This is my last sermon with Peace Covenant Church of the Brethren, a tiny, mighty, informal but competent, unity-over-uniformity congregation that I’ve been honored to love for nearly 8 years.

October 1, 2023

Here’s one of my favorite Peace Covenant stories:

The story of the apple butter kettle.

Sometime in 2018, I think, we discovered that our apple butter kettle had gone missing. If you’ve never seen an apple butter kettle, you might not know what an absurd statement that is. Making apple butter is a long-standing tradition among the Brethren in this part of the world. When I grew up, the entire congregation sat aside a whole weekend in the fall to make apple butter together: peeling, coring, slicing, cooking the apples, then spending 8-12 hours slowly, constantly stirring all that applesauce and tons of sugar and spices in gigantic, 40 gallon copper kettles, over an open fire.

Peace Covenant inherited one of those kettles from another church, and had made apple butter here, several times. The kettle, which was not small and was not light, was stored in the shed out back. But sometime in 2018, I think, the kettle went…missing.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen an apple butter kettle to know how hard it would be for one to go missing ANYWHERE, but you’re here, in our tiny building, so you definitely know how hard it would be to lose something of that size and weight on this property. We didn’t even have to search – the kettle was just…gone.

Which meant, we assumed, that someone had discovered it and carefully planned a way to steal it. Seriously, you’d have to bring a big ol’ pickup truck and several strong people to heft it up and out. For the copper, we guessed. It was kind of a big loss, in some ways, not only because the actual kettle was probably worth some money, but also because it was unlikely that we’d find and secure and transport and store another one.

But. When we shared the news of the stolen apple butter kettle at the next Coordinating Council meeting, the entire table sat quietly, digesting the news. No one said a word. And then Nancy Hillsman, in her sardonic way, simply said, “well, I guess they needed it more than we did.”

And we simply moved on. No one ever mentioned the apple butter kettle again.

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These last few weeks, I’ve been sharing lessons I’ve learned from Peace Covenant over the last almost-8 years. Peace Covenant has taught me that tiny is mighty, that churches can be both informal and competent, and that it’s possible to value unity over uniformity. Another thing I’ve learned from Peace Covenant is the value of what I once heard called “traditioned innovation.”

That phrase comes from the former dean of Duke Divinity School, Greg Jones. I came here to Durham in 2010 to be part of a program through Duke for church leaders, where we learned about traditioned innovation. The idea is a way of thinking that holds the past and the future in tension, not in opposition, and is crucial for any kind of growth. It is a way of existing that takes the past and its traditions seriously while also being radically open to the new possibilities that God is calling us into.

During the months that I spent in the program, we learned about innovation by doing things like practicing improv comedy and hanging out with the Duke jazz ensemble. We learned that the best actors and jazz musicians have the ability to create new scenes and rhythms exactly because they understand what has already happened and are exquisitely attuned to the people around them.

Traditioned innovation requires knowing not just what we DID, but WHY we did it. It is the antidote to the perennial complaint about change (especially in churches): “but we’ve ALWAYS done it that way!”

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Jesus was the ultimate traditioned innovator. He knew the law backwards and forwards, but he knew, more than the letter of that law, the intention and meaning behind it. In his most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reminds all his followers, then and now, that he has come not to abolish the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them. 

But take one look at Jesus’ life as presented in the gospels and you’ll see pretty quickly that not everyone believed that he was honoring their traditions and practices. The Pharisees – teacher and scholars of the law – are CONSTANTLY critiquing Jesus for doing things wrong, breaking rules and instigating change.

Constantly. The religious leaders are NEVER painted in a good light in the gospels – they’re more concerned with the maintenance of an institution and rituals of worship than they are with following God’s clearest commands to love one another.

From the perspective of the religious leaders, Jesus did everything wrong: he hung out with the wrong people, he healed people on the wrong day, he exegeted scripture in the wrong way. But Jesus is pretty clear that what he’s doing – and how he’s doing it – are actually more faithful to law and prophets than anything the religious leaders are getting upset about.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus quotes the prophet Hosea multiple times: “Go and learn what this means: I require mercy, not sacrifice.” The religious people were caught up in ritual and sacrifice, performing the trappings of religion in the right ways at the right times with the right people. But Jesus is more interested in the meaning at the heart of all those rules and commands.

