How Many Journeys Will God Send Us On?
How Many Journeys Will God Send Us On? (Draft)
A Sermon for Pleasant Street Congregational Church, UCC
February 28, 2010 (Second Sunday in Lent)
Rev. Reebee Girash
Text: Genesis 12:1-4; 15:1-12; 17-20
12:
1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” a 4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
15:
1 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” a 3 And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” 4 But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” 5 He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” 6 And he believed the Lord; and the Lord b reckoned it to him as righteousness. 7 Then he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.” 8 But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” 9 He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10 He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. 11 And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. 12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him….17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, 19 the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”
Prayer
Sermon
Abram, long before his name was Abraham, was 75 years old the second time he moved. And after that, he moved 7 more times, in the 100 years before he died at age 175. Forgive me, friends, I have moving on the brain. I hope to get over this obsession within a few weeks of unpacking my china.
Abram and Sarai moved nine times in their married life. With Abram’s father, Terah, and his nephew, Lot, they moved from Ur in Chaldea, to Haran. There, the Lord told Abram to move – taking with him his nephew Lot, and their families and their animals – to the land of Canaan. They settled first in Shechem, then just a little south to Bethel, where Abram built an altar to God. Then to the south, “the Negeb.” Then in the face of famine in Canaan, they moved to Egypt. After a tussle with the Pharoah (actually, it was Abram’s fault), they moved back to the Negeb (the South) of Canaan, and then back to Bethel, where the altar was. Around then, Abram and Lot had the fortunate problem of having too much stuff accumulated, and they separated their households. Unfortunately, Lot took off for Sodom, but Abram and his family settled at the Oaks of Mamre, near Hebron, where Abram built another altar to God, because this time it seemed like the family was ready to truly settle down. And indeed for 7 chapters of Genesis – translation, about 25 years – they stayed put. Abram became Abraham in this period, and God covenanted with Abraham that he would have land, and would father multitudes. Abraham traveled quite a bit – he had to rescue Lot once, and try to rescue him twice. After the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham must have had the itch to move again, because without explanation, he takes everyone down to the Negeb, the south, once more – between Kadesh and Shur in the land called Gerar. This time there’s a tussle with King Abimelech of Gerar, again, Abraham’s fault. Finally, around Isaac’s birth, Abraham and Sarah and their sheep and camels and servants and tents all settle near Beer-sheba, pretty close to Hebron and Bethel, where many years before, Abraham built altars to the Lord. And near the altar at Bethel, Sarah and Abraham would be buried, decades later.
Nine moves.
Not just college dorm room moves, where all your stuff fits in two trunks and a carryon. Not just moves across town. These were moves in which entire families were disrupted, and moved back and forth across national and ethnic boundaries. Pretty huge stuff. And mostly, these moves happened because God said to Abram, I love you, I have something good in store for you over here in Canaan, I covenant with you and your descendents that if you follow my call, there will be a great reward.
And Abraham trusted God, so Abraham went, as the Lord had told him. (12:4)
And Abraham believed the Lord; and the Lord b reckoned it to him as righteousness. (15:6)
~~
Our life as a congregation began in 1842, 168 years ago. Our communal life began with a move.
In 1842, the granddaughter of the first pastor of the first church in town, Anna Bradshaw, met with 33 other people – 25 women and 9 men in total – who had once worshipped at that first church. Folks who had decided that the recent change to Unitarianism did not match their beliefs, and that they needed a Trinitarian church. In the first three years of the congregation, it had four physical homes: Anna Bradshaw’s house, where the conversations began; the Baptist church, where they met for worship at first; another hall – where town hall stands today; and then the building we are in right now, finished in 1844. Well, not quite finished. In the written histories I perused this week, I found evidence of 10 separate occasions requiring “extensive repairs of the edifice” or the like – all before 1990. That’s going off topic, of course…
Now, here in New England, most Protestants can see in the origins of their faith communities, a move. That is to say, UCC folks can look at our Pilgrim forebears and remember that they moved, because of their faith, from Europe to a new land. Members of other denominations can look at their own histories and see that they originated in a deliberate move. A group of people looked at their current religious situation, saw within it theological or practical challenges they could not, or did not wish to, overcome from within. They moved to build new religious homes. They felt called to express their faith different ways. In other cases – more than you’d think, the desire for change led to mergers. Our own tradition is the merger of four traditions. Most Protestant denominations, after splintering and splintering again, wove themselves back together in a major ecumenical movement in the first half of the twentieth century. But, moving apart or moving together, there’s been a lot of moving.
