It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance - for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light .... Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it? .... Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.
Yesterday, Irie and the kids and I went back and worshipped in the little church where I was ordained and where Irie and I were married. Lowe's Grove Baptist Church can trace its beginning to 1890, when a Sunday School class was meeting on the front porch of a home in a little community just south of Durham, NC. That Sunday School and another church joined together and the church was officially organized in 1907. The building we were married, a quaint, partially-Georgia-style construction was built in 1947. Though for most of its life Lowe's Grove has been mostly a quiet, family church, it has at times been a place for the compelling. In 1981, it was one of the very first Southern Baptist Churches to ordain a woman to the Gospel Ministry. Irie and I the very same week that three crosses were burned by the KKK in downtown Durham, our fully integrated wedding a sign of hope and reconciliation amidst a time of strife and division within the city.
The Church has been without a pastor now for a couple of years and as often happens in times between pastorates the congregation has dwindled some. It was mostly an older group gathered yesterday for Sunday morning, though the church was excitedly planning for Vacation Bible School which began last night. I know they were wondering how many would come and how many would stay and what kind of future there is for a church like Lowe's Grove.
As I stood in the pulpit where I preached my very first sermon 13 years ago this coming fall, I read the excerpt from Marilyn Robinson's novel. It is the words from an old, old preacher in a little church in a little community, writing to his young son, who he had brought forth into the world at a great age. In a sense, it is Robinson's way of having the patriarchs, that "great cloud of witnesses", spoken of in the book of Hebrews, to write to this current, struggling generation of Christians trying now to hold on to the faith of our fathers and mothers. And the message is for this current generation to hold its hope and to remember that God's kingdom is among us, if we have eyes to see.
Sometimes God does breath upon this "poor gray ember of Creation" and for a moment something amazing happens -- a sleepy little Baptist church does something bold and lays its hands on the head of a woman called to preach, or rises as a sign of racial harmony amidst a world of division. God breathes for a time there is fire and there is light and he Church knows that it is alive, but then it sinks into itself again, and no one would ever know who did not themselves remember.
And so that was my message for the people of Lowe's Grove yesterday, to remember, to hold onto the memory of when God moved and breathed, and to hold onto the hope that God shall surely do it again -- in His own good time.
God bless you Lowe's Grove Baptist Church. God bless and keep you and make His face to shine upon you . . .
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