The Rev. Laura Everett delivers her sermon “A God Who Repairs” during the morning worship service last Sunday in the Amphitheater.
“Usually when you wash something in blood, it gets dirtier, not cleaner,” said the Rev. Laura Everett, responding to the day’s scripture reading from Revelation. But, she added, we have been promised repair through kinship with Christ. “Jesus is not our laundry detergent, but instead the One who too has suffered violence and persecution.”
Everett preached her final sermon of the Chautauqua week on Friday morning at the 9:15 a.m. worship service in the Amphitheater. Her sermon title was “The Promise of Repair” and the scripture reading was Revelation 7:9–17. Continuing the week’s theme, Everett followed the thread of textiles throughout scripture. “By taking the textiles of our sacred texts seriously,” she reminded the congregation, “we might see what they have to tell us about our ancestors in the faith and about our relationship with God.” She used slides in her sermon.
Her selected text, Revelation 7:9–17 offers a vision of heaven without hunger, thirst or burden of toil. In this vision, “a great multitude” of people from every nation, tribe and tongue are robed in white, praising the Lord for their salvation. Everett asked the congregants to consider to whom this vision might be promised — “but, who are those robed in white?” — before offering two clues from the text. The first, from verse 9, is that they will be “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.” She showed an image of a grand quilt, made by Jane A. Blakley Stickle, called “In War Times.” Each piece making up this enormous, 80-inch-by-80-inch quilt is unique. It is entirely hand-pieced and hand-quilted. With no repeating patterns or fabrics, there are more than 5,000 pieces in total. Each piece comes together to serve its purpose in the quilt. Everett said that “this is how diverse those clothed in white robes are, all worshiping the same Lamb.”
Everett continued by sharing the second clue useful in identifying the white-robed multitudes featured in John’s revelation — those who have come out of the great ordeal.
To this point, Everett shared the story of a group of Mississippi washerwomen from the 19th century. In 1866, a collective of washerwomen from Jackson, Mississippi, went on strike, demanding a fair wage. These were the women who had washed, scrubbed and mended the textiles that clothed and decorated the people of Jackson. Yet despite their skill and the necessity of their labor, these washerwomen still struggled to live comfortably from the fruits of their labor.
The women in the photographs held little societal power and were exploited. Their ordeal was living in a society that did not value their dignity or the dignity of their work. “Far too often, those who have gone through the great ordeal have been the ones who grow, raise, spin, weave, clean, design, make or mend our clothes,” Everett continued.
But these women had gathered and organized. By knowing their collective worth and inherent dignity, they formed the Washing Society in Atlanta in 1881.
But this problem was not left behind in history. Everett presented an image of the Rana Plaza in the Dhaka District of Bangladesh. The Rana Plaza had housed five manufacturing companies, producing mass quantities of textiles destined for the United States. In 2013, the Rana Plaza collapsed. When the search efforts ended, it was revealed that 1,134 souls had been lost. Many of the victims had been women, and most came from poor backgrounds.
“These women … are God’s beloved, robed in white, who have been through the great ordeal,” Everett said.
Everett made the point that our society has a ways to go to untangle ourselves from industries that exploit labor and deny dignity. She knows it can be easy to dismiss the ordeal of those who have suffered.
“But,” she said, “the promise of Revelation is that those who have gone through the great ordeal, those who have been martyred are washed clean … brought into a place where there is no pain or suffering, where they are no longer washing clothes below minimum wage in degrading conditions, or picking cotton without the dignity of full wages and safe conditions, where they are no longer sewing Gap T-shirts or Brooks Brothers chinos in 95-degree heat.”
Everett then turned her attention to considering what this means for the rest of us. “For those who have never been through such an ordeal,” she said, “will we still wear a long white robe and join the Lamb in that heavenly song?”
She replied that the answer can also be found in Revelation. In the text, John teaches that it is not our good works, righteous living, position, privilege, degrees, “or even how many Chautauqua lectures we’ve attended” that will win us eternal salvation. Instead, Everett said, “it is God alone that offers salvation. It is God alone who is perfect.”
Everett’s final slide showed a darning sampler from 1793, made by an unknown artist. In sharing this image, Everett challenged the congregation to consider the whiteness of the patches. She cautioned us that whiteness in our society can work similarly — covering up and masking that anything is wrong at all. But, she says, we must fight this impulse to dismiss, deny or devalue. Instead, we must ask ourselves, “What can I do with my privilege?”
We should ask, “How are those who are currently enduring the great ordeal of this terribly torn world any better because I am in it?,” while remembering that we too are invited to join the multitudes. Like many patches forming an enormous quilt, we should remember that we all gather around the same God. Everett concluded by reminding us that we have a God who repairs, a mending God, and that only by God’s mercy do we belong.
Fr. Jim Daprile, president of the Chautauqua Catholic Community, presided. Annie Leech, Student Minister for the Department of Religion read the scripture. The prelude was “Meditation from Symphony No.1” by Charles-Marie Widor, played by Organ Scholar Owen Reyda. The Motet Choir sang Edgar L. Bainton’s “And I saw a Heaven,” under the direction of Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and the Jared Jacobson Chair for the Organist. Organ Scholar Rees Roberts accompanied. Stafford played Friday’s traditional postlude, Widor’s “Toccata from Symphony No. 5,” on the Massey Memorial Organ. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and services is provided by the Randell-Hall Memorial Chaplaincy and the J. Everett Hall Memorial Chaplaincy. Mary Lee Talbot will return to the morning worship column in Week Nine.
