Applecart Lessons

April 2009

by Phyllis Kersten

The following is a true story, and possibly a kind of parable as well.

The women’s organization at Grace Lutheran, River Forest, Illinois, has a proud and illustrious history that goes back more than a century. In it’s earliest years, it was called the Women’s Society and was known for hosting elegant receptions (with tea and coffee poured from a beautiful silver tea service) and exquisite luncheons. The organization’s major activity from its beginning, however, was a gigantic fall sale each November. Committees formed almost a year in advance—to pick the overall theme, work on decorations, design the table settings, and field-test recipes. Small groups of women met in homes all year long sewing craft items.

The sale included a bakery booth, a meat and cheese counter, a Christmas ornament area, and crafts center that included needlework, quilts, and hand-made birdhouses and wooden toys. There was a large “attic treasures” area, a children’s corner with items under a dollar, and a best-selling books area. Proceeds each year was more than $20,000, all given away to benefit selected local, national, and overseas church-related charities.

Times changed, of course, and the women’s organization changed with it. Grace Women’s Society became the Women of Grace—to broaden its appeal as an organization open to all women in the parish, especially to the growing number of women working outside the home. The organization’s annual activities and its many ministries—meal delivery for the ill and homebound, funeral luncheons, Bible studies— continued on full speed.

There came a time, however, when the leadership of Women of Grace could no longer do it all. Age, illness, caregiving responsibilities, and death diminished their ranks. And with that diminishment also came a palpable fear: Given all the economic changes, with more women now working than staying at home, would there be enough women with the energy to continue the Women of Grace traditions? And would these younger women care enough to put these events on with the flair that Grace church and its community had come to expect? Could the torch be passed to the younger generation?

Tempest in a flower pot

There was a group of women in their 30s and 40s—some new members of Grace, some members for many years—who had both talent and interest in food and event planning and preparation. These women picked up the torch and volunteered to plan the next event: the fall luncheon. They had a creative idea—to serve the chicken salad entrée in lined flower pots. Decorated with ribbons and a flower, the pots looked like upside-down spring bonnets.

The salad was both tasty and pleasing to the eye. No one denied that. And the flower pots did make for a colorful, charming table. But some of the older women—ones who had not offered to step up into the leadership void themselves— were merciless in their criticism of the younger women who put on the luncheon. “Chicken salad served not on a plate, but in a flower pot? Whoever heard of such a thing?” The critics were brutal in their disdain, and the committee members were deeply hurt.

Having been burned by the criticism they received, these younger women were no longer eager to take up the torch being passed. It’s not surprising. Younger members were reluctant to take up the mantle of leadership.

What God will do in Jesus

Right from the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, in Mary’s Magnificat, is the theme of what God will accomplish in Jesus’ incarnation: turn the world (if not a luncheon) upside down. In Spirit-inspired words, Mary speaks, of this “applecart upset” as if has already happened:

“He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

The Gospel, at its essence, is the story of Jesus becoming like us, taking on our human nature, so that by his death and resurrection (the ultimate applecart upset) we might become like him.

Sent out by God as Jesus himself was, those first disciples in the early church turned the world upside down, historians of that era tell us. How did they do that? By the love they showed one another, we’re told. By the way they welcomed one another, and, especially, by the way they welcomed Gentiles and others who were different than themselves. That welcome and inclusion are still how Christians turn the world upside down today.

Memories vs. nostalgia

Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, in her book The Gift of Years: Growing Old Gracefully, writes of one of the paradoxes of old age: “That it means at the same time ‘letting go’” of some of what we’ve accumulated, as well as coming “alive in ways [we] have never been alive before.”

Chittister also describes the danger of blurring the distinction between memories and nostalgia. “Good memories,” she says, “make us laugh on gray days and bring us old warmth on cold nights. . . . They enable us to have faith in the future because they remind us that the past has been so life-giving, so full of hope in all the tomorrows of life” (p. 175).

But, Chittister says, “Nostalgia is something different entirely. Nostalgia is not simply recollection of the past. Nostalgia is immersion in the past. Nostalgia traps us. . . . But the melancholy of nostalgia is not the geography of old age. Possibility is.”

Chittister continues, “Nostalgia is pining and yearning and longing for what was good for us in the past, but which would be totally out of kilter with the here and now.”