“You have heard it said,” Jesus repeats, like a refrain here in the Sermon on the Mount. He knows the law, and he knows that his followers know it, too. 

“You have heard that it was said,” Jesus teaches, “do not murder. But I say to you, people do a whole lot of damage through anger without murdering anybody.”

“You have heard that it was said ‘you shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you, y’all KNOW that all kinds of harm gets done to relationships before anybody touches anyone else.”

“Again, you’ve heard that it was said ‘you shall not swear falsely.’ But I say to you, just telling the truth all the time is a much better policy than only being honest when you’re forced to swear to it.”

Jesus acted and taught differently not just because he like to shake things up, but because he understood that law and practice are always only signposts pointing toward the deeper, ultimate values and commands. He knew and valued tradition, and he innovated in ways that allowed the core of that faith tradition to be sensible and relevant in the midst of change and upheaval.

Which is what traditioned innovation is about, and what y’all here at Peace Covenant have taught me to be not only possible, but essential; not only tolerable, but fascinating, beautiful, challenging and vibrant.

We’ve changed a lot of things together over the last few years. Some of those changes have felt forced, by the pandemic or changing congregational dynamics or financial realities. But what has amazed and encouraged me is that nearly all the things we’ve changed have been done with an eye and an ear toward WHY we do the thing in the first place.

Think about it.

We changed the arrangement of this sanctuary, because worshipping over Zoom reminded us why we gather, and what’s important.

We got rid of the bulletin (!!!!), because we learned that it was unnecessary, that we were wasting creation’s resources, and the purpose it served was being met in other ways.

We re-oriented how we practice footwashing because our understanding of gender shifted, and we remembered that the point of washing feet is not to underscore cultural gender norms but to reinforce the sweet fellowship of this community.

We recalibrated how our ministry teams work, both because there were fewer people to do the work and because we recognized that when we got down to it, “nurture” and “outreach” weren’t really all that different.

We don’t make apple butter anymore, partly because the kettle got stolen, but also – maybe by now it’s safe for me to say – by 2018, not all of us in the congregation understood the cultural resonance of that Appalachian practice, and the value of being together and working side by side was something we were practicing in other ways.

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More change is coming here at Peace Covenant, and I have to tell you that I am not at all worried about what that means or how you will navigate it as a community. I’ve walked with you through many seasons of change, now, and every single time you have amazed me with your willingness to engage and make change by taking the past seriously while simultaneously remaining radically open to whatever God is already doing and preparing. 

That’s traditioned innovation. It’s what you do without even knowing that you’re doing it. It’s the ability to say “well sure, let’s try it!” Or to receive the news of a stolen apple butter kettle with some sadness, some admiration for the thief’s logistical prowess and the ultimate understanding that whoever would undertake such an endeavor surely needed that kettle more than we did.

That ability is rooted in this community’s deep understanding of who it is and why it exists: not to simply keep the doors open and make sure worship happens on Sunday mornings, but to exist in gracious, generous, hospitable community together, to live as witnesses to the enormous mercy and justice of God, to be constantly curious and open to whatever unexpected invitation God might be issuing.

And here’s the thing: none of that is something that this congregation has to work hard to be or to do. Yes, some of the work requires hard conversation and humility. It’s not exactly EASY to live with one eye on the past and the other on the future, to be constantly open to change, to be willing to shift again and again. But it is also so deep in the DNA of Peace Covenant, so much a part of who you are and how you’ve always lived together that it does not and will not require you to be anything other than who you already are.

It’s just a matter of owning it, living it, and being willing to be who you are out loud. Who you are is beautiful, and precious, and beloved. Whatever God is inviting you into will not require you to be anyone other than who She created you to be, who She already and has always loved. I am so grateful to have learned that here, with you all.