Pastor’s Valentine Letter
Ruth 1:1-18
February 11, 2007

The other day – Thursday – I spend at home nursing a cold and this sermon. Neither were going very well. I wanted to speak of Ruth and starting life all over again. I wanted to speak of how God works not only through kings and kingdoms, but through people who find themselves strangers in a strange land, trusting their journey and their God.

It’s a good topic. I’ll take it up another time. This time I sat down with kleenex, aspirin, hot tea, my bible and a pad of paper that stayed very blank.

I found myself thinking about Valentine’s Day. I get a little anxious around Valentine’s day. It’s not that my wife Beatrice is particularly demanding about Valentine’s Day – she’s not -- but she does like me to remember the day, and I have a tendency to forget. So about a week before Valentine’s, I start writing myself notes in places I won’t miss them and reminding myself to think of something I didn’t do last year. Remembering and being thoughtfully romantic is not one of my sterling gifts, and I am grateful to Bea that she seems to find other things about me worth staying in the marriage for.

At any rate, it occurred to me as I sat there that I’ve been pastor here at South Church for a long time – nearly eighteen years when today the average length of a pastorate is 3-5 five years – and I ought to be grateful that you have overlooked my shortcomings and stayed the course with me this long. So I thought maybe I should write a Valentine’s sermon to you. Things have frequently been tough around here over the past eighteen years, but there have been lovely moments – moments sometimes light and sometimes deep – and I want you to know that I cherish them. Outsiders have often said to me I should write a book about my experiences at South Church, but my own feeling is that you have to be in midst of it all to get it – you have to be here to understand how the struggle can be hard and beautiful at the same time. Outsiders might laugh or weep or be amazed – but they just wouldn’t understand how you can do all those things at once.

I am reminded, for example, of sitting with Col. George Mallis, the day after his wife Dorothy died. Those of you who have been around for a while will of course remember George: smart, opinionated to an extreme, could be kind of a bully in meetings once in a while, terribly proud of his service in the army. But that day after Dorothy died, he told me a little of their love story. I wouldn’t have known it – when I visited George and Dorothy at their home out on Shaker Road, they were constantly battling and bickering – all broad swords and short strokes as some marriages can get to be. But that day George told me about growing up a poor Greek kid on Hungry Hill who didn’t even know much English when he went to school, and how in high school he met Dorothy, small, lovely, smart as a whip and rich. How George fought off other suitors and how Dorothy’s family dropped her when she married him. How they never had children, but as he spoke to me he looked down at his hands and told me that after sixty years of marriage she was still the most precious thing in his life and he didn’t see how he could live without her.

He didn’t – less than forty-eight hours later, George was gone, gone after Dorothy.

I remember another kind of love story. A few years into my ministry here I was concerned that there were a number of women with cancer and I didn’t know that I could meet their spiritual needs. So I asked Barbara Matthews and Maureen Carlson to lead a cancer support group for women. I sat in on the first couple sessions – they gathered about eight to twelve women together twice a month and called themselves Phyllis’ group after a former Christian Education Director here at South Church who had died of cancer. About a year after the group began, they invited me to come sit with them one evening. It was mostly politeness on their part – they didn’t need me. We said a prayer and then those find ladies got right into it – what cancer does to your love life was one of the topics they touched on that night. I remember Lynda Haynes looking at me after a while and she said – why, Peter, you’re blushing! I was – it’s true. They all laughed. I was amazed at the places they could go together.

They’re almost all gone now, those women in Phyllis’ group. If you look in the Guild Room on the wall, though, you’ll find a beautiful cross-stitch with ribbons put together by Arline Robbins. Each ribbon represents one of the women in that group, and there’s a lovely silk butterfly rising across the ribbons – a symbol of resurrection, life and laughter that can’t be defeated or forgotten.

That reminds me also of sitting by the Chrismon tree during Advent some years ago. You know – the Big Christmas tree in the Parish Hall put together in the 1970’s by the Afternoon Guild? Bud Warren sat by that tree – I asked her to because I was afraid we would forget the story of how that tree came about – Bud sat there and explained about all the symbols of Christ that Afternoon Guild members made. Then she laughed and she said that one morning at the end of the project she announced to her beloved husband Roger over the breakfast table that the Chrismon Tree was finally finished and he replied: So does that mean I won’t find glitter in my wheaties anymore?

