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1 Kings
6:11-20
February 7, 2010 OUR
MEETINGHOUSE AND THE STORIES OF JESUS: This building, I dare say, is the pride and joy of this community. Musical Masterworks, as is evident by the large piano this morning, uses this building and they do so with great appreciation for you the members of this church for making it available. The Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts has used our building for a Graduation baccalaureate as well as other ceremonies, and it has been used frequently by the Florence Griswold Museum for any number of lectures and programs. It’s always been our tradition as a church to offer a ministry of hospitality to the other organizations of our community. I remember a number of years ago being called by Mrs. Bunny Brevalier to see if the Colonial Dames might be able to use our building. I knew Mrs. Brevalier and so I immediately said, “Sure, that would be fine.” But I confess I didn’t hear her correctly. What I thought she said was “Colonial Games” and so I asked her what sort of games they would play. I mean I envisioned bowling down the center aisle – it sounded like fun!” For many years after that Mrs. Brevillier and I laughed about how we should organize some “colonial games” for our Meetinghouse. I know I speak for all us in saying that we are proud to make this magnificent building and our Parish House available to so many of the organizations in our community. It’s a part of the ministry of our church. As we have said, this Meetinghouse was rebuilt 100 years ago, and so each week, in this series of sermons, I am trying to make a connection between some aspect of this building and the life and teachings of Jesus. For long sermons and for long musical concerts and for long lectures, these pews may not be as comfortable as what theater seating is, and if not, I would suggest you take it up with the building committee of 1907 to 1910, chaired by Mr. George DeWolf. And if you can’t reach him, I suggest you try the other members of his committee – Mr. W.H. Ludington, Mr. Ernest Chadwick or you can always try to reach the minister – the recipient of all complaints -- The Rev. Edward M. Chapman who served as the secretary of the Building Committee. But if you complain, allow me to say in their defense, having looked extensively through the minutes of their many meetings, they really agonized over the shape and the design of these pews. In reading through all their minutes and all their correspondence, I almost felt sorry for the manufacturer of these pews. There were many other details to this building, but it seems that these pews occupied much of their time – the color of the mahogany, the curve of the arm but especially, especially the angle and the comfort of the pew. Back and forth they went with Mr. Theodore Kundtz, the President of the manufacturer of these pews, situated in Cleveland, Ohio. The building committee didn’t like this, and they weren’t sure of that, and so Mr. Kundtz sent them a sample pew, and I love to picture the members of the building committee trying out that sample pew in the same way that we might try out a mattress in a department store. I can imagine one of them saying to the minister, “with all due respect, your sermons are rather long, and if we want people here on a Sunday morning, either your sermons need to be shorter or we need to make sure that the angle is just right.” “And besides, take a look at the throne you get up in the pulpit and compare that with what we have!” In my estimation, Mr. Theodore Kundtz in Cleveland, Ohio was exceedingly patient with the building committee, and whether or not they made the right decision, well, that’s for you to decide. Sit back and try, just try to relax. I will say, for what it’s worth, that one of the design flaws in this building, from my perspective, is the step up that one has to take in order to get into these pews. I’ve never known what the purpose of this is, and perhaps one of the architects of our congregation can enlighten me. But, from my perspective, they are a safety hazard, and especially for weddings. Many fathers, after having given away their daughters, have been so flustered, so overwhelmed by the emotions of the moment, they have tripped on that step, and they have found themselves to be airborne. And so now, that’s a warning that I have to give at every wedding rehearsal! Be that as it may, it’s not so much the practicalities and the comfort of the church pew that I want to focus on today, but rather the aesthetics of it, and especially the wood trim on the arm of the pew and how that wood resonates with the wood of the staircase leading up to this pulpit and this round table over here which was called an “alms table” and this table over here, which was a gift to the church from the Sunday School children in 1910. But it’s especially the wood of our communion table that I would have us ponder today. I don’t know about you but I love the feel of a finely crafted piece of furniture, and I’m fairly confident that being the son of a carpenter as he was that Jesus also would have admired the woodwork in this building, but my question is this, what does our very familiar passage from the Gospel of John have to do with all of this wood, beautiful though it may be? For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son so that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.. For God sent the son into the world. Sometimes, we forget that God’s love is for the whole world and not just our own little corner of it, and if we want to be faithful, then the church needs to be a reminder of that love in all that it does, and so we also need to love the world as much as we can and to allow that love to take us far beyond the boundaries of our home here in Old Lyme. For me there is a direct correlation between saying, “For God sent his Son into the world” and saying, “For God sent his church into the world.” In other words we are at odds with God when we stay within the boundaries of our own community or tribe or nation or comfort zone. God sent his son into the world, and so we the church use this building as a launching pad to send us out into the world as well. I think we all should feel enormously proud, for example, of the 28 members of our church who will represent us in taking God’s love down to El Salvador later this week to build