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A Service by the Judson Search Committee
January 08, 2006
Sermon by Abigail Hastings
A Judson Legacy of New Testimonies
Edward Judson (Judson minister, 1890-1914)
In 1875, the youngest son of Burmese missionaries, Edward Judson, left a wealthy Baptist congregation in North Orange, New Jersey, to minister to a pastorate that was composed almost entirely of immigrant poor. Judson told the people when he was leaving North Orange that he felt "called" to the work of "building up a church in the lower part of New York [City]." He accepted the invitation of the struggling Berean Baptist Church [on Bedford and Carmine Streets] and spelled out the following conditions for acceptance of their offer: that all seats in the church be "without exception free" and that the expenses of public worship be met by purely voluntary contributions. Judson also stipulated that the pastor's salary be established at $1,200 per year.
From his home at 35 West Washington Square, the then 30 year old pastor wrote a great deal about the relationship between Christian and immigrant. "The tendency is," Judson wrote, "for the intelligent, well-to-do, and church going people to withdraw from this part of the city." Judson lamented the way in which the church also followed a policy of "abandonment," forsaking "just these sections of the city where they are needed most.... This "policy of retreat is fatal to Christianity, as in dropsy the water rises little by little until it submerges the vitals."
Judson's response to the social problems created by immigration, urbanization, and industrialization was the Institutional Church, a concept he brought to fruition in 1890 with the dedication of the Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square South.
[excerpts from Mission for Life: The Story of the Family of Adoniram Judson by Joan Jacobs Brumberg]
Robert W. Spike (Judson minister, 1949-1955)
We have assumed that the manifesto of the gospel is so painfully obvious and well known, that the main job is to dress up the package in attractive wrappings. This attitude insults the explosive power of the Gospel which is ours to proclaim. Christian Doctrine rightly understood is dynamite, but it is dynamite that our Lord compels us to handle, and to explode in the midst of the seemingly immovable prejudices and alien faiths that every generation erects for itself.
[from Spike's piece in praise of the theological conference
of the Northern Baptist Convention held at Green Lake WI, 1954]
Howard Moody (Judson minister, 1956-1992)
Judson, located in the midst of New York's Greenwich Village, has been called "an exciting experiment in church life." But it ought to be made clear that the people at Judson (from 1949 when it began its "modern" phase to the present) never understood themselves as an "experiment". They were simply seeking to learn what it might mean to be a church, obedient and faithful, in the mid-20th century in a highly urbanized setting. Judson was never as exciting or faithful as its devotees claimed, nor as "far out" or "radical" as its detractors insisted it was...
...The Judson people are learning to live in a world of the withering away of apologetics... We Christians will no longer be able to play a religious "shell game"; we will no longer be able to claim to know where God is (both in action and intent) and thereby always best the unbeliever.
...The implications of this are, I believe, that we will be enabled to be human to our fellow-beings. The activities of our church are not justified by the need to convert, cajole or change... It is enough, for example, if in art, in all its forms, there shines through the mystery and creativity that brought it into being. Theology, then, is not a weapon to use against agnostics and atheists, but rather a means by which we clarify our own experience.
... The Church's real center of interest is outside the Church - living and looking for those situations in the world that call for loving responsibility, there to work out the shape that God's mission will take.
[excerpted in a somewhat altered order from
"Toward a Religionless Church for a Secular World," Renewal magazine, 1965]
and this, 34 years later...
The reasons we join this ritual [of worship] regularly are as diverse as the heterogeneity of this congregation. We come as believers and non-believers, praisers and doubters, but whatever the form of worship, it is a response to the world in which we find ourselves. In some real sense that is when it means the most - "an act of desperation," a wanton need to celebrate some joyous creative event in our lives or some tragic, evil circumstance which must be greeted with revulsion and a cry of dereliction...
...One day after a service...a visitor came up to me and said, "I found your service really blasphemous and I won't be back." It hurt me, but when I reflected on his response it made me aware of all the daily blasphemies and denials of Christians who refuse to make our faith believable by not living it out with courage and sacrificial love.
