4/1/62

Scripture: Hebrews 8: 6-12.

This is the second Sunday of centennial celebration in our church. Last week, we held service of commemoration, with Dr. Howard Schomer leading our thought and experience. He reminded us not only of our hundred years of history in this church, but also of something like 40 centuries of religious history to which we are heir. We are grateful for his reminder, and for the historical heritage. On Tuesday, we had our Church centennial dinner. It was a kind of birthday party made joyous by the recognition and remembrance of people, of times and occasions, of accomplishments. And now, today, we gather together in service of rededication, and of communion with one another and with God.

Part of our very recent history is our entrance into the United Church of Christ. As the United Church of Christ has been emerging, one of its characteristic features is the Statement of Faith which we have read together in today’s worship service. This Statement is commended to the churches to be used, regularly or upon occasion, not as a “test”, but as a testimony of our faith. It is not a creed to which we must assent; but it is a way of describing some of the beliefs which we hold in common. Each of us will be at individual variance over our meaning, or interpretation, of some parts of this statement. And yet it seems to catch up many of the attitudes and convictions which we share with one another. It is a part of our unity.

Traditionally, we of the Congregational branch in the United Church of Christ, have been strictly non-creedal. We are usually covenant churches. We respect the great creeds of Christian church history, recognizing their force in shaping the convictions, the direction, the quality of countless lives. But we do not require ourselves or others to assent to them as a test of faith. Rather, we prefer to be covenant churches, entering into voluntary agreement with one another and with God.

There have been numerous covenants used by churches of our persuasion. Before those intrepid men and women who had survived a perilous autumn crossing of the north Atlantic ocean disembarked from the Mayflower, they drew up and signed a compact -- a solemn agreement with each other, wherein they voluntarily bound themselves together, “mutually and in the presence of God” to live for the purposes which brought them to that distant and dangerous shore. That was in 1620.

In 1629, the people who had formed a church at Salem drew up a covenant which summed up their purpose and belief in a single sentence: “We covenant with the Lord and one with another and do bind our selves in the presence of God, to walk together in all his ways, according as he is pleased to reveal himself unto us in his blessed word of truth.” We are spiritual heirs of that tradition. We are in fellowship with the church people who have affirmed their faith and purpose in a statement adopted in 1913 at a national meeting of the Congregational church delegates in Kansas City.

We have our own covenant, used for many years in this local church, and which we now review and renew by reading it together whenever members are received among us. We propose to read it again and “own it” together in this service today as our expression of purpose “to walk together as Christian brethren.” We begin the second century of this church’s history as a continuation of this convenant relationship.

Please note that this relationship, which is a distinguishing mark of this particular branch of the universal Christian church, is not exclusive. For we believe that we are a part of the fellowship that is much great than our Congregational family.

Eighty nine years ago, the Rev. Robert M. Webster, who was then pastor of the First Congregational Church of Grand Rapids, Wis. -- our church in its early years -- preached a sermon in which he assured the congregation that: “The Christian Church is no sectional thing. It is not peculiar to any nation even. It belongs to the world, and the world shall sooner or later belong to it. .. Part of the Christian Church may be found in any and every denomination. Part of it may be found outside of any visible and special organization ... It is the whole number of the true and the loving of all ages, who shall finally constitute that august, that magnificent, that glorious ecclesia, or assembly, or Church of the Firstborn.” ... Rev. Mr. Webster went on to say, “Look at the foundation of this church -- not any abstract truth, not any system of philosophy, not even any human compact. It is founded on the Christ -- the son of the living God.” Our covenant is our own voluntary way of expressing our one-ness with others as Christian folk, as well as our unity as one Christian family in the Christian community.

The word “covenant,” the covenant concept, is not new in this past hundred years of our history. It is as old as the 40 centuries of church history which Dr. Schomer noted last Sunday. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob felt themselves living under a covenant with God. So did most of those who have lived in the various ages of Hebrew history. There came a time when a new covenant appeared with the revelation of God as Jesus of Nazareth, become Christ.

