I gave the homily for our Saturday night Quilt Camp closing worship. I wanted to take a minute and make a record of the experience before it slips away.
Our Bible verse for the overall retreat was Psalm 91: 4, and during the evening devotional time of the first two nights, we focused on the first part, about God covering us with God's feathers and sheltering us beneath wings. We talked about wings and feathers and angels. We had a prayer board in the shape of wings, and we had feathers where we wrote prayers.
I wanted my homily to go in a slightly different direction--what happens when we don't feel that sheltering space? What happens when it looks like everyone else's prayers get answered and not ours? How many of us feel too old for whatever might have once seemed to make us special?
We had begun the retreat by talking about where we had sensed the presence of angels, and I started my sermon by talking about the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary, but that's really a young person's story. Can you imagine if Gabriel came to any of us with that possibility? We'd say, "Hmm, mother of the Messiah--not really my calling thanks."
So I thought about other people who make an appearance in our Advent and Christmas texts. I thought about Elizabeth, who gets to be the mother of John the Baptist. But she doesn't even get the angel message herself; it comes through her husband, who laughs at the idea that his very old wife might have a baby. He's struck mute through the whole pregnancy for his disbelief. But it's still pregnancy, still not everyone's idea of fulfillment.
I continued: I call your attention to a bit later in the story, when Joseph and Mary bring the baby Jesus to the Temple. Simeon has been promised that he will not die without seeing the Messiah, and he holds the baby Jesus, holding the light of the world in his arms. But I call your attention to Anna in Luke 2: 36-38 (I read the text). We may think of Mary Magdalen as the first evangelist, the first to tell of the empty tomb, but I've come to think of Anna as the first, as she goes out to tell everyone about the Messiah.
Of course, it's sobering to realize that by the time the Gospel of Luke was written, that very Temple has been destroyed, and it will be thousands of years before there will be another one.
Then I took the turn to quilting: it's a bit like quilting. Some of us have everything we need, the right material, the sewing machine that is up to the job. Other times, we discover we didn't buy enough cloth, and it's no longer available, and we have to figure out what to do. There are times we are given a quilt started generations before, and it comes with no instructions, and we have to figure out a way. And we, too, will die. Maybe someone else will complete our projects, maybe not. But we continue to do what we can do.
The life of faith is like this. Some times, everything goes well. Other times, the sewing machine explodes. But we are in a group that can keep us going, keep us encouraged, help us solve the problems.
I concluded with what I think is the most important thing to remember: when we feel abandoned by God or abandoned by our quilt group, we're not. God is still there, although we may not be able to hear God. Even someone like Mother Theresa has felt this way, as we discovered, when her letters were published after her death. Some people thought her doubt diminished her, but I felt just the opposite, this relief that if even someone like Mother Theresa feels doubt, then I shouldn't feel alarm when I feel abandoned.
The trick is to keep going, keep working on our quilts, keep believing until the time when it isn't so hard to keep going.
As I delivered the homily, I noticed a few people wiping their eyes. I noticed people smiling and nodding--happily, I didn't see any angry expressions.
I felt good about my homily, and I got good feedback, from people who appreciated the brevity to those who appreciated the message which gave them hope. But most importantly, I feel that my homily spoke to those who were feeling loss and grief, emotions that are never very far away, especially for those of us who are on the older side of life.
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