Family Stories

(Exodus 17:1-7, 19:1-9    ; Psalm 95; Hebrews 11:1-12:2  Matthew 21:23-32

Yesterday my high school class got together for its 35^th anniversary reunion, out in rural Hamburg, PA, where I grew up.   I always struggle with the question of whether to go to high school reunions.  For me, there’s a certain amount of curiosity to see how my high school classmates ended up, but it’s not like I have any emotional investment there or even ongoing contact with most of my classmates.   For the most part, they’re little more than strangers to me now, as I am to them.  A handful  are Facebook friends, and every now and then I get a message from one of them, but such messages are like ghostly voices from the past, having little meaning in the present.   High school was a long time ago – 35 years ago, to be exact – and over those 3-1/2 decades, my classmates’ lives have gone in various directions, as has mine.  

By contrast, the ties that connect a family are strong indeed.  Even family members long separated by geography, when they get together, can pick up their relationships right where they left off – for better or for worse.  Conversations may restart from where they left off when the family last met, and in some cases, arguments may pick up from where they were when one of the family members stomped off and broke off contact.    Within families, William Faulkner’s saying that, “The past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past” rings true, as patterns of behavior can replicate themselves from one generation to another, and traumatic events in the lives of parents and grandparents – a divorce, a miscarriage - can echo down through the decades into the present, unconsciously causing anxiety around decisions about when to commit to marriage or whether to have children.  As much as we Americans like to think of ourselves as rugged individualists, our families influence us and we influence our families more than we can realize.

 Today we celebrate the 153^rd anniversary of a family of faith, of our family of faith, Emanuel United Church of Christ; formerly known as Emanuel Evangelical & Reformed Church; before that, Emanuel’s German Reformed Church.   Today, we celebrate the reality that Emanuel – God with us – has been with Emanuel Church for 153 years, and that, in turn, Emanuel Church has been proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ to generations of Bridesburgers – is that a word? – and folks from the surrounding area for over a century and a half.

As in our families of origin or of marriage, the ties that connect a congregation are strong.   While one hopes our members feel some sense of connection to the church’s current worship and witness and ministries and to those who currently fill the pews, nonetheless people feel connected to Emanuel Church for a variety of reasons. – because it was the German church in Bridesburg and that ethnic identification carries meaning, or because it was the family church, and parents and grandparents are buried in the cemetery outside our window, or because parents and grandparents were active members and leaders in the past, and their children feel a continuing responsibility to the church in the present.  The various objects around the church themselves have great meaning.   Rarely do various pictures and wall hangings and knick-knacks just happen to find their way into a church; they’re almost always donated by somebody, sometimes to mark a special event, and so they carry holy memories.  Touch them at your own peril!  For example, the plaster cast of praying hands on the table outside the sanctuary was made, as I understand it, by Walter Nowak.  Our longtime members remember who made our beautiful altar cloths, who made the colorful banners that we hang during Advent and Christmas.  Along with these objects come stories handed down from generation to generation.   And our congregation certainly has its stories – stories of starting out in 1861 with less than 3 dozen people and with $9 in the bank, stories of one of our early pastors, Emanuel Boehringer, along with his family starting what would become Bethany Children’s Home in order to care for children orphaned by the civil war – and likely working himself to death in the process – stories of one of our long ago pastors playing cards after church with one of the long-ago pastors at All Saints and stories of our loaning our chairs for their use.  We have stories of beloved pastors, such as Rev. Victor Steinberg in the 1940’s, who confirmed a number of our members.  And, inevitably, there are stories of Emanuel’s less beloved pastors, who shall remain nameless, but nonetheless had a hand in shaping who we are today as Emanuel Church.

Our Scripture readings this morning remind us that Emanuel Church, with our 153 year history and all our stories and holy memories, is part of an even larger story, a story that extends across space and through time, God’s great story of salvation, of which our “little stories” are a part. 

