"That is not the best sermon which makes the hearers go away talking to one another,
and praising the speaker,
but which makes them go away thoughtful and serious,
and hastening to be alone."
-- Gilbert Burnet
A Spiritual Quilt from Religious Scraps
Call to Worship
Minister: In the beginning, there were scraps.
People: Bright scraps, dark scraps, all shapes and sizes.
Minister: The Master Quilter cut the many scraps.
People: With sharp scissors the scraps were shaped and refined.
Minister: Strong thread was used to sew the pieces together.
People: Threads of many colors bind our scraps.
Minister: The backing and edges formed a strong firmament for the scraps.
People: And so the quilt of our world was born, the work of seven days and seven billion, a project that was created and yet evolved. And here we are.
Spiritual Texts
There are sacred and holy words in every religion, and in none. They reside in scripture, on parchment, rolled or bound or carved in stone. At one end of things, all words are sacred, being created by we who are also sacred. Some words, however, ring more true than others. Today I share with you two spiritual texts. The first is a Christian text many of you may be familiar with, from Genesis.
Christian – Genesis 37:3-10
Early American - Text by Eliza Calvert Hall (1907)
The Day's Lesson: A spiritual quilt from religious scraps
I love quilts. On cold winter nights they represent warmth and comfort. During the hot summer, they're a comfortable place to sit on the beach. There are simple quilts and complex ones, and crazy quilts as well. My favorite is the patchwork quilt, made out of scraps from here and there but still pieced into an overall pattern.
These are my family's quilts, which I've brought here to show. We didn't make them, but they've been with us through thick and thin and have a lot of meaning for us. Each of the designs actually has its own meaning. There's the double wedding ring quilt, the flying geese, the mosaic, and there's this wonderful patchwork quilt that was passed down to us from my partner's grandparents. Each one has a story behind it, and each one was stitched with love.
I think that we're an awful lot like the patchwork quilts. Each of our unique beliefs and personalities is a piece in the quilt, a scrap of fabric to be used by the Divine in some way. Sometimes the shapes we take on are quite beautiful, and other times they're plain, or even ugly. Still, if we work at it, even the ugliest of scraps can be incorporated into the glorious whole, and take a place of pride.
The top of a quilt is the part that everyone sees. It's the part I love doing best! This is where we showcase the best of our lives, where the stand-out moments are. The top is also where we sometimes have to cheat a little to make things work, trimming a bit of fabric or sewing it a bit tight to make it fit just right.
The flaws are there in every quilt, but most people never see them because of the beauty of the finished product. That's sort of like life, after all... people see the big picture, but focus less on the little quirks and problems.
You have to work hard to piece a quilt top. You have to cut the pieces “just so”, then iron them, pin them together, sew them by hand or by machine, then iron them again. As the quilt grows, you have to make sure it's the right size for the bed you're making it for. There's a lot of measuring involved, and a lot of checking numbers. The attention to detail is impressive.
Once the top is pieced, you have to choose your batting. That's the stuff that goes in the middle. It might be cotton, quallofil, or some other fluffy material. In the pioneer days they sometimes put an old quilt inside a new one so it would be warmer and be useful longer! Whatever goes inside is pretty much hidden from view. No one ever sees it. It's important, though... it's what makes your quilt warm and comfortable. The Master Quilter sees it, though, and knows that it's important to use quality filling.
The stuffing of your quilt needs to suit the use to which you expect to put the quilt. If it's a summer quilt, only the finest of light batting will do. On the other hand, a winter quilt designed to keep you warm when the New England snows are deepest, needs to have a thick, dense batting, something that will warm up and stay warm. You wouldn't want that warm quilt on a hot summer day, and the thin quilt isn't going to help much when it's cold out.
The backing is the piece that is on the other side of your quilt, the “plain” side. Except that it's never really plain, is it? It takes on the patterns and designs that are quilted onto it, and sometimes those “plain” sides turn out to be a better work of art than the top! As you quilt out the pattern on the top, it is translated into this beautiful hidden design on the back. Those hidden patterns are, to me, like the good things we do anonymously or without expect of return. They represent the times we leave a tip for a waitress who's working hard, or send a basket of food to a family that we know is hungry.
