Yale historian Paul Johnson’s seminal work A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 begins with this paragraph: In November 1830 the evangelist Charles Grandison Finney faced an audience of merchants, master craftsmen, and their families at Third Presbyterian Church in Rochester, New York. The people at Third church were inheritors of New England Calvinism, and they knew that the world was beyond their control. In 1815 the town’s Presbyterians had declared themselves impotent before a God who ‘foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.’ Ten years later the founders of Second Church reaffirmed the belief that men could alter neither their individual spiritual states nor the shape of their society. Revivals had been eroding these beliefs since the 1790s, and there were people at Third church who had rejected them altogether. But most Rochester Protestants still inhabited a world where events, in H. Richard Neibuhr’s phrase, were a glove on the hand of God. Finney had been fighting that idea since the middle 1820s. Now he turned to the audience at Third Church and completed the revolution. (Page 4)

Just three years earlier, 175 years ago, on December 30, 1826, a group of Rochester Christians gathered for the first time in what was known as School #4. After meeting for a month, the group felt led to form itself into a church, and in February of 1827, the presbytery took the necessary action to form a congregation. The names First and Second having been previously claimed, the new congregation, in a stunning burst of creativity, named itself Third Presbyterian Church. And the rest, as they say, is history. 

As you know, Third Presbyterian Church will mark this anniversary over the next eighteen months, under the thematic banner “Celebrate the Journey.” Like a symphony whose modest overture builds to an inspiring crescendo, this commemoration will do the same, culminating with celebrations in the spring of 2003. By that time, we will all be either so inspired so as to be ready to take on the next 175 years, or…or we won’t. But I hope that we will.

I am grateful for this opportunity, and not simply because I am somewhat of a church history wonk. We do this for many reasons, of course. We do it to learn, to remember, to give thanks, to have a bit of fun. The primary reason that we invest our energy and resources in this anniversary endeavor, however, has less to do with the past and more so to do with the future. 

One of the predecessors in this pulpit, Paul C. Johnston, preached a sermon in 1943, in the midst of World War II, when our worship bulletin provided regular reminders about Third Church members serving in the armed forces. That sermon happened as this congregation was commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the sanctuary, built in 1893. Johnston preached that “in our heritage we discover our destiny.” 

In our heritage we discover our destiny, and so we will spend this season, from time to time, with greater or lesser emphasis, looking over our shoulder in order that we may look to the horizon, where God is calling each one of us, and more so together, where the journey might continue with faithfulness and joy.

175 years is a very long time. So much has changed. So much hasn’t. The nation was 51 years old. 24 states comprised the union. So much has changed. So much hasn’t. Time has marched on, in many ways. In other profound ways, time simply reflects new iterations of previous realities. We have faced a Civil War, World Wars – twice, wars in Korea and Vietnam, a Cold War, wars on poverty and drugs and now a war on terrorism. This congregation offered its members to those wars, even at the same time as members of this congregation no doubt protested them. 

So much has changed. So much hasn’t. The changes are obvious. Electricity. The automobile. The split atom. The computer. An end to slavery. A woman’s right to vote. The falling of the Berlin Wall and the release of Nelson Mandela. Time marches on. 

These next eighteen months will focus on many themes. We will have special worship services, music and arts events, unique educational opportunities and time just to have fun. Celebrate the journey. 

This anniversary will provide an invitation to remember and to give thanks. In a preacher’s never-ending search for alliteration, I would suggest that we would give thanks for at least two things – people and places. If you visit the wonderful gallery displays this morning, you will notice both of those themes. 

There are old photographs of people – ministers mostly but not exclusively, and a series of buildings. We will spend some time remembering those who have served this community of faith. They have been a diverse lot. They have preached against the evils of slavery and they have preached against the evils of mixed dancing. Some were known as great orators, some as being filled with pastoral winsomeness, some as prophetic activists. We stand on the shoulders of giants. I am grateful for their ministry and their stewardship of a certain legacy, for their gifts and for their shortcomings. 

But as we all know, a church is so much more than its ministers, and this story is about people – saints and pioneers whose gifts of energy and intelligence and imagination and love leave us filled with the song of gratitude. Third Church sang “For All the Saints” on January 12, 1902, 100 years ago, to celebrate its 75th anniversary.  We sing, “For All the Saints” this morning for good reason – “Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.” 

