FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth

 

October 21, 2007

 

CHRIST AT THE CENTER:

WHAT IF THE FOUNDERS CAME BACK?

 

Scripture:  I Chronicles 29:10-19

 

INTRODUCTION

 

“Tradition is the living faith of those who have died; traditionalism is the dead faith of those who are still alive.”  So wrote the Yale theologian Jaroslav Pelikan many years ago (“The Vindication of Tradition,” by Jaroslav Pelikan, Yale University Press, 1984), and I think he was right.

 

I

 

In the church, there are those who glorify the past and remember “the good old days” as if they were the only days that really mattered.  For them, the way things used to be is far better than the way things are today or might become tomorrow.  Ask those folks “How many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb?”, and they reply “Change?  Why change?  My grandparents gave that light bulb to the church.”  That’s traditionalism – the dead faith of those who are still alive.

 

Tradition, on the other hand, is the living faith of those who have died.  In our Judeo-Christian Tradition, we remember Abraham and Sarah as the couple with whom God chose to establish His covenant.  Their descendants, including Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob, Leah and Rachel, Moses and Joshua, followed generations later by King David and eventually Mary and Joseph and Jesus our Lord and Savior with His twelve disciples – through all of them, and because of the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Judeo-Christian Tradition lives on as the vision of those who have gone before us continues to unfold before our eyes.

 

We also belong to the Reformed Tradition, going back to Martin Luther in Germany, John Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland, John Knox in Scotland and a long line of Presbyterian men and women who brought the Reformation faith to these shores in the 18th and 19th centuries.  And that faith is still alive, burning in our hearts, enlightening our minds and strengthening our hands for service to others all these years later.

 

Then, on the 8th of January, 1848, nineteen faithful women and men were called by God to launch this congregation in a log cabin building at the junction of what became known as Peachtree, Houston and Pryor Streets.  Their names were:

 

          Joel Kelsey                                         Henry Brockman

          Minerva Kelsey                                   Ruth A. Brockman

          Kesiah Boyd                                      James Davis

          Margaret Boyd                                   Jane Davis

          Annie Houston                                   H. A. Fraser

          Oswald Houston                                Julia M. L. Fraser

          Jane Gill                                             Lucinda Cone

          Mary A. Thompson                            Harriet Norcross

          Joseph Thompson                              C. J. Caldwell

          Mary J. Thompson

 

Those founding mothers and fathers called as their pastor a strong leader from Decatur named Rev. John S. Wilson.  And so nearly 160 years ago, with a sense of unity and an eye on their destiny, our First Church forbears laid the foundations of this congregation.  And that is why we can say that “tradition is the living faith of those who have died,” for surely the Spirit of Jesus Christ is alive and at work in this sacred place and in all of us today!

 

II

 

So I’m wondering this morning, what do you think would happen if those nineteen men and women, together with Dr. Wilson, were able to get into some kind of a time capsule (like Michael J. Fox and that wild-eyed scientist “the Doc” in the “Back to the Future” movies) and somehow reverse all of the years and return to be with us here and now?  “What Would Happen If the Founders Came Back?”

 

In 1993, I preached a sermon by this same title (I’m sure you all remember) and we basically affirmed that the founders would more than likely be glad and grateful to see that we still stand firm on the foundation stones of our Reformed and Presbyterian Tradition – that we believe in the sovereignty of God, in the centrality of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of our lives, in the authority of the Scriptures, and in the priesthood of all believers – as it says in our bulletin every week: “Ministers – All Members of the Church.”

 

Moreover, we acknowledged in 1993 that the founders would also be pleased to recognize how we have stayed true to the core values here – to ministries within this congregation as we care for one another and grow in our faith together through Christian education…and to the proclamation of the gospel and giving our time, energy and money to help people who are lost and lonely, hurting and hungry, suffering in poverty and desperately needing to feel the healing touch of the Body of Christ called the Church.

 

In other words, that original sermon concentrated on how our founding fathers and mothers would be pleased to discover how faithful we have been to the traditions which they established nearly 160 years ago.

 

But what I did not spend much time on back then, and would like us to focus our attention on today before we close, are the transitions which have changed this church in ways that those founders may never have imagined.

 

III

 

So consider one of the most dramatic transitions, the major change in our location.

 

Back in 1847, and I’m reading now from our 150th Anniversary Book “A Church on Peachtree,” that lob cabin house of worship was “in a chinquapin thicket that stood at the triangle now formed by Pryor, Houston and Peachtree Streets.”