As we look ahead into the coming century, we are aware of dangers and of hopes. [Here he read a statement by Abraham Lincoln, made in his annual message to Congress, December 1, 1862. “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.”] We have been reminded that some 70% of the folk in this nation claim, or acknowledge, a connection with some church or religious body. But there are still a host of folk in our country who do not have a faith that makes them part of a church. There are multitudes elsewhere in the world who have no such faith. And there are unborn generations of people yet to come who will need the nurture and persuasion of the Christian way.

You and I do not live for this moment alone. We live for the time yet to come. It is our business to be planting seed which we may hardly see sprouted, let alone matured. And yet our planting is great work!

Will you permit a personal observation? For nearly eight years, I served as pastor of an interracial Union Church of Congregational affiliation in Kahului, Hawaii. It was my first pastorate, and I was eager for results. I worked, together with church officers and church school teachers, to create an atmosphere of Christian living and to bring about Christian commitment on the part of people -- many of whom were young folk of Buddhist or Shinto ancestry. They were alert, eager, responsive. And yet few of them, at that time, would come to the point of baptism into the Christian faith or entry into church membership. These steps seemed to them to represent a break with their parents and families which they could not face. I had to content myself with the hope that my work with those church leaders among those children and young folk might bear some worthwhile fruit in the future. Now, more than a quarter century later, I have been hearing of some of the fruit. And it seems to be good. Many of those very young folk whom I knew, upon reaching their maturity, have sought baptism and church membership; have begun the Christian nurture of their own children; have assumed responsibility for leadership in the church; have become responsible citizens of the community.

My fellow workers and I may well be content with the knowledge that the seeds we planted and tended for a short while grew and ripened into right and useful fruitage. Let no concern or anxiety or cynicism over the present, blind us to the hope for the future or the consecrated determination to do what we can now to make it good.

Howard Thurman tells a short story which I commend to you and while I share with you this morning. He begins it this way [read from book, p. 4-8] Apparently some of the beginning is missing.

I watched him for a long time. He was so busily engaged in his task that he did not notice my approach until he heard my voice. Then he raised himself erect with all the slow dignity of a man who had exhausted the cup of haste to the very dregs. He was an old man -- as I discovered before our conversation was over, a full eighty-one years. Further talk between us revealed that he was planting a small grove of pecan trees. The little treelets were not more than two and a half or three feet in height. My curiosity was unbounded.

“Why did you not select larger trees so as to increase the possibility of your living to see them bear at least one cup of nuts?” He fixed his eyes directly on my face, with no particular point of focus, but with a gaze that took on the totality of my features. Finally he said, “These small trees are cheaper, and I have very little money.” “So you do not expect to live to see the trees reach sufficient maturity to bear fruit?” “No, but is that important? All my life I have eaten fruit from trees that I did not plant; why should I not plant trees to bear fruit for those who may enjoy them long after I am gone? Besides, the man who plants because he will reap the harvest has no faith in life.”

Years have passed since that sunny afternoon in La Grange, Georgia, when those words were said. Again and again, the thought has come back to me, “Besides, the man who plants because he will reap the harvest has no faith in life.” The fact is that much of life is made up of reaping where we have not sown and planting where we shall never reap. And yet that is not all the story. There is a reaping of precisely what we have sown, with the extra thrown in, guaranteed by the laws of growth. Thus the insight from the Scriptures: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap.” [Galatians 6: 7]. The good and the not-good alike. All of life is a planting and a harvesting. No man gathers merely the crop that he himself has planted. This is another dimension of the brotherhood of man.

-------------------------------

We have been in on the harvest of good living that our ancestors of the past hundred years made possible by their planting and cultivation. Let us live, and plant, and plan with such excellence and faithfulness that, one hundred years from now, people whom we do not know, and who may not know of us, will nonetheless gather a harvest of benefit. [Prayer].

-------------------------

Dearly beloved, the church is a body of believers in Jesus Christ, bound together by a common loyalty and a common love. Now, as one of the families of the Christian Church, let us stand upon our feet and again, together, “own” the covenant of this church.

[Read it].

-----------------------------

Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, April 1, 1962.