I can’t see the floor of my office. It’s piled with over 70 boxes and bags of food that the Youth Ministries collected for the Oregon Food Bank. This was our service project for the MLK Holiday. We’re still waiting for OFB to pick it up. When I showed the staff a picture of this glorious mess, my colleague, J Quanbeck, quipped, “Your office always looks like that, David.” Maybe, but the drive brought in much more food than any of us expected. This put me, on the day of the drive, in the awkward position of begging my wife Wendy to quickly clean up the old office mess so we could make room for the new one. I suppose that every silver lining has its share of clouds.
Office messes notwithstanding, the MLK Food Drive was a remarkable success by any standard. We collected approximately 1500 pounds of food. More than 15 of St. Michael’s Youth, many regulars and some who I haven’t seen for months, showed up and dedicated their time and energy to the simple proposition that nobody should ever go hungry.
But the Youth Ministry was just one part of this modern miracle of Loaves and Fishes. So many of you in the congregation contributed your own food and time. State Representative Charles Dembrow and his staff spent most of the afternoon working with us. Perhaps even more exciting, we pulled in uncounted numbers of donors and volunteers with no prior connection with St. Michael’s. My friend and predecessor Ann Hargraves made this happen by placing the event on Barack Obama’s Inaugural Website, where it stood alongside thousands of other service and community-building opportunities. I’ve never seen my country more unified.
May ye live in interesting times. I was born in 1966. Then, if any black man had travelled through the southern part of this country announcing his intention to be the president of the United States, he may have been brutally attacked and possibly murdered. But the day after our food drive, our kids got to watch an African American sworn in as our country’s 44th president. Five days later, the sponsors and candidates of our Y2B (Yes to Baptism) program shared their impressions of the inauguration with me. Sponsor Kevin Warren reminded us of a metaphor that Obama used in his speech that many pundits wrote off as rhetorically unremarkable: “…we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”
And then, suddenly, we found ourselves at the Sermon on the Mount. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” There, the eight of us sat in St. Michael’s House, in a moment that spanned two millennia. We stood upon a moral and spiritual foundation laid down by a radical, egalitarian prophet named Jesus: the man we recognize and worship as the living embodiment of all that is godly; indeed, the Son of God Himself. Perhaps our meek and earthly inheritance is not as far off as we might have thought.
Then again, I’m not holding my breath. This economy is terrifying, and its perils are every bit as real as our country’s newfound sense of hope. Those troubles weighed heavily on my mind as I rode the bus to St. Michael’s this past Sunday morning. At 7:30 am, the Y2B class had not yet happened. It was a mere lesson plan that I had scrawled in my notebook. Kevin’s reminder of the president’s speech wouldn’t happen for another six hours. Riding that bus, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Portland look as beautiful as it did that morning. Snow had fallen the night before, and the streets were white and empty. God’s providence and grace were everywhere to be seen and wondered at. But all I could think about were finances: my finances, my family’s finances, the church’s finances – the list just kept metastasizing, and I felt very, very depressed.
Among my worries was my impending commitment for the church’s Annual Meeting, scheduled for 4:00 pm that afternoon. I had promised the staff and congregation that the Youth Ministries would handle childcare; that I could get a critical mass of teenagers to come in at 4:00 in the afternoon on Sunday and take care of little children. Yeah, right. What if nobody came? Or what if they did – what kind of activity could we all do together that would make everybody happy? What if everybody got bored? What if my backup plan didn’t work? What if I failed? Oh God, I thought, please, please, please don’t let me fail. I can’t afford to fail right now, there’s just too much at stake.
I unclenched my fist, and I was offered a hand. That afternoon, plenty of youth showed up to mentor and spend time with our younger children. After the meal, we went downstairs and took a St. Michael’s Memory Tour. Each of us recalled an event in our history at the church. One at a time, we took the group to the place where the event had happened. Then we told our stories.
Nine-year-old Sanya Cowal started by taking us to the hallway outside of the choir room. There, she and Rosie Orellana had chased each other that very day through the basement, past the restrooms, and up the stairs. Sanya took us outside, retracing the steps of the chase: first through the courtyard, then down the sidewalk, and finally to the back of St. Michael’s House. We asked her questions: What was she wearing? What color was her coat? As she answered, I noticed that she was shivering. Her teeth chattered. The snow was gone, but it was cold. The sun was setting, and it was time to go inside.
Soon we would be in the church itself and hear Sue, my dear colleague on the Youth Team, share her own memory. Soon, we would learn how 25 years ago, Father John Scannell had, in that very church, married her to J Quanbeck. J: the man, who, a quarter of a century later, would give me a good-natured ribbing about my messy office. The story of Sue and J’s wedding might not span the next two millennia. But once again, we prepared to look forward, all the while standing upon the never-ending and ever-present foundation of memory, history and shared tradition.
But outside, shivering in the cold winter sunset, Sue had not yet told us the story of her wedding. That story was a part of our future. And, of course, our past. Now, as we walked in from the courtyard, I marveled at the joy of the present moment, the tasks at hand, and the brisk and brittle cold. St. Michael’s was as bright as I have ever seen it. And when we walked through those doors, and found ourselves inside, we were very, very warm.