Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Pentecost 16
September 16, 2007
W. Gregory Pope
WHY REMEMBER THE PAST?:
THE RECOLLECTION OF SACRED HISTORY
Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Isaiah 51:1-3
Today marks the beginning of our Centennial Celebration. Over the next nine months we will be retelling the story of our past as well as seeking to understand what God is calling us to do in our next century of ministry.
Why should we do such a thing? Is this more than just a nostalgic trip down memory lane? I sure hope so, because remembering the past is important.
We remember the past to remember who we are. And we remember who we are by remembering what God has done. And from those remembrances, we hear who we are called to be.
I have subtitled this sermon on remembering the past, “The Recollection of Sacred History.”
“Recollect” is one of those words we all know but do not use that much any more. I remember hearing it on The Beverly Hillbillies. Old Jed would rub his chin and roll his eyes up trying to remember something and eventually say, “I don’t rightly recollect.”
The word “recollect”has a classical pedigree with fine old Latin roots. From re-colligere, meaning to collect, collate, gather again, re-collect.
Re-collecting is a particular kind of remembering. It is an intentional act of going back and picking up certain memories and gathering them together again to find meaning and purpose in the story they create.
The Bible addresses this way of remembering, of how to choose from our past what matters most, and having recollected these memories, to let good and faithful living flow from them. An example of this is found in the text we read today from the book of Deuteronomy.
Out in the wilderness, Moses is instructing people who are about to enter their new land. He is telling them how a certain offering should be given when they have become farmers in the new land. He says: When harvest time comes, each of you fill a basket with the first grain, bring it to the sanctuary and say to the priest: “The land was God’s gift to us.” Then give your basket to the priest to lay it on the altar. Then tell your story with these words: “A wandering Aramean was my father. He and his people were made slaves in Egypt, and were afflicted harshly by their masters. We cried to the Lord, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and with signs and wonders, brought us here and gave us this land flowing with milk and honey. So I am giving to you now, Lord, what has sprung from the gift you gave to us.”
The is an act of sacred remembrance. And what is striking is the reach of the memory being asserted here. People at worship bearing baskets of what they have just this week produced are to state the reason for their gift in terms of events that happened long ago. “A wandering Aramean was my father.”
By father they didn’t mean “daddy,” they meant Jacob, their ancestor from centuries ago. Jacob’s mother Rebekah was ethnically from a group called Arameans. These were nomadic people, wanderers, homeless. When you give your gift, says Moses, say so that you hear yourself say it: I come from people who had no home. A wandering Aramean was my father (Papa was a rolling stone). My heritage is vulnerability, destitution, homelessness.
But you’re not finished yet, says Moses. Tell the rest of the story. Go on to say: We were slaves, dispossessed even of our lives. We were held down harshly, and in our misery we cried to God - and, what do you know, God heard us and acted for us and set us free, handed us our lives and gave us a place for good living. And here is my gift and glad worship today because of all this that happened to me before I was born.1
The story of Crescent Hill Baptist Church began before all of us arrived here, with the exception of one, Louise Dohrman, who was three years old the day this church was formed.
But our story began long before 43 members from Clifton Baptist Church ever thought of meeting to form this church. Because the story of the Christian Church goes back almost 2000 years ago. And the roots of the Christian Church reach further back into the story of Israel beginning with Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and his twelve sons. The text we read today tells part of our sacred story: “My father was a wandering Aramean. We were slaves in Egypt and God has set us free and given us all that we have.”
So let us be clear: Our history did not begin on January 12, 1908. It began on the first day of creation. Our full history is not recorded on a Crescent Hill Time-line. Our history begins on the sacred pages of scripture. Our story begins with the biblical story.
To recollect the long arc of our real story - the enslavements we’ve been freed from and the gifts God’s love has lavished on us - puts our smaller memories in a whole new light. To know that we live in the fortunate legacy of gift on gift, grace on grace, deliverance on deliverance, calls forth from us a life that is grateful and generous.
We remember the past to remember who we are.
To know someone we need to hear their story. Our stories - the events of our lives and our life together - make us who we are. The classic rock and roll band, Jethro Tull, entitled one of their albums, “Living With the Past.” An important distinction I think from living in the past. We always live with the past, so we need to know the past to know who and what we are living with. We need to know the biblical story and the story of the past 100 years here athe corner of Frankfort and Birchwood.
It is important to remember our history, moments that shaped us. Many of these events will be remembered by these in the center who have been a part of this place for over 50 years.
In these upcoming months you will hear this church’s story. And if you’re fairly new to the congregation, arriving in the last ten years or so, there is a story you need to hear, understand, and respect in order to learn who these people are who’ve been here for much longer.
In the months ahead of us we will hear about the Depression years and the financial crisis the church faced having just built this sacred space, and how some members mortgaged their homes to avoid foreclosure on the church property. We gather each week on land preserved by great sacrifice. We must never forget that. And we must let it inspire us to sacrifice and generosity.
There have been days when Sunday School and worship attendance exceeded 1000, reaching a high of 1756 in 1966.
There are been days of grief as children died of leukemia, and teenagers died in car accidents, and our beloved Grady Nutt died way too soon in a plane crash.
And days of pain when ministers faltered morally.
There have been grand days of worship and mission. Moments when the pipes of an organ or the pipes of a human voice was music to your soul, words uttered that transformed your faith and your understanding of God.
