10/25/64

Scripture: Read Psalm 145: 1-13

Text: Psalm 145: 4; “One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts.”

This day has many meanings. (1) It comes at a time of the year when autumn is in the air. Many of nature’s crops are harvested and others are nearly harvested. Leaves have turned in color and have fallen. Sometimes the air is crisp and cool with a foretaste of colder days to come. Sometimes its mildness lingers with memories of the summer. The time of All Saints Day, or Halloween, comes at the end of the week. And the Thanksgiving season is not far off. Today is a fine autumn Sunday.

(2) This day is also Reformation Sunday. Many Christian Churches mark it as the day of reminder that a stormy, intrepid man with a mighty conscience nailed his theses for discussion and debate on the door of his church. It was a dramatic gesture, though he probably did not intend it as such.

Martin Luther was only one of a succession of great-spirited people who believed that some things needed changing in the church to redeem it from corruption and error. There was John Wycliffe of England, born about 1320 or 1330. Over on the continent, John Huss was born in Bohemia in 1369. Saronorola was born in Italy in 1452. Martin Luther arrived in Germany in 1483. Zwingli came to a German Swiss home in 1484. Back in England, Thomas Cranmer was born in 1489 to become one day the first Archbishop of Canterbury, and then a martyr to his efforts to improve the church. Meanwhile Tyndale was born in England in 1484 to become a first translator of the Bible into the vernacular, English. Melanchthan was born in Germany in 1497. Over in Scotland, John Knox appeared in 1513 or 1514. And in France in 1509 John Calvin was born to become the mighty theologian of Switzerland.

These reformers lived over a period of nearly a century. All of them struggled with the entrenched evils of their day. All suffered for their venturing and faith in attempting to correct the church. Some were martyred, accepting death by fire rather than recant the truth that they had taught and preached.

It was the stalwart Luther who, taken before Emperor Charles V at Worms in 1521 , said firmly: “I am held fast by the Scriptures --- and my conscience is taken captive by God’s Word.”

The determination of these reformers is well worth our remembrance at least once a year on Reformation Sunday. Their lives and teachings are worth our protracted study. They built upon what was good in the past; they broke with what was in error; they were loyal to the future. We are direct beneficiaries of their faith, their sacrifice, their devoted effort. Our world has been a better world because of them. We owe it to our children, and our children’s children, to be as loyal to the future as were they.

(3) But this day has a very special significance to us in this church. For today we mark the beginning of a new church home by laying a cornerstone for the first unit of the new house of God. Thus we formally begin construction of the fourth home that this congregation has had since the church was organized in 1862.

Last Sunday, we were led, at worship, by laymen of this congregation. That 13th annual observance of Laity Sunday was more than a formality. It is living evidence that God’s Holy Spirit can live and move through all of His church, pastor and people alike, if we will be dedicated to His will and His ways. Paul Brown reminded us of the four years of planning that have gone into preparation for our building, and called us to planning and building of our lives into the true church. That was a reminder to us to be loyal to the future.

I suggest that we look back farther than these past four years for further evidence of loyalty. Not a few of you who gather here today were acquainted with Miss Anna McMillan. Some of you never had the privilege of knowing her. I can assure you that she was well worth knowing. She had been a teacher for some time -- well prepared by temperament and training for her work. Then she and her sister withdrew from teaching and gave themselves fully to caring for their mother through years of failing health until her death.

After that, our church was to benefit by some extraordinary understanding and service. Anna McMillan served the community in many ways, both in public service and in private encouragement. But her church service was especially distinguished. She was elected to membership on the Board of Deaconesses, and for some time served as chairman. That Board leaped ahead in significant service under her quiet encouragement, her guidance and her leadership. She also served on our Church Board of Religious Education, giving special attention to the church school library, but extending her understanding and grasp of the work, the possibility and the needs of the young folk in church school and youth programs.

Then there came the time when our church elected her to the Board of Trustees where she served well and faithfully until her death seven years ago in the summer of 1957. When notice of her will was published it became known that she had provided for her church out of her estate an amount which, in due time, would make possible the “building and maintaining” of “suitable quarters for educational and recreational activities of the young people of said church or affiliated church groups.” She had, herself, been blessed with the provision of an uncle whose bequest to her helped keep her comfortable and independent. She in turn provided for this church, among other objects of her concern. It is her loyal concern for the future which makes possible the erection of the building unit whereunto we lay a cornerstone today.

I have recounted just a little bit about this one member of our church whose foresighted contribution is a mighty springboard for the whole building program to which all of us are giving of our substance and ourselves. We are forever hearing talk about being loyal to the past. We must keep the faith committed to the saints and purified by the reformers. We must be worthy of our spiritual ancestors! But it takes a lot more than formal veneration of the past. We do our part, but in our own loyalty to the future. Said the Psalmist, “One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts.” [Psalm 145: 4].

