Hebrews 10:32-39
Goooood Morning Covenant Church!
What a good day …
A good day to celebrate …
60 years of faith, hope and love …
60 years of grace, mercy and peace …
60 Christmas Seasons and
60 Easters …
Baptisms, weddings and funerals …
Mountaintops and valleys; tears and turmoil; joy and laughter …
Tuna casseroles and heaping bowls of potato salad …
Groups Alive and bowling teams …
Mission teams and youth trips …
Sunday School and Preschool …
Vacation Bible School and Church Camp …
Sermons and Bible studies …
Preachers and teachers!
60 years wherein Covenant Presbyterian Church has lived the gospel, searching and seeking … taking some pretty courageous stands along the way … an open and welcoming congregation …
We’ve come a long way in our journey … lives transformed by the gospel … salt given to the earth, light for the world …
We’ve learned a lot … and speaking of learning,
At Jim and Susan’s 50th wedding anniversary, Jim was asked to give a brief account of the benefits of a long marriage.
“Tell us, Jim, just what is it you’ve learned from all those wonderful years with your wife?”
Jim responded, “Well, I’ve learned that marriage is the best teacher of all. It teaches you loyalty, forbearance, meekness, self-restraint, forgiveness — and a great many other qualities you wouldn’t have needed if you’d stayed single.”
To be a part of the church is sort of like being married:
We have to learn a few things about getting along and working together … making plans together, showing up and being there … figuring out how to love one another … constantly learning what it means to follow Jesus.
Our reading from Hebrews says it well … it’s not always easy!
The Christian life is a strange amalgam, a topsy-turvy wonderland in which everything seems slightly unusual, a little off-kilter …
We live with an eye on Christ … and we live in the world … a juggling act … trying to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world … one day, seeing clearly … the next, it’s all fogged in.
But we make it … we believe and we love … we help one another … we’re God’s people by grace, and by grace, we’re Covenant on the Corner!
So don’t give up your confidence, says the writer to the Hebrews …
Stay the course, remain faithful … you’re gonna make it.
We’ve come a long way …
And having come this far …
Where do we go from here?
It’s a very different question today than 60 years ago.
60 years ago …
A powerful Protestant culture.
A culture that encouraged church attendance.
After the Depression and WW 2, everyone was looking for stability - a new home; a better world.
People moved out of the cities, built the suburbs.
Created and joined the YMCA, neighborhood associations, civic clubs and fraternal organizations; PTAs and book clubs; bowling leagues and card clubs …
They joined churches …
Millions of Americans signed on – churches sprung up on thousands of corners all across the nation …
Methodist and Baptist, Episcopal and Lutheran, Congregational and Presbyterian … an unprecedented building boom for mainline Protestant congregations … two and three Sunday services; bulging Sunday Schools … ramped up programs …
Part of our celebration today is remembering what it was like … we were young and eager … new jobs, new homes, new schools, new families …
And a new church called Covenant!
Covenant on the Corner.
It wasn’t your grandfather’s church; you were not the church of 1900 or 1925, you were the church for 1950 … you created a new church for the WW 2 generation.
You dug the foundations and raised the walls; you nailed the shingles and laid the carpet … you built the church with sweat and tears; you prayed and you studied; you sang the LORD's song in a wonderful new world.
So let’s celebrate; we’ve come a long way … but let’s be careful.
Memory plays tricks on us …
In the golden glow of memory, the past looks better than it was … the Golden Age and the good old days - and we can get a little nostalgic:
¸ Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, but the past perfect!
¸ If you're yearning for the good old days, just turn off the air conditioning.
¸ People seem to get nostalgic about a lot of things they weren't so crazy about the first time around.
¸ It's never safe to be nostalgic about something until you're absolutely certain there's no chance of it coming back.
Aslan says to Lucy in the film, Prince Caspian, “Nothing happens the same way twice.”
Lot’s wife looked back and turned into a pillar of salt.
The Hebrews yearned for the safety of Egypt and failed to take the Promised Land.
The leaders of Jerusalem longed for the restoration of a by-gone glory and killed Jesus when He pointed to the future.
