“Saying Thank You and Goodbye”

Sermon for Closing Worship at Crestwood UCC

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Scripture: Psalm 121; Genesis 12: 1-5

Rev. Jean E. Morrow

One of my favorite movies is Out of Africa, which is based on a memoir by Isak Dinesen.  In her later years, Dinesen looks back and tells the story of a period of her life lived in Africa.  Her husband purchased a coffee plantation in Kenya, and so they packed up their household in Denmark and they moved to the great continent of Africa.  Well, Africa turned out to be quite different than she had expected, a very challenging place to live…but over time she grew to love it and love it deeply.  She did not live there long, and so in this memoir, we are looking back with her and remembering this significant time in her life.  Africa has left its mark on her…left its vibration and color and scents and sounds on her soul.  And so we find her, reflecting on whether or not she has left her mark on Africa.  She says,

“If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the field and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers…does Africa know a song of me?  Will the air over the plains quiver with a color that I wore?  Or will the children invent a game in which my name is spoken?  Or the full moon throw a shadow over the drive that was like me?  Will the eagles of the Ngong hills cry out for me?”

We have come to our own day of remembering.  Today we pause to remember…to recognize that this place…this significant stop on our journey of faith…has left its mark on us…we carry in our souls its vibration and color, scents and sounds…and we reflect and hope that, we too, have left our mark on this place…that this building will always quiver with our color and energy.  And so, even in our enthusiasm and excitement to pack up the household and begin our journey yet again, we pause to mark and remember, to offer our thanksgiving and praise for our time here and to say goodbye.

As people of faith who travel out of the Abrahamic tradition, leaving the familiar and following God’s leading is at the core of our understanding of who we are. The story of Abraham and Sarah is a story not unlike our own…though, as Marcia demonstrated in the Children’ Sermon, it would be difficult to find people who lived a daily life that was more different than ours. 

Abraham and Sarah are said to have originated in a place with what I think is a poetic name, Ur of the Chaldeans.  At the time, Ur was a Sumerian city in the lower Euphrates River valley.  We know it as part of Iraq that lies nearest Kuwait.  Abraham, Sarah, and their people were nomadic…they lived in tents…and they survived mainly by herding animals. 

Biblical scholars are uncertain about a number of things concerning Abraham and Sarah, not least being how we ought to consider them.  Are we to understand them as discrete, historical people…or are we to understand them as symbolic ancestors of faith?  For today, I would suggest that whether or not they lived as individual human beings or represent a folk ancestry is really unimportant.  For today, what is important is that they embody for us the origins of our religious awakenings and they represent for us our long religious tradition of taking God’s promise seriously and following God’s lead.  For God’s leading is all they really had.

As I read the text, they didn’t know where they were going.  They had no particular destination.  Basically, God said, “Pack up your household, say goodbye to your friends and relatives, and move to a land that I will show you later…when you get there.”  And they did it.  They packed up their belongings, said goodbye and walked into the future with God.

In this way, we are like them.  When we pack the trucks later today, we have a specific destination.  But, I would suggest, on a spiritual level, we don’t really know where God is leading us. 

This was fully demonstrated to me several weeks ago when I had a conversation with a woman who was writing an article for the UCC News.  The article will be about the innovative ways churches are reinventing themselves.  We were having a nice visit about our becoming a seed community for a new, larger UCC community in Sioux Falls…then she asked me a question I couldn’t answer.  She asked, “How will your community be different when you become Spirit of Peace?”  That made me pause…and then utter those three words that you don’t really want to say in an interview with the press, “I don’t know.”  I don’t know how we will be different as Spirit of Peace, because I don’t know who we will be until we get there and live into our call as the community of Spirit of Peace.  I can speculate on who we will grow to be, because I know who we were in the past and who we are now, but who will we be?  How will we be different?  That we will better know, looking back, once we have had a chance to follow God’s leading for awhile.

For today…for part of today…we are still Crestwood UCC…we may be transforming into Spirit of Peace…but for a little while longer, we are Crestwood.

Recently, I have had a great time getting to know about the roots of this community.  Vi Andersen and the Archives Committee have been busy the past several months archiving the historical documents and mementos that will give substance to our memories in the future…and they have been slipping Marcia and me copies of the earliest days of this congregation as they run across them…bulletins, newspaper articles, and early issues of the Chimes. (You can see some of them on display in the Narthex.) In those earliest days, there are names I recognize sprinkled all about:  Hans Poppe and his family, Neva Ingwerson, the Engens…no surprise, we see Elaine and Ray McKittrick’s name often…as well as Chuck and Doris Graham.  In fact, Doris served as secretary from the very beginning, it would appear.

