The Final Sunday on the South Lawn [Proper 25B - Psalm 126]

 

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Psalm 126

 

The Final Sunday on the South Lawn

 

Sometimes I see old pictures, pictures from a time that no longer exists, pictures from way back in the year 2019.  And in those old pictures the world looks different.  There are no masks, of course, very little concern about personal space, and an alarming lack of distancing, and that is always a bit striking.  But more than that, I see in those old pre-pandemic pictures a people who have not yet lived under the cloud of disease.  They have no idea that life is about to stop.  And change.  And change.  And change.  And scar them in ways still not entirely known.  They have no idea how many people they will bury, hundreds of thousands of people killed by a virus of which they have not yet heard.  

 

Those pre-pandemic people had no idea how a world would respond to a global pandemic of this magnitude.  They couldn’t know where lines would be drawn, where fractures in the foundations of our society would form.  They could not predict the fear and the frustration, the fights over masks and vaccines.  They probably thought, that when confronted by a global crisis, folks would come together, to face, as a united people, an insurmountable problem.  And they never could have guessed just how long it would last and how much discipline and sacrifice and endurance it would demand of us.

 

When I accepted the call to become your rector, lo those many years ago, I came with hopes and plans.  I arrived with dreams in my heart and the trust that the God who brought us together would bless our future.  I had in my mind an idea of what our shared ministry would look like.  I can assure you, those plans did not include navigating a pandemic or recording sermon videos from my backyard or answering questions about ventilation systems or celebrating the Eucharist backdropped by a small tree.

 

And yet here we are, sitting on the South Lawn, for what I am told will be the last Sunday before returning to the space from which we have long been exiled.  This space, this outdoor space, has become a home away from home.  It has cradled us for sixteen months of Sundays – some of them quite cold, cold enough to inspire a surge in our on-line viewership, but also to inspire a sense of pride in many of our members, and even a little attention from the national press; some of the Sundays were very sunny, so sunny that I am glad I know the Eucharistic prayers as well as I do; and almost all of them dry.

 

In June of last year, when many of us had been mostly confined to our homes for weeks, this lawn offered us a place to be together.  It was a place where we could see faces in three dimensions and hear other voices recite the words of the Lord’s Prayer in concert with our own.  Preaching to people for that first time, after three months of preaching to my phone, meant more to me than I could have ever anticipated.  This lawn hosted Mthr. Claire’s ordination to the priesthood.  It was where we welcomed saints through the waters of baptism and where we said goodbye to others.  When we received the host in September, after six months of hunger, we did so on this holy ground.  This grass has tasted the blood of Christ and holy waters and even some candle wax.  Like the pews inside, it is now saturated with the prayers of this congregation.

 

After the destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians in around the year 587 BCE, and after a long exile, the people of Judah, those who never gave up hope, returned to their land.  And from the rubble, of their buildings and of their lives, they rebuilt the Temple – not exactly as it was, but as they needed it to be.  And they stood in the shadow of that new age, wearing the scars of the past, changed but perhaps more deeply committed to those things that had sustained them in their times of trouble.  And in the steely cold of the shadows, their dreams suddenly appeared more vivid.  And their laughter meant more because they had earned it.  And their joy was more complete because they had walked the valley of the shadow of death.

 

Rather than forget the exile or downplay the pain, they embraced it as sacred memory.  Because it did not last forever.  Because the tears they sowed, grew into new songs of joy.

 

And like them, it is now our turn to say: the Lord has done great things for us.  And that is why we are here, together, today, a community that has survived hard things, that has traversed rocky roads, that has learned to dream the dreams of exiles.  We have shed tears, but we stand in this field with the God of the Harvest at our side.  The past has taught us what our present is teaching us: that God is with us, that God has a future for us. 

 

I stand on this South Lawn today and I look around.  And it feels to me, that while perhaps normal has lost its meaning, our move into the nave will introduce a little normalcy into our lives.  And this time of wilderness worship, will, I hope, be a strange but special memory.  Like the ancient Hebrews, perhaps we will look back on these days when God set a table for us under a blue sky as proof that there is healing even in times of illness.

 

We made this journey together.  Next week we will step into our beautiful building together.  And that is the only way we will realize the future God wants for us: together.  We will see better days; we might also see harder days.  But our memories will always remind us that the Lord has done great things for us. 

 

In the most challenging moments, I have been sustained by your amazing faith and your dedication.  In my moments of doubt, I have been humbled by your trust in me and your willingness to walk with God on uncharted paths.  After all we have been through, I now see in your faces a warmth able to cut through the coldest wind gust; I hear the hymns of praise you belted into a world of despair; I know the ways your love reached across distance and divides. 

 

It was never my intention, when I joined you as your rector, to lead you through a pandemic.  But together we are making our way – with love as our compass and grace in our steps.  I will never forget, I will always remember these many challenging months, these months of difficult decisions and unprecedented change, these months on the lawn.  And when I do, I will be reminded that, when life was hard and the future unclear, the Lord did great things for us.