PROMISES KEPT AND PROMISES YET UNFULFILLED

30th Ordination Anniversary Sermon
given by the Rev. Dennis R. Knight
November 16, 2003, 2003 / Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost

Thirty years ago this month, Harold Hannah, who was then President of Beneficent Church, stood in this very spot and welcomed a congregation of some 300 persons to an afternoon service of worship.

The charge for that service was to ordain me as a Christian minister. While that service stands as one of the most important markers in my life, I would offer that the moment belonged as fully to Beneficent Church as it did to Dennis Knight. To the best of anyone's understanding at the time, that event witnessed the first instance in the then 230 history of this Church when someone who was baptized here as an infant, and reared his entire childhood and youth in the body of this congregation, entered the ministry. Not many years later, Mark Bolles followed the same pathway from baptism to confirmation to ordination, so a course for the future was set by two of us.

And as the moment thirty years ago belonged both to this congregation and to me, so too this anniversary belongs to two parties today. It is a fitting time for me individually to reflect upon what has been, and what may yet come to be, and to invite you corporately to do the same.

Harold Hannah began that ordination service by reading from T.S. Elliot. The poem he invoked contained the commanding line, "We shall return to the place where we began and know it for the first time."

I have returned to this place many times since the day Harold Hannah uttered those words, and always I have wondered, do I yet "know" it. The "it" of course is not Beneficent Church in and of itself. The "it" is the nature of the Christian life and the role of ministry in specific relationship to that.

Certainly after thirty years, I ought to have something to say on the subject, and I do.

The first observation I would make is that my concept of ministry was much more self-conscious then than it is now. Years ago, one of the members of my church in Auburn introduced me in a social setting. She said, "he's the minister of our church, but don't worry, he's just a regular guy." By then, I considered that high praise. To my thinking, ministry is not something that is esoteric and remote. Rather, its character is immediate and present. Ministry is about calling forth the sacred from ordinary, everyday activity.

I often return in my mind to a marvelous comment made by Arthur Wilson, who was the minister at Beneficent when I was growing up, and certainly a visionary for my life. He had arrived late for a gathering and explained that he had gotten tied up with his accountant. He added, quite casually, "You know, accountants are just like ministers. They spend entirely too much time learning how to make the perfectly obvious, perfectly obscure."

Life in the church can get really bogged down with obscurities. Simple issues can become tremendously complicated for all kinds of sidebar reasons. Personalities clash, unsettled matters get drawn into play, shadow issues cast their pale on the discussion at hand, people sometimes simply get mean spirited or fixed on a single point of view. When that happens, what should be a straight-line run can turn into an obstacle course.

One of the roles that falls to the minister is to help folks keep their eyes on the goal post, and away from the debris underfoot. The minister's job is to articulate first principles, and to work to dispel any trivialities that rise up to obscure those principles. Without the benefit of a clear, central vision to act as a guiding beacon, then the church will falter. A function of the minister is to help direct all the crosscurrents to a single flow.

There is a marvelous phrase in the text from Nehemiah that describes this role. Verse eight states, "and they gave the sense [of the Law], so that the people understood the reading." One of the jobs of the preacher is to offer sense. Particularly so, to offer sense in the face of confusion, uncertainty, and in situations where there is lack of clarity. It is ever the minister's task to return to first principles and apply them to matters at hand.

As I thought about first principles, I went back to an image from that ordination service thirty years ago. There was an extended moment in that service then that was revealing of the essence of ministry. Julie Barney had assembled a fairly large choir of children, twenty or more, who sang Peter, Paul and Mary's "Weave Me the Sunshine." Debbie Munson was then a youngster of about four who declared to her parents that she wanted to be a part of that choir. Her mother said to her, "But Debbie, you can't read. How can you be part of the choir?" Debbie insisted she was going to sing, and sing she did. She stood on those very steps and could be heard above every other voice in the choir. And she knew every word of the song. The irony was that Debbie's music could be seen to be upside down the entire time.

Debbie couldn't read, but she could memorize.

I can think of no better single image of ministry than that found in this example. Ministry is about helping people sing who want to sing, and especially helping them when others tell them they cannot. Ministry is about cutting out doorways and dismantling barriers so that those who are excluded can be included. It really is that simple, bearing in mind that simple is not to be confused with easy.

Ministry is about converting hearts and minds from narrow, inward perspectives to broad, outward looking ones. Ministry is about transition and transformation. The Bible uses the phrase hardened, as God hardened their hearts. Ministry is about softening hearts, so that change can occur.

One Sunday, sitting in one of these pews, I saw in the configuration of this pulpit area with the symmetrical stairs on either side, something akin to the Victorian footbridges that dot Roger Williams Park. Similar bridges can be found in the Boston Common, or Elm Park in Worcester.

In the moment I made that association, I thought, indeed, this is right because the function of the church and the role of ministry, is to serve as a bridge. On one side of the bridge stand confusion, obscurity, and exclusion. On the other end is to be found order, clarity and inclusivity.

There is more to this symbol here at Beneficent as well. Our baptismal font stands on one side of the stairs leading to this pulpit. In the Christian perspective, we begin our journey at the baptismal font. The journey in this church from the baptismal font over this symbolic bridge transits from west to east. The journey from this baptismal font is toward the rising sun. That too is the case for the Christian life. We are called ever to journey toward the dawn, toward the new light, toward the rising sun.

The notion of journeying toward the light is another first principle in Christianity. I found it helpful in my time in ministry, when faced with a difficult policy decision, to pose the question, which of the alternatives at hand was likely to lead toward the new light, and which of those alternatives was likely to move deeper into darkness? Posing this one question would often serve to frame and clarify an issue at hand. The choice to move toward the light or linger in the darkness is one that is ever before the church.