The first Chimes, published on October 1^st, 1958, told me volumes about the foundation of Crestwood…and, frankly, it informed me about who we are today.  For instance, there was a fellowship dinner on the calendar…that sounded familiar…and there was quite a long article about the organization of the Sunday School.  And, believe it or not, the women’s Fellowship was organizing a rummage sale.  It was held on October 16^th in 1958.  They also wrote their purpose in plain, strong language that we have come to expect from the Women’s Fellowship.  They wrote:  “Lest the wrong impression be given, the group is not at all primarily a fund raising body.  They do not anticipate underwriting a portion of the church budget.  They do plan to become a much better informed body concerned with the larger work and witness of the church.  They do plan to cultivate and nourish the spiritual life of the membership.”  To this I would say, “Well done, women,” as this is who you continue to be today.

As I said, that first Chimes is just chock full of goodies.  There is information about our first budget…back then we took in about $70 a week in the offering plate…which was deemed too low.  Those early Crestwoodians felt challenged by their worship attendance and membership numbers.  In fact, they wrote, “Our attendance is very limited.  We have taken two jaunts into the countryside and one to Wall Lake.  We have not organized but we have a determined feeling that if all who are mildly interested would attend with regularity, we would have a sustaining and worthwhile group.”  I don’t know if they ever got themselves organized, but I would say the result is certainly a sustaining and worthwhile group.

There are two significant quotes that appear with regularity in several of those early documents.  The first is about the ceiling and architecture of this building.  Several places it was noted that “the curved arches and the square corners of the building symbolize the grace and the law in the Gospel.”  Isn’t that beautiful?  I always knew there was something sacred about our swooping roof line, and now I know what I detected…it was grace….and I shall always remember the beautiful ceiling and the grace I experienced here.

The second quote is perhaps the most intriguing for me…and one I hope to always remember. It is a quote by Robinson Jeffers and it reads, “Lend me the stone strength of the past and I will lend you the wings of the future.”  That is what Crestwood has been for us…and will always be for us…the stone strength of the past…and it will also be the place from which we were given wings for the future.  What a gift…and what a legacy to take with us.

It is because of the way this congregation came together, heard God’s call and defined itself that we can, almost 50 years later, pack up and transform ourselves into a new community so that we might more fully, more faithfully live into God’s call to us into the future.  It is at once remarkable to me and it makes perfect sense to me that the organizing values of Crestwood, building on the past to give wing to the future, foreshadows this very day…and in that foreshadowing, I hear a blessing from that early Crestwood community…and the blessing I hear is “Take strength from us, trust in the promise and follow God’s leading.”

And that is what we shall do. 

As we gently transform from Crestwood to Spirit of Peace, we have much to remember and much to be thankful for…and so our memories will be marked with gratitude.  But, we do have one more spiritual task today, and that is to say good bye to this building and to our former identity.  As I have thought about saying goodbye, it occurs to me that I might share a bit of valuable insight that was shared with me about how leave-taking works.

As most of you know, I have quite a bit of experience moving…Abraham and Sarah do feel like family to me…I have packed up my household, said goodbye and literally moved many times.  Some moves were easy…some were quite difficult.  In the midst of those moves, I heard something quite insightful from a Presbyterian.  Rather serendipitously, I attended a lecture by a retired Presbyterian scholar whose area of expertise was church history.  He was lecturing about the ways in which the historic church was foundational for the future church…and was speculating about the future of the church based on today. 

Honestly, I don’t remember a lot of what he said…but I do remember this.  He was talking about moving…how our ancestors packed up and moved from Europe to the New World…how they felt called to explore and move from the east coast of this continent to the west.  And amidst his comments, he paused and said, “You know, the body moves quite easily from place to place…but the soul…well, it takes the soul much longer to leave a place.  More often than not, the soul lingers for awhile. The soul just can’t move that quickly from a place that it loves.  It takes time.”

For me, his comments created an “ah ha” moment…an epiphany. I knew what he was speaking of.

I share my epiphany, that it might soften our leave-taking of Crestwood.  Knowing that goodbyes don’t happen all at once might be helpful for some of you.  If in the coming weeks and months your spirit lingers at Crestwood, it doesn’t mean you don’t love Spirit of Peace or our call to transformation, it simply means you need to give your soul a little time.  The body moves quite easily from place to place, but the soul lingers, particularly in a place that it loves.  

My friends, leave-taking will be soon upon us.  Let us celebrate that Crestwood has left its mark on us…and we on it.  Let us celebrate that we have grown strong here, and have been given our wings here.  And as we go from here, may God bless this building and its future, may God bless the path before us and may God lead us in ways that will always bring honor to our heritage and this sacred place.  Amen.