The backing, even if it's a very simple one, is also essential. It keeps the stuffing in, gives shape and sturdiness to your quilt, and holds the actual quilted stitches tight. It's the side that is against your body most often, and it gets worn and sometimes stained. It's also the part that becomes soft and slightly fuzzy and just the right texture for cuddling.
Quilting is the actual act of stitching the three layers together. All the other parts are just parts. Without the stitches, made with the right thread and the right needle, your masterpiece will just be bits of fabric. Quilt stitches are pretty plain... up and down, up and down. They need to be relatively even, though, and that can be hard to learn. It's a bit tedious, too, for those who don't enjoy it.
But that quilt stitch, poking through all the layers of the quilt itself, is what holds it together. If you made a quilt and didn't quilt it, the first time you washed it all the filling would ball up in one corner and it would be useless from that point on.
The type of patterns don't really matter – the quilt doesn't care if you stitch leaves or crosses or circles or stars onto it. What matters is that the things you stitch are close enough together to hold the three pieces firmly together, keeping the inside batting from shifting, and turning the top, batting and backing into a new thing: a quilt.
There's a quote I found when I was researching this sermon, and I felt a need to share it because it spoke to me so strongly. It's from a United Church sermon from a few years back, by Rev. Joyce Kelly. She said:
“The Holy Quilter has a universal DESIGN, with Star of David, Muslim Crescent, Celtic crosses. And the Great Quilter stitches the Light of Christ with incredible beautiful embellishments – the Mercy and Grace and Love that we meet in Jesus, spangled like shot silk through the complexity that we are.
“Crazy Quilts have yet another layer – overlays of lace, silk, satin, velvet, ribbons, bows. I think God is making a Crazy Quilt, adding overlays of extra fine blessing after we've done the best we can, enhancing whatever color or shape we have become, no matter how many times we've been ripped apart and redone. I think God puts extra fine trimmings on those who've re-worked (and been re-worked) the most.”
Think of all the scraps that go into a quilt. You have light bits and dark bits, square bits and triangular bits, patterned scraps and those that are plain. Our religions are sort of like that. Over here's a bit of Judaism, and it's got blue in it, and stars, and it has a fairly rigid shape.
Christianity's over there, a bit larger, some of it looking a bit grandiose and other scraps from the same fabric being more plain, but all on the same theme, obviously meant to be stitched up together. The Muslim parts are a bit frayed right now, and some would say ugly... they come in reds and mud browns, but oh... the glimmers of hope are there, you can see the delicate thread of it in the fabric's weave! The Abrahamic faiths are easier to stitch into a quilt because they're fairly standard... Lots of precise angles, very few surprises in the general make-up of their fabrics.
The earth centric faiths are more difficult to fit in, sometimes. Wiccans and polytheists and Native Americans look less regular, more circular or oval. It's hard to fit a square piece against a circle piece, because the edges don't match up right! With no specific holy texts to call from, and no standard rules across the board, the pieces are all the colors of the rainbow, and the fabrics don't match. Some are dark, others light, and some are a crazy mix of both.
The edges don't have to perfectly match, though. That's one of the best parts about quilting. There are little faiths, personal faiths, spiritual faiths that have only one or two followers. They fill in the gaps in a lovely way! Watch: (use fabric scraps to illustrate the point).
Our religions are the quilt. The Master Quilter is God, Goddess, All that Is, the Many, the One, the All... the Divine. We're the fabrics, all doing our own thing, and the Quilter is sewing us all together with a good, thick quilting thread.
When we're all done, we can try and look at the whole quilt, but not everyone's in a position to do that. The bits in the middle can kind of peer around, but the ones at the edge can't see the other side. Not one piece of the quilt can be given up and still have an entire quilt... even when some of the bits are troublesome.
There's a beautiful quilting poem I want to share with you. It's called "I think God is a quilter" and no one knows who wrote it.
I think God is a quilter
Who takes His needle and thread
To piece our world from nothingness
And give it form, instead.
I think God is a quilter
And everything I see
Are pieces from His careful hand
From tree to bumblebee.
I think we see God's stitches
His texture everywhere;
The velvet moss, the grainy sand,
The silky strands of hair.
