325th Anniversary Sermon

 by The Rev. Andrew Young

 November 20, 1994

Happy Birthday to this congregation which has enriched and enlightened and strengthened the world in which we live. As a result of the preaching and the teaching, the prayers, the giving, and the mission of this congregation, we as Congregationalists, members of theUnited Church of Christ, tend to take ourselves seriously from our founding. This was a great church 325 years ago that participated in the development of a great nation. And indeed, I would say that throughout the history of this planet, whether you know it or not, the preaching and teaching and ministry of this congregation has shaped and continues to shape the world in which we now live. In part it is because we do not understand that, that we find ourselves exceedingly anxious in this day and time.

I picked up the Pope's little book in the airport a month or so ago, and I bought it simply because of his opening line. His opening line was "Be not afraid." And I thought that was a very unusual opening line for any book. But I think the Pope understood the anxiety of our time. He understood the threat that comes not only to us in America, which is a whole lot deeper than last week's election, but it is a threat to the world, the ideas of the world as we know them. It is almost as though everything that we have been taught to believe, or everything upon which we have based our lives, has been shaken to some extent. For instance, if you are Black, most of your life has been dedicated to dealing with racial segregation. And lo and behold, legal racial segregation is now gone, and the NAACP is having a terrible time deciding what it must do. Part of the upheaval of its present leadership crisis really has little or nothing to do with racial segregation or sexual harassment, but it is a struggle for a new sense of meaning. The Atlanta paper this morning says that the NAACP needs a woman president, because there was clearly no understanding of gender discrimination when a young woman with a masters degree from Middlebury and a law degree from the University of Georgia, who worked two sessions on the staff of a United States Senator, could not be employed in that organization. She was skipped over for someone of talent, but not nearly the credentials. And the issue perhaps for the NAACP was that maybe we as a civil rights organization have not been able to understand the crisis in our relations, between male and female. The issue which inflames Ben Chavis and that organization was the issue of whether or not the NAACP was going to be the "national association for the advancement of certain people," a certain educated, employable black people who are only being discriminated against because of the color of their skin, or whether there was going to be an ability to reach to the unwashed -- those who have been locked out of progress and education and opportunity, in part because of the color of their skin, but also because our society has not really ever understood how to open its doors to all of our citizens. But once those problems are addressed, we look around for leadership, and there is no clear vision.

The same might be said for the world in which we live in the absence of communism. In the absence of communism as the enemy, we still find that there is a tremendous amount of chaos and confusion, that there are religious anxieties dividing the world, that there are ethnic rivalries which had been buried by an authoritarian state which now emerge and threaten us. And we are here on a communion Sunday, and we are reminded by the Pope that we need not be afraid.

And there is another message at the communion table. It is a message, in some sense, that we heard in Joshua after the death of Moses, when they were standing on the threshold of the promised land: without Moses, where do they go, what do they do? They have been wandering in the wilderness and they just get to the place where they are looking into the promised land and the leader dies. And Joshua reminds them, and is reminded by God, that the God who brought them out of Egypt, the God who led them through the wilderness, the God who fed them with manna from heaven when there was no food, that God was still with them. And they should neither veer to the right (with Newt Gingrich) or to the left (with me), but know somehow that there is a straight and narrow path, a faithfulness, and that God continues to lead us on that path.

Back in the old days before we had satellite transmission of sporting events so that we could see them live from all over the world, some of us were very, very anxious about Arthur Ashe at Wimbledon. Arthur Ashe was the sainted athlete. Jimmy Connors, in those days, was still a spoiled brat, and something of the devil incarnate, because he brought a kind of brashness, you know. (He's a grand old man now.) But in those days, Jimmy Connors was everything you did not want your children to be. And so for Arthur to be playing Jimmy Connors at Wimbledon was one of those morality plays that everybody focused on, even though it happened to be a Sunday when we had to be in church. And we came home from church, and sitting home looking at the match on television, we suddenly became very, very anxious, because after winning the first set, Arthur lost the second set. And it was kind of typical of Arthur to choke up in the big ones, and everyone was very, very anxious about it. One of my preacher friends' blood pressure was racing, and his daughter finally came to him and said, "Daddy, look, please don't worry; settle down. Arthur won." He said, "What do you mean, Arthur won?" She said, "This is a delayed broadcast. I heard it earlier. London is six hours earlier, and it's over, and Arthur won." And there was a great sigh of relief. And then you could relax and enjoy the rest of the match. Contrary of the feeling that maybe it deprived us of some of the tension, we were glad to be deprived of that tension. For we needed at that moment the assurance that the victory was won.