...We look here for camaraderie in this world; confronting the mysteries of life and death, facing the enigmatic and absurd mixture of good and evil in the world around us; aroused to the injustices in our society and confessing our part in them... [This is a time set apart] when not everything depends on our capacity to believe but on our willingness to feel; to be open to that unexpected invasion of the Spirit's movement.
...And all this happens in this wondrous space, renewed and renovated; a place made dear to many of us by the magnetism of memories - where so many beliefs were born and some died, so many talents and inhibitions unleashed; so many hearts broken and mended by words, touches, and looks; a place where the pain of our disabilities and dysfunctions are acknowledged and sometimes healed.
...It is a place where the stained glass walls do not divide and separate us from the world but it is here that we bring our world in its brokenness, its anguish and injustice to be remembered, and prayed for, and hoped for...[so that] "righteousness will roll down like rivers of water, and justice like a mighty stream."
[excerpted in a somewhat altered order from the sermon,
"How Did We Get Here: A Look at the Evolution of Worship at Judson," February 7, 1999]
Al Carmines (Judson minister, 1961-1981)
The old arguments about theology - liberal or conservative or neo-orthodox - have a strangely quaint sound today. The times and this world have pushed us far beyond such arguments. . . .
. . . I want to play around a little with expanding the meaning of worship, beyond the ways in which we normally think of it. My thoughts will be arbitrary, personal, and quite possibly wrong, but I want to experiment. Suppose we think of worship as those communal experiences whereby a group respects or participates in the re-enactment of some aspect of their lives in such a way that they are brought to a confrontation with the meanings of their lives in a deeper way - how that actually happens to us in many ways, involving all kinds of rituals.
Theater, art, rallies, services, all somehow when they work, do that for us. I was very impressed with Rochelle Owens' play "Futz" - what it revealed to me was the vision of man's infinite capacity to love on the one hand, and man's infinite capacity to hate those who love in a different way, on the other. I spent a good deal of time trying to work out theologically how such a revelation is possible through a play, and how it differs from a revelation through the Bible or a traditional worship service. But maybe it doesn't differ at all. Maybe the theology must emerge from my experience of that play rather than my fitting that play into a theology that comes down from heaven, as it were. The community of the Church, I say, lives by these rituals. I can conceive of a church without a worship service or a church without a theater or a church without dance, but I cannot conceive of a church without some ritual, some re-enactment of its life, some communal celebration of the inner powers of all living things, including us.
... A church with only ritual turns into a cult; a church with only action turns into a cause. It is the confrontation of the cult of worship with the actual needs of the world that creates the friction known as the Church, I believe. It is the tension, the electric sparks thrown off by the rubbing together of those two necessities of community, in which the Church actually comes to be.
[from the sermon, "A New Basis for the Church," May, 1967]
Arlene Carmen (Judson "Administrix" 1967-1994)
Leslie Dennis notes: "Administrix" over those years encompassed first Howard Moody's secretary, then Church Administrator, and finally Program Associate was added to Administrator sometime in the early - mid '80s. It occurred to me as I read over this material that it is 28 years ago this month that Arlene was arrested in a sweep of prostitutes while talking with working women in the Times Square area, and also 28 years since Arlene interviewed me to work at Judson.
Leslie read an excerpt of the following police order, here reprinted in full:
POLICE DEPARTMENT
CITY OF NEW YORK
PATROL BOROUGH OF MANHATTAN NORTH
WEEK OF MARCH 31, 1980
Assistant Chief Milton Schwartz, Commanding Officer
Deputy Chief Michael V. J. Willis, Executive Officer
ROLL CALL TRAINING BULLETINS MAY BE USED FOR ROLL CALL BRIEFINGS, BULLETIN BOARD, SLACK TIME AND OTHER PRECINCT TRAINING PROGRAMS.
JUDSON MEMORIAL CHURCH PROSTITUTION PROJECT - MOBILE UNIT.