Our readings from Exodus pick up an early part of the story at a fragile moment.  Moses has been leading the Israelites through the wilderness, they’ve come into a place called Rephidim where there’s no water, and the people are tired, hot, and bothered.  They’re cranky, understandably.  They complain to Moses for dragging them and their livestock into the desert where there was no water – “Have you brought us out here to die?” they cried.   And in turn, Moses cried to God for help – “They’re about to stone me!”, Moses cried.   God told Moses to take some of the elders and strike the rock at Horeb.  Moses did this, and water gushed out.   Moses calls the place Massah and Meribah – Hebrew words for grumbling and quarrelling – as it was here where the people said, “Is the Lord with us or not?”

Later, the group leaves Rephidim and comes to Mt. Sinai.  God is preparing to give Moses the law, and instructs Moses to remind the people what the Lord did to the Egyptians, and how he brought the people on eagles’ wings to himself.    And the people agree, “We will do as the Lord says.”  Of course, they don’t hold to that very long, but at that moment, harmony was restored between God, Moses, and the people.  

But that story of the rebellion at Rephidim, also known as the place of Massah and Meribah, stuck with the people.   In Psalm 95, written some four to five hundred years later, we hear these words,

“O that today you would listen to his voice!
   Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
For forty years I loathed that generation and said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray,
   and they do not regard my ways.’
Therefore in my anger I swore,    ‘They shall not enter my rest.’.”  

These are family stories of the Hebrews, which were handed down from one generation to another.  They were used to celebrate – “Remember how the Lord brought us on eagles wings from Egypt to himself.”   They were used to warn and admonish – “Remember what happened at Massah and Meribah when we rebelled against God.  You remember what happened.  Let’s not do that again.” 

Those Jews who later became followers of the way of Jesus brought their Scriptures – what we call the Old Testament – with them, and so the stories of the Hebrews were adopted by the early church as part of its story of faith.  In Hebrews 11, over and over again, we hear the words, “By faith Abel offered a more acceptable sacrifice.  By faith Enoch was taken so that he did not experience death.  By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out.  By faith Moses left Egypt, unafraid of the king’s anger….    Over and over again the refrain, “By faith….by faith….by faith.”  And then the writer concludes, “Seeing that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run the race that is set before us.”    We can think of the great story of faith as a relay race, as the baton of faith is passed down from Adam to Abel to Noah and  Abraham and Moses, down through so many generations of believers.  And now the baton has been passed to us, here at Emanuel Church.  And it’s our job to make sure that the baton is passed – that the faith is passed – onto future generations.   Our congregation, and we as believers, do not exist only for ourselves.   Our 153-year story is a small part of a much bigger story, and as part of the larger story, we have an awesome responsibility to do our part to make sure the story continues, to make sure that, this site of heaven, the story of salvation, of the church’s mission in the world, never comes to the words, “The End”.  This side of heaven, we never want to see or hear those words written or spoken about the church.

And yet, running a race can be exhausting.  Like Israel in the wilderness, we can become hot, and tired, and cranky.   We can feel tempted to rebel.  We can feel tempted to drop out.  But two thoughts can keep us going.  One is that, in a relay race, we are not responsible for running the whole thing, just our section of it.   People were running this race before we were born, and, God willing, people will still be running this race when we have gone on our eternal reward.   A second, much more important part, is that we do not run the race alone.  As we run, we look to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was waiting endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and is now seated at the right hand of God.    When I read this passage, I think of us running, keeping our eyes on Jesus, and all those who have gone before us in the faith, our loved ones, the cloud of witnesses, cheering us on as we go.  Let’s give them something to cheer about.

So, Happy 153^rd birthday, Emanuel Church!  Let’s give thanks to those who founded this church and sustained it in the past.  Let’s give thanks for those who will support it in years to come.   And let’s give thanks for one another, who carry the baton of faith into our families, our communities, our workplaces, everywhere we go.  May we be faithful in carrying the baton of faith in our day.  Amen.