And that's essentially what communion says. Communion says that God is with us in the death of our leaders, as we wander in the wilderness of life getting ready to move into a promised land that we are equally as afraid of as we were of the wilderness, where there are many people who, as they did in the election, vote to go back to Egypt! (If I can be forgiven for a Democratic digression, if we were voting for the future, when we finally see Strom Thurmond, and Al D'Amato, Phil Gramm and Jesse Helms, I think the American people will say, "Wait a minute, is this what we really want"? This clearly was an attempt to find some security in a past that seems now to have been certain, but perhaps never was.) And what we have in the presence of this worship service, is the continuing message that we don't have to be afraid. That as God was with Moses and Joshua, God is present with us in Christ, and we see Him and we know him in the breaking of bread. I get in trouble down south when I say this, but these elements symbolize the continuing presence of the Holy Spirit with us in our day to day existence. And we know Him in the breaking of bread. Because we know Him in the breaking of bread, whenever two or three of us gather together we are to be sensitive to Him, whether it's in church at the 325th anniversary, or whether it's beer and pizza before the Celtics ballgame. Whether it's Koolade and cookies or whether it's milk and bread, the ordinary elements of life, Christ is with us. There is a spiritual dimension of our existence, which is indeed our reality. This earthly body that we put on is but a passing fancy.

My family has just lived through three and a half years of what for us was an agonizing death by cancer of my wife of 40 years. And one of the things that was amazing about the experience, which was a tremendous suffering for us, was that it seemed to be a tremendous strengthening for her. As her body became weaker, she shared with us a presence of her spirit that put us very much at ease about her death, so that even in those final agonizing moments, when her body lay there incapacitated, my youngest son and my daughters were able to say, "Mother's spirit has departed that body. She doesn't continue to share in that suffering." And there was a sense of a spiritual reality that engulfed us, that we need to be reminded of on a regular basis.

 And so we celebrate in the breaking of bread, the continuous presence of the Spirit in our midst. And that Spirit is unfolding a new reality constantly. What happened here, in Boston, in the Old South Meeting House, was repeated years later at the time of slavery. And when our country floundered, it was out of our congregations that an anti-slavery movement started, and that an American Board for Missions was born, and an American Missionary Association, which a little over 100 years ago came down South and started Atlanta University, Talladega College, and Howard University. And in so doing they created out of the concern and conscience of Christians of this congregation and others, they created the institutions which gave us a Black middle class. And it was the Black middle class that essentially gave us a continuing doctrine of human rights to share with the rest of the world through a Martin Luther King.

But at the same time our churches were founding Atlanta University and Howard University in the South, they were involved in the educational institutions of Southern Africa, the institutions that educated a Nelson Mandela. They were also involved in the institutions of the Middle East. One of the reasons I always had trouble with the State Department was that I always saw Palestinians as young men and women that we helped to educate out of the old Congregational Church. And I could not participate in their demonization, because a few years earlier I had been similarly demonized as a communist in Alabama and Mississippi and in my home state of Louisiana. But God saw us and God was present with us in the midst of those struggles, and the God that brought us through, who led us by the spirit of Christ, who forgave us in the love of Christ, and who continues to be with us, lo even to the end of the age, says in these tough times, in these difficult times, in the breaking of bread, "You will know that I am with you." You will find in the breaking of bread and the drinking of this cup not only a sentimental reminder of the past, but your minds will be opened, your hearts will be comforted, your lives will be made secure, because you are surrounded by the power of the Creator of the universe, who is also your Father, Mother and Redeemer, your brother, your sister, your friend. But this is my Father's world. It is created on an empire of love, and it may seem in the midst of our anxiety and our fear that we turn to violence and hatred, but the battle has been won, and we know that in Jesus Christ. We celebrate that victory this morning in the breaking of bread. We open our hearts to the continued guidance and revelation of the Holy Spirit, because God is not through with us yet.

May we pray:

O God of restless living, we lose our spirits' peace, and yet we come before your table seeking the peace of your presence in our lives and the power of your blessing for our future. Open our hearts and minds. Feed us with thy spirit. Enlighten us with thy truth. Bind us together in thy love. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.