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A Devotion
In 2021, St. Greg’s gave me the privilege of attending a weekend of spiritual formation at Kanuga with my family and Catherine Drewry. There, I had the honor of meeting the Reverend Canon Stephanie Spellers. She is the Presiding Bishop Michael B Curry’s Canon for Evangelism, Reconciliation and Creation. She has a Master’s in Theological Studies (MTS) from Harvard Divinity School, and has authored Radical Welcome: Embracing God, the Other, and the Spirit of Transformation, as well as the book I quote from today, The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, decline, and new hope for beloved community.
In The Church Cracked Open, the Reverend Canon Spellers evokes the biblical story as told in Mark 14:3. “While [Jesus] was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head.” Jesus’ response was, “Wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.” (Mark 14:9)
In her book, the Reverend Canon Spellers responds to 2020 lockdown, the loss of lives to COVID-19, and the attendance crisis COVID created in the church, along with the political and racial divides growing in America by wondering if we, the American Christian church community are not like the alabaster jar, feeling broken, but at a crossroads between trying to restore things to the way they were, or allowing the disruption to break us open. (Here I pause to acknowledge that Mother Nikki has referenced breaking open in her homilies at least once as well. It is a powerful analogy and bears repeating.) The author prayed and meditated on the woman with the alabaster jar, saying, “So much has cracked open. We have been cracked open. We don’t know how to embrace the disruption, make the sacrifice, stop worshipping the beauty of the jar, and instead break it open so the healing substance inside can work its way into a world that so desperately needs it. We’re tempted to scramble around and gather the pieces and reassemble the jar and scoop up the lost oil. And we’re really terrified we might be the jar, broken open by God, for love of the world. Maybe that’s what God wants, but it’s not what most American church folks signed on for.”
She continues, “How might she respond? In my prayer, I hear her speaking these wise words, calming the storm even as she stirs the waters:
“You and your church, you are holding a beautiful jar. You are used to grasping it with both hands, tilting and pouring the contents with moderation through the carefully crafted spout. Someday, you will have to break it open so the contents flow free, or God will do it for you.
“You and your church, you think loving a thing means protecting and maintaining it exactly as it was handed to you. Someday, you will understand what it means to love something enough to let it crack apart and just sit with the pieces, notice what needs to be removed for good, and then faithfully piece together what matters most to make something more whole, something more like what God intended all along. Someday you will lose your life and gain real life.
“Oh child, this could be one of those times.”
Discussion questions: What about our church (or our selves) could we let go?
What about our church do we hold dear and believe to be what God initially intended it to be?
-- Kate Avinger
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