Description of Vehicle
A Chevrolet bus, white and green, New York Registration 958TQX, with name "JUDSON CHURCH MOBILE UNIT" painted on both sides. This vehicle is registered in the name of Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South. The interior of the vehicle contains a driver's seat and bench type seats running around the sides and rear, with a capacity of approximately 12 persons.
The Reverend Howard Moody of the Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South (212 GR7-0351) and Miss Arlene Carmen, Administrix of the church have implemented a counselling unit for prostitutes utilizing this bus. The bus is parked at locations frequented by prostitutes, they will be invited to sit in the vehicle, have coffee and talk to trained counsellors. The aim of the project is to counsel them relative to legal, medical and social services. It is not the intention of the sponsors of the project to provide sanctuary or a place which the prostitutes could utilize as a headquarters from which to operate.
Although it is the avowed intention of the project's sponsors to avoid providing sanctuary or a working headquarters for prostitutes it is entirely probable that some prostitutes will take advantage of the situation to further their own ends. If such a situation is observed the police officer should make this known to his commanding officer so that the project operators can be contacted and given an opportunity to take corrective action.
No authorization has been given for this bus to violate any provisions of the Vehicle and Traffic Law or Parking Regulations.
Invasion of this vehicle or harassment of its occupants will not be tolerated.
***
On May 1, 1988, Arlene joined the church and that morning said in part:
This is probably one of the most surprising and unexpected moments of my life. When I came to work here in 1967, if I'd had even the slightest inkling that twenty years later I would be asking to become a member I would have turned on my heel and run as fast as my legs could carry me.
...As most of you know, I was raised as a secular Jew. My parents were not observant so we never went to temple or kept a kosher home. But from the time my sister and I were old enough to understand I can remember my mother saying with absolute conviction that, "being Jewish is all in here." And I have never doubted that she was and still is right. In large measure who I am was determined by generations of Jews whose genes I have inherited. And that will never change. Nor would I want it to.
So coming to work in a Christian church, while it seemed a little weird at the time and produced some anxiety was not prohibited by anything in my background. And of course I never thought I'd stay but for a hot minute....
Last week Michael Kelly asked me to describe the exact moment when I knew I wanted to become a member of this church. I couldn't give him an answer then, but his question rested in my mind until I finally remembered. Last November, at the party celebrating my 20th Anniversary, as I watched and listened to our kids up on the altar doing their bubble gum rap, I knew without the slightest hint of discomfort how irretrievably intertwined my life is with this place and this people, its past and its present. And that even if it wasn't my good and ever so bountiful fortune to work here, I would choose to be part of its future.
Many, many years ago I had a conversation with Howard, the details of which I have long since forgotten. But the punch line has always stayed with me. "If you give me a little of your Jewish guilt," he said, "I'll give you a little of my Christian grace." And that sums up what I'm asking of you this morning.
Lee Hancock (Judson minister, 1981-1985)
What we are called to do is enflesh our faith in the Spirit, put it right in our center, grounded so deeply in our hearts that our very being -- as much as our doing -- can transform each other and the world. Natalie Goldberg writes: "Whether we know it or not, we transmit the presence of everyone we have known, as though by being in each other's presence we exchange our cells, pass on some of our life force and then we go on, carrying that other person in our body, not unlike springtime when certain plants in fields we walk through attach their seeds in the form of small burrs to our socks, or pants, or caps, as if to say, 'go on, take us with you. Carry us to root in another place.' This is how we survive long after we are dead. This is why it is important who we become, because we pass it on."
What an odd band of evangelists we are, for when our faith in the Spirit is enfleshed, we transmit it just by contact. When we acknowledge that the Spirit animates our lives, and surrender to it, we can become servants of, not slaves of, our passions. We can lay down our lives for truth and compassion and love, in service to each other and an alternative reality of justice and love. May we so enflesh our faith in the Spirit that animates us, that we too, can transform the world through our very beings.
