May 23 Storytelling Service: Rachel Harvey
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Hi. My name is Rachel Harvey and I am a life-long United Methodist. I grew up in a United Methodist church of 30 people and I’m related to all but three of them so at an early age I learned that church equals family. Every Sunday my family, about 15 of us, would meet at the farm and decide where we were going out to eat. Every Sunday my brother and I begged my dad to let us go along and every single Sunday he said no. I thought it was because we were poor or something until one Sunday when he said yes.
My brother and I were excited as we crawled into the backseat and decided what we would order and which cousin we would sit next to. As our car neared the end of the lane their cars turned left while ours turned right. “I thought we were going out to eat, where are we going?” I asked. My dad quickly responded, “I told you we’re going out to eat, now no more questions until we get there!”. I was a lot of things as a child, but stupid wasn’t one of them so I kept my mouth shut. We were all shocked as we pulled up to our local soup kitchen. In our Sunday best we waded through the line and had food plopped onto our plate, found four seats together and sat in silence as our neighbors ran up for seconds and thirds. As we left I yelled at my dad, “Why did you lie to me, you told me we were going out to eat!”. He responded, “Rachel, we’re not eating out until all these people can eat out if they choose to.” It wasn’t until eleven years ago when my dad passed that I learned he as a Black man wasn’t welcome at my mom’s White family church. In that moment my dad, from the margins, taught me what it means to be the church and more importantly what it means to be a family. It means we make sure everyone has a place at the table with access to the resources they need.
This past Christmas I asked my mom for the first time what made my family change in relation to my Dad being welcome as a Black man and she turned to me and said, “Well Rachel it was you.” Apparently when I was little I had a lot of questions. In addition to wanting to know where babies come from, I needed to know why my dad wasn’t allowed to come to Thanksgiving dinner. My mother’s response, “I don’t know, let’s call Nana.” My mom called her mom and asked the question. My Nana said, “Well you know how your dad is.” My mother responded that she “wouldn’t lie to her daughter anymore and my grandpa was going to have to tell me himself.” So my Nana went and got my grandfather, handed him the phone and my mom handed me the phone. I asked the question and to this day don’t remember what he said to me but my dad was invited to Thanksgiving that day. After that he was invited back for Christmas dinner and at the first sight of summer he was invited out to the farm to help bale hay. After a hard day’s work my grandfather invited my dad to stay for dinner…he invited him to the table. From that day on my dad was welcomed in the family and when my dad died he was closer to my grandpa than my grandpa was to his own sons.
Based on my own experiences and what I read of the birth of our church in Acts I know a few things to be true.
- Whether or not our families, churches and denomination choose to recognize it, Sophia (the Holy Spirit) rests on each one of us.
- When our families, churches and denomination fail to recognize any of our sisters and brothers we are called, whether we’re four or forty, to ask the question why.
- When we think we’ve drawn the circle wide enough, we must always draw it wider still.
