♪ By the waters the waters of Babylon
We lay down and wept
And wept
For thee Zion
We remember thee
Remember thee
Remember thee Zion.♪
This a moment of great joy.
It is a somber moment…
This is a moment to remember for generations to come…
We have been a people in Exile…
But unlike the Exiles that occur because of war, not one nation, but all nations have been in exile for the last year
A virus has moved through the world. Between 3 and 4 million people have perished as a result of the coronavirus.
Estimates could be much higher…
♪ By the rivers of Babylon—
We have
sat down and wept
when we remembered Zion.
Today, after more than a year, we find ourselves sitting together in our beloved sanctuary again.
It is a moment of hope
Let’s sit together and let this moment sink in…
**
On page 232 of volume one of the History of Jaffrey, by Albert Annett and Alice E. Lehtinen, there begins a section that narrates the establishment of house worship that was, at that time, known as the Jaffrey East Congregational Church:
Toward the middle of the 18th century the balance of population in Jaffrey was swinging toward the east, with the thriving Village of East Jaffrey the focal point. Already the Baptist and Universalist societies had built meeting-houses there, but the people of the Congregational faith still traveled to the center of town to attend public worship in the brick Meetinghouse where the Reverend Laban Ainsworth was the venerated minister. Convenience soon demanded a nearer place of worship, and on March 24th 1849 a group of citizens in the village met at the house of John Verder, to “take into consideration the expediency of building a meeting house in said village and forming a society for maintaining public Worship in the same. On April 24th land was purchased from Jonas M. Melville, east of his residence.
The building committee hired Samuel N. Laws to build the new edifice, which was completed in 1850. On December 10 1849, twenty three individuals requested letters of dismission from the church at Jaffrey Center and recommendation to the new church at East Jaffrey and thus became its first members. By an Ecclesiastical council which convened on January 9th 1850, the church was formed under the name of the Jaffrey East Orthodox Congregational Church.”
Did you catch the vital statistics of that timetable?
In March of 1849 a group of folks from east Jaffrey met over at John Verder’s place to talk about building a church in East Jaffrey. A month later, in April, they bought some land from Jonas Melville, and by January of the following year the new church was already standing, and serving a congregation of twenty three faithful…
Ground was broken in April 1849, and worshiping began in January 1850.
April through January…
Hmmm…
Nine months…
Isn’t that an interesting detail?
It seems the gestational period of this church was the same as that of a human child!
And like a child, this place is sacred…
Upon this plot of land, purchased from Jonas Melville, walls were built. A roof of slate. A heating system. — things you would find in any building in these parts.
But this is not just a building.
Not just four walls and a roof.
This is a sanctuary.
It is now the year 2021.
This church, first convened in 1850, is now 171 years old.
What does that mean?
That means that, when this church was built, the audacious political and social experiment which was the United States of America, was a mere 74 years old.
It means that the economy of this fledgling nation was still based on the enslavement of African people.
The American Civil War that would embroil the nation in its crucible of pain and death was still a decade away.
This church was only 15 years old when the emancipation proclamation freed the enslaved peoples of this nation.
At fifty years of age, this church would have seen the turn of the twentieth century, and at seventy years — in August of 1920, the women who sat in these pews, were given the right to vote.
Young men who sat in these pews departed to serve, and sometimes perish in the battlefields of two world wars, in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan…
Let’s take another quiet breath and look around.
These pews…
The tall windows that let the sunshine fall in from the East…
The gentle shadows where our hearts find solace…
This humble place, built on a piece of property purchased from Jonas Melville, sitting beneath the slope of the great mountain — this place is the spot where generations of people have bowed their heads in prayer…
Where mothers and fathers have asked God to return their sons from battle…
This quiet space where each of us, has lifted our most earnest hopes in our hands and presented them to our God…
It is in this place, that people from this corner of the world, have gathered to express the yearnings of their hearts.
Through all the upheaval of American history…
Through all the long decades of struggle as we tried and failed, and tried again, to achieve a more perfect union…
Through all of it, this place…
This place
Has been a place of intention…
A place of communion with every sad sweet love that makes us human…
A place to try to live into the great boundary breaking love that we learned from our mutual friend Jesus.
Our mutual friend Jesus
Who said:”Do not let your hearts be troubled…”
Why Jesus?
How?
How can we not be troubled, when we live in such troubling times.
He gives us an answer:
In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.
Jesus tells us that he goes to prepare those dwelling places for us…
The Greek word that is translated here as “dwelling place” is the word “Mon-ay” — it is pronounced like the name of the French impressionist painter, “Monet”
This word appears only twice in the New Testament, and both times it is uttered by Jesus.
There is a dual meaning to this special word that only Jesus utters.
In the first sense, a dwelling place is a place where one can go.
A place where you can go, not just for a short stay, but for your life — a home, in the most profound sense.
In the second sense, a dwelling place can be you…
You can be a place where something goes to live. In this second sense, you become a home for something.
Two senses…
We can abide in a place…
And something can make us its abode.
God does not live only between these walls.
God is not sheltered, only, by this slate roof…
God is everywhere.
God was with us in our homes during the pandemic.
God, certainly, was with us in the parking lot of 54 Main street.
And yet, there is something special about this place.
There is something remarkable…
And today, as we sit quietly together, we feel it, as we have never felt it before…
This place is not just for walls and a roof.
This place is where we come to be transformed…
Here, we come, to become…
Here we come to become homes for God’s love.
In this place, on a piece of Jonas Melville’s land, we commune with an accumulation of generations of hopes and prayers…
Here we abide in God’s love
And God’s love abides in us…
Let me tell a story…
A story is a good way to show you how a building becomes a sanctuary…
Many of you were probably present when this happened, because it happened during the memorial service for Sandy Carland.
Our cantankerous, wonderful, salty, beautiful, friend Sandy…
I miss you Sandy…
During Sandy’s memorial service I invited the people gathered to share brief stories about Sandy’s life, and Sandy’s grandson — a lovely bi-racial young man — raised his hand and spoke. Sandy’s grandson talked lovingly about coming to church with his grandmother when he was very young, and as he was speaking, he pointed at the pew in front of him, and he told all of here, that right there, beneath his fingers, were the teeth marks that he had left in the pew when he was a restless little boy.
This is love.
This is community.
This is sanctuary.
Welcome home my friends
Welcome to our hearts, O God.
(Please join me in humming one verse of Blessed be the tie that binds.)
Amen