April 16, 2011 | Over time, any story, even the Easter story, can be worn smooth. Told and retold, over 2,000 years or just a lifetime, a story becomes familiar, the rough edges leveled, blurred.

It’s not that the retelling renders a story powerless. But it does make a story hard to hear the way you heard it the first time. Like it happened the first time.

What gets lost in the retelling, even with the Paschal mystery, is surprise. Shock. The jaw-dropping, slap-me-in-the-face astonishment and wonder of the unexpected.

But this Easter, one small church in North Carolina will hear the story afresh, with ears attuned to surprise.

A historically African-American congregation, St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church barely had a pulse two years ago, when maybe 15 people showed up on a good Sunday. Even worse, after sharing a priest for 40 years with the white Episcopal parish across town, St. Cyprian’s was suddenly on its own. Some in the tiny church believed it would die.

Today, propelled by one unexpected event after another, St. Cyprian's is growing.

Lay leaders have stepped forward with new ideas for ministry and outreach. Out of nowhere, a white Lutheran pastor, bored in retirement after 45 years pastoring African-American congregations, came knocking on the diocese’s door, looking for part-time work. At 75, he is experiencing some of the most exciting, fulfilling ministry of his career. New members, black and white, are joining the church, 20 in January alone.

One of the bigger surprises: all of this is happening in Oxford, N.C., a small town with a troubled racial past, the town where the events recounted in the book “Blood Done Sign My Name” occurred.

“This is a church that was stuck, suffering and near death,” said the Rev. John Heinemeier, the Lutheran pastor who now serves as vicar at St. Cyprian’s. “But a big part of Easter, then and at St. Cyprian’s, is surprise. The resurrection came as a flat-out surprise to the disciples and everyone else around Jesus. They just didn’t think that was going to happen. That was not one of the options.”

Reaching across the racial divide in a time of turmoil

Two years ago, resurrection wasn’t high on St. Cyprian’s list of options, either. Founded in 1906, the church, like most rural Episcopal churches, had always been small. But it had once been an active presence in Oxford’s black community, the scene of weekend dances and youth programs in the 1960s and 1970s.

For most of its existence, the church had had its own full-time priest and been served by black Episcopal clergy. The last one, the Rev. Othello D. Stanley, was vicar from 1943 to 1970.

As Stanley was stepping down, however, Oxford was engulfed in racial turmoil following the shooting death of Henry “Dickie” Marrow, a 23-year-old black veteran, and the acquittal of the white men charged in his killing. The events of that period -- an angry summer of protest marches, Klan rallies, firebombings and an economic boycott of the town’s merchants -- were chronicled by historian Timothy B. Tyson in his book “Blood Done Sign My Name.”

In a statement of racial solidarity, St. Cyprian’s and St. Stephen’s asked to be “yoked” together by the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina, with the two churches sharing a priest. In 1970, the Rev. Harrison Simons was appointed rector at St. Stephen’s -- a full parish church -- and vicar at St. Cyprian’s, a mission church supported by the diocese. He served in those posts until his retirement in 1997.

“The yoke was an attempt by the two churches and the diocese to be a witness that the Episcopal Church stood together in a divided community,” said the Rev. Canon Michael B. Hunn, who serves as an assistant to the current bishop, the Rt. Rev. Michael B. Curry, coordinating programs and pastoral ministry for the diocese.