I think God is a quilter;
Stitching tight and tiny rows,
Adding to my scraps and pieces,
Seaming everything He knows.
I think He cuts the patterns
From what I'd throw away.
He shows me how to use each scrap
In His redeeming way.
I think God quilts a pattern
From everything I live;
But He can only stitch the quilt
From what I choose to give.
I think God is a quilter
Stitching strength where I am weak.
Showing me that life He touches
Embraces everything I seek.
I think God is a quilter
From the patience in each thread;
Proving length of time no barrier;
Treating time a gift, instead.
I think quilts are lessons
God uses just to teach
That our pieces and our remnants
Have kaleidoscopic reach.
So, in the life I'm living
With pieces everywhere
I'll give them to the Quilter
To stitch with loving care.
I'll give them to the Quilter
Unwanted though they be
And with His work of quilting
He'll make a quilt of me.
There's space in our quilt for everyone. The normal, the weird, the standard and the unusual, the passionate ones and the ones who need to just attend and absorb, the Martha's and the Mary's of the world.
Please join me in prayer:
Dearest Divine Quilter,
Blessed be the weird people,
for they are the ones who make the interesting part of our quilt.
Blessed be the normal ones, the ones that fit in,
because they provide stability and help us stay bound together.
Blessed be the ones who are passionate
because they are the strong and sturdy edging that binds us together.
Blessed be the Muslims for giving us crescents, and the Christians for crosses.
Blessed be the pagans for the circles they bring us,
and blessed be the Jews for all the stars in our scrap quilt.
Blessed be all of us, all the varying shapes and fabrics and colors and beliefs, because the Divine is larger than all of us, and we ARE made in the image of the Divine, each one of us!
Amen, so be it.
In order for a quilt to be made, we must use all of these pieces. If it were made of single fabric it would not be a quilt, but a blanket. A blanket is useful but not as beautiful and varied. A blanket is a blanket but a quilt can keep you warm, it can give you a place to sit, and it can even be Art.
Let us work together to make our quilt a wonderful one. Let us help the rougher pieces fit in without hurting so much. Let no piece be shamed for it's creed, color, or orientation. Every piece is sacred; we are all sacred.
Minister: In the beginning, there were scraps.
People: Bright scraps, dark scraps, all shapes and sizes.
Minister: The Master Quilter cut the many scraps.
People: With sharp scissors the scraps were shaped and refined.
Minister: Strong thread was used to sew the pieces together.
People: Threads of many colors bind our scraps.
Minister: The backing and edges formed a strong firmament for the scraps.
People: And so the quilt of our world was born, the work of seven days and seven billion, a project that was created and yet evolved. And here we are.
Spiritual Texts
There are sacred and holy words in every religion, and in none. They reside in scripture, on parchment, rolled or bound or carved in stone. At one end of things, all words are sacred, being created by we who are also sacred. Some words, however, ring more true than others. Today I share with you two spiritual texts. The first is a Christian text many of you may be familiar with, from Genesis.
Christian – Genesis 37:3-10
Early American - Text by Eliza Calvert Hall (1907)
The Day's Lesson: A spiritual quilt from religious scraps
I love quilts. On cold winter nights they represent warmth and comfort. During the hot summer, they're a comfortable place to sit on the beach. There are simple quilts and complex ones, and crazy quilts as well. My favorite is the patchwork quilt, made out of scraps from here and there but still pieced into an overall pattern.
These are my family's quilts, which I've brought here to show. We didn't make them, but they've been with us through thick and thin and have a lot of meaning for us. Each of the designs actually has its own meaning. There's the double wedding ring quilt, the flying geese, the mosaic, and there's this wonderful patchwork quilt that was passed down to us from my partner's grandparents. Each one has a story behind it, and each one was stitched with love.
I think that we're an awful lot like the patchwork quilts. Each of our unique beliefs and personalities is a piece in the quilt, a scrap of fabric to be used by the Divine in some way. Sometimes the shapes we take on are quite beautiful, and other times they're plain, or even ugly. Still, if we work at it, even the ugliest of scraps can be incorporated into the glorious whole, and take a place of pride.
