This Advent Season at Old South, even as we have moved through very familiar themes (focusing on the first chapter of Luke— annunciation, Elizabeth’s pregnancy, Mary traveling to Elizabeth to spend three months together, and finally, Mary’s song of praise) and traditional Advent words (hope, peace, joy and love), we have experienced a season that is nothing less than profoundly new and wondrous. Yesterday, at a congregational meeting following worship, members of the church voted to accept a purchase and sale agreement— an offer— for the sanctuary building. There’s a lot to get through to close on the building, but the fact that the membership managed to accept this offer, without vitriol or schism, is a remarkable moment in the life of the church.

The small community that makes up Old South in Hallowell can no longer adequately maintain the lovely structure in which the congregation has gathered for decades, with its large organ, stained glass windows and imposing steeple. And necessary repairs and renovations are simply beyond our financial capacity. It’s time not only to let go, but to entrust that beautiful building to another’s care.

Much of the expressed emotion has centered on grief and heartbreak. A week ago, when we announced the offer and the plan for a congregational meeting to accept the offer, one woman (who knew that the announcement was coming) burst into tears. A few other people have been resigned to the news. They don’t exactly like it, but they’ve seen it coming. Any anger in the group is held by only a couple of people, who have come to a sort of acquiescence. While they didn’t vote in favor of accepting the offer, they did not vote to reject it either.

My hope is that we can work through our collective grief, moving beyond all of grief’s stages, to find ourselves not only accepting our situation, but recognizing the great gift that is before us: possibility. What new and meaningful connection and service might be ahead of us as we right-size our physical plant and our budget? What new opportunities might we explore as we renovate the parish house and move fully into it?

I’d like us to embrace that we are not “giving up” and moving ever-closer to closure, but taking a big faithful step into a newly forming future. With so much time, energy and treasure given to that big sanctuary building that may now be freed up for other purposes, what new calling might be out there to enliven our ministry and our mission?

In yesterday’s New York Times (12/22/24), columnist Ross Douthat wrote the following in a piece entitled “Religion Has Been in Decline. This Christmas Seems Different”:

This Christmas seems different. There is statistical evidence that the latest wave of secularization has reached some sort of limit. There is suggestive cultural evidence that secular liberalism has lost faith in itself, that many people miss not just religion’s moral vision but also its metaphysical horizons, that the arguments for religious belief might be getting a new hearing. Notre-Dame de Paris has been rebuilt from its ashes. I rashly predicted a religious revival earlier this year, and at the very least I expect religious trends in the later 2020s to be different from the trends of the 2010s.

But different probably means really different, not just a return to what existed in the past. The last bastions of the before times, the old religious establishments, are likely to remain in existential trouble.

For instance, Catholic Poland, one of Europe’s last hubs of intense national religion, seems to be following the same de-Christianizing path as Ireland and Quebec and Italy. The American Protestant Mainline isn’t about to leap up from its sickbed, nor is an all but expired Anglicanism in Britain. Likewise, groups such as the Southern Baptists and the Mormons, fast growing a few decades ago and struggling today, aren’t going to automatically rebound or boom again.

Instead, any growth is likely to be nondenominational, subcultural (think Latin Mass Catholics or converts to Eastern Orthodoxy or communally oriented Protestants), mystical and sui generis, with notable flowerings in places where traditional faith has rarely grown before (like in the tech industry, say).

Might we be able to morph ourselves into a really different kind of community, one that is willing to move into new dimensions of what it means to be people of faith?

To better appreciate what we are looking at, we need look no further than the holy day upon us: Christmas. Christmas is all about recognizing, wondering about, and endeavoring to engage with our God who comes to us in very unexpected and surprising ways, even in the smallness and vulnerability of an infant. That infant is calling to us, and asking us to see with new eyes, with a new awareness.

That infant isn’t done with us.