Annual Meeting Sunday

Seeing then that we have been entrusted with this commission, which we owe entirely to God’s mercy, we never lose heart.      1 Corinthians 4:1

We have all just seen our way through an historic series of snow storms.
Records that will most likely stand the test of time in the history books.
We will remember our intrepid hikes out in the snow. Our feats of shoveling. Setting up shop at home for a week or so.
It’s hard to imagine….but not too long in the future, the snow will have melted and we will be on to hot weather and heat advisories.
A new weather event will make news.
Our historic snowstorm will be just that---a piece of history.

And who cares about history?

That’s the question that Congregational historian Margaret Bendroth asked in her article “The Past isn’t the Past” in the last issue of the magazine Christian Century.
And in her role as a denominational church historian, she notes the following:

The more I have read congregational histories, the more I notice something that is hard to talk about: contemporary congregations seemed to be living out the sins of their ancestors. In all kinds of odd and sometimes humorous ways, congregations are all haunted by the past.” (Christian Century, February 9, 2010, p. 30)

She began to think about this as she visited a mid-sized congregation on Cape Cod. She recounts the visit:

The pastor had done a wonderful job pulling together a detailed narrative of the past 300 years, and I read almost the whole thing in one sitting. As I laid the book down, however, I began to feel obligated to pass on an urgent word of advice to this pastor and to any who followed him: DON”T GO NEAR THE WATER. His predecessors had drowned with depressing regularity, not just in the ocean as one might expect on Cape Cod, but in lakes and rivers, sometimes falling off boats and sometimes just disappearing in the midst of a swim. If I were going to serve a pastorate there, I’d come with a life preserver.

It is interesting that mainline denominations don’t take congregational history seriously.
Why might that be?
Maybe it’s passed down from clergy to the congregation.

First off, in the 19^th century, when formal seminary education was first offered, students did not take church history until their senior year. 
That means biblical studies, theology, ethics---all these come before the history of the church one is dedicating one’s life to.
As our Education for Ministry students know, church history is a depressing diet of conflict and changing truths over the centuries. A

s Bendroth says, church history “challenges the idea that there is only one truth and only one way of seeing things, and it challenges the assumption that the church is always a fountain of virtue, always stretching after the example of Christ.” (p. 32)

OR maybe it’s our culture’s need to move on to the next new thing. 
The past is over and done with. Let bygones be bygones. Make a fresh start.
And even though it’s said that those who choose to ignore history, repeat it…. 
So many of us do avoid history—and especially church history—and even more especially denominational history.

Bendroth points out that most denominations end up with a baseball-trading-card approach to history—they highlight singular achievements but don’t explore larger complexities.
Churches like to remember the Mountain Top experiences—like the stories we hear about Moses and Jesus in our readings today—the story we capture on our triptych in the very front of the church. 
Our first and progressive stands on social issues.
The day the organ was finished.
Our elevator complete.
The founding of the Samartian Community. The Ladies’ Auxiliary. Listening Hearts Ministry. 
The Memorial Musical. 
All good things.

Or we concentrate on old grievances.
The time that we argued about a renovation project.
The time folks left because of integration, or confirmation, or women priests, or a new prayer book or same sex blessings or gay bishops.
You name it, people leave church over it.
Bendroth suspects that this “aversion” to history in churches is “one reason why the historical memory of mainline denominations seems to stop somewhere after the Civil War and pick up again in the 1960s. The long intervening decades, making mainline Protestantism’s glory days and its deepest crises, are virtually unknown territory.”

 So, what we miss is all those days of ministry down from the mountaintop—days of annual budgets and new programs, festivals and dinners, Sunday school and community outreach.
All those days captured in “old record books, the painstaking labor of years—sometimes centuries—stuffed into boxes and left in unheated closets or packed away like relics, left in no one’s particular care.” (p. 30)

Well, this past year, those old record boxes capturing the labor of our 150 years at Memorial have been hauled out by our historians Louise Miller, Erin Kelly and Mary Goodwin. Long forgotten minutes of Vestry meetings and other yellowed records have been unearth and read. 
Weekday mornings when I would pass by the nursery, I would sometimes hear sudden bursts of laughter. I glanced in. There were Louise and Erin finding a gem of a story in the old papers.
In our 150^th year, Memorial has begun to take its history seriously and what gems we have found.
Gems that are beginning to be captured across the decades in our monthly history facts—today found in your Annual Meeting report and on the wallboard created by Monty Howard in the Parish Hall.

 Church historian and observer Diana Butler Bass wonders if these historical tidbits actually allow churches to “re-tradition”---to build new practices and new ways of connecting to history as a source of congregational vitality. 

I think we might have one of those moments from our history to help us today.
It’s not a mountain top experience—but an experience of everyday parish life back in the early years.
It is an example of not losing heart.

As the church was being built during the Civil War and readied for occupancy, the Memorial Vestry struggled with how to pay for building—a part of which was financed by a loan from the good people at our Mother Church Emmanuel Church down the road in Mount Vernon.
From its very beginnings, Memorial wished to be a church where rich and poor could worship alike.
In its history, it is recorded that “the original design of its projectors was to establish a FREE CHURCH…embracing many worthy poor who were much attached to the Church. It was an object of special interest to retain them in communion and to make them feel that their accustomed privilege of free worship was not to be abridged.”