The top of a quilt is the part that everyone sees. It's the part I love doing best! This is where we showcase the best of our lives, where the stand-out moments are. The top is also where we sometimes have to cheat a little to make things work, trimming a bit of fabric or sewing it a bit tight to make it fit just right.
The flaws are there in every quilt, but most people never see them because of the beauty of the finished product. That's sort of like life, after all... people see the big picture, but focus less on the little quirks and problems.
You have to work hard to piece a quilt top. You have to cut the pieces “just so”, then iron them, pin them together, sew them by hand or by machine, then iron them again. As the quilt grows, you have to make sure it's the right size for the bed you're making it for. There's a lot of measuring involved, and a lot of checking numbers. The attention to detail is impressive.
Once the top is pieced, you have to choose your batting. That's the stuff that goes in the middle. It might be cotton, quallofil, or some other fluffy material. In the pioneer days they sometimes put an old quilt inside a new one so it would be warmer and be useful longer! Whatever goes inside is pretty much hidden from view. No one ever sees it. It's important, though... it's what makes your quilt warm and comfortable. The Master Quilter sees it, though, and knows that it's important to use quality filling.
The stuffing of your quilt needs to suit the use to which you expect to put the quilt. If it's a summer quilt, only the finest of light batting will do. On the other hand, a winter quilt designed to keep you warm when the New England snows are deepest, needs to have a thick, dense batting, something that will warm up and stay warm. You wouldn't want that warm quilt on a hot summer day, and the thin quilt isn't going to help much when it's cold out.
The backing is the piece that is on the other side of your quilt, the “plain” side. Except that it's never really plain, is it? It takes on the patterns and designs that are quilted onto it, and sometimes those “plain” sides turn out to be a better work of art than the top! As you quilt out the pattern on the top, it is translated into this beautiful hidden design on the back. Those hidden patterns are, to me, like the good things we do anonymously or without expect of return. They represent the times we leave a tip for a waitress who's working hard, or send a basket of food to a family that we know is hungry.
The backing, even if it's a very simple one, is also essential. It keeps the stuffing in, gives shape and sturdiness to your quilt, and holds the actual quilted stitches tight. It's the side that is against your body most often, and it gets worn and sometimes stained. It's also the part that becomes soft and slightly fuzzy and just the right texture for cuddling.
Quilting is the actual act of stitching the three layers together. All the other parts are just parts. Without the stitches, made with the right thread and the right needle, your masterpiece will just be bits of fabric. Quilt stitches are pretty plain... up and down, up and down. They need to be relatively even, though, and that can be hard to learn. It's a bit tedious, too, for those who don't enjoy it.
But that quilt stitch, poking through all the layers of the quilt itself, is what holds it together. If you made a quilt and didn't quilt it, the first time you washed it all the filling would ball up in one corner and it would be useless from that point on.
The type of patterns don't really matter – the quilt doesn't care if you stitch leaves or crosses or circles or stars onto it. What matters is that the things you stitch are close enough together to hold the three pieces firmly together, keeping the inside batting from shifting, and turning the top, batting and backing into a new thing: a quilt.
There's a quote I found when I was researching this sermon, and I felt a need to share it because it spoke to me so strongly. It's from a United Church sermon from a few years back, by Rev. Joyce Kelly. She said:
“The Holy Quilter has a universal DESIGN, with Star of David, Muslim Crescent, Celtic crosses. And the Great Quilter stitches the Light of Christ with incredible beautiful embellishments – the Mercy and Grace and Love that we meet in Jesus, spangled like shot silk through the complexity that we are.
“Crazy Quilts have yet another layer – overlays of lace, silk, satin, velvet, ribbons, bows. I think God is making a Crazy Quilt, adding overlays of extra fine blessing after we've done the best we can, enhancing whatever color or shape we have become, no matter how many times we've been ripped apart and redone. I think God puts extra fine trimmings on those who've re-worked (and been re-worked) the most.”
Think of all the scraps that go into a quilt. You have light bits and dark bits, square bits and triangular bits, patterned scraps and those that are plain. Our religions are sort of like that. Over here's a bit of Judaism, and it's got blue in it, and stars, and it has a fairly rigid shape.
