"Missing the Point "
I apologize in advance to all the people who gave me wedding stories this week for use in this Sermon. Many were illuminating. Some were amusing. Some were inspiring. But I*m not using them today. I realized, when I sat down to write this sermon, that I was missing the point. Most of us go through life missing the point * about a lot of things. Jesus talks about weddings in our gospel selection, but weddings were not His point. He conveyed a bit of conventional wisdom that He knew His listeners would agree with. Everyone in those days knew that weddings were highly structured affairs. They probably didn*t have a seating chart. But everyone from both families knew where to sit * that is, unless you were like the man in the parable, someone who was invited (invitations weren*t necessary if you were family). An invited stranger could make a faux pas if he (the parable only mentions men) sat down in the wrong place. It could happen today. That*s why we have place cards. They didn*t have place cards in Jesus*s day. So where did you sit?
Jesus didn*t have to tell His listeners that the smart thing to do was to ask. Asking is a way to fit in, to find one*s way in a strange locale, so to speak. Only an arrogant person would simply claim the best seat. An arrogant person like that is setting himself up for a reversal * for looking like the opposite of his posture * looking like a fool.
Jesus was at a feast and the Pharisees had come in and taken the best seats without asking. They were setting themselves up to look like fools.
So, Jesus was talking about weddings that day, but what he was really talking about was something else entirely.
Most of us go through life missing the point. We wander the world missing the point unless we ask God to walk with us on the journey. There are many dangers, toils and snares out there. It*s the real world, after all. He wants to be with us. We need Him because we never know what the future will bring.
Most of us go through life so focused on the cards that are dealt to us that we can*t hear the voice of God calling us to let Him be our journey companion.
I would like to preface the next part of this sermon by saying that although the next few minutes deal with a past capital campaign, I*m not about to talk about money, but rather spirit. I*ve been given the job of working with you on our stewardship and so I*m interested in the spirit with which people give. I*m greatly interested in what*s in your hearts. So what follows is about how that part of our walk with God leads to greater spirituality. It will be no surprise to many of you that I turned to our church*s history.
I took time this week to think about this wonderful building that houses our church. Notice that I*m not calling the church our church. We are the church, not this structure. We*ve had our church building burn down once, and it didn*t destroy the real church. And I*ve been thinking about a wonderful story told to me by an elderly gentleman who once was the church*s historian. I was with him recently and he answered some questions I*ve had about the 1940's campaign that moved us to this location.
Memories have a way of erasing the rough edges. From the vantage point of 60 plus years we think it was pretty brilliant to move here and build a big sanctuary and education wing just in time to provide a church for all the new families of the 50's and early 60's. But our ex-historian tells it a little differently. And the real story is a lot more interesting.
It started with termites. The old church building in the center of downtown was riddled with termites.
Now, some people say that everything that happens is an act of God; and, so, God sent those termites to eat our old church. I have problems with that. I don*t believe that God sends evil like Adolph Hitler. And I find it hard to believe that God sent the termites. In my view, the termites simply came. They came to a church dinner, so to speak. By the time we knew about it, the main support beams of the church had been digested.
These were dark days, the kind that test the mettle of folk. It was the late 30's and termites weren*t the only uninvited guests feasting on the world. The younger amongst us don*t remember these days, but let me remind you of what you*ve forgotten from your history classes. Hitler was feasting on central Europe, one region at a time. The Italians had launched a new empire in Ethiopia. The Japanese were already in China. Our military was ranked well behind those of most industrialized nations. And soon much of our navy would be positioned in Pearl Harbor, a sitting duck for Japanese naval air power. In 1939, Hitler invaded Poland and the largest, most destructive war in history was ignited. Polish-Americans huddled around their radios as did African-Americans who followed Mussolini*s invasion of Ethiopia. Mob violence on Manhattan*s upper east side broke out between African-Americans and Italian-Americans.
Dark days abroad and dark days at home. Our nation, and much of the rest of the world, was enduring its tenth year of the Great Depression. The adults who lived through the Depression are largely gone now. Living memories today are with those who were teenagers or children during those times. They remember birthday parties given by parents who had to hoard flour and eggs to make a small birthday cake. There were few presents at Christmas. One in four Americans who wanted work couldn*t find it. The collection plates at church were sometimes empty.
Was there ever a worse time to have a church crisis? Our church had been through a great crisis in 1882 when the place burnt down in a conflagration that took most of Red Bank*s downtown. We rebuilt and in the process, I*m told, we were stronger as a people. We felt closer to each other and closer to God.