One can say a really sound word about loyalty to the future. Our ancestors are important to us. But there is a proper sense in which we maintain that our posterity is more important. And not all of the saints to whom the faith was and is delivered are in the past. Some are yet to be born!

The trust committed to us by our fathers is a living one. We must hand it on to our children enriched, developed, enlarged. It is to go back into the hand of our Master not just as we received it (like the one-talent man of Jesus’ parable) but with the addition of our own toil and enterprise (like the two-talent and 5-talent servants of Jesus’ parable). [Matthew 25: 14-30]. We have no right to lay narrow plans that might cramp our children. We have no right to be so small or fearful that we will not attempt tasks that are worthy for our sons and daughters to take up! Surely the future must be greater than the past. There is more work --- good work --- to be done than has been done. We walk not in the evening twilight but in the morning twilight --- the dawning! God’s day is just getting started.

The future has more claims on us than the past has. We are tempted to say: “The past at least is secure.” But at least a great deal of it is not secure until we make it so. Our fathers handed to us a great many unfinished plans. The part they played in those plans is not approved until we have done our part. An architect’s plans, carefully drawn with skill and imagination and understanding, take effect only with the building. The Great Architect’s designs for us take effect only with the building of life by ourselves and our children and their children.

There is a fair sense in which the past means security. Each generation is set forward, or greatly handicapped, by the way we take life. Solomon builds a more magnificent temple because his father, David, prepares materials for him. And David owes something to his father, Jesse. But if David owes something to his father Jesse, he owes more to his son, Solomon.

The future depends on us, as the past does not. Our loyalty to the future is the great demand. It is a real question to ask of our plans, our faith, our life: “Do they honor the past?” It is a more penetrating question to ask of our plans and our faith and our life: “Are they what will ensure the future?”

Anna McMillan has given a gift, more than seven years ago, which insured that, in her future, a very significant part of the house of God here would be built. And now her future is becoming our reality. I’m sure that I have known Miss McMillan well enough, and many of you have known her well enough, to be sure that she really gave for the advancement of the Kingdom of God. Her sister also testifies her belief that this was Anna’s purpose. Let it be clear that this is our purpose. We, too, want to be part of the building of that Kingdom, or realm, as the expression of our loyalty to the future. It is part of our being as often as we pray, “Thy Kingdom come.”

A major portion of the ministry of Jesus upon earth was a teaching ministry. Whether he taught in the Synagogue on the Sabbath, or on a Capernaum lake front, or on a hillside or in the home of a friend, or by the roadside, he taught his hearers to expect the Kingdom of God; to be ready for it; to help bring it in.

That Kingdom is no rule by temporal authority of any person group. It is no tyranny of any sort. It is simply and forcefully the rule of righteousness. Righteousness, or righteous character, such as God would recognize in a day of judgment, will introduce the Kingdom of God. It is the basis for the New Age.

For Jesus, rightness grew largely out of his own experience, educated in the religion of his people and their church and their scripture; illumined by the Holy Spirit. It is primarily a matter of the heart. A person makes his primary adjustment to the will of God, as he makes contact with that unseen energy. He is good, or bad, as he yields to or resists that Good will. When a man faces another man, or woman, or child, or an enemy, or any person in need, if he does not yield to the will of Heavenly Father, rising there in speech and deed, he is bad; if he does yield, he is good. A person needs even to store up such goodness.

The righteous heart is the sincere, the honest heart. It is unreserved in its love. The teaching of Jesus is comprehensive in his understanding of love. Love for the Heavenly Father involves trusting in Him. And that trust is one aspect of the faith that is involved in loving Him. This, and much more, is involved in being ready for the Kingdom of God; in believing in it and helping to usher it in wherever mankind will receive it. It is the Christian’s purpose.

It must be taught, as Jesus taught it. It must be learned as his hearers learned it, before it can be lived into reality. And so there is no greater responsibility in Christ’s church than the teaching about God’s Kingdom. It is excellent, indeed, to have a place of quiet for meditation and reflection upon life’s meaning, to be challenged with a sense of sin by coming face to face with God. But it is also tremendously important and urgent that there be the teaching of our Christian religious convictions in the pulpit, through the scriptures, in the classroom and fellowship halls.

Who was Jesus? What did he teach about the Kingdom? What are the historic Jewish-Christian insights that aid us in understanding? How may we apply or understanding to the contemporary life and need of our time?

Our time cries out for the Kingdom of God --- for the righteousness of God. We live in both anxiety and trust. We stand on the verge of a brave, startling era that can yield the end of grinding poverty, or war and all the breeds of hate that make hell on earth for countless millions. Why, by our deeds, should we curse God and die when we can reflect Him and live?

Let the Kingdom of God come, then --- not pushed upon us by any divine compulsion but sought and worked for and prayed for and lived for by our own purpose and dedication. And let it be taught and learned by our children.

For this purpose, let us live in respect for the past, and in loyalty to the future.

Amen.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, October 25, 1964. (“Cornerstone Laying Day.”)