Christianity's over there, a bit larger, some of it looking a bit grandiose and other scraps from the same fabric being more plain, but all on the same theme, obviously meant to be stitched up together. The Muslim parts are a bit frayed right now, and some would say ugly... they come in reds and mud browns, but oh... the glimmers of hope are there, you can see the delicate thread of it in the fabric's weave! The Abrahamic faiths are easier to stitch into a quilt because they're fairly standard... Lots of precise angles, very few surprises in the general make-up of their fabrics.
The earth centric faiths are more difficult to fit in, sometimes. Wiccans and polytheists and Native Americans look less regular, more circular or oval. It's hard to fit a square piece against a circle piece, because the edges don't match up right! With no specific holy texts to call from, and no standard rules across the board, the pieces are all the colors of the rainbow, and the fabrics don't match. Some are dark, others light, and some are a crazy mix of both.
The edges don't have to perfectly match, though. That's one of the best parts about quilting. There are little faiths, personal faiths, spiritual faiths that have only one or two followers. They fill in the gaps in a lovely way! Watch: (use fabric scraps to illustrate the point).
Our religions are the quilt. The Master Quilter is God, Goddess, All that Is, the Many, the One, the All... the Divine. We're the fabrics, all doing our own thing, and the Quilter is sewing us all together with a good, thick quilting thread.
When we're all done, we can try and look at the whole quilt, but not everyone's in a position to do that. The bits in the middle can kind of peer around, but the ones at the edge can't see the other side. Not one piece of the quilt can be given up and still have an entire quilt... even when some of the bits are troublesome.
There's a beautiful quilting poem I want to share with you. It's called "I think God is a quilter" and no one knows who wrote it.
I think God is a quilter
Who takes His needle and thread
To piece our world from nothingness
And give it form, instead.
I think God is a quilter
And everything I see
Are pieces from His careful hand
From tree to bumblebee.
I think we see God's stitches
His texture everywhere;
The velvet moss, the grainy sand,
The silky strands of hair.
I think God is a quilter;
Stitching tight and tiny rows,
Adding to my scraps and pieces,
Seaming everything He knows.
I think He cuts the patterns
From what I'd throw away.
He shows me how to use each scrap
In His redeeming way.
I think God quilts a pattern
From everything I live;
But He can only stitch the quilt
From what I choose to give.
I think God is a quilter
Stitching strength where I am weak.
Showing me that life He touches
Embraces everything I seek.
I think God is a quilter
From the patience in each thread;
Proving length of time no barrier;
Treating time a gift, instead.
I think quilts are lessons
God uses just to teach
That our pieces and our remnants
Have kaleidoscopic reach.
So, in the life I'm living
With pieces everywhere
I'll give them to the Quilter
To stitch with loving care.
I'll give them to the Quilter
Unwanted though they be
And with His work of quilting
He'll make a quilt of me.
There's space in our quilt for everyone. The normal, the weird, the standard and the unusual, the passionate ones and the ones who need to just attend and absorb, the Martha's and the Mary's of the world.
Please join me in prayer:
Dearest Divine Quilter,
Blessed be the weird people,
for they are the ones who make the interesting part of our quilt.
Blessed be the normal ones, the ones that fit in,
because they provide stability and help us stay bound together.
Blessed be the ones who are passionate
because they are the strong and sturdy edging that binds us together.
Blessed be the Muslims for giving us crescents, and the Christians for crosses.
Blessed be the pagans for the circles they bring us,
and blessed be the Jews for all the stars in our scrap quilt.
Blessed be all of us, all the varying shapes and fabrics and colors and beliefs, because the Divine is larger than all of us, and we ARE made in the image of the Divine, each one of us!
Amen, so be it.
In order for a quilt to be made, we must use all of these pieces. If it were made of single fabric it would not be a quilt, but a blanket. A blanket is useful but not as beautiful and varied. A blanket is a blanket but a quilt can keep you warm, it can give you a place to sit, and it can even be Art.
Let us work together to make our quilt a wonderful one. Let us help the rougher pieces fit in without hurting so much. Let no piece be shamed for it's creed, color, or orientation. Every piece is sacred; we are all sacred.
