St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Brunswick, Maine

With Faith in Our Future: A Campaign for St. Paul's

Pilgrims Together

As we begin Lent, say the Great Litany, and make appeals to re-build our parish hall, we do well to remember that all journeys in the church are communal. We travel together. One of the first accounts in the English language is the pilgrimage to Canterbury:

Whan that Aprille with his showres soote
The droughte of March hath perced to the roote ...
Then longen folke to go on pilgrimmages ...
From Engelond to Canterbury they wend.

The pilgrims make their way down the road a few miles a day. At night, they find an inn and roast one another with stories. Then all are included in the supper, take their rest, and go on together the next day, until they came to the town and the church.

The way of pilgrimage and making space for fellowship go hand in hand. The Bible may begin with a couple in a garden, the Garden of Eden, the showres soote—but we travel on exodus to a town, a city, as we heard in Revelation, a place to live and serve together with the trees of life growing on the sides of the street. The Bible ends in renewed fellowship.

God's people need a place. How dear to me is your dwelling, says David's psalm:

My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord
The sparrow has found her a house, the swallow a nest
Happy are they who dwell in your house.

Twenty five years ago, the parishioners of St. Paul's renovated the foundation and walls of the nave of the church, where we are now. The parish house next to us has been cobbled together over the years. As St. Paul's and Brunswick have grown our parish house has served an average of fifteen hours a day, and it must be said is serving us less and less well.

Most of you have heard the reports from our building and planning committees. What's important is that we are now acting in the spirit of the first builders of Codman Hall. Here is a report from our archives of what Bishop Codman said in 1914:

The bishop made the request that parishioners use the house for others as well as themselves. The nave of the church, [where we are now] stands for worship. ... The parish house is where the congregation serves, reaches out in Christ. Bishop Codman spoke of the horrible disease of parochialism, a parish turned in on itself.... It is evident that Codman Hall has produced a marked effect upon the town, With the improvements being made by the directors of the library [remember he is speaking in 1914], it is easy to understand that Codman House is beautifully situated.

He could be speaking today. And he could be speaking from the Book of Revelation on the renewed city, where the water of life flows from the Lamb of God.

Our bishop today, Chilton Knudsen, has visited our vestry twice in the course of planning. She said we have two choices: to remain a small parish, like an orchid in a green house; or to grow with space for new plantings. She said orchids are lovely, and need to be preserved; but Christ reaches out and seeks new growth. She urged us to be part of the growth.

George Cadigan remembers buying his fishing boots at L. L. Bean's, when it was a one room shop, on the second floor over the Freeport post office. While not headed toward Bean's current complex, we do want a place where infants are safely cared for, fellowship groups of all ages can meet, we can sit down together for a meal, and we can continue our hospitality, through the day and evening.

I am the true vine, says Christ,

and my Father the vinegrower.
Abide in me as I in you.
Those who abide in me, and I in them, bear much fruit.

I recently had an experience of such abiding. During the nor'easter that socked us three weeks ago, and socked Massachusetts even more, I was at a retreat house in Gloucester, on the easternmost point of Cape Ann. I thought I had gone to make a personal retreat, and after dinner sat in one of several chairs by windows facing the North Atlantic. The waves smashed into the rocks, and hurled spray. The snow drove into the windows. To be alone, even in a secure building, would have been terrifying. To know that a church community—centuries of worship, feeding, and care—stood behind me, gave me comfort in the storm. I was not alone.

We live in houses from the end of Harpswell to the far reaches of Durham and Pownal, but this is our home in Christ. We come here to know we are loved beyond our achievements and failures: to be baptized, married, and cared for through life and beyond. That we choose to do so here is a witness and service to many others. We are in the primary social service area between Portland and Rockland. Within a quarter mile are the Tedford Shelter, Mid Coast Hunger Program, alternative high school, post office and library.

We have an extraordinary opportunity to abide and grow with Christ. The call is great in these precarious times. Let us be pilgrims together.

By whatever window we face, whatever storms we face, let us have the assurance that Christ's fellowship surrounds us.

The Reverend Daniel Warren

Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means. For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have.
2 Corinthians 8:11-12