Texts: Matthew 21: 1-11; Matthew 25: 31-46
Dreams of a Parish House: Revisited
I won’t be preaching the sermon I intended today. It’s the final Sunday of Lent, and I had hoped to return to the theme of healing in its many different connotations this morning. I had also planned to include Jesus’s piece of street theater into the morning, when he parodies a military procession by riding a donkey into Jerusalem, moving inexorably toward his confrontation with the authorities in that city. We’ll get there by the time we sing our final hymn. And we’ll attend to those events later in the week. For now, however, I wish to attend to some instruction that Jesus provides his disciples after that fateful ride into the city, but before the hammer is dropped. Jesus knows the score. He knows what’s coming. And he uses the intervening calm before the storm to insure, one last time, that his teachings have been understood.
One such teaching, delivered shortly before the events of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday commence, has to do with how people might recognize Jesus after he has gone. You know the passage. Lord, when did we see you hungry, some people ask, and the response is swift: insofar as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me, Jesus says. Did you feed hungry people? Did you care for the sick? Did you clothe the naked? Did you welcome the stranger? Then you welcomed Jesus. Did you refuse to do such things? Well, then, you may have missed Jesus entirely. That’s the backdrop against which this Palm Sunday shall unfold. That’s the teaching I wish to recall on this Sunday before Easter.
But first, a little story. Back in 2013, shortly after I had been invited to serve this congregation, I read through David Good’s collection of sermons, published under the title A Place of Grace. They were, and are, extraordinary for their craft and literary power, but also for their wisdom. I confess to feeling a little intimidated while reading them, hoping that I could offer something even half as well as what all of you were used to receiving on a weekly basis. But I also felt absolutely uplifted and thrilled by what I read, realizing that I felt entirely at home in the vision contained in those many sermons. As one who sometimes felt like a theological and spiritual outlier, as one who often wondered if there were churches where I might actually find a home, David’s sermons were powerfully reassuring to me, for here, evidently, was a place of grace that felt entirely consonant with who I was.
One of the sermons that I recall most vividly was entitled “Painting the Manger: A Few Dreams for Our Parish House,” originally preached on December 5th, 1993.[1] The Parish house, where our Fellowship Hall and library and Sunday School rooms are located, had just been completed, and volunteers were busy painting the rooms, preparing to put the building to use. And David took that Sunday, the first Sunday of that Advent Season, to lay out his vision for the ministries the Parish House might eventually provide. The central, anchoring vision wasn’t one of potluck dinners or coffee hours, important as those are. The anchoring vision was that the new Parish House might host a food pantry.
I revisited that sermon this past week. I’d like to use it as an occasion to reflect upon some of our fundamental commitments as a faith community. And I’d like to use it as a means of reminding ourselves of how our Food Pantry ever came to be in the first place. It’s a guiding vision that can orient us as we struggle to determine the future of the Food Pantry that operates in our space. More about that in just a bit. For now, I’d simply like to share a few insights from that sermon, preached in this pulpit some 26 years ago.
David writes that a member of this church had come in search of food, and he had recommended they go to the Old Lyme Town Hall, where a local food pantry was then housed. That person was turned away, because they did not reside within the town of Old Lyme. The irony was that the person in question had once lived in Old Lyme, but had to move out because affordable housing couldn’t be found. For those of you who may worry about the changes being wrought throughout our society, I wish to reassure you: on this score, some things do not change, even after 26 years.
The sermon goes on to suggest that as social services have been cut, cities have assumed a greater role in addressing the problems of our country. Except, David notes, “their food pantries are in short supply. Their soup kitchens and emergency shelters are terribly overcrowded. Something is wrong if a small town won’t even open up its food pantry except to those who are bona fide, certified residents of the town. From a national or more global perspective, something is wrong with this policy.”
That insight led to a dream, that this church would open its own food pantry, and that anyone, from anywhere, could come into this building, and could count on receiving a bag of groceries, no questions asked. It was a vision for young people in particular. Let me quote David’s words one more time: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this community became known for what might be called a Compassion Team? Wouldn’t it be great if every day, our new Parish House was teeming with young people organizing and stacking food in our pantry and, with a warm smile, passing out bag after bag of groceries without all the bureaucratic and so-humiliating rules and regulations of our present system? You need a bag of groceries? Come and get it, no questions asked!”
