Rector’s Letter: Why do we celebrate our bicentennial?
Why do we celebrate our bicentennial?
In an obvious sense, bicentennials are just something you celebrate. It would be bizarre not to celebrate 200 years of communal life, like not celebrating a golden anniversary. But what in particular do we hope for, from our bicentennial celebrations, 2024-2026?
First of all, the celebration is going to be a lot of fun. It is going to pull the parish together in a lot of novel ways: signing a new lay charter for the parish in September 2024, various lectures series, even historical dance evenings, Faith & Arts concerts, and special dinners. All of this is wonderful and I am deeply grateful for it. See the schedule for this year here.
But our bicentennial is going to do even more with us.
When we celebrate our bicentennial as a Christian community we are inevitably going to engage with stories that tell us about ourselves. They will teach us about our exact situation now as baptized Christians charged with the Gospel, about possibilities for our Christian vocation and mission, and the perils and temptations to which we are vulnerable.
In our history, we will certainly discover stories of grace, faithfulness, courage, and goodness — stories of God doing great things in people’s’ lives. When we hear those stories about people rooted in this place, just like we are, we will catch glimmers, intuitions, of new possibilities for ourselves. We will wonder, "Is that kind of living, that kind of faithfulness, that kind of seriousness about the Gospel, that eccentricity or grace possible for me too?"
On the other hand, because we are fallen creatures in a fallen world, when we engage our history, we will also discover stories that show where pressures from the fallen world —social, economic, political — have driven professing Christians into choices inimical to the Gospel and opposite to the life of Jesus, into actions that grieve God's Spirit. When we see this, if we are reflective in our faith, we will feel some wariness, some unease about ourselves. We will see that we are just like these other people. We will see our own vulnerability to sin and to a fragmented life. We will ask, "Is that kind of opposition to Jesus's call, and the inner compartmentalization of faith that makes it possible — is that possible for me too? Where has that already happened in my life?”
In short, our bicentennial celebrations, along with building fellowship, are designed to open wide a sense of wonder about God’s possibilities for us, as well as cultivate a gentle humility, a wariness about ourselves and our vulnerability to falling. This kind of faith in God’s overcoming goodness, combined with humility about ourselves is priceless. Utterly priceless. Faith in God and humility about ourselves is the ground of the next chapter of St. Matthew’s mission and life, and our bicentennial leads us directly into these gifts.
But there is one more thing. As a historic community, our history connects us with the town of Hillsborough, with Orange County and indeed the State of North Carolina. Our history involves us in the history of everything around us. Wherever human beings have been anywhere for any length of time, wrongs have been done, divisions have crept in, and resentment and haughty disregard has divided people from people. Where I'm going with this is that our history — particularly our history with enslavement at the foundation of the parish, and the violence against the freed black community that followed the Civil War for many decades — gives us a unique platform from which to function as healing agents for God’s love and reconciliation in this place — provided that we own this history and are honest about it.
I was talking recently with The Rev. Tony Boss, pastor of Piney Grove Baptist Church out by the Orange County Sportsplex. We were planning, with Hillsborough Presbyterian, joint worship services for the coming year. These joint services with just these three parishes will be a starting point from which we will re-engage our historic relationship with Dickerson Chapel and other churches. I am hoping they will also help us to imagine a memorial on our campus to the enslaved persons whose lives provided the foundation of our parish, and whose way of faithfulness, still carried in their descendants, can teach us about the Gospel in new ways.
In any case, as we were talking, Pastor Tony said that during his time with Covid — several months in an ICU on a ventilator, close to death several times — God changed his heart. He began to understand that not only will there be white and black and every other kind of folks in heaven together, reconciled and celebrating as one under Christ, but our call on earth, now, is to practice heaven. Heaven, as he said, is ‘game time’ but our earthly lives are ‘the practice field.’
People of St. Matthew’s, our bicentennial is going to be a huge amount of fun. It is going to build fellowship, deepen our faith and humility, and create in us new interest and joy in collaborating and celebrating with communities from whom we have historically been divided. Heaven is game time; earth is our practice field. Let’s tie on cleats for firm footing (our faith in Christ as Lord of every human being) and strap on our helmet (the life of prayer and worship) and join in God’s call to practice!
God bless us all in this time of fellowship, learning and new mission.
The Rev. Robert Fruehwirth, Rector.
