6/29/69
First Generation Christians
Scripture: John 6: 53-69.
It has been 11 months since I appeared in this pulpit, save for a part in the installation of the pastor in October. I have been glad at seeing the congregation’s response to the preaching and the leadership of the Rev. Mr. Fischer. I’ve been glad to continue a part of this church under his leadership. This week, he is away on important church business, attending sessions of the Seventh General Synod of the United Church of Christ in Boston. At his invitation, I am happy to stand here before you in our house of Sunday worship while he worships in Boston.
The General Synod normally meets every two years for inspiration, enlightenment, renewal, and the conduct of some of our denomination’s business. One item on the agenda of this year’s meeting is the choice of a new President of the United Church of Christ to succeed the Rev. Dr. Ben M. Herbster, now retiring. Three candidates have been nominated for the office, and the choice will, presumably, be made at tomorrow’s meeting of the Synod. Dr. Robert V. Moss of Pennsylvania is the recommendation of the nominating committee. Trained in the background of the Evangelical and Reformed branch of our United Church of Christ, the Rev. Dr. Moss is President of Lancaster Theological Seminary. He is 47 years old; Caucasian; an educator, administrator, scholar and activist.
Another candidate is Dr. Arthur D. Gray of Illinois. Rev. Dr. Gray is pastor of Park Manor UCC of Chicago and a past president of Talledega College. His training and ministry has been in the Congregational wing of our United Church of Christ. He is 62 years of age; part Negro; highly competent; well acquainted with urban problems and strategies. His candidacy is urged by the Negro ministers of the church, and heartily commended to the whole fellowship.
A third candidate is the Rev. Paul E. Gibbons of New York. Mr. Gibbons is now campus minister at Cornell University. He comes of the Congregational background of our United Church. He is Caucasian, young, aggressive, eager to jump into the issues of the day. Himself 36 years of age, he is being nominated and recommended by a group of younger men in the denomination who are eager for the changes they feel are vital for the strength and survival of the church in contemporary society. It will be interesting and instructive to follow news releases for word as to who will lead our United Church of Christ as President in the next ensuing years.
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Now many of you know that, when our church here in Wisconsin Rapids celebrated the 40th anniversary of my ordination in June of 1968, Mrs. Kingdon and I were presented with the means of doing, after my retirement, some of the travel we had long hoped to do. Well, we did some of that traveling last winter, visiting friends and relatives across the western half of the continent, and going to Hawaii for some 3 1/2 months. Hawaii was not new to us, since it had been our home for 12 years through the first two pastorates of my ordained ministry. But going to Kalahikiola Congregational Church, of the United Church of Christ in Kohala, for a 3-month interim pastorate, was new to us. And we have treasured the experience. That church is now numerically small --- something like 100 members on the active roll. It is a united congregation largely made up of the remnants of 4 earlier congregations --- the Polynesian Hawaiian Kalahikiola church, the Caucasian congregation which had often been called the “foreign” church, a Chinese congregation, and a Japanese church. People from those four backgrounds, plus a few Filipino families and an occasional Puerto Rican, make up the church which I served as temporary minister.
Serving in such a situation has put my wife and myself again into touch with some first generation Christian people, either through first-hand acquaintance or through a reading of recent history. Pastor of the Chinese Church of Kohala for many years was the Rev. Yee Cho Ping. Trained in Bible work in China, the young Mr. Yee had come to Hawaii as a young Christian worker. He spent his life as a licensed Christian minister, having married a Hawaii-born Chinese girl, and he made himself a life-long part of the Kohala community, and especially its Chinese sugar plantation workers. It was rugged pioneering! He left a family to carry on in church and community life after his untimely death from a coronary seizure. His daughter is now a trustee of Kalahikiola church, chairman of the music committee, church organist, and chairman of the pulpit committee. Her husband is church treasurer and a deacon of the church. They are salt of the earth, and solid supporters of the Christian church -- and perhaps I should say of the “Christian Establishment.”
Charles Perez is an old Hawaiian man who told us that he had been baptized Catholic. But the preaching of a fiery, saintly, Hawaiian pastor had captured his attention and loyalty. He united with Kalahikiola Church in his young manhood, and has been with it ever since. I was a guest of the Perez family when they gathered from near and far and flew across channels to celebrate the 55th wedding anniversary of the aging parents, Charles and Elizabeth.
The Hawaiian congregation, of which they had been a part, dates far back in the history of the Hawaii mission. The first company of missionaries had come to the Sandwich Islands, or Hawaii, in 1820. They had worked in Lahaina on the island of Maui, and at Kailua, on the island of Hawaii. But it was a matter of some years before reinforcements made it feasible to explore the possibility of a Christian mission station in the Kohala district. It was nearly 20 years before, in the late 1830s, a couple of missionaries went to work in the then-populous Kohala area. For valid reasons, they did not last at that location more than a couple of years.