There have been days of gladness when this church took pride in being a spiritual home to thousands of seminary students and professors and presidents.That day in 1877 when the first session of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was held in Louisville, moving from Greenville, South Carolina, was a significant day for us, even though it was 30 years before our founding. That relationship with Southern led to the building of this great room as a place to hold convocations and graduations.
To understand the people here we need to know the story of those days as well as the days of sad darkness when that part of our history came to an end.
And then there were lighter moments when Blanche Goetzman was not the elegant woman you saw reading scripture today, but a squirmy child being called out for misbehavior by her pastor, Dr. Charles Graham, in the middle of worship.
And we must not forget that momentous day in 1949 when the one who led us in our call to worship, Pat Shipp Scott, along with Monty Justice were crowned Queen and King at the annual Youth Banquet. I hear she still wears the sash underneath her choir robe.
And then that significant day in 1973 when we ordained our first three women to the deacon ministry, one of whom, Gaga Woodward, is here today.
And three mission trips in past six years to Thailand that began a relationship with the Karen we had no idea would turn out like this.
And there was the day back in 2005 when Crescent Hill installed its first pope. The jury is still out as to whether it was a day of gladness or darkness.
Those days of glad surprise, deep suffering, and joyful ministry mark who we are to this day. We remember the past to remember who we are.
We remember the past to remember what God has done.
Our story runs deeper than the events that have happened here. It’s not about us. We remember the story of our past in order to remember what God has done among us.
There are days through which only God could have carried this congregation. Days of conflict and nights of darkness that have proved God’s grace.
We remember the past to remember who we are called to be.
Though we are shaped by our past, we are not defined by them.
That is why we always need the larger biblical story to live into and out of: so that we never become completely defined by a century that is brief compared to the biblical story that takes us back to creation.
One of the things the biblical story teaches us through God’s covenant with Abraham is that we have been blessed in order to be a blessing to all people.
And who would have known that the day in 1813 when Ann and Adoniram Judson arrived in Burma, eventually resulting in many of the Karen people becoming our Christian Baptist brothers and sisters who worship with us now - who knew that day 95 years before our founding would be significant to our congregational story.
God continually calls us and does a new thing among us.
At the beginning of this sermon I said that those who had arrived here within the last ten years needed to hear the story of this congregation to better understand who we are.
At the end of this sermon I would say to those who have been here longer than ten years to listen to the newer voices among us.
Newer people can sometimes better discern when we are trying to live as if we are still what we once were. Sometimes it takes newer voices to hear the new thing God is calling us to do and be.
Elizabeth Canham says that the events and activities of a faith community and of the history of the church “are not repeated out of a nostalgic longing for what has been; rather, they remind us of where we are, who we are, and what God is inviting us to become as we continue on the way.” She says: “Grace comes to us . . . to remind us that we come from God and belong together with God, to whom the Hebrew Scriptures frequently refer to as a rock. So that God’s people might remember who they are, a holy community . . . , the author of Isaiah writes, ‘Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug’ (Isa 51:1). The stones ask, ‘Can you find yourself in the timeless procession of saints and sinners traveling hopefully in response to the divine call?’”2
As we remember what has happened to us and what God has done among us, we must always be asking what new thing God is calling us to do and be in this new day. Many times throughout Israel’s history, the prophets recalled Israel’s past to remind them who they are and how that should inform who God is calling us to be, especially when circumstances changed.
During the exile, Jeremiah had to tell the people to stop wishing for what had been and to make a life where they are now because things were not going to change for quite some time. Build houses, plant gardens, have children, and let them be married here. This is your life now.
There are things about our history that we cannot re-live. Things that will most likely never be true about us again. But who knows what new things God has in store for us. We will always have our grand and storied history, a story that continues to be written even today.
I have come to believe that it is not change itself we fear, but the loss change brings. So many of us long for the church of long ago. I know I do.
I miss the church of my childhood. I miss the idea of church as a safe place you go all dressed up. I miss the idea of the kind of church I thought I was going to pastor when I felt called to ministry back in 1984. There was no danger involved. No getting dirty. I would preach, lead worship, encourage people to join the church and be active in Sunday School, visit the sick, bury the dead, marry the young, and survive deacons’ meetings. That idea of church is dead. That model of being a pastor is outdated. And part of me is sad. But the better part of me knows that God calls the church to more than that.
So much has changed for us in the last six months. When you signed up for the nursery or to teach children’s SS class, did you ever think that the majority of your class would include people who just a year ago lived on the other side of the world and spoke another language?
The arrival of our Karen brothers and sisters has changed the kind of church we will be. And I for one thank God. They are God’s gift to us. There are challenges for all of us as we learn to live together in community. We have all been removed out of our comfort zones. And they are teaching us what it means to be the church.
I want us to take on this new identity, this being church with those who are just now learning our language. I am so glad to look out on a congregation that looks more like the real world as God made it than an exclusive country club. Diversity brings its challenges. We will be called to give sacrificially of ourselves in different ways than those who mortgaged their homes during the Depression. But together we will be a better truer church, engaging the world in ways we never imagined.
The song of this congregation reminds us it is not our choice the wind’s direction, unseen what lies ahead. But we are promised hands beneath us, arms around us, and above God’s shining face. And so we pray to the Christ who calls us, “Plunge us on with hope and courage til Thy harbor is our home.”
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1. I am indebted to Paul Duke and his thoughts on recollection and this text found in his sermon, “Recollection,” preached at First Baptist Church, Ann Arbor, Michigan
2. Elizabeth Canham, Heart Whispers, 156-159
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CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425
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