“Premise and Promise”

James J. Rhatigan

September 28, 2008

25^th anniversary sermon

This church was born on April 17, 1983. Like many churches, its existence stemmed from controversy. The reasons underlying that controversy are no longer relevant, but it is true that our initial membership came from Plymouth Congregational Church. The first service was held two miles directly south of where the church sits today, in the chapel at Collegiate School.

The first called minister was Dr. Robert Meyers, a professor of English Literature at Wichita State University who had served at Plymouth as its pulpit minister. In addition to his religion training, Dr. Meyers’ background was augmented by a Ph.D. degree in literature from Washington University in St. Louis. He often taught university courses on the Bible as literature. His sermons were filled with passages from Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton and countless other figures in English and American literature. I never came to church then or since without a pen. I did feel that to gain a good understanding of a quotation I should read the source from which it came. This proved to be useful. It allows me to recommend with some sense of authority, John Milton’s Paradise Lost for any of you who suffer from chronic insomnia. This 17^th work is rated as one of the classics. It is my theory that the voters were English Literature professors. Admittedly, as one who thrives on two star movies, perhaps I was just not up to it.

There is a fancy word that describes the activities of the handful of people who met for several months before deciding to start a church. The word is entelechy and it is intended to suggest that sometimes out of a few, small decisions something extraordinary results, something that could not have been foreseen or predicted at the beginning. One can imagine the excitement of those who ran an ad in the Eagle and called friends, to see who might want to attend the first service. The response surely would indicate what might happen next. About fifteen minutes from the scheduled 10:30 hour, few people were in evidence. Professor Walt Myers, who would be playing a trumpet solo, suggested that participants lie down on the pews as he thought it would seem like a bigger turn-out. Soon, however, people poured into the chapel. The organizers, who said they would be happy with a turnout of 50, were stunned when nearly 240 people came.

After a word of welcome, a hymn was sung, one of poignant beauty and simplicity, a hymn that has become our personal church anthem. (Cathy Pike sings, a cappella, Morning Has Broken.)

Then we hear in memory the voice of a 10 year-old child, Kristi Wiggins, whose life would be short but who occupies a permanent place in our history: “The Lord has done great things for us. We come to the house of the Lord with songs of thanksgiving, so in gladness of heart we will sing a new song. Let us break into singing, for the Lord has promised that while sorrow may last for a night, joy comes in the morning.” (read by Ms. Katie Helmer) .

We have been blessed these past 25 years to hear outstanding pastoral prayers that have addressed our hopes and concerns as a congregation and this is Bob Meyers’ prayer that morning:

“The world trembles this morning, our Lord, on the very edges of the season of life. After the rain and wind and cold, we feel a surprise in the air around us; in the blue sky and bright sun, in the faces of those we love, and in something in this very room that is eager for new life.

We have come seeking to borrow some of the hope that is Springtime, to be reborn with the April morning which has broken in such warmth and beauty upon us. Grant us the wisdom to know who and what we are as we take steps to shape our new destiny.

Help us control our memories, so that no bitterness is invited to become a permanent guest. Make clear to us the way we should go. We stand at the beginning without knowledge of the end; we take the first uncertain steps on a road that leads we know not where. The harbor to which we should finally come is guessable now only by our faith, and reachable only by a kind of wild hope which stirs at this moment so deeply within us.

Fill us, then, with a resolve to do with skill and grace what it is we wish to do, so that we may run and not grow weary, walk and not faint, until that day by Thy grace we will see with our own eyes the fulfillment of our hopes. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.” (Read by Tim Robu).

We do not look back on these events as empty nostalgia but in appreciation for those few people who brought the church together for the first time. We are time-binders, and the past is an essential part of a continuum that has brought us to the present day, toward a future we hope to create.

We know that this church represents only one small room in the Christian world, yet for us it is a room of great significance. It is not an ending place but a starting place for the faith, hope and love that we profess and that we carry beyond these walls.

From the very first day we have gathered for a purpose. That purpose is found in our covenant and is the most important thing about us that can be said. It was written by Dr. Robert Meyers. Every Sunday you will see this before you in the church bulletin but if you are like me it does not often catch your attention. Yet we have no church without it. Let me read it as you follow along: “In the love of truth, and in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ, we join with one another to worship and to live so that peace, justice and brotherhood may prevail in the world.” These words contain a premise and a promise. It is not enough to proclaim faith through high levels of abstraction, because it lives in every day behavior. In the book of James we learn that “faith without works is useless.”

Certainly there are creeds in the Christian world which direct and affirm the lives of many believers, but some of them have been divisive. There are hundreds of Protestant denominations and some would claim a special relationship with God. Not to believe in a specific creed means not to belong. People have come to this church from many denominations and with different life histories. We understand from the life of Christ that all are welcome. Christ enters our life in many ways and for different reasons.

In his informative book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, Albert Schweitzer states his belief that every generation reinvents Jesus to meet the needs of its own time, and that no creed speaks exclusively to the issues of the human heart. The Quest of the Historical Jesus is in my view one of the greatest Christian books ever written. This is the final paragraph on the final page of that book: “He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side. He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same words ‘Follow thou me!’ and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands: And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship , and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who he is.”