Then, in 1841, came the Rev. Elias Bond and his young wife. They pitched in with a will, with much energy and great understanding. And they never left. All of their lives were poured into the life of those Polynesian Hawaiian people of Kohala. Long before his death, Elias Bond was known, as he continues to be known in history, as “Father Bond” of Kohala. It was my privilege to receive one of his descendants into church membership in the final week of my 1969 sojourn in that place.
Now a sparsely-populated sugar plantation community, Kohala was inhabited by thousands of Hawaiian people when Father Bond came. Hundreds of men and women performed almost unbelievable feats of strength and persistence in order to build the several edifices for worship supervised by the missionary father. A grass hut which he found on his arrival was soon moved, and a larger building erected. At length a very impressive church of poles and wattle and thatch was erected as a tremendous labor of love. After some four years of worship in comparative comfort, by large congregations of native folk, a severe storm blew down the church and left the people desolate.
But e’er long, they resolved, under Father Bond’s leadership, to build a permanent house of worship with stone walls and timbered roof. Stones had to be gathered by hand. Timbers had to be hewn from the forests and literally dragged by hundreds of men over nearly impossible terrain. Mortar had to be contrived by burning coral, brought up out of the sea by divers; and out of sand carried from distant beaches bit by bit. But in 1855 the present stone church was finished and dedicated; and it has been in use ever since. Measuring some 85 feet by 45 feet, it has been redecorated and kept beautiful. I preached from its high koa pulpit for fourteen weeks this winter.
A special right-hand-man to Father Bond during all those early years was an exceptionally devoted Deacon named Parker. Whether it was aiding in the building of the sanctuary, or listening to the sermon from a special deacon’s bench in the great church, or gathering other Hawaiians into the worship and activity of the church, or expressing his own “menno” or “thought” on a passage of Scripture that had been read, Deacon Parker continued a tower of strength to the Hawaiian Church. He typified the zeal and faithfulness of unnumbered first-generation Hawaiian Christians whose lives can still speak to us out of history.
A direct descendant of Deacon Parker was the wife of John Campbell, who, with her Scotch-Hawaiian husband, attended every church service, rain or shine, while they were in the district. She was deaconess emeritus of the church. Since returning to Wisconsin Rapids, we have heard of the death of Emily Campbell, and so now she is gathered to the realm of her ancestors. The descendants of Parker have demonstrated a loyalty and devotion, according to the light and understanding of their day, that each of us could well emulate as we meet the changing understanding and needs of our day.
Preceding the coming of Christian missionaries to Hawaii is a bit of history that is now being commemorated and is of interest to all of us who have loved, and believed in, the missionary movement. In 1782 there was born, near Punalua, Hawaii, a boy whose name was Opukahaia. When he was 10 years old, his father and mother were killed before his eyes in the fierce neighborhood wars over who was to be chief. The boy was being trained by an uncle to become a priest of the native religious rites. But he was unhappy.
There came a day when he saw an American sailing vessel anchored off Kailua. He watched for his opportunity, plunged into the sea, swam to the ship, and eventually went with the captain back to New York. He was given hospitality in New England homes, was educated in American schools, and eventually, at the age of 26, seemed ready to go back to his native Islands to help teach his people and to bring them the message of Christ. For he had been impressed with the devout homes where he had found people who cared, and had himself become a Christian. But a tragic turn of fate prevented his return. He fell ill of typhus fever, succumbed to the disease and, upon his death, was buried in Cornwall in February of the year 1818.
Moved, first by the hope and promise of this young life, then stunned by the death of Henry Opukahaia, the recently-formed American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions very soon made plans to send missionaries to Hawaii. And only 2 years later, in 1820, the first company of missionaries arrived in Opukahaia’s homeland. A true first generation Christian had started something that continues to this day. Last year there was a significant celebration of the 150th anniversary of Henry Opukahaia’s death with pageantry at the Kailua shore where he had plunged into the sea to swim out to the American ship, with a great service in Kawaiahao Church of Honolulu and a February pilgrimage of Hawaii church representatives to Cornwall to visit the young man’s grave. While in Hawaii this past winter, I saw the world premier of a film on this story, entitled “An Island Boy.” The churches in Hawaii of our United Church of Christ fellowship are planning, for 1970, a great sesquicentennial celebration of the coming to the Islands of the first Christian missionary companies in 1820.
But there are interesting first-hand experiences with contemporary first generation Christians which one may have if he cares to look for them in Hawaii. Part of the meaning of Christian baptism began to “come alive” for me, as never before, when I was first a minister in Hawaii 40 years ago. I was fascinated by the quality, the eagerness, the ability of oriental young people whose parents were Buddhists and Shintoists. Those young people whom I know were active members of our Christian Sunday School, of the youth fellowship, of the church choir, of the church-sponsored scout troops. They were earnest participants in worship in the church. They became warmly Christian in their friendship for me and for one another and for their neighbors. But when asked if they would care to be baptized and confirmed in church membership, many of them would back off and say, “No, Mr. Kingdon. I hope you will consider me Christian in many ways. But to be baptized and go home to my Buddhist parents --- that I can not do.” You see -- in their eyes, and in the eyes of their parents and friends, baptism is the mark of a Christian --- as indeed it truly is! I have understood this more vividly and more meaningfully ever since.
