Rev. 21
“More
Than Heirlooms”
This past week, I attended a pastor’s retreat at camp
Johnsonburg. The theme of the retreat
was story telling. We sat around a fire,
with full length windows on either side, so the gorgeous fall foliage accented
the beauty of the burning logs. Our
speaker shared his stories, each beginning with a scripture and each ending
with a connection to how God is present in not just the stories of our
scripture but in the story of our lives.
We were then invited to share stories of our own lives, stories from our
ministry, stories of life, and stories of death.
He shared a story on Revelations 21 of the new heavens
and the new earth. His story was of one of
the reality of the world, that sometimes really bad things do happen and how,
as a people of faith, we live in this time knowing God’s promise that in the fullness
of God’s time God’s love overcomes oppression, injustice, suffering, and even
death. We live in this imbetween time,
this time of proclaiming God’s work in Jesus Christ, a season of resurrection,
but still not the fullness of all knees bowing before God, and embracing God’s
love in their lives.
But the thing is, we have stories, we have stories of
when God’s fullness is present in our lives.
We have glimpses of God’s future glory if we open ourselves to interpreting
our life stories through the lens of scripture.
As I began to think more deeply about my stories, and
this particular day we call All Saints Day, I began to think about the people
in my life that have gone before. I
remember visiting my grandmother and how she was so adamant that there be no
fighting over her things after she died that she gave us all masking tape and a
marker and we were suppose to go around and put our name on specific
items. Grandma wanted her stuff to be passed
along. There were some really special
things that I wanted. I was one of the
last of the grandchildren not to have children, and Grandma had made all the
other great grandchildren baby blankets.
Well, wouldn’t you know, she had a hope chest, and in the chest were a
pile of baby blankets waiting, waiting for future babies, babies not yet born,
but waiting for future possibility, future expectations, future love. Maybe like God’s hope chest of the new
heavens and the new earth, filled with God’s love for not just what has been
but for what will be.
Sometimes, the things we receive from loved ones are
family heirlooms, other times they are deep connections to our loved one’s
life. I have a few items passed along to
me that have very little meaning to me. I keep them only because they belong to
grandma or grandpa. But there are other
things that are more than heirlooms, they hold a reminder to stories, to
memories, to moments where our lives connected and our stories
intertwined. From both of my
grandmothers, I asked for one of their quilting books. They were both avid quilters and this is an
art form that I am deeply drawn to.
Although I have only done a few small quilts, I plan to embrace this art
form more deeply as my girls get a little older.
Another item I claimed, was my grandmother’s Bible
Quilt. I only learned of this quilt on
her 90th birthday when my mother and aunt put together a book for
all the grandchildren. After grandma’s
death, I used the Pastor card and said, I am the only pastor in the family, I
get the quilt. This quilt is by far more
than just a heirloom, just as our scriptures are by far more than just an
heirloom. It is grandma’s faith
story. She picked the fabrics, she
picked the stories to remember, she retold the stories by her art, and her love
for God and her love of telling God’s story is infused through this quilt. As I
think about all Saints Day, I think about all the stories of faith that were
embraced by the generations before us and how people sought to tell the story,
sought to share the love of God with others, with their family and with the
next generation. Our stories are more
than heirlooms, our stories when told through the lens of faith, illustrate to
the world our trust in God, our understanding that is at work bringing
wholeness and goodness into this world.
Our Bible, our scripture is more than an heirloom, it is
a living story. A story of people that
did their best to understand God in their lives and how they were to live as a
people connected to God. All Saints day
is more than just remember our loved ones, it is a time to embrace the stories
of those that formed us, fashioned us, molded us into the people we are
becoming. We are, only because of the
lives before us, the good, the bad, and the ugly. It all is a part of who we are. Communion is more than just a heirloom. Here is a story that we tell over and over
again, not just through words, but through action. Because we believe in God’s promises, because
we believe that God is at work in the world, because we believe we are called
to be the yeast of God’s love that works within the dough, we break bread and
share the cup living into God’s story.
We are not just retelling the story, we are not just connecting the
story to a moral or ethical meaning, we are participating with in the story, we
are participating within the great chain of saints, those that came before, and
those that have not yet been born. We
are the now of God’s work, the now of God’s promise, the now of God’s story,
and in the bread and in the cup we are united with the entire body of
Christ. This is God’s promise, this is
the new heaven and the new earth, this is the time when knees will bow and
people will praise God with one voice.
Embrace your story, embrace the moment, and be fed on God’s covenant of
grace, reconciliation, and newness. In
Christ, we are a new creation, we are the not yet, but someday will fully
be.
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