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Our church has an outstanding record of outreach. Each year a portion of our budget is set aside and expended by a committee who looks at the needs in our community and beyond. I am happy about this but have felt that it seems more like a corporate gift from us. I think another way to think of this is to rephrase the term and think of “ reach out” as I believe it calls us to individual participation, effort and intentionality.

We have great personal stories to tell about the good works of the members of our congregation in our daily life. Let us think about what more we might do as a church, beyond our financial gifts. What if we intentionally added one small deed to our normal daily activity; something we would go out of our way to do; something in which we could justifiably say “this one is for the church.” Think NEW, ADDITIONAL and INTENTIONAL! We are about 600 in number. The total contribution of our church then would be nearly 220,000 deeds a year beyond our normal behavior. In five years this would exceed a million small behaviors. What difference would this make? We would never know for sure; it is not our destiny to know. But think again about that word, entelechy. The accumulation of these behaviors might produce results that never could have envisioned.

I had a colleague at Wichita State, Dean Josephine Fugate, who was more than thirty years my senior.. She broke her hip at age 99 and I visited her in the nursing facility in which she was recovering. A young woman came into the room and Mrs. Fugate spent some time telling me in the young woman’s presence how wonderfully helpful she had been. I could see that the young woman was very affected by this praise, as her eyes glistened. When the aide left the room Mrs. Fugate told me that she was an awkward teenager, with little education, whose work had been receiving criticism. Mrs. Fugate said that with a little seasoning this aide would do just fine and she had spread the work to the staff to that effect. The moment allowed me to recognize that even a woman age 99, with a broken hip, flat on her back in a nursing home, can contribute to the world of right relationships. She is perfect example of the admonition of a leader of the Hasidic Jews who declared that, “Every day life is hallowed and each of us is responsible for the bit of existence that God has entrusted to our care.”

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We are a church that takes the Bible seriously, but not literally. Our three ministers have spent considerable time in demythologizing the Bible. Notice that I did not say debunk. They have pointed out over these years that the Bible has within it, a variety of offerings; they contain contradictions, archetypal persons, riddles, paradoxes, poetry, parables, metaphors, mysticism and more. In some churches there appears to be a tendency to ignore the historical time frame in which the Bible was written where, for example, the world was thought to be flat, where it was perceived that the Sun revolved around the earth, and where most people of faith could neither read nor write. In Palestine, this was a time before science. We have learned that it is not critical to believe in literal or factual terms many of the Bible’s stories. It is more important that we come to understand that the truth is in those stories, the truth is beyond the stories.

I would say, though, if you adhere to the simple faith of your grandparents you still will find this church a comfortable place to be. On the other end of the continuum are people who must weigh the give and take between faith and doubt. Paul Tillich, a great writer and teacher from the 1950s and 1960s wrote that doubt was essential to faith, in fact that if there were no doubt than there would be no need for faith. We cannot wait for the answers to questions of faith that have occupied the lives of scholars for hundreds of years. We move forward, with faith and doubt as partners in our spiritual journey.

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The church has many dimensions and certainly music is one of them. For us, music is not a matter of decoration but at the center of the idea of worship, spiritual in every sense. Francis Sloan and Bob Scott are the only two choir directors we have had in 25 years. One thing is certain. No one takes our music for granted. As you observed this morning, we can also be proud of the music offered through the children in Christian Education. In fact, all of Christian Education is innovative; as just two examples, (1) story-based interactive curricula and (2) an age-appropriate human sexuality component, are part of the overall program for young people. The Women’s Guild is so much a part of our church that it could only be fully appreciated if it were not there.

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Our three pastors have not dwelled on the saving of souls but rather how to bring each of us into a closer relationship with God, with the life and teachings of Jesus as our guide. We know that our efforts alone will not prevail in the world, but we are closer to God as we live a Christian life as each of us defines it. Why? Because we move to a better self. We are imperfect so we do not always exhibit it, but we do often glimpse the goodness in ourselves and this can inspire us to greater effort.

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After a few years of sharing space with the members of First Christian Church, downtown, a questionnaire was sent to members to determine their interest in building our own church. If so, what kind of church, and where should it be located? The answer to the first question was yes, and the second was to build a modest-size, colonial-style church in the New England tradition in the northeast part of Wichita. Fund-raising began and in 1987 we moved into this church, at least the part of it we call the parlor, and this sanctuary. There were two small offices and below were fellowship hall and a few Sunday school rooms. As we increased in size the need for additional space was compelling, emphasizing a place for fellowship and new Sunday school rooms. The effort bogged down in 1991, not from opposition, but from arguments about the need for purchasing new land, and other priorities.

This is when Bruce and Nancy Cochener came forward with a large challenge grant for Fellowship Hall. As Bruce put it, “It was analogous to throwing a grenade into a foxhole; you do not know for sure what will happen but people will move.” And they did, and in 1992 we finished the church property as it exists today.

Office space was the lowest priority and through the generosity of the congregation soon we will begin the third phase of our building space, which will include better work space for the staff, along with a study for the minister, conference room space, and other needs.

