Sermon - June 22, 2008

Sermon Preached By Rev. C. Alan Hogle, the First Pastor of St. Matthew’s United Methodist Church - June 22, 2008

Move off the page, Lord.
Move off the page to the world.
Move off the page to the troubles.
Move off the page to cancer treatment.
Move off the page to children who are abused.
Move off the page to people who bomb each other.
Move off the page to St. Matthew’s.
Move off the page to our hearts that we may know your will and do it.
In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.[i]

In the 1960s the church starters were John Wesley Lord, Bishop of the Baltimore Annual Conference; Marian Michael, the District Superintendent of the Washington East District, the recruiter; A. Hensel Fink, an architect for The Methodist Bureau of Architecture; and Cranston Riggin, the Executive Director of the Conference Board of Missions and The Methodist Union.

The Levitt Corporation, Bowie’s builders, had given 3 acres of land to each of the Presbyterians, the Lutherans and the Methodists and 10 acres to the Roman Catholic Church. Because Levitt stipulated in the gift of land that all denominations had to begin building within one year, Cranston Riggin chose our architect and our contractors. The congregation was never engaged in a theological discussion over the shape and purpose of the building. It is a multipurpose building; what more do you want? said Hensel Fink. Build the church, said Bishop Lord.

I was recruited in 1962 by Marian Michael to build the new church in Belair at Bowie. I was graduated from the Hartford Theological Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut in June of 1963 and so pastor-without-a-congregation, wife, Mark and Heather, the first two of my four children, moved into the heart of the United States Government and the military. What were going on, of course, was Civil Rights and the Viet Nam War. By the way, and to make it clear, my wife, Teddy, was my Co-Pastor.

Cranston Riggin bought us a parsonage at 12405 Stonehaven Lane in Somerset in June of 1963. He also bought us a house that we called Wesley Hall--our first office and Church School building. Maggie LeVee was my first church secretary. The subdivisions were built in this order: Somerset, Buckingham, Kenilworth, Foxhill, Tulip Grove, Longridge, Meadowbrook, Heather Hill, Chapel Forge, Whitehall. We had no lawns, no trees and in many neighborhoods no streets.

In the four years that I was pastor, I hit every house on every street in every subdivision. Pastors on foot built churches in those days.

We began holding services in our home on July 21, 1963, with 87 people attending two services. Teddy, Mark, Heather and I moved the living room furniture out every Saturday night and put up folding chairs. We rented a Hammond Organ and Tavia Wyatt and Margaret Sigafoose were our first organists. Hal Sweet was my only choir director.

We exploded at the seams in no time at all and negotiated with Bowie to conduct services at the Belair Junior High School. Within 6 months we had 103 charter members and on February 2, 1964 we were constituted as St. Matthew’s Methodist Church.

We celebrated worship in the round, with the communion table between congregation and pastor. On the table were a small lectern for notes and sermon manuscripts, the communion cup and the baptismal bowl. This meant that Word and Sacrament were the center of our attention. My father, Charles Newman Hogle, and I, baptized Robin, my third child, born in Prince George’s County.

I must admit to some deception on the naming of the Church. The Bishop insisted that the congregation name the church. But he also insisted that the congregation name it St. Matthew’s. We held an open meeting in our living room on June 25 [Three days from today will be our 45^th anniversary of that meeting]. I explained that Methodists were tired of town-named churches, like Belair Methodist Church or Bowie Methodist Church, that Methodists were tired of numbered churches, like 1^st Methodist church of Some Place, that Methodists were interested in Biblically named churches like Trinity or Good Shepherd or one of the Gospel Writers. Then I said, “Everybody already has dozens of St. Mark’s and St. Luke’s and St. John’s.” Roger Shockor raised his hand and said, “I move that we call it St. Matthew’s.” And it was done, unanimously.

We knew next to nothing about the Bible or worship or church history or church government. Many could not name the four Gospels. We never thought about what happened between Jesus’ resurrection and Belair at Bowie in 1963. Having grown up in the church, we didn’t know what church meant. We didn’t know what we believed. Ministry and mission were words that we never used. Linking Jesus to issues of racism was hard. Thinking peace in a community half of which was uniform was very hard. We were not without a great deal of controversy.

The Levitt Corporation was racially closed to making first housing sales to African Americans. SNCC [Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee] and CORE [Congress of Racial Equality] were the Civil Rights Groups of the 1960s. And they marched on Levitt’s sales offices. The first weekend I was in Bowie I marched on Levitt with Roman Catholics, the Lutherans and the Presbyterians, there being no Methodist Church then, and others persuaded of civil rights.

N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham in the Church of England, has written that the Kingdom Jesus brought, which is not from this world is

about to leave it again; he has thus defeated the forces of tyranny and of chaos.[ii]

God said to Abram, Leave your native land where you are most comfortable, leave your relatives, leave your father’s house and go to a place that I will show you. Abram said to God, What is the new place like? And God said, I haven’t the faintest idea; I’ve only just created Somerset, Buckingham and Kenilworth. But trust me. And Abram went.

Jesus was walking along in town and came upon Matthew, the tax collector. And Jesus said, “Follow me.” And Matthew said, “Where are we going?” And Jesus said, “Somerset, Buckingham and Kenilworth and probably Jerusalem. Trust me.” And Matthew followed.

Abram and Matthew are our faith ancestors. God said, “Go,” and Jesus said, “Follow.” And we went and followed. There we were, in a faith community never seen before, with no plan, no map, and no compass. Just Go, and Follow.

Some of us came and followed with expectations that the new church would be just like church back home. Of course, back home was different for each of us. Some of us came with no expectations at all, willing to take whatever there was.

