FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth
Annual Meeting Sunday
February 1, 2004
THE HOUSE OF HOPE
Scripture: Matthew 7:24-29; Ephesians 2:13-22; 4:4-6
INTRODUCTION
When the territory of Minnesota was organized in 1849, a young missionary – the Reverend Edward Duffield Neill – set out from Philadelphia to form a Presbyterian congregation in that region. They called it First Church in Downtown St. Paul, and soon thereafter, in 1855, another church was founded named “The House of Hope,” declaring that “it might be a place of refuge for weary and heavy laden souls.”
Those two congregations merged in 1914 and if you were to visit that city today, you would find – in the heart of St. Paul, Minnesota – a vibrant and active community of faith – The House of Hope – which seeks to serve the surrounding metropolitan community and which also gained national notoriety when Senator Hubert Humphrey’s funeral was held there back in the late 1970’s.
In a remarkably similar way, this church was founded around the same time – in 1848 – and as most of you know, we moved here to the corner of 16th and Peachtree between 1913 and 1919. Over the years, Atlanta has expanded all around us in what we now refer to as “Midtown,” and the sign out in front of this sanctuary says “First Presbyterian Church.”
To be sure, that name embraces our history and reminds us of our identity. But I want to suggest to you this morning that, like our sister Presbyterian congregation up in St. Paul, Minnesota, we are also known as a “House of Hope” right here in the heart of this city – “a place of refuge for weary and heavy laden souls” – as we reach out to people from all walks of life, and open our hearts and arms and doors to all those who seek the Lord…”
I.
That was the vision which the Apostle Paul had in mind as he wrote to the Ephesians:
So then … you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple of the Lord … in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)
If you look back to verse 12 in chapter 2, Paul reminds those first century believers that they were once strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and (living) without God … And on the other side of our text, Paul goes on to proclaim in chapter 4 that there is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call – one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all who is above all and in all and (working) through all (of us) –
4:4-6.
In other words, those Ephesian Christians were building and becoming a House of Hope which was constructed on the foundation of faith in God, bound together by unity in the Holy Spirit, and centered in the lordship and love of Jesus Christ.
And that House of Hope, the early church, was able to endure the destructive forays from the Roman Empire on the outside, and to withstand the divisive forces that had been let loose on the inside of the Christian community, including theological controversies, inter-personal conflicts and ideological differences of opinion that threatened to tear them all apart.
But in most of those congregations, they stuck together and began to learn, as Paul advised them, to speak the truth in love…not to let the sun go down on their anger…to put away all bitterness, wrath and slander and to forgive one another as God in Christ had forgiven them (selected verses from Ephesians 4).
That was the model, the proto-type, the “spec house” of the way God wanted the church to be when He laid the foundation stones of the Christian faith nearly 2000 years ago. So it was then and so it can be still today, as we seek to be and to become a House of Hope in our time and in this place.
II.
Now, God has never promised that it would be easy or conflict-free in the church, and human nature being what it is, we can anticipate stormy weather.
When Jesus told the story, the Parable in Matthew 7 about building the house upon the rock instead of the sand, He assumed, and He said so, that the rain would fall, the floods would come and the winds would blow and beat on that house (Matthew 7:21-27). And as you know, that happens to the church from time to time – stormy weather.
I have told you before about a man in the church my father once served up in eastern Long Island back during the 1950’s. His name was Mr. Beef and he was not a happy camper. When my father would begin his sermon, Mr. Beef would get up from his front row seat and walk down the side aisle into the narthex … where he would wait until the sermon was over and then make his way back to the front row again during the closing hymn.
I was just a little boy, seven or eight years old, but I would often daydream about tackling that man in the aisle and taking him down. Sometimes we talked about it around the Sunday dinner table, and my mother would say, “Bob, why don’t you confront him?” And my father would answer, “Emily, he’s an old man with a sour attitude and he needs all the love we can give him.”
Well, someone did confront him at an Annual Meeting one Sunday after church. Mr. Beef contested something proposed in the budget, which if I remember correctly, was a slight raise in my father’s salary. A feisty lady in her eighties stood up and said, “Mr. Beef, you are out of order.” And sitting there quietly, I thought to myself, “It’s about time!”