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As Robert Meyers passed the age of 70 and the church continued to grow, he recognized that some change was needed. One day when talking to his son. Robin, who was at the time (and still is) the pastor of a large United Church of Christ congregation in Oklahoma City, Robin told him the story of a young man who come to his church as a disaffected Christian, who had been re-invigorated to the extent that he had entered the Phillips Theological Seminary where he was accumulating an outstanding record. In probably one of the most scandalous cases of raiding in church history, Robert Meyers persuaded this young man to join this church as an Associate Pastor, stealing him from, his own son! This was before Gary Cox had even completed his degree program.

After an agreed-upon changing of responsibilities over three years, Gary Cox became our senior minister in 2000. While Robert Meyers preferred passages from literature to illustrate his sermons, Gary Cox preferred philosophy. It was through Gary Cox that we learned about the writings of the Jesus Seminar, Marcus Borg, John Polkinghorn, John Spong, Ken Wilber and others. Gary was a passionate and articulate speaker and preacher and was often quoted in area newspapers as he spoke out on a variety of issues. He was courageous. Some people quit coming to church because of his views on one or another issue. He was saved by his reasonable approach, his thorough knowledge, and his deep humility. For every person who left, many more came.

It was devastating when just beyond the age of 50, this outstanding man was diagnosed with a cancer so aggressive that his life expectancy was first measured only in weeks. He extended this to 16 months and during this time his life ebbed away virtually in front of his congregation. One would think of this as a time of abject sadness, and of course that is part of the story, but it was far more. The larger story is one of inspiration as he demonstrated what dying could be like if we were instructed by faith.

Quoting Gary: “I made no life changes when I was diagnosed with incurable cancer in March of 2005. “ He went on to say that,” I continue living a life filled with faith, hope and love surrounded by friends and family. As I faced the reality of a shorter life than I had expected the one thing that changed was my preaching. My illness brought new life into my preaching. I felt a new urgency to speak to the most important matters of faith.”

The congregation was well aware of his concern about fundamentalism in any faith, but of course Christianity was his focus. He felt that by itself a literal interpretation of the Bible was harmless. It was the application of such a view that deeply disturbed him. Gary rejected any form of Christianity where people claimed God and his word exclusively for themselves. Others are outsiders. He decided to present a series of sermons on the issue of fundamentalism, borrowing a quote from an Anglican theologian who claimed that the modern church is like a swimming pool, with all the noise coming out of the shallow end.

These sermons were of such wonderful quality that it was suggested to Gary that he edit them in book form. He did that and the result was THINK AGAIN: A RESPONSE TO FUNDAMENTALISM’S CLAIM ON CHRISTIANITY. The book was published in his last months and he was able to enjoy the reaction to it.

We have always had outstanding pastoral prayers in this church but in the last months of Gary Cox’ life they took on a tenderness that was deeply moving. As I prepared these comments this morning, I listened to a number of these prayers given by Gary in his last months and this is only one of them:

“Let’s open our hearts in prayer. Gracious and loving God your son taught us that your kingdom is among us. Yet so often we treat life as something to be gotten through instead of something to be embraced and to be cherished. We look ahead to the end of the work day, to the week-end, to the summer vacation, to retirement, and we forget that the only time we will ever have is now. Open our eyes and open our hearts so we know that we cannot collect the moments we waste and store them for future use, and we cannot hide our love away, protecting it, thinking the ideal time will someday arrive when we can reach into that vast reservoir of love we have saved up and joyfully pour it upon the world. Tomorrow may never come and we cannot relive a single wasted yesterday. Today is all we will ever have. Grant us the wisdom to understand that now is the time to embrace the fragile beauty of life and now is the only time we will ever have to love the people you have placed beside us for this mysterious and beautiful journey.” (read by Tim Robu)

Gary would say that in many ways the last year of his life was the greatest as he married a daughter, looked forward to the birth of his first grandchild, wrote an outstanding book and received his doctoral degree from the Chicago Theological Seminary.

Next Sunday, Gary Blaine will be installed as the third pastor in our history. He obtained a doctor of ministry degree from the Candler School of Theology at Emery University over 25 years ago. We can see after his brief year in Wichita, that he enjoys the same appreciation of scholarship as his predecessors. He is an excellent teacher and preacher and for a decade has served as an adjunct faculty member at Phillips Theological Seminary. Gary has an inclusive philosophy a passion for social justice, and wherever he has lived, has been recognized for serving people often marginalized by the larger society. He sees the importance of children in building a congregation. He has recognized that one person can no longer do all that is required in our church and has offered what professional religionists call a “program approach” encouraging more participation from the congregation. Recently the church held a strategic planning meeting involving the officers of all boards and committees. It revealed a refreshing and extensive set of ideas about the future of the church.

As we begin our second quarter century we face challenges and opportunities of all sorts. Our covenant asks us to match our belief in the life of Christ with behavior that demonstrates it. In the fifth chapter of first Thessalonians the Apostle Paul wrote to the fledgling church and speaks to us as he proclaimed, “in everything give thanks…and hold fast to that which is good.”