I have just laid out a series of images that are all forward looking. Yet I am standing in a place that is overflowing with past memories, and on an occasion when my thoughts naturally, and strongly, move backward in time. I can remember the first time I ever spoke from this pulpit, when I was fourteen. I, along with Gary Bolles, delivered the sermon on that youth Sunday. I have told Irene Hope that I remember when she delivered the youth sermon a couple of years prior to me, and how I sat where you are, thinking, one day I want to do that. As moving and as present as those memories are, I resolved that whatever I said today, it would not simply be an exercise in nostalgia or a recounting of reminiscence.

However, I do want to speak to the matter of the past and its relationship to the present and future.

The past can be a millstone hung 'round our necks. A phrase that is frequently, and tediously, echoed in church settings is, "but we've never done it that way before." That notion can be as hobbling as a tether on a horse. I confess at times to reaching levels of frustration that I cannot describe when I heard this phrase. There was one instance I vividly recall, when a woman in my church, harangued so much that my tolerance level broke. She had confronted me with the question, "why can't we sing hymns we know?" Many other instances of complaint had preceded that, and I found myself rather sternly replying, "Ruth, how many hymns were you born knowing?"

That instance represents the inhibiting and restraining aspects of the past. But tradition has another, entirely opposite, dimension as well. While the past can act as a millstone holding us back, it can also act as ballast steadying us as we move forward. Rhode Island has a long-standing and proud sailing tradition. The America's Cup races, for instance, used to be held off Newport. Other significant events such as the Newport to Bermuda race remain as sailing competitions of world note. The ships that compete in such races have running boards beneath their hulls. These running boards pierce deep and straight into the water. These running boards in turn are filled with lead or other heavy material that stabilizes the craft and keeps it from capsizing even as, in catching the wind, the boat leans toward the horizontal.

Beneficent Church has always been a place where the past has served to stabilize the current generation. The past has always provided each generation in its time with ballast so it could run the race. The lore I grew up with is that the change of color of bricks on the west side of the Meeting House reflects a place where the brick supply fell short. When the builder's brick ran out, that wall was finished by removing ballast brick from the holds of cargo ships in Providence Harbor. If that is so, the very notion of ballast, of stability, is literally built into the structure of this place.

I spoke earlier of the church being a bridge. One aspect of that bridge that is of immense importance is how many people have crossed it before us. What our forebears learned in their journeys, in their transits, can serve as signposts for our journeys. Those who went before are our ancestors in faith. It was their passion that built the world we inherited, and it was their efforts that made of us heirs.

Struggle, and challenge, and conflict, and turmoil are not new. Every age has faced difficulties in the effort to move forward. While the immediate context varies, the dynamic does not. Fifty years ago, the issue was that women should not be ministers, or for that matter, lawyers or doctors or engineers. Today the issue is that a gay man should not be an Episcopal bishop. The subject is different, but the impulses are the same. Those who in their time walked the bridge of women's rights, or racial equality, or suffrage, are kin and kindred with those today seeking to dismantle other barriers. They relied upon and were guided by the same religious tenets we embrace today. They drew upon the same wellspring of religious insight and conviction that we do today.

When Arthur Wilson died, I thought, but to whom will I turn to when I need direction? To whom will I turn when I cannot quite puzzle it out? To whom will I turn when the right words for a funeral elude me, or the sermon idea just will not come together, or inspiration simply fails me?

The people of Nehemiah's time had long lived in the circumstance of being without spiritual direction. They were removed from all their Dr. Wilsons. They had lived as refugees in a foreign land, captives in Babylon. Consequently, they felt barren and detached from the ground of their faith. They had been forcibly removed from their homeland, hence disconnected from all the familiar landmarks and guideposts that had established a context for their lives.

In the episode at hand, we find the people weeping when they reencounter the Law from which they had been separated. The chain that had been broken was reconnected with their return to Jerusalem, and specifically so when the words of the Law were once again set before them. In that moment, they realized they had been delivered from a literal and spiritual exile.

In the body of the church we learn we are not solitary voices isolated in time and place, left to struggle in our various individual ways. We are reminded, like the people in Ezra and Nehemiah's time were, that we have a spiritual grounding that is deep and sustaining. In the body of the church, we come to understand that we are part of a chorus that is timeless and boundless.

Twenty years or so ago, sitting in this very building my mother said to me, "I think of my mother every single day of my life." Silent tears accompanied her words, which I could only greet with more silence. Inwardly, I wondered then, how could it all be so immediate for her when her mother, my grandmother, had died some forty years earlier.

My mother's statement no longer mystifies me. Twenty-five years on, her experience is now my experience.

Our spiritual heritage is compelling. It runs deep. The past is part of the flow that will carry us to the future. Remembrance is not just sentiment. It is inspiration. Arthur Wilson is not lost to me, or to Beneficent Church. Nor is the host of people who were present here when I was baptized in 1947, or confirmed in 1961, or ordained in 1973. Those former people of the faith, and the generations before them, to whom they are now joined, stand as sustaining spiritual guardians who, though gone, are abiding still.

It is their vision and their hope that is working its way out in our lives. It is they who have gone before whose lives and witness and testimony lingers on to beckon us to an ever more abundant future, just as our lives will beckon another generation to come. It is our future for which our ancestors in the faith lived and struggled, and it is the morrow's future for which we live and struggle. Our lives are testament to promises kept and promises yet to be fulfilled.

Amen.

Amen.