houses with the poor. Likewise, I think we can be justifiably proud that we were the very first church in this country to sign on with the Fuller Center for Housing to sponsor a house in Haiti, and indeed, thanks to your generosity, we now have enough to build 4 of those houses! That’s how God demonstrates his “love” for the world, and I thank you for being an ambassador of that Love. I am also very proud that during this week I received phone calls from you the members of this church who have called attention to the on-going disaster out on the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation where the temperature dropped down to 20 below zero and ice storms brought down their electric poles such that for 2 weeks now the Green Grass community and many of the other communities on that reservation have been without water or electricity. I am very proud of the spirit of those members of our community who have said, “How can we be of help?” Given all the other problems in the world right now, it would be so easy to flag in zeal and to ignore our Native American friends, but I am proud of the fact that even now the generosity of this church is at work in bringing warmth and not only physical warmth but also spiritual warmth to those who shiver in the dark. For God so loved the world… That’s in the past tense but in the loving spirit that you exemplify, we can also say, “For God so loves the world…” and so God is forever sending his sons and his daughters out into the world to bring comfort and warmth and compassion and housing and medical supplies to those in need. But El Salvador, Haiti, Cheyenne River… what does this have to do with the wood of our communion table and the arm rest of your pews? I know I’m rather peculiar, but I’m fascinated by the origin of things. I can be sitting at dinner and I can pick up a piece of lettuce and say, “I wonder where this lettuce comes from. I wonder how far it traveled to get to our home. I wonder about the farm or the garden in which it grew, and so it is with the piece of furniture that we call our “communion table.” I look at it and I say to myself, “I wonder what type of wood this is. I wonder where it came from. I wonder about the journey that it made to become the table that it is today. I wonder about the tree from which it was cut, and I wonder where that tree was; I like to picture it standing there, and I wonder about the person who cut it down and I wonder whether he did so lovingly or not so lovingly. Knowing what we do now about deforestation I worry about how that tree was harvested, but now, perhaps the best way to honor that tree, the tree from which our communion table was crafted, is to rededicate ourselves to loving the world that “God so much loved”. In my research for this sermon, I discovered that the wood is mahogany – which I already knew – but indeed African mahogany. I love how in one of his letters to the building committee, Theodore Kundtz out in Cleveland, Ohio said “(this) is the very finest of African Mahogany, which I import in the log and saw myself.” Touch the wood in your pew, gaze upon the beautiful wood in our communion table and know that you are touching, seeing, beholding something that quite literally had its roots in Africa! Am I the only one to think that that’s rather amazing? A tree somewhere over in Africa – maybe the Congo – was cut down and dragged through the forest and was loaded onto a boat and found its way all the way to Cleveland, Ohio where Mr. Theodore Kundtz and his workers crafted the arms of your pew and our communion table, such that now a little bit of Africa graces the Meetinghouse of our church! I was brought up to believe that it’s never too late to say, “thank you.” And so this morning, I would like to thank the tree from which our beautiful furniture was crafted. I would like to thank the members of our Building Committee for all the care and attention to detail they exemplified. I would like to thank Mr. Theodore Kundtz for being the good business man that he was and for being a lover of quality, for taking such pride in his “African Mahogany.” I would like to thank the continent of Africa for helping to make this Meetinghouse the pride and joy that it is. On behalf of all the organizations that have used this building, on behalf of all the members and friends who have worshipped in this sacred place, on behalf of all those who have been worried and anxious, all those who have rubbed their hands over the mahogany arms of their pews and found there some measure of comfort, all those fathers of the bride who have caught themselves from falling by holding on to that mahogany, all those tired and weary and beleaguered who have used that mahogany arm to raise themselves up – literally and figuratively -- on behalf of all those who have received communion from this table, all those who have found in the Sacrament of Holy Communion a way to reconnect themselves with God’s Love, for all those who have felt that they were beyond the pale or beyond redemption but have been made to feel that they were welcome at this Mahogany Table, for all these reasons and so many others, I would like to say, “thank you” to the great continent of Africa for bringing a little bit of God’s Love, God’s Mahogany Love into our lives. I was also brought up to believe that the best way to say “thank you” is to show our gratitude in our own love, and so as I rub my hands over this African mahogany, I am reminded that we need to take our love, the love our church out into the world, and so to those who are going down to El Salvador, thank you for honoring that tree, thank you for honoring that Mahogany tree that came to us 100 years ago. To those of you who are actively involved in our church’s partnership with the good people of South Africa, thank you for helping to restore the balance between our two continents; we have received a beautiful African Mahogany Communion table, and the least we can do is return something of our love to the land and the people of Africa. And to all those members and friends of our church who have worked and prayed that our church might be a Citizen of the World, thank you for all that you have done, but of course, there is so much more to be done if we are to honor and to equal the beauty of this African Mahogany. Amen.
David W. Good Old Lyme, Connecticut
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