It’s a beautiful vision. It wasn’t long before volunteers had mobilized to do just that – to provide a bag of groceries to anyone, anyone, who showed up at our doors, no matter where they came from. Eventually the operation grew, so much so that we began partnering with the Shoreline Soup Kitchens and Food Pantries to help us run and organize our food distribution. That’s been an effective and meaningful partnership for nearly twenty years now. But it’s been the members of this community, as well as volunteers from outside of our church, and indeed, from outside of our town, that have made the Food Pantry what it is.
This past summer, the novelist Dave Eggers found his way to Old Lyme in order to write about our Sanctuary efforts, a piece that eventually found its way into the New Yorker. He arrived early on a Saturday morning, when our food pantry was running at full tilt. People were gathered for breakfast, and they sat visiting with one another at tables in the fellowship hall. Guests were flowing through the basement, collecting groceries for the week ahead. And then they were moving up the elevator and out the side door, grocery carts rattling down the driveway and onto Lyme St. Meanwhile, volunteers were cheerfully greeting our guests, asking them about their week, making sure they had enough to get by. The Food Pantry was the first glimpse that Eggers had of this community, and I want you to know that it made a powerful impression on him. Yes, we were providing sanctuary to Malik, Zahida, and Roniya. “But you do this every week?” he asked.
We do. We do it with the support of this community. We do it through a team of extraordinary volunteers, some of whom have engaged in this work ever since David’s founding vision. And we do it through our longstanding partnership with Shoreline Soup Kitchens and Food Pantries. Just yesterday, I was visiting with some of the guests who show up here every single week. What I heard, a number of times throughout the morning, was that guests show up here on Saturdays because of the fellowship, because of the welcoming embrace that they feel in this place, because they’re treated with dignity and respect, because they’re understood to be a part of our wider family. Yes, with Shoreline’s help, we feed people every week. But we do more than that. We create a safe haven, a place of care and compassion that makes people want to be here. Every time I’m present, I marvel at the remarkable spirit that fills this place every Saturday morning. It’s something for which we can all be extremely proud. It’s one of the features that makes this community distinctive.
So you can imagine our surprise, our consternation, and our confusion, when Shoreline announced several weeks ago that it planned to close the food pantry that operates here. The ministers were stunned by the news. Our team of volunteers were stunned by the news. But I have to tell you, our guests were the most stunned of all. Many of them have been coming to this pantry for years, if not decades. They’ve come to depend upon the food they receive in this place, and many of them struggled to understand why they would suddenly be turned away. The reason they were given was that it had been both a financial decision, and a logistical one. Financially, they – we – were all told, the Old Lyme pantry is the most costly of the five pantries that Shoreline runs. And it was the most costly, we were told, because this pantry has had the practice of receiving a great number of people from outside of the 11 town region that Shoreline serves. Their mandate is to serve people exclusively from one of those 11 towns – Madison, Clinton, Killingworth, Westbrook, Chester, Deep River, Essex, Old Saybrook, Lyme, Old Lyme, and East Lyme. And so in the future, assuming the pantry had reopened, if you lived within one of those townships, you would be welcome. If you didn’t, you would need to make other arrangements.
Now, many of our guests come to us from New London, from Norwich, from Groton, or from other neighboring towns. And they observed that it seemed as though the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme no longer wanted people of color to find their way into Old Lyme. They observed that it seemed to be a form of redlining that was taking place. It’s not that there aren’t deep financial burdens in the 11 town region that Shoreline serves. It’s just that those towns are overwhelmingly Caucasian. Defining the boundary in such a firm way effectively prevents people of color from accessing the resources from our food pantry, or any of the others.
Recall the words from David’s sermon in 1993 once again: “Something is wrong if a small town won’t even open up its food pantry except to those who are bona fide, certified residents of the town. From a national or more global perspective, something is wrong with this policy.”
So look – no one at Shoreline is plotting how to keep people of color from accessing the resources of the 11 towns. This isn’t happening because closet racists are operating somewhere. That such people exist is incontrovertible, but that’s not Shoreline. What we do see happening, however, is the reproduction and reinforcement of long term systematic decisions that do have implications concerning race and class. And that’s unacceptable – to me, to Carleen, to Laura, and to our team of volunteers. It embarrassed me deeply to know that our guests, who have by now become friends to many of us, thought that FCCOL no longer wanted them here – they don’t distinguish between policies produced by Shoreline Soup Kitchens and those produced by the church. To them, FCCOL was telling them that they weren’t welcome. It troubled me to know that word would spread in New London and other towns that our church was engaged in policies that, wittingly or unwittingly, perpetuated and reinforced the racial and economic segregation that we otherwise are trying to dismantle.
