Last week I received an e-mail from John Terry who writes the “Oregon’s Trail” column in The Sunday Oregonian. He wrote, in reply to an earlier message from me, “how fortunate you are to serve in one of our finest remnants of historical church architecture and (that) the congregation has seen fit to maintain its integrity inside and out, unlike the ‘modernization’ visited on (other churches) in the early ‘50s.” It’s the truth, you know. We have here a place of unexcelled beauty, a set-apart place, sacred through its use, sacred in its keeping. It truly is a gift from previous generations who had the vision of such a place of beauty for Christian worship and who made the commitment to make that vision a reality. It wasn’t easy. In 1881 First Presbyterian Church was a young twenty-seven years old with 412 members located in a perfectly adequate sanctuary at the corner of Third and Washington Streets. As the city of Portland grew, the pastor and the church’s leadership felt it important to establish other Presbyterian Churches. In 1882 fifty members were dismissed to establish Calvary Presbyterian Church whose first home was in what is now called “The Old Church.” Other new congregations followed in relatively short order, but the organization of these churches took its toll on First Church. Total membership had dropped to 250 by 1883. These were lean years financially as well. In 1882 the pastor was asked to take a reduction in his salary “in consequence of the church being much reduced” in membership and income. In 1884 the choir, a paid quartet, stated that they were no longer willing to sing for the church unless they were paid. The same year the Trustees borrowed $14,000 to balance the church budget. The note was renewed the next year. Ironically it was at this meeting in 1885 that Trustee Donald Macleay proposed that the Board take action regarding the sale of the church’s home at Third and Washington Streets and the construction of a new place of worship on lots owned at Twelfth and Alder Streets. I’ve wondered sometimes what First Church might be today or even if First Church might exist today had it not been for the faith and vision that made that move a reality. We owe those forbears a tremendous debt of gratitude. Of course, the great company of the saints we remember on this Sunday after All Saints Day reaches far beyond those of our history here. We recall the saints of scripture who heard God’s call and responded with faithful obedience–Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, the prophets, apostles, and martyrs of the ages. And others, many others, from succeeding generations–Augustine, Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, and Knox among them. And we remember too those more immediate to our time and our lives who have walked beside us and have now finished their earthly journey–parents and grandparents, perhaps, brothers and sisters, friends and teachers–models each of them of faith and love. Through them we experienced the love and grace of God in Jesus Christ; from them we learned to pray; through their efforts and example we were nurtured in the meaning of discipleship; and from them we inherited the values we hold dear. Who we are has been shaped by their lives, their labors, their gifts and their love. On this Sunday after All Saints Day we are reminded, I think, of just what a debt of gratitude we owe to those who have gone before us. All Saints, though, is not merely a time to look back, to remember, and to give thanks for what has been. It is also a time to renew our hope and expectation for what is to come and our continued relationship with the saints from ages past. There is, I think, within each of us an innate hope that life does not end with death, that there is something more. Surely a life-time of loving, living, dreaming, working, and sharing, doesn’t simply flicker out like the flame of a candle, leaving not so much as a faint glimmer of its former light in the surrounding darkness. We know that we live on, at least for a while, in the hearts and the memories of those who loved us. We know that there are those who will bear the mark of our touch as long as they live, so that through them, at least, a bit of us lives on. Still, though, there must be something more–more than a memory strong or fleeting, more than an occasional glimpse of who we were in the look or mannerisms or speech of a child or grandchild, more than a headstone in a cemetery somewhere. The question a group of Sadducees put to Jesus in our reading from Luke this morning addresses that hope. A woman had seven husbands, all of whom predeceased her. In the resurrection, they asked, whose wife will she be? In this age, Jesus said, men and women marry and are given in marriage, but in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage. God, he tells us, is the God of the living, and not of the dead, and those who belong to God, though they die, yet shall they live. Frederick Buechner writes: “Unlike the great oriental religions, Christianity takes death very seriously, which is of course why it also takes life very seriously, why there is such urgency about living right and living it now. In the New Testament there is no doctrine of endless rebirths on the great wheel of life, no doctrine of a soul, which by its nature cannot die. On the contrary, by our nature we do die, as Christianity sees it, with our bodies and our souls inextricably one in death as they are in life. But if death is the end in Christianity, it is not the final end; it is the end of an act only, not the end of the drama. Once before out of the abyss of the unborn, the uncreated, the not-yet, you and I, who from eternity had been nothing, became something. Out of nonbeing we emerged into being. And what Jesus promises is resurrection, which means that once again this miracle will happen, and out of death will come another realm of life. Not because by our nature there is a part of us that does not die, but because by God’s nature he will not let even death separate us from him finally” (pp. 77, 78, The Hungering Dark). One of the classic prayers of the church once read at funerals includes this line: “We thank Thee that deep in the human heart is an unquenchable trust that life does not end with death; that the Father, who made us, will care for us beyond the bounds of vision, even as he has cared for us in this earthly world.” The concept of the immortality of the soul is based upon a doctrine of human nature that denies death, while the concept of the resurrection to eternal life is based upon a doctrine of God, which says that even though we die, God gives life to the dead. St. Paul put it this way: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Death does not have the last word over us. God does, and God’s word for us in Jesus Christ is life, full and eternal. Even though it is “beyond the bounds of our vision,” as the prayer puts it, in the heavenly kingdom, still they live, these saints who went before us and who walked beside us, and in a way that I cannot begin to explain to you and in ways that neither your nor I can begin fully to understand, still they are one with us and we with them. We share with them in one holy communion, in one holy church in heaven and on earth. As the hymn reminds us: “Yet she on earth has union with God the Three in One, and mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won: O happy ones and holy! Lord, give us grace that we, like them, the meek and lowly, on high may dwell with Thee.” On this All Saints Sunday we remember those who have gone before us, honor their memory, and celebrate the victory over death, which is theirs in Christ Jesus our Lord. They have shaped us and into our hands they have placed the sacred trust of the church. By the grace of God in Jesus Christ we in our own time will join them “beyond the bounds of vision” in the eternal realm and we too will leave behind a legacy of faith, hope, and love for our successors to build upon. That legacy is shaped and sustained by what we do today–through the gifts of our love, our faith, our loyalty, our energy, our talent, and our financial commitment. Next Sunday you and I will be offered the opportunity to make a financial pledge to support the life and ministry of the church in the coming year. As those who went before us committed themselves to this cause of Christ, may we also commit ourselves in faith and love. J. Dudley Weaver |