And that calls to mind a wedding that stands out in my memory. Ellie Lammers and Ginny Robbins will remember this. Brian and Fatmata Williams were members of St. John’s up the hill, but St. Johns pastor was away that summer. So Brian and Fatmata – who were both refugees from violence in Sierra Leone in West Africa, planned their wedding with me. When the day came – I’ll never forget it – hundreds of people came, many all the way from Sierra Leone, including the bride’s father with two of his wives – the day broke beautifully and the crowd arrived dressed with all the grandeur and color of African finery. The groom and his groomsmen were dressed in white linen with gold trim and the bride’s party were in orange’s and green’s and purples and silvers. Instead of an organ processional, an African drum group played softly as the bride stepped up this aisle, then louder and louder until the walls shook – but went silent as the bride’s hand touched the groom’s. I felt chills go up and down my spine.

Speaking of the sanctuary – there was a time when we had some serious ceilling repair to do, back in the mid-nineties. We were out of this sanctuary for six months. We had scaffolding on three great levels across the sanctuary so the workers could work at different levels. It was awesome to climb up into the rafters and touch the ceiling – and it answered an old question. Somebody had said that originally this ceiling was blue with gold stars. Can you imagine???!! Yes, indeed, when we chipped off the old plaster and scraped paint off, there was a royal blue with gold stars. I’ve still got some pieces somewhere in my office. Can you imagine those wild old Victorians and their idea of what church should look like?

And then there was the time we uncovered those lovely stained glass windows in the great space – nobody even remembered they were there. Go see them some time.

And, remembering how the building looked different. There was a time when the city was desperate for shelter for the homeless and we were the first church to step up. It was so touching the first time I came into the Parish Hall and saw ninety beds, men – all men at that time – sitting, talking, eating, staying warm, creating a warm human mustiness that would linger in the air for days. Felt like the kingdom we talk about in worship.

We touch lives other ways as well. As part of our Rejoice Nights we used to do a healing service – a service of prayer and touch. One time a member – she’s here this morning but I won’t mention her name – I haven’t asked her if it’s OK. A member asked to be prayed over because she was having heart surgery the next day. We weren’t used to this, praying over such an immediate need. But we gathered in the Guild Room – we’re all a little umcomfortable, remember, but then the words of the healing prayers began and we say them together, and we gather hands over her, and something begins to glisten in the very air. I swear – you could see the presence.

It’s not all been serious. I remember the Annual Meeting when we were tired of doing business as usual so we asked everyone who was to give a report to sing the report instead of just talking it. I’ll never forget Ann Southworth, who was the registrar at the time – the one who keeps the record of membership – singing Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem Rolling bones. It was a precious moment.

There was that Easter morning, too, when I left my wireless mike somewhere and I could not for the life of me remember where. So I hunt high and low for the thing, and finally I give up. The service has already been delayed five minutes, you’re all Eastered up out here and ready to go, and I’m just walking into the service set to begin when over the speaker system we can all clearly hear a toilet flush and I suddenly remember where I left the wireless mike.

It’s not all in the past, either. The other night we held an event here in this building celebrating Black History Month. It was a good event and fascinating to see who came. At the end of the evening I said goodbye to Mrs. Jopsephine Fullilove. Now MRs. Fullilove was a long-time music teacher in Springfield – Larry Picard was once one of her students – and Mrs. Fullilove is married to one of the leading black pastors in Springfield. As she left the Sanctuary right over there the other night she said to me: I came to Sprinfield in 1950 and until tonight I have never set foot in this building.

I said to her, It’s about time, then, isn’t it? And she said: Yes, it’s about time.

You see, I know we have strayed far from Ruth this morning. I know I have strayed far from the usual sermon. But I believe God works not just through kings and kingdoms, but through people’s lives like yours and mine. And the things we do count after all: the things things we do and the things we leave undone; the choices we make and the choices we don’t; the promises we keep and those we don’t; the paths we set out on and the paths we leave behind.

There’s a thread in our story. The thread leads us out of our past and into a future that God has in mind for us. If we can, like Ruth, believe that God will lead us even in a strange new land among companions who once were strangers – if we can say to one another: I will go with you and your people will be my people and your God will be my God, and your fate will be my fate – then we will be all right: blessed, healed, and encouraged.

And maybe someday somebody will want to write a book about us – after all, how many Jesus-centered, Open and Affirming, Multi-racial churches are there?

For now, a Valentine’s letter is enough, and a reminder of things that came before and things that are still to come.

And a reminder that God wouldn’t have brought us so far, just to leave us now.

Amen