I’m pleased to say that Shoreline has now chosen to reconsider their position. They’ve elected to keep this food pantry open. That was the result of a good many conversations, and I’m grateful that we shall continue to partner with Shoreline in order to feed hungry people within our region. And let it be said near and far that while a lot of people worked hard to being that about, Carleen deserves the lions share of the credit. That being said, however, Shoreline is insistent that they’re only in a position to serve people within the 11 town region defined by their mandate. That policy will take effect on January 1st, 2020 – not yesterday, as had originally been announced.
So listen…we’re disappointed with that decision. But nevertheless, I would have us receive that word from Shoreline in a spirit of grace. We may not like it, we may not agree with it, but it does represent a long time mission partner speaking in candor about what they can and cannot accomplish. And I believe we owe it to them to respect that decision. The process has left much to be desired, but after some honest conversation, and after a recalibration of the process by which the changes will come about, I simply understand Shoreline to be articulating its own limitations. Every organization faces financial and organizational challenges from time to time, and we must acknowledge the real challenges that Shoreline faces.
But ours is a partnership, and partnerships presume two parties, both of whom must be acknowledged if the partnership shall continue. Our mandate, preserved in David’s sermon and across twenty five years of practice, has to do with meeting the needs of those who come to us from outside the boundaries of the 11 towns, in addition to those who come from inside. That’s a mandate that lives within our work to feed hungry people, but it’s also a mandate we struggle to live out in each and every one of our ministries at FCCOL.
The other day, an interviewer asked me what the greatest challenge to ministry is today, and my response was unequivocal: it has to do with our imagination of space, and the boundaries we impose based on the arbitrary lines drawn around us. Up and down the scale, from homes and families, to towns, to states, to regions, and to entire countries, we’re beholden to ideologies that suggest that those on one side of a geographical marker are those before whom we’re responsible, while we bear little or no responsibility for those on the other side of that marker. I can take care of my family, but not yours. We’ll take care of those within our town borders, but not those outside. We’ll draw rigid lines around our national borders, or our national identities, but we won’t be held responsible for those at the edge of the gates, for those on the other side of our walls and fences. Everyone in their right place.
I don’t know about you, but that’s not the world I wish to live in. It’s not what this church practices. And it’s sure not the world we encounter in the Bible. Which means that we have work to do before that January 1st deadline.
The individuals that come to us from outside of the 11 town region do so not because they’re gaming the system. They do so because food insecurity in this region is real, and it is extensive. There are services in New London. There are services in Norwich and Groton and some of the other towns. But they are far more limited in scope. Not only that, to my knowledge, ours is the only pantry that operates on a Saturday, meaning that it is available to a wider array of people who work during the week. And we have become known throughout the region for the hospitality and good energy that abound in this place on Saturday mornings. We’ve been successful in helping people feel at home in this place, something for which we can all be proud. And that’s not something we can carelessly cast aside.
And so let me share with you my own dream, a revisitation of the original dream offered some 26 years ago. My dream would entail that we allow Shoreline to meet the needs of local residents, and that we find ways to express gratitude that that mission is being fulfilled in our midst. Thank God that it is. But my dream extends beyond that, for faith communities cannot, must not, be seduced by the ideology of artificial spatial boundaries, beyond which our concern does not reach. And so between now and January 1st, we’ll need a small team of dedicated volunteers to envision a way to continue to feed the people that come to us from afar. And we need that same task force to begin exploring how we might partner with other institutions in our region to address the very real food insecurity that people face. We can’t do it alone. We need Shoreline Soup Kitchens and Food Pantries within this mix, and they need us. But we both need a good many other institutions, agencies, and foundations to think critically about how to address food insecurity. Most importantly, my dream is that on January 1st, there will be a seamless transition, and that our guests will feel the unwavering love and support that they have grown used to around here.
What do you think? Can we do it? As we march into this week called Holy, can we remember just how to find Jesus when it seems he is not to be found? Can we remember that it will be in the hungry people that come to us week after week that Jesus is to be glimpsed? If we can, we stand a chance of making it through the darkness of the week to come. We stand a chance of making it to Easter morning.
[1] All quotes from A Place of Grace: The Gospel According to the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, by David Good. Pgs. 22-25. Published by, and available from, FCCOL.
