Everyone has been most warm and gracious to us as you have welcomed us to the church, but I have to admit that I have been just a little nervous about this first sermon.  I was reading an article in a preaching magazine on preaching your first sermon in a new congregation.  And this article said that the first sermon has “the possibility of great hope.”  The first sermon in a new church has the possibility of great hope.  Did you know that this sermon has the possibility of great hope?  I know it doesn’t seem like it so far, but the first sermon has that possibility, any sermon has the possibility of great hope.  And I began to feel better as I read that.  I should have stopped reading right there, but I continued reading and the article said that the first sermon also has “the potential for disaster.”  I began to feel a little nervous again.           

Two different friends of mine, when they heard I was coming to Christ Church, sent me two different clippings.  One friend sent me a cartoon from the Harvard Business Review.  I didn’t know there were cartoons in the Harvard Business Review.  But in this cartoon,  it looks like this young man sitting in the corner office of the senior partner of this high-powered Wall Street law firm, or perhaps it’s not a young lawyer, perhaps it’s a United Methodist minister sitting in the office of the bishop and learning of his appointment to this high-powered church in the South Hills of a major city, let’s say.  Anyway, the caption says, “If you have access to performance-enhancing drugs, I suggest you start using them.”  So I’ve been just a little nervous.           

Another friend sent me a quote from Nelson Mandela.  Mandela said this during his inaugural address as the first president of South Africa after apartheid was dismantled, he said, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.  We ask ourselves: ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?’  Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God.  Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.  There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.  We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.  It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.  And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” 

I love those words.  They strike me as words that are similar to the words of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord has anointed me (to preach).”  There are perhaps no more powerful words in the Bible, for the preacher anyway, and yet these words make me nervous too, because of the enormity of what we are asked to do, we are asked, not just me, but we all of us are asked to preach the good news to the world, to proclaim liberty and release, to build and re-build, to plant and to harvest.  It sounds overwhelming doesn’t it, impossible?  And yet this is what we are called to do. 

I’m reminded of a movie, I can’t remember which one, where one of the characters often says about something they have to do, he says, “It’s impossible!  It’s impossible!  But it’s doable, it’s doable.”  This is what God seems to be saying, “Here is this impossible task I have given you!  It’s impossible!  But it’s doable.  It’s doable.  In the strength of God, it’s doable.  In the power of the whole community, it’s doable.  Working not on your own, but working with others, working through the church, it’s doable.” 

I love the church, and one of the reasons is that together we can do so much more than we could ever do by ourselves.  I caught this love of the church from my parents and grandparents.  I remember my grandmother so fondly, my father’s mother.  My grandmother loved the church.  There was nowhere in the world she would rather be than in church.  She didn’t live long enough to see me ordained, but she did know that I was studying to become a preacher.  She was so proud; she told everyone, “He’s going to be a preacher, he’s going to be a preacher.”  But long before I ever would have thought I would become a preacher, she and I were having this conversation on a winter day.  It had been a particularly nasty winter that year, snow up to here, you know, and bitter cold temperatures.  And I knew that she loved the church, and I wanted to talk about what she liked to talk about, so I was asking her about the church, and having the weather in mind, I asked if she ever went to church when the weather was so bad outside.  And she answered that, “No, no, we would never even think of going to church if the weather is too bad out.”  She thought about that for a moment, and then, with a clever twinkle in her eye, she said, “Of course, the weather’s never been too bad out yet for us to get to church.” 

So I love the church.  And what’s more, we have grown in just a short time to love Christ Church, to be truly smitten with the members and friends of this church.  We have just fallen in love with all of you.  And I’m amazed at all of the ministries that go on here, all of the people in need who are helped.  It is obvious that this church rests on a foundation that has been thriving and growing and building and depending on God for nearly 58 years.  Truly this is a church that has built its foundation on a rock, the rock of Jesus Christ.  God has been at work here.  People of vision have been at work here, you can see their footprints everywhere.  

I heard the story of a young man who was traveling, and as he traveled he happened to see an old man who was hard at work on some barren mountainside.  The old man was taking something out of his pocket and nudging it into the earth.  So the young traveler asked him, “What are you doing?”  And the old man said that he was planting acorns, his goal was to change the face of this mountain.  In his mind’s eye, as he planted, he said, he saw massive oak trees, he saw villages full of people nestled under those trees, he heard birds singing, he saw children playing.  Well, the young traveler scoffed at this as he went on, this poor, silly old man, trying to change the face of this barren mountain. 

But a few years later, this traveler was once again passing through that way.  He was no longer a young man, he was grown, he was probably the same age as the old man he met there years ago, and that old man was probably long gone by now.  But as this traveler passed by that barren mountainside, he saw to his amazement that it was barren no longer.  He could hardly believe it, because he saw now what that old man years ago had seen only in his imagination, but he had indeed seen it because here it was in all its glory: massive oak trees, and villages full of people nestled under those trees, and birds singing, and children playing, oh there were so many children, where there had been nothing before. 

I wonder if there had been some person who came through this way 58 years ago as the church was just barely getting started, and maybe hadn’t been here since, but was passing through again today, I wonder if that person might say, “Oh, so this is what Harry Peelor saw all those years ago when he was starting this church in a storefront above a hardware store, this is what William Grove saw during his ministry here before he became a bishop, this is what Brian Bauknight saw, this is what the people of Christ Church down through the years have seen, and now here it is, this facility, this ministry that is so powerful and reaches so many. 

And I wonder too if someone were here today and then gone for awhile but were to return in 20 or 30 years, I wonder if that person might say, “Oh, so this is what Duane Thompson saw, this is what the people of Christ Church saw on that day back in 2007, this is the vision that God gave to his people back, and now here it is.”  Today we have this magnificent foundation, but it’s not a foundation on which to now just relax and get comfortable, it’s a foundation on which to build and grow, to blast off into the future in exciting and new and meaningful ways. 

I love those words of Tennyson from his epic poem, Ulysses:

Come, my friends.

‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, -

- One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 

We live, someone has suggested, we live between memory and foretaste.  We live between the past and the future.  We live on this solid foundation, but we live too always dreaming, always daring, always anticipating, always stretching ourselves, always reaching toward the future. 

I heard of, not a church, but of a young woman named Mary who lived between memory and foretaste.  When she was just a young girl, Mary was in an accident, and she lost one of her hands.  Her little brother, who was probably just acting like most little brothers, I suppose, had his eye on her bicycle.  And he said to their father, “You know, Mary won’t be able to ride her bike now that she has lost her hand.”  But their father said, “Well I don’t see why Mary can’t ride her bike.  I think she can do anything she wants to.”  And Mary was eavesdropping on that conversation, and she had been concerned that she might now be forever limited in what she could do.  But then she heard her father say, “I think Mary can do anything she wants.”  And it gave her the confidence she needed to master that bicycle with her one hand, and to feel that she could do anything she set out to do.  It was this memory, this foundation, of her father’s faith in her that guided her understanding of who she was and her expectation of what she might yet be. 

I believe a church that has its memories, that has its foundation, might now simply take off and dream and dare and do what others might think to be impossible.  Only our imaginations can limit us, only our willingness to live boldly by faith.