In a precursors to the pledge system—by which we all support the financial obligation of the church with a yearly pledge—Episcopal parishes historically rented pews. Each family would rent a pew—that was their pew and seat for worship for the next year. You know that Episcopalians love having their pew. Back when, you actually did have your own pew.

The Vestry of Memorial Church---under early financial strain—wanted to forego the renting of pews and have a totally Free church—much like the Pratt Free Library.   However, the Vestry discovered that this was not going to work…there had to be rentals of pews to make the church financially solvent. However, true to Memorial’s spirit, the Vestry made sure that all could worship regardless of financial means.

Our historical notes from the period say this: “The Vestry while adopting the plan of supporting the Church from the rental of pews,. Endeavoured to retain the chief advantages of the free system. Among its earliest proceedings after its complete organization, was the declaration that no one should be debarred that sanctuary on account of their circumstances. In arranging the terms of renting, the rates were so graduated that a number of the pews were assessed at a low price and the treasurer was authorized to make further reductions to suit particular eases, also to assign sittings to families or individuals at a nominal rate or free. Several members of the congregation provided for special eases by renting pews for their use. The system has been attended with the happiest results. It is literally a “House of the Lord” where the rich and poor meet together.” 

Charles Worthington—who was on Memorial’s first Vestry and who wrote a history of the church’s first years—also included some extra pages, not intended to be included in his history, in the stack of early records. These special pages were “clearly intended to be seen by future generations.”

In these pages is an incidents that has application today.

This incident was included to make “manifest Providential interposition.”

Here is the story:

“Soon after the death of (their first Rector) Mr. Howard, Charles Worthington (then treasurer) received a notice of a tax bill of about $150 to be paid within a limited time or the church property would be sold. As there were no funds in the treasury and none available from any source of which I was aware, and as my own means had been sucked off by means of the WAR, I was powerless to avert the sacrifice; but God’s hand was not shortened, neither was his ear heavy. The work had been committed to Him and He sustained it.” 

And here’s how it happened---probably on a Monday morning when Charles Worthington was counting the Sunday morning collection.

“In the midst of my anxiety, a friend of the Church, unexpectedly and unsolicited, made a contribution of $20 and there was to be found a check of $50, payable to the order of Mr. Howard which had been received near his last days and was laid aside unnoticed.. this was supposed to be sent to him for the use of the Church. I applied to the drawer of the church and found that such was his design and he made it available. These two sums allowed me to make a payment on account of the tax bill and obtain a postponement of the balance on the condition of giving my note therefor.”

 But what of the balance? Listen up Finance Committee and Vestry!

"Not knowing how the note was to be paid, I reluctantly gave it as an alternative for putting off the evil day. I can now exclaim “Oh, ye of little faith!” As the time for the maturity for the note drew nigh, my anxiety was renewed for I could see no prospect of meeting it. Just then the lawyer who had undertaken the settlement of Mr. Howard’s estate, found among his papers a memorandum “Due the Memorial Church--$100) Without any explanation Mrs. Howard sent it to me to learn if I was aware of his having any funds belonging to the Church. As he had been making collections and expenditures which had not been recorded, I could not say. As there were doubts, she preferred having it paid eveer, which enabled me to meet the maturing note and for a while postpone further trouble. The amount received from three sources was $170. the paving tax and costs amounted to 169.70.”

 “My eyes were then opened to see the Hand of the Lord clearly manifested.”

Charles Worthington goes on to recount other liens for which the church had no money in those early years.

God bless Charles Worthington! God bless Memorial’s long line of treasurers, Vestries and Finance Committees! God bless countless other folks whose names have been lost to history.

Folks came forth to save the church again and again—from a friend of the Church that bequeathed a large amount in the 1860s to two young men “Christians friends whom Charles Worthington knew from the Young Men ‘s Christian Association” who came forward to help in a time of need.

At the end of his notes, Charles Worthington added this ending: “In reviewing the past I cannot but now see God’s interference in a matter, which at the time seemed an ordinary event…       Others can trace His guardian ear in many ways, but the incidents recited are not likely to be remembered, and perhaps not appreciated, but t me they now come up with too much force to be forgotten, and I can but wish others to participate in the feeling of gratitude the recollection of them affords me, and for this reason record them.” Signed Charles Worthington.

In the long march of ordinary ministry, God has provided again and again to Memorial Church. It’s as if NO MATTER WHAT, God wants these church to remain in this place---a place FREE for all—whose doors open to all---and have been throughout our 150 years.

No matter if heat pipes burst or the roof leaks or a loan balloon is looming, Memorial Church has put her trust in God.
It’s easy to doubt on the ordinary days when there doesn’t seem to be enough.
At this Annual Meeting in our 150^th year, let’s give a shout out and prayer of thanks to Charles Worthington.

We are grateful.
We WILL remember that God makes “manifest Providential interposition.”
That when it comes to Memorial Church “God’s Hand is not shortened nor his ear heavy.”
Help us to open our eyes and trust in the hand of the Lord.
If we do, we can never lose heart. 

AMEN.

The Rev. Martha Macgill
Rector, Memorial Episcopal Church