Imagine, if you will, that you were in Anna Bradshaw’s parlor, with those 25 women and 9 men, on December 14, 1842. You share connections: you all live in “West Cambridge,” you all used to worship at First Parish, and you all believe in the Holy Trinity. On this foundation, you wonder, can a new church be built?
You pray and you sing and you talk. Maybe voices are raised once or twice, or maybe there is a sense of certitude from the beginning. You listen to this woman, Anna Bradshaw, fifty-seven years old, as she says, if we are to have a new church, I will give the land on which it will be built. You ask God, is this the right thing? Somehow, you and your friends feel God’s confirmation, for this is what you do: you build a new church.
Maybe God’s words echo in your mind: “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” (Genesis 15:1)
Once the sanctuary building at 75 Pleasant Street was built, our address was fixed. But that is the only way we’ve stayed the same, over 168 years. The town changed its name. The building changed in countless ways. The congregation grew, shrank, grew, shrank. Endured wars. Adapted to disestablishment. Welcomed new pastors. Saw members come and go. Changed its name. Became Open and Affirming. Many of these spiritual and physical moves were gradual. There is no one moment you can point to, when people would say, “that’s when everything changed.”
But, there is another move – a spiritual and literal move – whose origins we can narrow to a single day.
That day was April 4, 1968.
Here is what had happened just before that day, a series of circumstances that made a dramatic change possible. I thank Sally Rogers for giving me this history.
First, the congregation became gradually more aware and more active in the Civil Rights Movement – alongside the whole town of Arlington, PSCC was deeply aware and involved with the changes happening in our country. In this pulpit, the Rev. Max Stackhouse told of traveling in the south as part of the movement. The church was involved with City Mission Society and Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries, and these organizations started calling upon churches to take action around civil rights, and in particular, a social worker at CMS started working to connect suburban parishes with urban areas. Around the same time, another key woman in our history, Edith Fox, died and left a financial legacy to the church. And then, April 4, 1968. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated.
Members of PSCC who were drawn to civil rights work were devastated. Meeting in the fireplace room on the second floor of the parish house – there were about thirty of them – they asked, what can we do? Can we invest in African-American businesses? Can we work on housing? What can we do?
Someone had heard of a deliberately multi-racial, multi-cultural pre-school, the Weston-Roxbury Preschool, hosted by another congregational church. That was our model.
The church gave the seed money, but Patricia Bowers, a member, was up and down Mass Ave raising funds.
The social worker from City Mission Society matched up children from Roxbury with the program.
They hired a director who named the program, “Creative Playmates,” and a morning nursery school was begun.
The idea was to encourage young people to know children of other races and cultures from the youngest age, in order to foster equitable relations between different racial groups in the Boston area.
The start of Creative Playmates (now of course known as Rogers-Pierce, for Sally Rogers and Charlie Pierce, two of the founders) wasn’t completely smooth. Sally remembers hearing a small number of church members saying, what are THEY doing here? We don’t want black children in the church.
There were challenges for funding, challenges for staffing. But the school opened, and children were educated.
I wondered, when did the school’s mandate change? Well, eventually there were enough programs around Boston of the same sort, that the need lessened, and there was no cause to bus children from Roxbury to Arlington or vice versa to have a multiracial educational experience.. The social worker at CMS who had been so instrumental in bringing together children from across Boston passed away. The general need for childcare in Arlington continued to grow, and there was both need and funding for full-day childcare. So, the charter of Rogers-Pierce evolved according to the community’s needs.
Some folks might be sad at the way things are now – not much connection between the church and the school. But, the way I see it, the school began as a mission arm of the church, serving the community. Now, the school’s existence benefits our church financially – coming around full circle.
Sometimes we move from Ur to Hebron to Egypt and back again.
Sometimes we move down the street.
Sometimes we move out into the community.
But in all our moves, God is there. “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”
“Do not be afraid, church, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”
Thanks be to God.
Amen.