Our Chain of Persons

Less than two weeks into my sabbatical, I see themes that pull these days together in holy ways. One can plan a sabbatical, a vacation, a wedding, a life and – as we all know – the unexpected always happens. I’m leaning into that.

After reading this article by Tish Harrison Warren, I discovered Andy Crouch who works for an organization I want to know much more about. They sound like my people.

Chapter 12 in Crouch’s new book is The Chain of People and he quotes my own worship professor from seminary – Horace Allen – who was so brilliant and lovely. (Horace lived in a train car in Boston.)

Each of us is only a couple chain links away from huge historic moments in world history. Only four generations/chain links before me were family members engaged in the U.S. Civil War. Just a few chain links before that were ancestors who took a ship from Ireland to Philadelphia who would later die in battle during the Revolutionary War.

But Horace Allen – according to Andy Crouch – taught that . . .

“all of us who read the Bible are just one generation away from the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. When we read the Bible, we are hearing of his life and the first-century church from those who were at most one or two steps removed from the ones who could personally describe, with the writer of the first letter of John what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands.”

Yes. We are connected more closely than we realize.

I didn’t plan this, but my sabbatical thus far has been about connecting with the people in the long chain of those who have made me who I am today. I had a meal with TBC’s best friend from age 8 and there is something about spending time with a young adult who grew up before your eyes that’s particularly special.

Today I zoomed with a couple whose wedding I will be honored to officiate in September and – when the bride was a toddler – I watched her and her sister in Arlington, VA while her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother (who was a member of the church I served) had a ladies’ lunch. The connections to this bride’s family will be with me for the rest of my life.

I spent a day in the Augusta County Historical Society offices in Virginia reading sermons that my 5th Great-Grandfather – David Turk Edmiston – would have heard sitting on a hard wooden bench in a church he chartered with several other settlers from Ulster, along with his wife and six children.

I’ve spent quality time with FBC and his oldest friend as we thanked God that they were raised in such an extraordinary place (Northern Virginia) with friends and neighbors from all over the world.

I’ve got other plans coming up to spend time with college friends, cousins, clergy colleagues and of course HH – who is the most essential link on my chain of people. God is teaching me how to help us thrive as the Church in these conversations – whether I’m planning for that or not.

We belong to each other. At least this is what God intends.

For all the missteps and heinous acts of the Church through the years, I still don’t know a better way to be a community than being The Church – at least as God calls us to be the Church. Although we have conflated “church” with stained glass windows and choir robes and even Bible studies, the Church – as God intends – is about defeating dehumanization and showing what God’s love looks like.

These are priceless days to relish such ponderings. Our connections make us who we are and there are so many other connections to make.

That’s all for now.

Image of a sculpture created with bike chains by Drew Evans.