Thanksgiving for Sunday Soup & Sandwiches

Collect of the Day - Proper 25 / Year C
By Rev. Heather J. Blais, Rector

Today marks the end of Sunday Soup and Sandwiches. I found it fitting that the Collect of the Day, gatherers, or rather collects, our shared prayer that God might:

• increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity;
• that we may obtain God’s promise - to always be with us; 
• and to make us love what God commands - to love God and neighbor. 

Because in March 2020, when an unknown virus locked us down in isolation, it was painful, but we knew we could sacrifice in person gatherings as a body of Christ for a short while. Just as we knew, that under no circumnstances, could we forsake the neighbors we serve and support through our core outreach ministries. At that moment, more than ever the Monday meal, essential goods, and socks would be needed. When another meal we supported needed to shut down due to the virus, we leaned into our collective wisdom, skills, resources and punted. Sharing our faith, hope, and charity to create a temporary meal until things opened back up.

Walter Bruggeman wrote a book - Virus as a Summons to Faith - which was published on April 30, 2020. I remember reading it when it was published, and being amazed he could already be doing such deep theological reflection amidst the throws of the early days of the pandemic, when we still knew so little. In the book he reflects on how the global pandemic was a summons to the Church to lean more fully on our faith during a time of great uncertainty, doubt, change, and fear. Looking back - that’s exactly what happened. The virus summoned us to deepen our dependence on God and our understanding of how much community matters. It was this summons, this increasing dependence on God, that led us to take a leap into the unknown by launching a short term meal to support our neighbors as best we could on Sundays, in addition to our Monday meal.

Five and a half years, and thousands of meals later, what is a ministry to do when the need keeps growing, but we sense God is calling us to make a shift? Well, we try like mad to see if there are other ways the meal can evolve, which our Sunday Soup and Sandwiches leaders did, very faithfully. And yet, it also became clear that sometimes something has to fully end before something new can be born. All we can do is end with intention and good communication, which we have strived to do this last year. 

We only hold one puzzle piece in a 10,000 piece 3D puzzle. We don’t know what is to come next to address hunger in our wider community. Yet just as we felt God calling us to take the leap and launch the meal, we again are being called to take the leap in concluding our Sunday meal. Trusting that in ways we cannot fully know or understand, God is in this too, breathing their Spirit on the greater community and world. While the uncertainty of living with Covid-19 has subsided, we are living in a different time of change and uncertainty. 

Just as the virus was a summons to faith, this time of change and uncertainty is another summons to faith. Our daily call is to keep leaning more deeply into our relationship with God, keep modeling our lives and community after Christ, and trust that the Spirit is at work in this world. 

Which brings us to this moment. As I thought and prayed about today, our worship, and the end of this outreach ministry, one thing kept rising to the surface. The most important thing we can do today is to say thank you to our Sunday Soup and Sandwich volunteers that are serving this final meal. Week after week, as we gathered for worship, they were busy next door in the Parish Hall making sandwiches, dishing out soup, and greeting neighbors. In doing so, they have helped share God’s love with our neighbors through a warm meal to carry them into the week. We as a faith community have never fully borne witness to this, as we are quite literally always in the middle of our worship. 

Which is why today, I’d like to not offer a full sermon. Instead I’d like to stop now, and have all who feel physically up to processing next door to the Parish Hall to do so. Together we can say thank you to those serving, offering a round of applause. 
Next week, we will offer a prayer of thanksgiving within our worship, for all who have been involved in this meal. So now, let us walk in love, as Christ loved us, and offer our thanks to God for the volunteers serving today and those served by this meal. May they know they are seen, valued, and appreciated by our community. Amen. 

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