A friend of mine said, “We Presbyterians had the Fifties all figured out, and if the Fifties ever come back, we’re ready for ‘em.”
I knew a man who said a hundred times a day, “My daddy used to say …”
And no doubt his daddy was a bright man.
But I said to myself, “When is Jim going to say what he thinks? Will Jim ever get beyond his father’s world?”
I once called upon a lovely lady just this side of 90 – when I got there, she was planting a tree in her front yard.
“You’re planting a tree,” I said; “What kind of a tree?”
“It’s an oak,” she said, and then added, “I won’t be here to see it, but my great grandchildren will see it. I’m planting it for them.”
I made a vow years ago to never say to a young pastor, “When I was your age ...”
Rather, ask the young pastor what she’s reading, what he’s planning … the latest strategy, the latest ideas.
In 1948, we built a church for the 20th century.
In 2008, we’re building a church for the 21st century.
It’s no longer a Protestant world … our neighbors are likely to be Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist … New Age, Wikan, or who knows what.
In the last 25 years, we’ve seen the rise of the Megachurch and now the Emergent Church.
Fundamentalist Christianity took to TV like a duck to water.
The Christian Right rose to new heights, while mainline churches lost millions of members and closed thousands of churches …
A huge shift … a paradigm shift … everything has changed.
Columnist David Crumm writes:
We haven’t seen times like these in 500 years … since the invention of the printing press and all the revolutions that brought Europe out of the Middle Ages into the Modern World.
(http://www.readthespirit.com/explore/2007/09/001-we-havent-s.html).
It’s a different world:
Computers and Blackberries … iPod and iPhone … BlueTooth and wi-fy … instant messaging and YouTube … the news delivered by John Stewart and Steven Colbert … the European Union and the rise of China … spiraling oil prices, Global Warming and Middle East tensions … the Big Three now Toyota, Honda and Mercedes … it’s enough to make your head spin.
But it’s not bad … though I sometimes fret, I remind myself: every age is the age of discovery … and God is still God.
“I’m doing a new thing,” says God.
God is always doing something new.
The whirlwind God … the God of the still small voice … the God of Sinai and the God of Calvary … the God of Exodus and the God of Easter … the God of Creation and the God of the New Creation.
The God of the Covenant, and the God of the New Covenant!
When I lived in Detroit, there was always a shut-down time in late summer when the auto plants re-tooled for the new models …
Mainline Protestantism is retooling right now …
So are the Megachurches - after 25 years of ascendancy, the Megachurch movement is experiencing both decline and reassessment: what worked once no longer works.
We live in a time when things change rapidly …
Adaptation, modification, experiment.
I like it … it keeps us fresh, keeps us on our toes, keeps us moving along, keeps us young, keeps us interested and keeps us interesting.
No time for nostalgia.
No time to be the wives of Lot.
No time for liberals to yearn for the ferment of the Sixties;
Or conservatives to yearn for the glory of the Nineties …
That Avocado-green refrigerator was a winner, so was the orange shag carpet … your collection of 45s and 33 1/3 rpm records … and how about those 8-track tapes and the Heath Kit hi-fi system we built.
It was all good, but that was then.
Now is the time to retool … now is the time for a new covenant.
The Lutheran Church of Norway recently cut its ties to the state after 500 years … the Bishop of Oslo said, “It’s of another era.”
I like that.
It’s gracious …
It’s wise.
It’s the truth.
Some things are of another era.
A new day calls for new strategies.
New ways of being the church.
We’re the church of Jesus Christ, here and now.
Covenant on the Corner of 80th and Sepulveda.
Presbyterian.
Reformed and always reforming.
On the move and moving into the future!
The 21st Century.
Put your hand to the plow and don’t look back …
Turn a new page.
Find new ways.
Adapt and adopt.
Be brave … as God would have us …
Be kinder than necessary, because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of a battle.
Live simply …
Love generously …
Care deeply …
Speak kindly …
Live with intention.
Walk to the edge.
Play with abandon.
Dance as if no one were looking.
Do not, therefore, abandon that confidence of yours; it brings a great reward.
Happy 60th dear Covenant … and here’s to another sixty years! Amen and Amen!