My expectation was that we would read the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other hand, that we would recognize that God had arrived on the public stage and that we would commit to the Church as God for us, which is why we are here this morning, and God for the world, which is why we do what we do when we leave here.

I never opted for a church that was to prepare us for eternity; I believed the church was to prepare us for today.

The Lord’s Table is the place where the preparation for today begins, you and me and our neighbors side by side, taking, breaking, blessing and giving whatever the broken, wounded and corrupt world needs to become whole. It’s called the Kingdom of God.

God embraces male and female, Jew and Greek, friend and enemy, gay and straight and the world is made whole.

God insists that we make our swords into ploughshares and the world is made whole.

God gives sight to the blind, frees the oppressed, proclaims that the captives are to be freed and the world is made whole.

I didn’t say this 45 years ago. I didn’t know this 45 years ago. But we walked together in places we never even knew existed. We walked in the Kingdom because we began to understand who Jesus was and what Jesus expected of us.

We started passing the peace, a very old tradition in the church but new to 20^th century Protestantism. Of all the things I asked St. Matthew’s to do, passing the peace was the one they hated the most. They called it Alan’s Musical Chairs.

Dee Marsico played the guitar and sang “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” and “The Sound of Silence.” Most of us had never heard guitars played in Sunday worship.

Our Confirmation Class was an ecumenical effort with the local Presbyterian and Episcopal churches. We had an Ecumenical Jazz Mass written by a Roman Catholic priest. We taught the joined congregations how to chant. We celebrated joint communion.

Our early service involved a dialogue sermon in which, after I explored the Sunday text, the congregation discussed and argued with me and with each other. We discussed draft card burning, the self-immolation of Buddhist priests and civil rights. There was an intense degree of anxiety and conflict. But we discovered that there was many ways to interpret Scripture and still remain Christian. And we discovered that Christians could disagree and remain in community with each other. I was never aware of any members who left their membership because we tried worship behavior that none of us had ever seen before or because we met controversy up front.

We reached out. We pulled back in anger. We hugged. We turned our backs on each other. God said to Abram, I want you to go from the expected into the unexpected. Jesus said to Matthew, Follow me and let us journey from the expected and the ordinary to the unexpected and the extra-ordinary.

Churches are not new because they are in a new location or in a new building or because it’s the first time these folks have gotten together. Churches are new when they realize that the Gospel is not a private affair but stands on the public stage with God.

I didn’t know whether I was bringing a new church to life or killing it in the womb. The fact that you are here this morning means I didn’t kill it. And I suspect that the pastors who succeeded me have worked with you to keep it alive.

Let me quote from our first budget brochure of 1964, a budget, by the way of $27,000.

To move out into the uncharted deeps of a new Church in a new community in what is a really new world is a dangerous undertaking. We don’t really know yet what our specific ministry is to be. We are scarcely even a church yet, since we have only begun to look beyond our surface relationships to the meaning of God’s promises in Christ to be with us in the community of faith and to make all things new. Dangerous as it is, yet is it an unusual and a great challenge. For there is now nothing we need to do because we have always done it. We are free to adopt the most suitable patterns for our human community, hoping that they will be the most suitable patterns for our Christian ministry as we make the world our Parish.[iii]

Encourage your pastor to take you from the comfortable to the uncomfortable, from the expected to the unexpected. We are very afraid that God seriously means to make all things new. And “all things” means us -- our values, our society, and our world. We don’t want all things made new.

Go where God sends you even if you don’t know where it is or what it is like. God is already there ahead of you. It may look like the edge of a cliff but God is there to receive you.

Jesus is on the public stage in the center of Caesar’s Kingdom, blowing it apart and establishing the Kingdom of God. We need to be there too.

[i] Free adaptation of a prayer written by Dr. Walter Brueggemann and printed in his book, Awed in Heaven, Rooted in Earth, Augsburg Fortress Press, 2003.

[ii] N.T. Wright, “The Public Meaning of the Gospels: Kingdom Come”, The Christian Century, June 17, 2008.

[iii] St. Matthew’s Methodist Church, First Budget Document, June, 1964.

Loving and always faithful God, our experiences often teach us that life happens while we are busy making other plans. We have learned that life-reversals can often become stepping-stones. We have learned that a significant loss has often led us through the doorway to a vital discovery. Thank you for the eyes of spirit that allow us to perceive guidance through all our experiences. Our trust in you prevents us from feeling that we are victims, that we have been betrayed or abandoned. You have called us to embark on a journey leading us through pain and joy to a promised land much as you did for Abraham. We thank you for giving us challenges that sharpen our skills of patience, courage, and perseverance. Thank you, that when we lift our eyes, we are always greeted with horizons toward which to strive. Amen.

Eternal God, we are so grateful for our journey thus far that has brought us to this day. Every adventure, great or small always begins with the first steps, the first risks, the first experience of uncertainty and that first leap of faith when we know there are no safety nets. Thank you for equipping us with curiosity, with the desire to grow beyond where we are, with imagination that helps us to dream of what is yet to be and with the ability to perceive life through a spirit that trusts you for the outcome of all that we experience.

This morning, we have the good fortune of being able to pause for a brief glance in our congregation’s rear view mirror. How grateful we are for the seeds of our destiny that you planted through your servant, Alan Hogle and his wife Teddy. It is a challenge for us to think about the distance our church family has come since the earliest of times. Many people have come into our midst and have gone, richer because they shared their lives with us before beginning the next chapters in the saga of their journeys.

Bless us this morning with a rich appreciation for what happened years ago when two or three were gathered in your name. Continue to bless us, O God, with vision, with trust and with faithfulness that allows us to make you visible in all that we do. We pray these thoughts through the loving spirit of Jesus, the Christ, who taught his disciples to say when they prayed . . . .