[from the sermon "Enfleshing Faith" November 03, 2002]
Peter Laarman (Judson minister, 1994-2004)
There has been a renewed discussion in recent years about the ethics of virtue.... Let me close by naming the traditional virtues, because they have a lot to do with how we will live and organize and struggle if we really believe that God comes quickly to redeem us and to honor our struggle...
Prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice. There they are, the famous four, and we will need to practice each of them in order to survive and ultimately to prevail. Prudence to pick the right targets and to avoid the missteps that come from unfocused rage; temperance to avoid unfocused rage to begin with; fortitude to keep going despite repeated rebuffs and setbacks; and justice to bind our cause to other causes and also to retain a sense of proportion over what we are about. [from "Sermon for Gathering of American Baptists Concerned," June 29, 1994, NYC]
And this from the Preface of Remembering Judson House, Peter wrote:
Deep down...we all know that the question of how much the spirit of the old Judson House can be sustained in a new era has little to do with legal documents or space layouts. It has everything to do with us: with how youthful and how feisty our own spirits feel, and with whether we still see the church as the vehicle for all forms of spiritual and artistic and social renewal and for all expressions of liberatory praxis...
My hope and my prayer are that along with renewed and revived physical spaces, Judson members and friends will come to realize that along with having had some fabulous good old days, this church as an outpost of freedom has some great new days lying right ahead of it.
[Remembering Judson House, 2000]
Louise Green (Judson minister, 1996-1998)
After a review of the practice of communion through history, Louise said:
Meanwhile, back at the Judson ranch, the Agape Meal was developed and instituted by the Worship Committee, not the clergy, in the mid-1960's as a result of feedback that worship was too dull compared to the theater and dance going on here. It wasn't originally called Agape, and the various elements of the ritual evolved over time, much the same as Eucharist in the early Christian Church. An early Judson Agape Meal involved the elements of scrambled eggs and bacon, along with the bread, cheese and fruit we use today. But eggs and bacon were eliminated as too problematic very early on, perhaps analogous to the disappearance of the cups of water, milk and honey [of early Christian ritual].
I asked the Congregational Life committee for some early recollections of Agape, and received both the oral history tradition of Maggie Wise, and the written history tradition of Grace Goodman. Grace's document, which I will refer to as the G source, recalls the following:
The basic idea was to go back to the original format from which the communion ritual was created - a meal. The religious issue was whether or not to have a separate ritual in the middle of the meal, or just to let the meal itself be the ritual. We decided to carve out a special ritual because there are always people in attendance who, for one reason or another, do not wish to participate in a Christian communion service, and we did not want them to feel tricked into having participated simply because they were sitting and eating with the rest of us.
... In our New Testimony this morning we heard Dorothy Day describe the great chain of being that a community of faith embodies. We are one of those communities whose lives are "touched by those who lived centuries ago," and we hope that "our lives will mean something to people who won't be alive until centuries from now." What is Agape anyway? You will decide for yourself. But it is part of that great chain of being, and we are holding up our small segment, "doing our utmost to keep that chain connected, unbroken."
[from the sermon, "What is Agape Anyway?" March 2, 1997]
Karen Senecal (Judson minister, 2000-2005)
We are living in an age when only the very courageous among us are daring to hope. We are living in an age when only the very faithful among us dare to see a future without the limits of time and space - a future the faithful describe in terms of opposing all that opposes life: brokenness, woundedness, fear, loneliness, hurt, worry, greed, violence, hatred, despair. Playwright David Mamet wrote the following definitions: "To act means to perform an action, to do something. To believe means to hold a belief." The Easter drama essentially offers the ultimate dare to humanity. We have been offered the dare to stop acting and to start believing. The challenge of Easter is before us: stop acting out your life and start believing in your life. It is our belief that we struggle with and not our disbelief because we are witnesses to hope and to things still to be seen.
[from the sermon, "Restored," March 27, 2005]
And this, from Karen's last sermon here just a few weeks ago...
