Scripture: Isaiah 35

This is a joyful day, in a joyful time. Around us are the evidences of the advent season as we prepare to keep Christmas. But on this particular day we mark a milestone on the journeyings of this congregation. A little over a year ago, on October 25th, 1964, we laid a cornerstone at the foundation of the first unit of our new church home --- the Anna McMillan Hall for youth education and activity. On May 23rd of this year, we held the last service in the stone church and moved into temporary quarters. For more than six months we have carried on our work and worship in the midst of construction. We have had to exercise our patience with the necessary work of building contractors and they have had to be patient with us while they tried to work. Finally, last Sunday, we closed the second service of worship with a move back into a new sanctuary. We are filled with joy to be here, holding our first full services of worship in this place.

We celebrate our joy with observance of the central sacrament of the Christian faith -- the communion or Lord’s Supper. And it is our plan and purpose to set the 1965 date stone at the westerly, “entrance,” corner of this new house of worship.

Much remains to be done yet. Our pipe organ is to be rebuilt and expanded. Some of the trim is to be finished. There will be much adjustment of furnishings. Consoles for organ and carillon are yet to be installed. It will take weeks of work and adjustment before we are ready; but not too far away, perhaps a couple of months if we wait for full completion of the entire project, we should be ready for formal dedication services and open house festivities. It is a joyful prospect!

Just over 101 years ago, on August 25, 1864, there was a cornerstone-laying by the First Congregational Church of Grand Rapids, Wisconsin. The building was only beginning and would not be completed until 1865. But on that summer day, representatives of the Lemonweis Association gathered for the laying of this church congregation’s first cornerstone. It began with worship at 2:30 o’clock in the afternoon. The Reverend Mr. S. Bridgeman preached from Colossians 3: 11 as his text: “Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man; but Christ is all, and in all.” Visitors and congregation partook, together, of the Lord’s Supper. Records of the Lemonweis Association, preserved in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison, continue the account from which I now quote: the “convention then proceeded, at the invitation of the church, to the site of their proposed church edifice to assist them in the ceremony of laying the cornerstone. Rev. A. C. Lathrop made a brief address and offered a short prayer at the laying of the stone, beneath which was placed a casket containing the latest papers, secular and religious, and a list of the members of the church and also of the convention. The interesting ceremony was concluded by singing a hymn and doxology, followed by the apostolic benediction.”

Thus does history repeat itself in our laying of a cornerstone in 1964 and in our placing of the date stone today for the fourth home of this church. Last October 10th was laity Sunday in our church, when we were led in worship and sermon by lay members of this church. Out in the state of Hawaii, the lay preacher on that day at Kahului Union Church was Mr. Robert Harrison Hughes, now Vice President of C. brewer and Company, and recently Chairman of the Board of Regents of the University of Hawaii. For several years I was Bob’s pastor while I served that church, and he was a high school and college student. And so I have had an acute personal interest in reading excerpts from his Laity Sunday sermon of two months ago. Among other observations which he makes is the fact that the Polynesian Hawaiians have a more descriptive way of referring to “church” than have we who use English. The Hawaiians actually have two words for “church.” One is “ekalesia” (or community of people.) And that is truly the church -- the gathered company of believers -- people who bear the name of Christ as a Christian family. The other Hawaiian word for “church” is “halepule” (or house of prayer.) Halepule -- that is what Hawaiians would call this structure where we have gathered for worship --- house of prayer. We who speak English use the word church for both the spiritual community of people and the place where they gather for worship.

Let our joy over this new place of meeting be equaled only by our satisfaction in being a part of a Christian community, one of the families of Christ in his church universal.

We are holding this, our first service in this sanctuary, on Universal Bible Sunday. One church in our community announced a Bible-Reading marathon for today, hoping to achieve the reading of the entire New Testament aloud in this one day. That is at least one way of calling attention to the Scriptures. The readers doubtless know that it takes more than once-over reading to comprehend the treasures therein. Countless passages yield up new understanding to those who will study and ponder them. Pilgrims about to leave the old world for the new land on these shores were assured by their pastor: “God hath yet more light to break forth from His holy word.” So we gladly join other Christians in recognition of the lasting worth of the Bible, and in grateful acknowledgment of the work of the American Bible Society in printing the Scriptures in hundreds of languages and thousands of dialects; in distributing the Bible at low cost to readers and potential readers all over the earth.

It is two gospels of the New Testament that bring us word of the joy coming to the earth with the advent of the Savior. That joy is not alone to a few people who went to a stable in Bethlehem on a certain night or week. It is good news to all mankind for all time. To the gospel writers, it seemed that the coming of Jesus was complete fulfillment of the expectation so often found in the writings of the Old Testament. Poets had sung of the joy; prophets had proclaimed it.

The prophet Isaiah has some stern observations on the life of his time. He is keenly aware of the malice and hatred among peoples. In the 34th chapter of Isaiah, the prophet proclaims his conviction that the Lord is enraged at the nations in their greed and gluttony, their warring and slaughter; and the Lord has a “day of vengeance” that makes a wilderness of a civilization gone corrupt. Then, in the 35th chapter which was read as our Scripture lesson for today, the prophet proclaims the joy that the Lord bestows on all those who know his ways and heed his commands.

“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, he sings. “The desert shall rejoice and blossom.” “They shall rejoice with joy and singing.” “They shall see the majesty of our God.” To all those who are oppressed by the world’s wickedness, Isaiah proclaims that majesty. “Strengthen the weak hands,” he says; “Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong; fear not! Behold your God --- He will come and save you.’”

In the 8th verse of the 35th chapter, Isaiah uses a metaphor that has caught the understanding and imagination of people through the ages. There are many ways in which men have envisaged life: as a battle, a sea voyage, a quest, a race. But there is one figure of speech that has caught the imagination in all ages --- that of the journey and the road.

From the distant day when humanity followed its dim, rough trails through a dangerous world, down to the present age of four lane highways and high speeds, the road has been of increasing importance to mankind. History could be written as the epic of the road. Man extended his domain as highways were pushed on. Over them flowed his traffic. Armies moved on them. They have been his lines of communication and the arteries of his civilization. The road is symbolic of much of life. We are not here to settle down forever. Stagnation means death. We are so made that we must forever be moving to new objectives of knowledge and faith. Always before us is some unexplored vista calling us in the “glory of going on.”

No people have had greater cause than the Jews to make their own that metaphor of the road. They have been wanderers and venturers in the centuries. And at the heart of their dream of a Messiah and his kingdom has been the vision of a homeland and the return of the exile. And so it catches the mind of those who first heard Isaiah when he says, “a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the holy way.”

To those of us who continue to read Isaiah in the centuries since, the conviction dawns that “a highway there is”; God, in Christ, has opened to us a new and living way. So let there be no surprise at the happiness that recurs every time we celebrate Christ’s coming. For “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.” [II Corinthians 5: 17].

Isaiah sings, at the end of the 35th chapter, “the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

If we will receive the message, and make it ours, this is our rightful portion in preparing for Christ’s coming in Advent. It is a joyful time to begin our gatherings in a new sanctuary and to re-commit ourselves to Christian faith and service.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, December 12, 1965.