What do you do, though, when the destruction is slower, when you are literally undermined and don*t find out about it until it is too late? What do you do when the economy has crashed and you have to watch every dime? What do you do when the dark clouds of war are approaching?
At times like those, it is easy to feel tired. To look in the mirror and see hair that has turned grey. It is easy to forget that your legs once had spring in them and that your heart beat with confidance that if you worked hard enough everything would work out OK. It*s easy to be like the ancient Israelites in captivity in Babylon who numbered their sins and felt like giving up.
It would have been easy to give up in 1939. We quickly had buyers for the land. And another congregation made an offer for the rotted building. The buyers figured out how to shore the thing up and move it across town.
We could have sold everything and dispersed to other congregations like contemporary Dust Bowl Oakies. Why not? It wasn*t a good time to do anything but duck.
In retrospect we look like smart people. We sold the land and the church and bought a house, added to it and had everything in place to provide a church home for the victorious men and women who after the war returned, married, had lots of baby boomers to fill our new education wing and the pews we sit on this morning.
No self-respecting historian would call the congregation of 1939 smart for the decisions they made. An impartial historian would conclude that we were foolish.
By 1941, we had title to the new property. But we were at war. And people in my generation who were brought up with war stories told by fathers and uncles and re-runs of war movies on television are sometimes unaware of how much darker the world became after 1939.
Even some who lived through those days forget that when we purchased this property in 1940, France had just surrendered and the English would soon be fighting the air campaign known as the Battle of Britain. Most concluded that the English would lose control of the skies and soon be invaded and conquered like France. That year Hitler decided to attack Russia, his greatest strategic error. But we didn*t know that. Hitler seemed on the verge of triumph. We joined the war in 1941 and our fathers and mothers tell us that they were angry. But in quiet moments they also admit that they were frightened.
Fellow baby boomers, forget what you*ve seen in the movies. We fought that war for four years and were losing it for the first two. It wasn*t until 1943 that the tide of battle turned in our favor, but even then it didn*t feel that way. The man in the street, the members of this church who were left behind on the home front didn*t know what was going on. Most, even including the soldiers who were doing the fighting didn*t know what was going on until they read about it after the war.
We dedicated this new church in 1944 a few months after D-Day. But there wasn*t a great deal to celebrate. Our troops had to fight their way into Berlin and across the Pacific. After the Germans surrendered 5 months later, many soldiers like my father expected to die in the invasion of Japan. Families around here were apprehensive. No one expected a WWII generation and a baby boom. Many thought we would have a church full of widows and weeping mothers, the way we did after the Civil War. No one knew what to expect. Even Albert Einstein in his little house at Princeton couldn*t predict what was going to happen.
So, why did the members of the church do it? Why did they choose to build anew when there was so much gloom and despair?
The younger generation was off at war. So the decisions were made by an older generation. Many of them had endured the horrors of WWI, a war fought with chemical weapons in rain drenched trenches. Some members of their generation gave up on life, gave up on God, never married and succomed to the darkness. But not all. Some prayed to God for forgiveness and healing. Some also married and raised children right here in Red Bank. Some were thrown out of work in the Depression but didn*t let that deter them. These folks are pretty much gone now. Some of you remember them. They knew that their children, if they survived the WWII, would need a place to recover, a place to thank and praise God, and a safe place to bring their children.
This place you are sitting in is their gift to you. If you are a visitor today, this place is their gift to you too.
The journey with God is largely in our hearts. No one but God can give you the gift of saving grace. Your parents couldn*t give that to you. But you were given a place to gather and pray together, a place to sing together, a place to baptize your children and to bury your dead.
The older people in the early 1940's knew that we would need a sacred place in the days ahead. They weren*t brilliant or visionary. They simply were experienced with the real world and dedicated to activities in the world that help people be strong, courageous and loving. They loved God. In the world that we*ve inherited, we, too, need to find hope and courage to fend off the darkness. We need to find love to end the loneliness and uncertainty and help us see beyond ourselves. And we find that here. Hope and courage are to be found elsewhere, yes, but we of this congregation find faith, hope, love and courage here.
For some among us this morning the journey is just beginning. This place is a gift to you. We ask only that you pass it to others some day with the same heart with which it was given to you. Until then, journey with God, and ask Him to be your constant companion. Don*t despair when dark clouds gather. Be one with God in Jesus and you will receive grace and a larger perspective, one that will help you along the way.