“To God be the Glory”                                                 April 18, 2010
Psalm 145:  8–13; Ephesians 3:  14–21                       Rev. Roxana M. Atwood
(As Benediction, some of Rev. 5:11-14)

PRAYER
May the imagination of our minds and the obedience of all our hearts
be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

On behalf of us who are as guests today and on behalf of those who are here every Sunday, we thank you, Beth, the Session, and all who have worked so hard to plan this weekend of celebration. It’s great to be back!

“To God be the glory.”
These are the first words I offered from this pulpit the first Sunday we worshipped in this building more than 25 years ago. They are still the words that I pray will fill all our hearts this morning:
“To God be the glory.”

That morning was the culmination of a vision coming to pass. Almost 5 years earlier, on a fall evening, about 25 people had gathered in the Burke Center Visitors Center. We met to discern God’s will and to work toward organizing a new Presbyterian church in this neighborhood. That group of good folks included some had read about a new church; some who had asked the presbytery to start a new church here; some who were from several nearby Presbyterian churches, Fairfax, Providence, Kirkwood and especially Grace Springfield. (We had an inside line to Grace because I was married to its pastor.) But not just for that reason, but because Grace had a concern for mission they would not only loan and encourage their members to start a new church but offer us rooms, office support, make the stole I am wearing, and gave generous financial gifts, as did this presbytery and the General Assembly.

These were folks with many talents and deep faith experience:  musicians, librarians, secretaries, engineers, soldiers, accountants teachers. They offered their expertise - a retiree who built a pulpit, a couple who gave us space in their home for an office, an artist who listened to our vision and drew the first Burke tree logo.  (and like the writer of the book of Hebrews, I cannot name them all, but God knows).  That night we weren’t a chartered church but we became a congregation.

Miraculously, these Presbyterian types were willing to go door to door inviting people in Burke Center to come to our new congregation. From that night, the vision we had unfolded. Many hours lay ahead of risk taking, worship and hard work (and sometimes overwork because I was too zealous, for which I apologize to you and to my family).  But by 1980 this led to the official chartering of Burke Church and a couple of years later the building of this meeting house.

When we gathered to celebrate our first service in this space, we knew that for all we had done, it was only by the power of God that we had realized the completion of that stage of this church’s journey.
And to God be the glory.

Hard to believe that was more than a generation ago. Thirty years of diligent and dedicated people of God – at times saints and at times sinners. Sometimes we failed to fulfill our faith. We did not always support one another in community; we did not always witness to God’s love in and for the world; but thanks to the marvelous grace of God, made known to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we could ask forgiveness, be restored in relationships, recovery our common purpose, and continued our journey as a testimony to the risen Christ.

Some or those hearty souls have been here for all those years.
Some have come only recently to be a part of this exciting congregation.
Some have moved on to new locations and church ministries.
Some have joined that great cloud of witnesses in God’s eternal community.
To God be the glory.

Today we celebrate that heritage that began so long ago in scripture with Sara and Abraham, Mary and Barnabas, and continued with the saints of the church, known and unknown, down through the ages. They, we, are a testimony of what it means to be faithful and sometimes fallible witnesses to the Gospel.

Recently when my husband was teaching a class here, I had the joy of worshipping with you several times, and was blessed by the inspiring welcome and worship and music and the insightful and moving sermons that Beth Braxton preached. With her leadership, it is no wonder that this is such an exciting church of commitment and vision.

As I sat among you I saw children comfortably find their way forward to a secure place under and around the communion table where they were greeted with warmth and God’s stories. For letting these little ones come to Jesus in ways that make them feel welcomed and loved.
To God be the glory.

Every month when I receive this church’s newsletter, “The New Leaf,” I am amazed at the incredible range of activities and opportunities for forming the faith for all ages through worship, education, music, meditation and mission.

Over the years I have been, and still am, awed by the creative energy of the leaders of this church – clergy and elders, deacons. Sometimes as leaders for Christ, all the time as followers of Christ, you have been here time and again to make crucial and sometimes courageous and unpopular decisions. Just think of all the hours you have sat through endless meetings seeking God’s will, and one another’s counsel, and the strength of the Spirit to help you bring that vision to fruition.

I’m reminded of one of the first presbytery meetings my husband attended as a young pastor. In the midst of a long, heated debate over some minute theological point, an older, revered minister rose and said, “The fires of hell don’t frightened me nearly as much as eternity spent in an endless presbytery meeting.”

I also remember, the countless people of God who show up here consistently Sunday after Sunday after Sunday to sing in the choir, usher for services, teach children, tend the lawn, feed the hungry, clean up the kitchen, to financially give and give and give again to support this church.