In his letter to the Romans Paul wrote, "Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." We are at the end and we are at the beginning. We are hoping for what we do not see and we wait for it with patience. Maybe some of you wait for it with patience.
... Hoping for what we do not see - peace and joy and the future of this church - are by no means an act of total relativism. On the contrary, the waiting we do reveals much more about our patience and love for one another and for creation than if we had simply put our hope in hope that is seen. We are at the end and we are at the beginning. This is time for each of us to act with hope, not for what we expect will happen, but for what will be revealed. Be ready, Judson Memorial Church, to lead a bold and defiant life of faith. Get ready for the rest of your story.
[from the sermon, "Now, For the Rest of the Story," December 18, 2005]
Judson Ministers Through Our History
(this list can be expanded to include more staff and ministry associates
that have been with us, but for now, a beginning list...)
Rev. Edward Judson (Judson minister, 1890-1914)
Rev. A. Ray Petty (Judson minister, 1915-1926)
Dr. Eleanor Campbell (Director, the Judson Health Center, at Judson House 1922-1950)
Rev. Laurence T. Hosie (Judson minister, 1926-1937)
Rev. Renato Alden (Judson minister to Italian-speaking congregation, 1930's,
sole minister after Hosie's departure)
Rev. Elbert R. Tingley (City Society's appointed executive director for Judson, 1946-1948)
Rev. Dean Wright (First Director, Judson Student Program, 1948-1952)
Rev. Robert W. Spike (Judson minister, 1949-1955)
Rev. Bernard (Bud) Scott (Seminary Intern under Spike, Assoc Minister under Moody, 1957-1960)
Rev. Howard Moody (Judson minister, 1956-1992)
Lorraine (Lorry) Moody (Ministry to the Sardonically Challenged, 1956-1992 - also, with Howard Moody, co-director of the Church in Urban Life
Summer Service Project at Judson House, 1950)
Rev. Al Carmines (Judson minister, 1961-1981)
Arthur A. Levin (Director of The Center for Medical Consumers, 1976-present - also, administration for many Judson-related projects since 1966,
including the Judson Teenage Arts Workshop, Judson arts program,
and the Judson Runaway House)
Arlene Carmen (Judson "Administrix" 1967-1994 - "Administrix" over those years encompassed first Howard Moody's secretary, then
Church Administrator, and finally Program Associate was added to Administrator
sometime in the early mid-1980s)
Roland Wiggins (Minister to Property & Churchland Security, mid-1970s - present)
Dr. Michael Kelly (Musical Director & Dirty Joke Curator, late 1970s-1992)
Rev. Dr. Lee Hancock (Judson minister, 1981-1985)
Andrew Frantz (Sunday School Director and Grand Poobah, 1993-present)
and his faithful dog, Garp, 1991-2005 (Director of Animal Therapy)
Rev. Peter Laarman (Judson minister, 1994-2004)
Aziza (Special Program Associate, 1993-) (including Licks 'n Licks, Single Mothers' Workshop,
Dance of African Descent Downtown)
Rev. Paul Chapman (Director, The Employment Project, 1994-present)
Rev. Louise Green (Judson minister, 1996-1998)
Rev. Karen Senecal (Judson minister, 2000-2005)
Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper (Judson minister, January 2006-)
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE PLUPERFECT
A Sermon for Judson Memorial Church by Abigail Hastings
I had one of those church-out-of-church moments last week. I was walking home from the grocery store with my neighbor who last year had a leg amputated as a complication of diabetes, which he believes is a complication of his years of drinking, which I believe is a complication of his post-traumatic stress syndrome from serving in the Vietnam war.
I carry a suitcase full of things in my coat pockets, as he does strapped to various parts of his wheelchair, and that along with our grocery bags made us look quite the pair. Crossing Crosby Street, a pothole lurking in the shadows seized his right wheel, sending him, groceries, and his paraphernalia flying. I was mortified because I knew I could not lift him back into the chair and couldn't imagine how he could do it alone.