Now, on a visit to the Islands 40 years later, I have had the quiet joy of meeting some of those same young people -- now parents, and even grandparents in their own families -- long since baptized, confirmed in membership, and devotedly active in the Christian church! They are true first generation Christians!
I think of an artist -- a producer and teacher of painting; gentle of manner, keenly perceptive, warm in her appreciation, a leader in her field. She was an active member of the church youth group 40 years ago -- but not baptized -- at least while I was the pastor. She had an older brother who, though cordially friendly, was aloof from the church at that time. 40 years ago I saw him almost daily at the local post office where he was a US postal clerk. While I was in Hawaii this last time, a newspaper article brought word that Robert Matsueda was retiring from service as Postmaster in that community. A little later when paying a brief visit to Kahului, we met him again and I learned that he is, and has been for a long time, an active, working, worshipping member of the church! He, and many others like him, have been instrumental in the growth of that church from something like 65 or 70 members, when I knew it, to 375 or more members now. I feel like singing a doxology of praise that I could have known some of them and that I am permitted still to number them among my Christian friends.
I think of a woman now prominent in one of the fields of medical practice -- competent, confident, firmly friendly. Her hair is graying now, but she was a high school kid when I first knew her. A keen student, she was graduated from an Island high school and from the University of Hawaii, with a consuming desire to be a physician. Her next schooling was at Loyola University School of Medicine in Chicago. I called upon her in 1936 while I was on furlough from my duties in a Hawaii church. As we sat at dinner in her dormitory dining room, she laughingly asked me a question. “Mr. Kingdon,” she said, “just what is our church? I am studying medicine in a Catholic University. I am living in an Episcopal dormitory. I have visited several of the neighborhood churches here in Chicago, but I don’t usually find what I am used to. I did visit a Congregational church not long ago and somehow the manner of worship there seemed like what I remembered at home. Are we Congregational, Mr. Kingdon.”
I was amused, and chagrined, and happy -- amused at the way she put the question; chagrined that I had never made clear to her the name of our particular family in the church universal (ours had simply been known as a Union Church); and happy that, up to that point, it had evidently been enough for her that our church was simply a Christian church. Now she is a source of strength to many people in that part of the world where she practices. Her sister is a particularly active member of church and community life. And the hospitality which they offered us was all the warmer for this first generation Christian experience.
The present clerk, and former moderator of Kalahikiola Congregational Church is a charming, earnest young woman who stands out in Christian faith, loyalty and concern. Her brother’s and sister’s families are still mostly Buddhist, or at least non-Christian, though 2 nieces were in this year’s confirmation class. But Harumi Kagatoni is one of the exceptionally “radiant,” “giving,” “fresh-visioned” first generation Christians whom we have met on our recent stay.
Just one more reference to be shared with you out of our experience. Last April, during the last week of our recent stay in Hawaii, we were guests at dinner in the home of one of Honolulu’s more capable attorneys. We had known him in his later-adolescent youth, had admired his agile and capable mind, had valued his participation in the church youth organization and had treasured his friendship. He was the only one of his family interested in Christianity at that time. His parents, his brothers and sisters, were Buddhists and were active in Buddhist circles. But, perhaps partly because of his initial interest, others of the family turned their attention to the Christian church. One of his brothers became a Christian minister and is still active in a specialized field of the ministry. One of his sisters, as well, attended an eastern university divinity school, was graduated, and now serves with the Society of Friends in the Quaker fellowship abroad.
We take much of our Christian connections as a matter of course. It is taken for granted that we want our babies baptized; that we want our children confirmed; that we want in some recognizable way to be a part of the Christian community. And all of this I believe to be good. But probably it is not enough.
If we have anything to learn from real first generation Christians such as some of those I have mentioned, and such as those first apostles whom Jesus gathered about him, it is that our time calls for tackling the problems and dangers and sacrifices and challenges and opportunities of this day with real imagination and devoted fervor.
For the Christian the frontier is wherever one finds it. And it requires fresh “plunges into the sea” in search of a better way of life not only for the individual swimmer (you and me) but for all the people of our world whose need awaits our help. The church is still Christ’s body and we members of that body!
And the church is still mission reaching out among others -- all sorts of others, near and far -- not just to secure a lot of “converts” but to spread genuine Christian concern. The church still calls us to be Christian, now. We are called, personally, to follow in the spirit of our Christ. But religion is more than personal in the self-centered sense. It is social in the concern we have for one another, and for others.
Our time calls for Christian genuineness in the relation between youth and mature age, between Oriental and Occidental, between “my nation” and “their nation”, between black and white, among all sorts of people.
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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, June 29, 1969.