All this week Chris Lane was rehearsing for what became a rather pew-rattling recital Friday evening. Included in his program was music from “The Phantom of the Opera.” I have been thinking of those saints, those “friendly ghosts,” whose memories and legacy continue to abide in the nooks and crannies of this place. We hear their footsteps from time to time, do we not? They sang in choirs. They taught Sunday school. They advised youth. They cooked in the kitchen. They snuck off to the Parkleigh. They fussed over budgets. They caulked windows. They wrote checks. They wrestled with agonizing decisions with far-reaching implications, and no doubt, they squabbled over the little things as well. 

They did grand things on grand stages – they protested slavery and fought for women’s rights and battled racism. And they did modest things on modest stages – they gave birth and presented their beloved babies for baptism. They raised children, and grew up themselves. They discovered mates here. They served on committees – the Presbyterian way. They found jobs and lost jobs. They buried their parents and their children. They got old and got sick. And they died here, knowing fully the love of God, experiencing that love in the blessing of this community. For all the saints, who from their labor rest. 

And I think of those forward-thinkers who envisioned now more than 100 years ago this place on this corner of the city, and those who 50 years ago envisioned new educational facilities and a beautiful new chapel. This celebration is about place as well, and buildings, certainly the buildings. We learned as children that the church is not a building, that the church is a people, but we also learned that the place where we gather is important, because it offers sanctuary – real and spiritual – and it offers a gathering place to do the mission to which God calls us. 

The place where we gather is important – particularly a most lovely chapel and a most magnificent sanctuary, punctuated by beautiful windows that welcome warmth and light. We understand that buildings are more than objects of shelter, that they are exercises of poetry and liturgy. (See The New Yorker, January 7, 2002, page 21) Bricks and mortar become more than bricks and mortar, so we will spend a bit of time considering the angels of our architecture and the ways our buildings have helped to tell our story. 

But as important as places are, and more so, as important as the very people themselves are to the telling of the story, one theme more – with appropriate alliteration – seems foundational. Charles Finney might fuss with it a bit, but it is highly Presbyterian and more importantly, quite true. Providence. 

For the Apostle Paul wrote to a fledgling group of followers almost 2000 years ago: “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ…grace to you and peace.”

The journey we celebrate locates us in a broader journey, a longer and deeper one, like a stream flowing into a river flowing into the ocean. A journey to which a bunch of Rochesterians hitched their wagon 175 years ago, a journey to which we hitch our wagons at this moment and every new moment, a journey filled with grace and peace. 

In an important work called simply Congregation, the late sociologist of religion James Hopewell wrote that congregations have mythic identities. Each one has a unique story, like the myths we learned as children, filled with heroism and comedy and even tragedy. We celebrate such a mythic journey every time we engage in the simple act of coming together. 

Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann contends that the Bible is our script, and that as we read the script, together, in community, we add to its pages, we become scriptwriters even as we are the plot and the characters. 

It is about providence, about God calling a group of people together then, in a particular time and place, in a particular city with particular social and economic and political forces, and then re-commissioning, re-constituting, re-membering, that community again and again for each new season, for each new moment, until this very one. 

The ones who have gone before us have stood their watch, written their script, stewarded their legacy. The stage is empty now save for us, for our moment, our time. What myth shall we craft? What story shall we write? What symphony shall we compose? 

I am new enough and smart enough not to prescribe too much, but I do have hunches about the trajectories of our vision and vocation. Worship will continue to be the central act of our life together, worship that is engaging and contemporary and timeless and that celebrates the role of music and the arts as a key interpreter of our faith. 

We will continue to take our context – urban, metropolitan, public – as a gift from God and as a central component to our identity and vision. The issues may be different, but the call to be a public church is not, whether we are considering the very future of our city, the education and nurture of our children, or issues of human sexuality and ordination to the church’s ministry. Who we are called to be plays itself out in the creative mix of WHERE we are called to be. 

And this outreach ministry must happen even as we think about inreach, about nurturing our minds and spirits in this place – all ages, caring for one another and strengthening one another for the journey we will face. 

And, I would submit, we do this all with an evangelical zeal that might not match Charles Finney, but that would reach out to those in our neighborhood and community and communities who just might be touched and taken with what goes on here. 

These are just hunches, of course. Together we will discover where the Holy Spirit is leading us, each one of us, and all of us together.  

The journey we remember, the journey we join, the journey we celebrate, began well before 1827. It will continue, by God's grace, well beyond these days. It will become a journey of resolve and vision, that we may take our place in this pilgrimage of faithfulness, for the once and future church – for the church we are and the church we are called to be. 

Celebrate the journey, for the sake of those who have gone before us and for the sake of those yet to come, for all the saints. Celebrate the journey, for God’s sake, whose love calls us ever forward, and who will welcome us home at journey’s end.
 
Amen.