But in the instant that he fell, a host of people swarmed about him, righting the wheelchair, lifting him back in it, inquiring about his welfare, and seeing him down one long block to firmer ground. I was so humbled and grateful for this immediate show of humanity to my neighbor. I felt an instant kinship with these people and wanted badly to go have a drink with them and talk about what had happened and why they got involved and what the hell we were going to do about those potholes anyway.
And that felt like church to me - responding to a need, sensing fellowship in the doing of it, looking for ways to prevent that hardship from happening unnecessarily again.
Of course, it's much easier to be church with people for ten minutes on a street corner. The work of being church for the long haul is a whole different story. Had I gotten to know those people better, I might have found out that we wouldn't have agreed on where to get a drink, or who to call to fix the pothole, or whether we should go look for more people in fallen wheelchairs, or wait at that corner for a new need to present itself.
That's why it's helpful to have a point person, in church lingo, a pastor, to help us think about how to navigate through to what we are best suited to do in the world. As this morning's readings testify, we have been blessed with extraordinary leadership over these past 116 years. But no one person lifts the person and the wheelchair alone. We are all in this together.
We are, on this day, at an intersection in the church's life, celebrating our inheritance, yes, but with a clarity that will serve us well in days to come.
One thing that is clear to me is that we have a strong and creative community. People have stepped up to the plate in amazing ways, from making the dream of a new building and renovated meeting space a reality; to envisioning what is needed for a vibrant and effective future; to worship services that astound even those "in the business" which is to say, clergy friends of mine.
Another thing that is clear to me is that we have a cranky community. We speak our minds, which I think is a good thing, but sometimes in a less than generous way that doesn't always serve what we used to call the greater good.
The hard work of keeping a community focused on what is important brings to my mind, of all things, and I would have been the last to think it, the apostle Paul. There may come a time when I can quit making up for calling him an asshole last June, but not yet. Since I've since learned there were things attributed to his writings that probably weren't his at all, I've slowly been making friends with the old curmudgeon.
And did he ever have his hands full with cranky communities of fledgling faith. These young churches were less a thorn in the side as a pain in the butt - infighting and convoluted priorities and petty jealousies. It's a wonder the enterprise ever got off the ground.
But it did, and largely due to Paul who expanded the rules of the conversion game to include Gentiles (us profligate and non-discerning meat eaters) as well as servants and women. Stroke of genius, I might add, not to require circumcision of adult males either.
And here's the other clever thing he did that has largely eluded us: he put the notion of following Jesus in terms the people of his age could understand, what Donna referred to a couple of weeks ago as re-scripting or reframing. Paul taught the Jesus of a miraculous birth, just like their Caesar Augustus, a Caesar thought of so highly they marked time by his birth.
Paul also taught about salvation, a word that had immediacy to a people who had been terrorized by civil war and brutality for generations. There was a general, if ill-placed, sense of calm in the "salvation" that Caesar brought - through successful wars and political domination, the Roman empire represented a kind of a peace that must have had people shrugging, "well, I've seen worse." Something like the not-so-heartfelt glue that held together the old Soviet bloc.
Paul preached a kind of peace unheard of, one that did not rely on the then-accepted assumption that violence and the threat of violence was the only way for people to coexist and, so to speak, keep a lid on it.
Paul made a direct comparison of the kingdom of Caesar and the kingdom of God - one that needs violence to sustain itself, the other marked by the constant defeat of violence. In this way, the kingdom of God was not some far off destination - it had and has already begun, and continues every time violence is not given ground but is beaten back.
In my mind, it is like a giant tug of war with us on one side and violence against humanity, creation, justice and equality on the other. Every time we pull the rope closer to us and away from violence, the kingdom of God gains new ground.
And this is where a church community can be so useful - a big clump of folk all pulling on the rope together. If we have that common goal in mind, great and powerful things can be done, and sacred ground will be recovered. This too helps clarify that little "growth" issue we've been kicking around of late. I think it is more useful to think of growing the church in terms of finding new "recruits" - we need more people on the rope - and there are people out there with whom we can make common cause, who will help strengthen us and perhaps shed light on new strategies for rope leverage and effectiveness.
