A Place for Rest and Renewal — Dr. Weaver

I really appreciate what Spencer had to say about the stories that could be told about experiences had at Menucha by men and women and children, families and friends, church groups and others for more than one-half a century. Those stories, as he so well reminded us, are woven together into a single narrative that tells the larger story of God’s love and grace in Jesus Christ at work in and through that set-apart place. And, as Mac so rightly put it, as that story has unfolded there have been multitudinous changes in the world, within this congregation, and in the life and ministry of First Church through Menucha. “We do not yet know what we will become,” the letter of John reminds us. We are always in process, growing, changing, but even as the story of your life and mine, our shared life as the church, and our shared ministry continues to unfold, there are nonetheless some things that simply don’t change. In any time, in any location, you will find them there. Among them is the need of human beings for physical rest and spiritual renewal.

The disciples of Jesus had just returned from their first-ever missionary journeys without Jesus. They were, no doubt, bubbling over with stories of miracles wrought, lives changed, and the remarkable power of God in the work accomplished through them. And they must have been weary too. You know how it is. The adrenalin rush keeps you going, but when you stop....  For the disciples and for Jesus, though, there was no time to stop, no time to talk or to rest. They were so busy, with so many people, that there was hardly time to eat, and so Jesus invited: “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest for awhile.” That is the heart of the ministry of Menucha—a place set apart from the duties and clamor of daily life that provides the opportunity for rest and spiritual renewal.

Paul Wright shared the vision that found its fruition in Menucha in a sermon he preached from this pulpit in 1950. Some of you may even remember it. He spoke of four areas of ministry that were current priorities for the church. Among them was “growing a sense of togetherness and fellowship,” and along with it “changing lives under the touch of God’s Spirit, by giving an opportunity for God to work through the sort of conditions which best foster that growth. The thing which Jesus did when he took his disciples apart on occasion; took them away temporarily from their pressing labors, into a secluded spot” provided just such an opportunity. Dr. Wright continued: “it was in these retreats that (Jesus) shared with them the deepest things in His own heart and (it was in these retreats that) they were prepared to gain His vision and carry on His mission” Menucha was envisioned as just that sort of place, where men and women and children and youth might in fellowship, worship, study, and prayer find rest and renewal, come to a deeper understanding of their faith, and be themselves changed and strengthened for the life of Christian discipleship. There in the quiet beyond the noise of daily life; there in the peace beyond the chaos of daily living; there in the hills and valleys, among the trees and flowers, with the sounds of birds and rippling water, in the gathering of friends and the laughter of children, you can hear, if you listen for it, the very voice of God, and, you can sense, if you pause long enough, the very presence of God.  And you will be renewed.

Of course, the vision has broadened in the intervening years as Menucha has opened her doors and offered the gift of hospitality not only to people of Christian faith but people of other faiths and no faith at all. Still, though, the mission is the same, for there men and women who have no faith in God and perhaps no desire for God in their lives experience in the welcome they receive and the quiet beauty of a set apart place the love of God that waits to embrace them. There people’s lives are changed in ways beyond their understanding. There new beginnings are made; friendships forged; wounds healed; hope restored.

Menucha is an integral part of the mission of First Church; as much a part of our mission as the work we do together with the poor and homeless at Julia West House or the work we support through our gifts and volunteer time at Friendly House, or the mission dollars we send to the larger church or the groups we sponsor for week-long mission trips across the world. It is a different sort of mission, to be sure, but mission nonetheless. I want you to be proud of that. Very few individual congregations have such resources for mission. And I want you as Mac suggested to embrace the possibilities for change that stand before us in our shared ministry there as we seek to expand our ministry both to our congregation and the larger community And I want you, as Spencer suggested, to write your story into the narrative that is the story of Menucha.

Forty-seven years from now, which is well past my time and the time of many of you, I pray that our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will gather at Menucha for its centennial and listen to each other’s stories of Menucha and in the silence listen to the stories from that great cloud of witnesses who have gone before them, and even the voice of God.

J. Dudley Weaver
First Presbyterian Church
Portland, Oregon