if what we who gathered back near the dawn of the 21^st century experienced as church has died for you, then we trust that God has done a new thing among you.

We have experienced this before, because for God doing a new thing is, in fact, an ancient pattern. This is what God does.

In fact, in the 50 years before our time as church – here in 2015 – God had done countless new things among the sisters and brothers who came before us. Way back in about 1960, when the church at Clarendon split, giving birth to the Church of the Covenant, I suspect that more than a few of the faithful believed that the church here was dying. I suspect that some not only remember former things, but they longed for them, as well.

But even amidst such longing and remembering, the people also looked for the new thing that God was doing, and they perceived the call to create the Clarendon Child Care Center, an institution that has provided loving care for hundreds and hundreds of children in Arlington for about a half century.

Even as they considered the things of old, they remained open to the new thing springing forth in their midst, and, in 1968, with fear and trembling, the faithful folks at Clarendon opened their doors to the Poor Peoples Campaign, and served as Virginia headquarters for that movement for justice.

Over those years, as the Mainline Protestant Church in America experienced a great decline, the church at Clarendon did, as well, and I am sure that many of the faithful remembered the past, longed for it, and felt that the future held nothing but decline and death. But even in their fearfulness, some remembered that we are a resurrection people, and with faith in the new thing that God was doing, in 1980 the people at Clarendon called the Rev. Madeline Jervis, one of the first women pastors in the presbytery.

Under Madeline’s leadership, the people again looked for a new thing springing forth – a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert – and, in the midst of the AIDS crisis of the mid-80s, Clarendon opened its doors and its heart to the suffering and the dying.

Within a few years, the church flung wide the doors – OK, against some fearfulness, the church pried open the doors with the WD-40 of righteousness and the elbow-grease of  hope – and welcomed in the GLBT community, eventually becoming the first More Light Presbyterian Church in Virginia – a lonely distinction we held for 20 years.

At every step along the way, as the people faced difficult questions and hard decisions, we have sought the light of God to brighten our way as we stumbled through darkness. Guided by the gospel – a story of generous grace and limitless love – we have sought to follow the way of Jesus in our own days.

From our current perch, proud of our recent history of leading the church toward authentic welcome of people long shut out, it’s easy to look back 50 years and wonder why it took so long to get where we are, and to ask “what were they so afraid of?”

It’s easy to look back at the session records from 1968, and chuckle at the timidity reflected there in the minutes from the meetings at which session discussed the Poor Peoples Campaign’s overture to Clarendon regarding space use, and ask, “what were they so afraid of?”

It’s easy to look back, but God says, “don’t waste your time looking back; I am about to do a new thing!”

All of which makes me wonder, as I write this letter to the church at Clarendon in 2065, what you will look back at from my time, chuckle, and ask, “what were they so afraid of?”

If there is no church to receive this letter a half century from now, it will be because we were afraid – afraid, most of all, to shine the light that we have found here, to share the gospel we have heard and experienced here, to go forth in joy to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.

I write in faith that the Holy One, the Creator of Israel, the God of new and ancient things, is making a way in the wilderness of the present age, because I know that God has always made such a way, God has always called people to sojourn along it, and, God has always and everywhere provided bread for the pilgrim journey of the people of God. As it has been for us in this place, may it be also for those who come after, and may you walk in rich light of God’s love all along your pilgrim journey. Amen.