And finally she writes that, “memories are not the shackles of the aging. . . . They are the watermarks of our growth, the invitation to claim the joys of the past and the call to seek out those same things again, in different form, perhaps, but as promise of the same kind of joy here and now.”

What would it take for the Women of Grace to break out of the trap of nostalgia that had immobilized the organization? What would it take for them “to claim the joys of the past and the call to seek out those same things again,” but “in different form, perhaps”?

Kick up your heels

What it took for the Women of Grace was for the older leadership to receive the gifts and ideas offered by the younger members for what they truly were: gifts from God, even though these ideas might threaten to turn some of their established world upside down.

Specifically what it took at Grace was for one—just one, Nancy—of the older leaders to meet with a group of younger women. She met with them and assured those who had been hurt that they didn’t need to “become just like us in order to belong.” She met with them and listened, listened to their ideas for involving more women and for helping the organization let go of some of what it had accumulated over the years, as well as come “alive in ways [we had] never been alive before.”

Out of these informal gatherings came a suggestion for a new name for the organization to appeal to younger members, Women@Grace. And then, Nancy became an advocate for the younger women with her contemporaries.

Out of this process came a new beginning for the women’s organization at Grace. Over 100 women attended a fall kick-off event entitled “Kick Up Your Heels.” The price of entry was a pair of gently used shoes, to be given to homeless women in a job training program so that they could wear a nice pair of shoes to their job interviews. The Grace women broke up into small groups to brainstorm ideas for the future of Women@Grace, and to sign up for ways in which they wanted to use their talents.

Women@Grace

After a one-year sabbatical, the annual fall sale returned. Its theme this year was “Paths of Peace.” Three younger women served as co-chairs, but there was a good mix of young and old making it happen. There have been a few new wrinkles added to the sale every year (just as most of us have seen our share of new wrinkles annually as well). Included have been Third World handicrafts, a used book area, a Friday and Sunday schedule (rather than the original Thursday to Friday format), with brunch on Sunday morning. Fair-trade coffee and chocolate are on sale, as they are on Sunday mornings monthly through the year. The proceeds still support ministries to women and children at home and abroad.

On other fronts, the children and grandchildren of those who had started the annual Christmas dinner for the Chicago Uptown Ministry (an inner-city program in Chicago) along with a cadre of other regular volunteers, keep it going. That ministry’s clients are also the honored guests at the Women@ Grace December luncheon.

A new monthly Saturday morning Bible study for the moms of infants and toddlers has been added to the array of established Bible study circles. A number of the older members of Women@Grace, together with their husbands, were among the first to volunteer for one of the five mission trips the congregation has taken to New Orleans and Mississippi for Hurricane Katrina relief. The Tuesday night mothers’ group chose their own way to help: getting the names of single moms and the ages of their kids at Grace’s partner congregation in Long Beach, Mississippi, to buy and ship items on their wish list for Christmas. Another year, this group sent gift cards.

To recognize Jesus

I think I know what motivated Nancy to gather those potential younger leaders together. I think she remembered the story in Luke of the widow’s mite and the story of the generations of women at Grace who had given all that they had. Yes, and I think she remembered the story of the bent-over woman, who was healed so that she could stand and serve again.

But especially, I believe, Nancy remembered Mary’s Magnificat and the parable of the woman who turned her house upside down to find one lost coin. The woman had nine coins, but like God, she couldn’t rest, she couldn’t be satisfied, until all 10 were united. Every coin is important and valued in God’s economy. There’s no joy in heaven (or on earth either) until the 10 coins, the 100 sheep, the elder and younger sons—and the elder and younger daughters—are home together again. That’s what Jesus turned the world upside down to accomplish, that completion.

Perhaps Nancy also remembered one other story from Luke’s Gospel: the story in Luke 24 of how the two disciples from Emmaus, in their sorrow, needed a stranger to walk with them, a stranger who became known to them only in the breaking of the bread. (See Luke 24:13–35

Early on, Luke says, “their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (Luke 24:16). We, too, often don’t recognize Jesus when he comes to us, walks with us, in the guise of a newcomer, a stranger. But that stranger is Jesus, and he comes frequently to play applecart upset with our lives–to help us come alive in ways we have never been alive before.

The Rev. Phyllis Kersten retired last May following 12 years as Grace’s associate pastor. She was co-author of LWT’s 1990 Bible study, “Companions on Your Journey: Studies of Biblical Women,” and has been an adjunct instructor at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.