Building on the Foundation
Stone wall in Maine
June 11th, 2023
Year A; 2nd Pentecost
Genesis 12: 1-9
Psalm 33: 1-12
Matthew 9: 9-13, 18-26
Genesis 12:1-9
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.”
And he got up and followed him. And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well. When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And the report of this spread throughout that district.
Homily by the Rev. Megan Limburg
In the name of the Holy Three. Amen.
Our sabbatical time in Maine was glorious and restful, and included many walks and several hikes. No matter if we were walking in the neighborhood where we stayed in Brunswick, or at the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden, or out in the woods, we saw stone walls everywhere.
Maine, and in fact all of New England, is famous for its stone walls. At the Botanical Garden an informational sign gave the following info about those stone walls including that:
“Most stone was scoured up and collected by glaciers, then left scattered across the land when the ice melted. There is so much stone in Maine and throughout New England that when Europeans…..came here, they had to clear it out of pastures and farm fields to make way for agriculture (these numerous stones were dubbed New England potatoes by (folks in the 18th century.)It is estimated that by 1870 there were an incredible 240,000 miles of stone walls crisscrossing New England—that’s the distance from the earth to the moon!”
As I took my daily walk in our neighborhood, I passed the wall that is shown on the cover of your bulletin. While many of the walls used those potato shaped stones, that were more round and oddly shaped, this wall was made of some round pieces but more often slabs of stone.
As I passed this wall each morning I enjoyed studying and yes, then photographing it.
This wall made me think of an image I often use for describing our lives, with all the joys and suffering, the darkness and the light, an image of threads weaving into a tapestry, the myriad threads coming together to create the beauty that is each human life.
But as I spent time each morning with this wall, and many others as we took our hikes and walks, the image of building a long stone wall came to mind for me, for our lives and, even more, for the lives of our churches.
I’ll come back to this image but first want to pull in our readings today, both of which speak of call. Abram, not yet renamed by God as Abraham, is a 75-year-old man minding his own business, when God comes to him with a word: Go.
“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house….”
Abram is called to go, and go far, and to leave much and to risk, and trust, and to believe that God is doing far more with his life than he can imagine!
Our gospel too speaks of call. Matthew was a tax collector, a much-reviled profession in the community of the Jews, as he was a fellow Jew working for the Romans to get the Empire’s taxes from them. And tax collectors were well known for overcharging and then pocketing the extra for themselves. So they were wealthy, but friendless and despised.
And Jesus sees him, at work, so it is clear what Matthew does, and Jesus still calls him: Follow! Another action word, like Go!
Follow me, Jesus says to Matthew, and he does, he gets up from his booth, and walks away from all that he was, leaving much and risking much, and trusting in that word of action, Follow.
A 75-year-old man and his wife, a tax collector, you and me, and Trinity Church and St. Mary’s Whitechapel, called and told to go, and follow.
One commentator I listened to this week said that God is always doing a new thing in our lives, in our churches, in our world, and our first requirement is to receive it, to receive that new thing.
I found this observation comforting, as new things can be startling, disruptive, and even upsetting. I was comforted to know that our first call is just to receive, to listen, and to be willing to hear the new call; all we are required to do first is receive, receive God’s new thing, God’s new nudge, God’s suggestion!
Just receive it.
And going back to the stone walls, as I looked at all the walls, I could see in them the various sized and shaped stones, the large and small events and moments in our lives, like the threads in the tapestry, the stones in the wall, fitting together, and all part of the larger beauty of the lives we are called to live.
But I kept finding myself thinking less of our individual lives, and more of the lives and histories of SMWC and Trinity.
What are the foundational stones of our churches? Where did each of these long walls begin?
Every time Tim and I drove into a new village in Maine, I’d read the welcome sign out loud: “this village established in 1744 or 1769 or 1794”, and every time Tim would reply: “well, that’s nice but SMWC had already been in existence for 50 years by then, or 100,or 150 years!”
In looking at these old seaports we were struck again by how old and amazing SMWC’s history is.
And her history, her age, is the foundational stone of SMWC, all that the church has seen and survived, and still stands and serves as a place of God’s light, after more than 350 years. The first thing I was told when I came to serve here was about SMWC history.
And for Trinity, the foundational stone was the story of the rector and his wife and children living in the SMWC parsonage in the 1880s, located “in town” in Lancaster Courthouse, and the wife wanting a Sunday school for their children, and so she started one at their house, that stood then very close to where Trinity stands now. And the Sunday school class quickly grew, as the children of the village, and beyond, came to the parsonage for Sunday school. And on that foundation Trinity was established as a church.
Caring for and caring about and teaching children is the foundational stone of Trinity, and I was told that story as soon as I came to Trinity.
A long history at SMWC, a call to serve children at Trinity, blessed foundational stones, but alone they do not build a whole wall.
God is always doing a new thing, and our first call is to receive it. And to hear those actions words in the call, those invitations like Abram and Sarai heard, like Matthew heard, go, follow, journey.
And we are called to listen and be willing to give up much and to risk. And we are called to trust in the God that has built these two churches and chosen well the stones at our foundations, and to listen with new ears as to what new thing that we cannot even imagine that God is offering, what new slab, new rock, new stone is next and will build the ministries of these churches, individually or together, going forward.
You might notice that the wall on the cover of the bulletin, like all the walls we saw, is not very tall, but it is very long. These stone walls were built originally to mark property lines, or to corral and provide shelter for sheep, thus they did not need to be tall, but they did need to be long.
The long wall of Trinity and the long wall of SMWC, and the even longer wall they create together as yoked churches, has offered shelter to generations of sheep, generations of tax collectors and sinners, for those who are sick in body, mind or spirit, to each of us for so many years.
As we look ahead to the next stone that will continue building our wall, as we look ahead to the next 10 years and beyond for our church, for our churches, may we be open to hear, open to listen for the new thing God is doing here and receive it.
Amen.