To pull with all our might means keeping fast to those things of our history that help us hold on. But if there are straggly yarns of past grievances held tight-fisted in our hands, I hope we can find ways of letting them go. "Tell me about despair, yours," as Mary Oliver says, "and I will tell you mine" and then let's see how we can move on from it.
This was my grandfather's gift to me - to share my wounded little heart with him, and if nothing more could be done for it, he'd lean over to me and say, "let's just go to the backyard and eat worms." He heard me, helped me let go, and gave me the gift of a new start.
"Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters," Paul writes to the Corinthians, "that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose." The same purpose. It's a way of saying keep your eye on the prize. Not an easy assignment, but it's at the heart of today's bulletin cover. I kept that Jesus picture in my search committee notebook all year. I wrote on it the reminder, "just two more things." And those two things I let Jesus whisper in my ear were: (1) remember what's important; and (2) have a good time doing it.
We certainly had a good time over this past year, but a thoughtful time too, in which I learned a great deal about myself, and about the love and strength of this community. Former minister Bud Scott said it well 45 years ago:
Judson Church is not a church intent on breeding saints, that is true. Judson's people never mention the ideals of sanctity, holiness and even the word "love" is used with apologies--all this is true. But something else must be said. Judson has learned the mystery of Christian community. There is a kind of "togetherness," a "fellowship" which bespeaks a wordless charity and betrays a secret sanctity. It is a community hard to enter but infinitely harder to leave. I have never found a true Christian community such as I have been privileged to know here.
[The Role of Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, 1960, by Bernard (Bud) Scott, seminary intern under Spike, associate minister under Moody, 1957-1960]
We have identified ourselves as a "church for the world" and though this morning has been inwardly focused, I want to conclude with an excerpt of a Judson sermon that brings the sorrows of the world back to us. It is about the Iraq war.
One of the dangers of fighting a war in the desert is that you are subject to mirages - those optical phenomena that create distortions so that we see things that are insubstantial and illusory. Like our leaders believing the war is over. The war is not over. People are still dying in southern and northern Iraq in a war that is civil, and an extension of the war we were fighting, and which resulted from our initiatives and challenges to the people of Iraq. Men, women and children are still dying...the fires are still burning;
Here we are, a month after the so-called "end of the war," with a tenuous permanent cease-fire, standing knee-deep in ambiguity, perplexed about where we go from here - our troops in Iraq utterly depressed and demoralized as they face the hunger and heartache and all the devastating aftermath of war mirrored in the faces of [Iraqi] men, women and children...
[slightly edited excerpt (removing references to Kuwait) from Howard Moody's
March 1991 sermon, "The Mirage of Peace and Victory in a Desert Storm,"]
Sobering, to say the least. But most sobering is the fact that it was written not 2½ years ago, but 15 years ago, in 1991. If we are in the business of beating back violence, we are in an emerging growth industry, one with no end in sight.
Donna told us a story at a house gathering about how she explained to young people getting involved for the first time in abortion rights issues that "you are part of a great movement."
I'm here to tell you that for all our foibles and follies, victories and defeats, you are part of a great movement. We are not unique, but we are particular, for a particular time and a particular purpose. It is your gifts that are needed at this time when all hands are reaching to bring the kingdom closer. It is your time and effort that will make a difference.
We build on an historic past, we live in a challenging present... and what of the future pluperfect? Aside from forms of grammar that make my head go twisted, pluperfect also has a meaning of "supremely accomplished" - a future for which to strive, a pluperfect future, and with all hands together, one that is within our grasp.
Before this great cloud of witnesses that have gone before, and for those who are yet to join us, I say with the man I never thought I'd be quoting, "I thank God for every remembrance of you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the good news from the first day until now."
And might I add, also to a pluperfect future - rock on, Judson, rock on.
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