The truth is, when conflict hits the church, it’s usually about something inside someone or a handful of people – anger, frustration, fear, resentment – that gets all stirred up and goes public as relationships are broken and we try to pick up the pieces and start all over again.
But in the House of Hope, in any congregation that seeks to be centered in Christ and governed by His grace and the spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation, there is another way.
III.
Kathleen Norris, in her classic book “Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith,” describes what it looks like from her own experience in the Presbyterian Church to which she belongs in South Dakota:
“It was January, bitterly cold and windy, on the day I joined the church, and I found that the sub-zero chill perfectly matched my mood…I still felt like an outsider and wondered if I always would. Yet I knew that somehow, in ways I did not yet understand, making this commitment was something I needed to do.
Before the service, the new members gathered with some of the elders. One was a man I’d never liked much. I’ll call him Ed. He’d always seemed ill tempered to me, and also a terrible gossip, epitomizing the small mindedness that can make small town life such a trial.
The minister had asked him to formally greet the new members. Standing awkwardly before our small group, Ed cleared his throat and mumbled ‘I’d like to welcome you to the Body of Christ.” The minister’s mouth dropped open, as did mine – neither of us had ever heard words remotely like this come from Ed’s mouth…But I was astonished to realize that while I may never like Ed very much, I had been commanded to love him – ‘Love one another as I have loved you’ said Jesus (John 15:12). My own small mind had just been jolted, and the world (suddenly) seemed larger, opened in a new way.” (“Amazing Grace: The Vocabulary of Faith” by Kathleen Norris, Riverhead Books, 1998, pages 141-142)
Now let me ask the question: What do you think would happen if we in this Presbyterian Church and in our Presbyterian Denomination, which is struggling with divisions over biblical and theological and sexual issues – what do you think would happen if we took Jesus at His word – to love one another as He has loved us – and took those words to heart? What do you think would happen?
Let me tell you what I think. I think we would begin to see all that is good and holy in one another, just the way God made us, in His own image. And if we looked at each other with the eyes of love, forgiveness and acceptance instead of judgment, retaliation and resistance, we just might open wide the doors to the House of Hope for all of God’s children who are waiting and wanting to come in.
Some of you are aware that a couple of weeks ago on Monday, Martin Luther King, Jr. Monday, after Charles Black and a group had breakfast here early in the morning and had gone out to do Hands On Atlanta, after we had had a wonderful service here the day before with Congressman John Lewis; on that Monday at 2:30 in the afternoon a man came to the door of the Hal and John Smith Family Christian Community Center and couldn’t get in, so he took what we think was a steel crowbar and smashed the windows and the glass doors on the first floor.
Across the street, construction workers at the Hugh Museum looking down from their crane saw him and they came and scared him away. Those doors and windows are now boarded up with plywood and someone on the staff put a note there about faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these being love.
We don’t know for certain who that man is. We’re pretty sure he is homeless. If we find him, we will need to deal with him because what he did was destructive and wrong. But what we need to remember as a church is that we care about what is inside that man and we need to know what made him so angry and full of rage. And someday I pray that he could discover that this is a House of Hope that is open to him.
That’s what the Letter to the Ephesians says. Listen again to these words that lead the way into the House of Hope:
For He – Jesus Christ – is our peace, who has made us one and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility…reconciling us to God in one body through the cross…So then, you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord…and in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.
CONCLUSION
It was that kind of a house – a house full of faith, a house full of love, and house full of hope – that Congressman John Lewis was talking about when he preached from this pulpit two Sundays ago during the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Weekend. John Lewis described the tiny shotgun house where he grew up in rural Alabama, and how when the thunderstorms came, he and his brothers and sisters together with their parents and grandparents were able to hold the house down so that it didn’t blow away.
And do you remember what Congressman Lewis said at the conclusion of that sermon? He said, “Whatever you do, don’t leave the house! Stay in the house where God has called you to be.” I believe those words are not only profound and true – those words are meant for me and for you, for this whole congregation and for the entire Presbyterian Denomination to which we belong.
United we stand – divided we fall – and Jesus Christ Himself has called us all to come into this house, to stay here and to stick together. That is the hope upon which we stand, going al the way back to 1848 - and it is that same hope which can lead us to a grand and glorious future which the Lord of this church holds in His hands.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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