 

To tell you the truth, I had to look up “chinquapin” in the dictionary, and it describes “a small North American tree akin to the chestnut.”  And to satisfy my own curiosity, last week I drove downtown to find the exact location of that log cabin church.

 

It wasn’t easy, because Houston Street, named for one of our founders – Oswald Houston, who became the first city treasurer – Houston Street has been re-named for John Wesley Dobbs.  And Pryor Street no longer intersects with Peachtree – it goes one way south and its extension to the north is now called Park Place, connecting with Peachtree where the Candler Building stands on one corner and the Georgia Pacific Center stands on the other.

 

So if the founders came back, they would surely get lost, just as I did the other day, asking an Atlanta policeman to help me find what I was looking for.  What’s more, our founders would probably be shocked to discover that the red brick church building which they constructed on Marietta Street in the early 1850’s (1850-52) for a total cost of $4200 is now the State Bar of Georgia Center, where our member Jeff Bramlett will preside as president next year.

 

If the founders came back, they would have good reason to wonder what on earth happened to their church!  We could give them the answer: beginning with a Sunday School building in 1915 and celebrating the dedication of this Sanctuary in 1919 (all of which, including the property, cost $125,000), we moved from downtown to 16th and Peachtree – “pretty far out” is how our history book puts it – to the place that our church leaders and members believed back then would be a better location.  And they were right.

 

Because, down through the decades, as Atlanta’s population has expanded from 2500 people in 1848 to more than four million in this vastly larger metropolis today; and as the center of our entire region has moved from downtown to midtown, this church at the corner of 16th and Peachtree is now strategically located in the heart of our city.

 

And in case you have been on another planet for the past ten years, the back street behind us that was once called Lombardy Way is now a thoroughfare named Arts Center Way.  Why?  Because our next door neighbors have developed the most dynamic hub and headquarters for the arts in the Southeast, with potential plans for a new symphony hall nearby to the MARTA station.

 

You see, we are in the right place at the right time – real estate people (and there are three of them in my own family) call it “location, location, location.”  So if the founders came back, I think they would understand why the Lord providentially moved us to this piece of land nearly a century ago.  And that is one of the most dramatic transitions they would find – we are in a strategic location.

 

Another transition which our founders would be surprised to discover is the growing diversity of our congregation.  Although three persons of color joined First Presbyterian Church in the 1860’s, it has taken a long time for us to fully embrace the equality of all God’s people in this place.

 

Dr. Harry Fifield led the way in the fall of 1957 with the Ministers’ Manifesto supporting integration of our schools.  Since the 1960’s, we have sought to welcome people into this church from every race and color and all walks of life.  Since the 1970’s, we have opened our hearts and our doors to homeless people and the urban poor, to international students and mission partnership pastors from other nations – and more recently, although all of the issues are not the same, in the midst of controversy, we have made it clear that men and women of different sexual orientations are welcome here.

 

None of those decisions have been easy.  But every step of the way, with Jesus Christ at the center of our life together, we have been working through the transitions of becoming a more inclusive congregation, just as the Lord has called all of us to be.  And if the founders came back, I would hope and pray that they would join us in the celebration of what God is doing here.

 

CONCLUSION

 

A strategic location.  A more diverse congregation.  And that leads us to one last transition which the founders would find astounding if they came back today – the cost of operation!

 

The church that began in a log cabin at the juncture of Houston, Pryor and Peachtree Streets, is now located on a campus of buildings and grounds in Midtown worth millions which requires hundreds of thousands of dollars to maintain and operate.  We are the stewards of these facilities, and I think the founders would agree that we need to take care of this place.

 

The congregation of nineteen women and men who launched this enterprise might be surprised to find a church of more than 2600 today.  But again, I believe they would agree that in order to strengthen this diverse, dynamic and growing community of Christians, we need to give generously in order to increase and expand our ministry and mission - $4,090,000 for the worship, work and witness of this church in 2008.

 

And if those founders and all of us here today could choose a text to under gird and support our vision, I think we would agree that I Chronicles, chapter 29, verse 14 might be one of the best in the Bible.  King David, standing before his people, looked back, remembered the founders named Abraham, Isaac and Israel and thanked God for them.  He looked forward toward the future, and blessed his son Solomon who would build the great Temple for worship in Jerusalem.  He looked around at the congregation and asked them to give generously to support the construction of God’s house for ministry and mission.  And then he looked up toward heaven and this is what he prayed to the Lord:  “For all things come from Thee, and of Thine own have we given Thee.”

 

If the founders of this church came back today, I think we could agree on that text.  Then, with their pledge cards in hand, I believe they would join us in giving our best back to God.  And that was, that is and that always will be our tradition.

 

In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.