(A homily before an annual congregational meeting)
For my birthday in November I was given sourdough starter from Patisserie Margo, in Edina. It is a 35-year-old sourdough starter that originated in France, (which feels really, really old, until I think about the jar in the fridge of one of our members, with a sourdough starter that is over 100 years old).
It’s been interesting to learn how to use this starter, when and how to feed it, how to bake with it. It is completely unlike cooking with yeast. I have to listen to it, watch it, pay attention to it, because it will tell me when it’s ready to be used by how bubbly and stretchy it gets – like the inside of a roasted marshmallow. And then I can’t plan how long the dough will take to rise; it rises at its own pace, affected by the temperature and humidity around it. So sometimes bowls of dough sleep overnight in my daughter's closet - the coldest spot in the house.
And when I need to get rid of some starter so I can feed and use it again, I feel some pressure to dispose of it ethically. I am not going to just toss it – it’s a living thing with a long history! So I put it into things- corn bread, muffins, pancakes, crepes. Now my skeptical kids ask two pre-screening questions of my baked goods, “Is it gluten free? Did you put sourdough in it?”
This thing isn’t just flour and water; it’s history, and time, and chemical reaction, and story; it’s living potential in a jar.
But also, it’s just flour and water.
Which makes the whole think kind of mysterious and magical.
I am not sure what percentage of what’s in my jar is actually part of the flour and water that came over from France 35 years ago, and yet this starter is that starter.
I love imagining that along with the tiny amount in the cardboard container that was given to me is 35 years worth of breads, croissants and rolls spilling out of that bakery, and countless other tiny cardboard containers sent into other kitchens like mine, filling the world with delicious baked goods for decades before and after me.
And if, because it’s so old and precious, I had tried to just hang onto and save that little bit of sourdough in the cardboard container, it would have eventually died, because it stays alive by being used. In fact, I didn’t get it home fast enough--by the time it reached my kitchen it was already bubbling and spilling out of the container ready to be used.
In April this congregation will turn 99 years old. It began seven years before that even, in 1915, as a bible study under a tree on the same spot where our building sits now.
And who knows what percentage or flavor of an original congregation remains 99 years later, and yet this congregation is that congregation.
A congregation is a living, breathing entity. It expands and contracts, people come and go, babies are born, people die, the building changes, the ways of sharing in God’s mission changes, and all along it is fed, tended and cared for by God.
We exist to be used by God to spill life and hope, love and healing into the world. That is what keeps a congregation alive. In countless ways, over decades, this congregation has been mixed and made into all sorts of lovely things that feed the world with life.
Ordinary flour and water kind of lives began this thing way back when, and ordinary flour and water lives continue to be what God adds in and stirs up into this miraculous, mysterious mix that makes up Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church.
We are history, and time, and chemical reaction and story; we are living potential that God uses to remind each other and the world of our belonging to God and all others in Christ Jesus.
This was maybe as unusual a year as LNPC has ever had. Maybe. A lot happened we had no control over, and yet, God sustained us and used us. And we discovered that even though a warm kitchen is where we believe dough belongs, sometimes what it needs the chilly closet. And that no matter where we are, or how we come together, God’s ministry is alive in us and moves through us.
This is God’s congregation, not ours. God’s ministry started long before this little congregation, and God’s ministry will continue through us and long after us. We don’t sustain ourselves, we simply love and seek God, and allow God to feed us and use us, again and again, and when we do, God will do marvelous things.
"God alone is our rock and our salvation, our fortress; we shall not be shaken." And so, today as we seek to listen to each other and to God, as we look back at this year and continue, as always, to discern our way forward, above all else, may we heed the words of the Psalmist who tells us, “Trust in God at all times O people, pour out your hearts before him…” and “The power belongs to God, and steadfast love is yours, O Lord.”
I wonder what God will make of us next.
Amen.
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