Sisters and brothers, more importantly, I think of those quiet, spontaneous ways you were there for me and one another in the daily routine of church life and especially in times of transition and crisis. You lovingly showed that “Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one, Our comforts and our cares.”

Whether we are ipod experts or ipod illiterates, (I speak for myself), whether we are retired from a career in which we found satisfaction or we have been accepted into college and are anxious to fulfill our dreams, whether we are care givers for a frail loved one or are parenting a new born, wherever we are, on this spectrum of life, when we gather together in this place on Sunday mornings, we know we are not alone as we cope with the great passages of life. We are a family connected across the ages, and genders, and politics.
To God be the glory.

I also know this is a congregation that dares to take on sensitive social and religious issues and to get involved in bringing change outside these walls to a fragmented and often selfish world, both through your ministries and the daily lives of your members.

This too is part of our church’s heritage. Our Presbyterian saint and sinner, John Calvin, was deeply concerned about the good of the public – about the well-being of the city of Geneva, not just the well being of the church.

He challenged the leadership of the church to do something about the sewer system in the city as well as to join together in teaching the children of the community – giving them secular as well as religious education.

This Calvinist heritage, at its best, provided the roots for the elected representative government on which our American constitution is based. Our heritage challenges us in the church today to be a healthy and active model of peace and justice in the world which God created and for which Christ died.

This continuing concern for our world can be rare in our religious generation. So much church success is cultivated around popular appeal and often limited to only a personal relationship with Jesus.

At the same time, the common good of politics is often portrayed as down and dirty rather than an opportunity and responsibility to determine the destiny of our society.

Government for which many of you honorably work is maligned as the adversary rather than an incredible privilege that we the people claim through civil discourse and the ballot box. Biblical principles of justice and peace are denigrated by some in the media rather than lifted up as an appeal to the better nature of humankind. This is heightened in days of financial stress that sometimes leads to irresponsible rage.

Church, this is not new; but it can be overcome. Not long ago, my brother gave me a copy of the history of the Presbyterian Church where our great grandfather had been a minister. Early in the 20th century, the congregation in that church was actively supporting a state tax that would fund public schools. (Can you believe that the precious privilege of public schools is that recent in the great state of N.C.?)

On the day of the vote regarding this tax, a short time before the polls closed in Alamance County, one of the members of the Church, James Covington, asked an African-American neighbor, Lawson Chavis, if he had voted. Chavis said that he wanted to vote but had been threatened with eviction if he did. Covington told Chavis that he would assure him housing and took him to the polls. The tax measure passed - by ONE vote––a vote cast for the common good by a dedicated citizen who had no children and whose own people would not fully benefit from that vote for 60 years.

What a courageous and sacrificial model of citizenship, Chavis provides for us today when we in the church and our society need to encourage our citizens to seek the common good even if not always for our own self-interest.
When we do, to God be the glory.

For all we have inherited from the past and all that you have done to bring this church to where it is today, the future is still to be realized by a new generation of believers.

I thank God every time I am in the company of my children that they are not locked into continuing my choices and the limitations of my insight. I thank God that I didn’t have to pass on to my children and grandchildren some of the inheritance I received from my parents and grandparents world: segregation, and the justifying of domestic violence with scripture, the hiding of the retarded and the mentally ill, not to mention the limiting of ministry to men.

Walter Brueggemann, in a lecture titled “Imagination and Obedience” puts it like this:  (Smythe Lectures at Columbia Seminary) Our society wants to keep the past, the present and the future
locked together so that everything is fated, settled, and necessary.

And it is the task of the church to create imaginative space between the present and the future, because most of our growth and most of our repentance, most of our transformation, and most of our conversion will happen in the free imaginative space between past and present, and present and future.

Yahweh hopes for a new possibility so that the sons and daughter are not fated to live out the lives of the mothers and fathers . . .
There is a break from old urgencies . . .
The church’s agenda is to create enough slippage to liberate the people
so that we can decide about the way the past has a voice in the present.  
It is not a dictatorial voice.
It is a voice that is waiting to be received,
and we have some freedom about how we listen to the past
(and apply it) in the present.

I hope that the next generation of this congregation will discover God’s will for them with new freedom and new imagination and new obedience.

As we celebrate 30 years of God’s ministry in and through you in this church may our hearts be filled with thanksgiving for all that God has done
May the life of Christ, our risen Lord, be for us an example of how we love one another and work for the common good in the world.
And may the Spirit empower a new generation to continue the creative formation of Christian lives in this place and the reforming of the world for God’s peace and justice.
And to God be the glory!