Friday night we had the opportunity to celebrate a church that managed to survive 60 years, and this church has survived. It wasn’t a huge celebration. Sixty years is a big deal but January is a cold and snowy month up here and travel isn’t the easiest or cheapest. But, sixty years is sixty years and if it was a birthday or a wedding anniversary it would be celebrated for sure.
Celebrating a church birthday though, can be challenging and awkward and honestly, if you haven’t attended said church all your life or from it’s inception it can be a little.. meh.
Because most churches shift and change and so they should. I believe churches should reflect their community and communities are often shifting and changing demographically and culturally. And so, families come and go and a new person is left to look at pictures of people they don’t know. Grainy pictures, snapshots in sepia or black and white or faded colour. These days we see those textures on instagram edits. What we don’t see under those insta edits are beehives and horned rimmed glasses, ’56 Chevy’s, white, short sleeved button front shirts and neck ties on every man (and boy) or dresses on every woman (and girl). It can all feel so un-relatable or irrelevant to the new person, like they are looking at a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away..
But, that is not truth
The celebration dinner was mostly people that are currently attending. We all contributed to the meal and one of the original (charter) members gave us the low down on some of the church history. This was her space, this was her testimony to faith. A group of people, all related, that grew up at Zion, sang an old hymn - in German - because that is part of the history. And I didn’t understand a word and it was beautiful.
Old voices, shaky but strong. Young voices strong but unsure, singing a witness song in a shared language, but a language that is known better by some than others. And the beautiful glory is that this is our faith, right? This is our shared heritage is it not? It doesn't matter when a church first began, whether it started it’s first sermon in German or Chinese or Swahili or Aramaic or Greek or Hebrew. None of that matters when we are all part of the bigger church. We are all part of the redemption story. Whether you were there at the beginning, middle or end you were.. are.. have been placed by God.
Your story, your redemption song is no less important than Paul’s or Peter’s or Martin Luther or C.S. Lewis or St. Francis or Mary Magdalene. This is called being part of the family of God.
It is beautiful and complicating and challenging and sanctifying and we can’t deny the history; knowing that the people before us helped to lay the foundation for us to build on and we continue the build by putting our parts on for the next people. Our job, as with the ones before us is to make sure the cornerstone stays in plays and is the constant in the building up of the church. HE is in all of it.
He is the person who built the pews, he’s in the nursery, the board room and the kitchen that has cooked 230,142 meals. He is in the families and the people that have come and gone and the ones that have been there from the beginning and persevered through the struggles to see the church rise and fall, and rise again. He is in the homeless that come by for soup on Thursday and he is in the memory of all we love that have passed form this time to eternity. He is in the moms that battle with their kids to just sit still and be quiet for one moment and the pastor that labours over every word he will share that Sunday morning. He is in the people that just can’t make it every Sunday and the person that is there without fail every Sunday and is doing all the things.
He is woven through the whole church by the people of the church and when we focus on that truth there is no long long ago. It all becomes glorious and beautiful and eternal. The reality is we are all part of the same heritage, we all have the same inheritance.
Never before has the phrase “great cloud of witnesses” beard such weight.
To the glory of God the Father, Jesus the Saviour and the Holy Spirit our guide
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