Sermon preached by Dr. John A. Huffman, Jr.
October 12, 2008
Copyright© John A. Huffman, Jr.|
All rights reserved.

DEDICATE/CELEBRATE/CONSECRATE

(Communion Meditation)

What a moment this is!

Here we are on this weekend of October 10 through 12, 2008, with three express purposes to: DEDICATE; CELEBRATE; and CONSECRATE.

It seems like it took forever to accomplish this Building the Future project.

It certainly did take six decades to get to this celebration!

A lot happened in those sixty years, which began right after the end of World War II when Harry Truman was president. Some of us have vivid memories of those years. I was seven years old, a youngster growing up in Boston, Massachusetts, when those founding few gathered in the Baltz Mortuary to hold the first worship service. Think of everything that has happened in the large world out there, in your own private family world and in the life of this congregation.

We are to take this moment for genuine consecration and/or reconsecration of our individual and corporate lives for the rest of this life and the next!

Our biblical text for today is taken from Nehemiah 12.

Usually, dedication services such as this go to an earlier historical event in the life of Israel, the dedication of Solomon's Temple, as you see it in the early chapters of 2 Chronicles. That was a most significant event in that David, because he was a man of blood, was not allowed to build the Temple. He made preparations for it, but it was son who bore the responsibility. Page after page of Scripture describes the festive events surrounding that dedication. One of the most familiar verses of the Bible emerges as part of that dedicatory celebration. We know it but often quote it out of context, when applied by teachers and politicians during political seasons to the United States. It's actually what God said to His people then and says now, "If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14).

But that is not the text for today.

During my summer devotional reading of the One Year Bible, I came across the great text in Nehemiah. That book describes how the faithful servant on God, a lay person by the name of Nehemiah, a Jew, an exile in a foreign kingdom, a cup-bearer to the king, dreamed of going back and restoring the walls of Jerusalem. Time does not allow for a recitation of the historical events surrounding the return of Nehemiah. He faced great obstacles. But over the years, God was faithful in allowing Nehemiah and his colleagues to return to Jerusalem to, against unsurmountable obstacles, rebuild the walls and refurbish the Temple. Let me read these brief words, "Now at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem they sought out the Levites in all their places, to bring them to Jerusalem to celebrate the dedication with rejoicing, with thanksgivings and with singing, with cymbals, harps, and lyres. The companies of the singers gathered together from the circuit around Jerusalem and from the villages of the Netophathites; also from Beth-gilgal and from the region of Geba and Azmaveth; for the singers had built for themselves villages around Jerusalem. And the priests and the Levites purified themselves; and they purified the people and the gates and the wall" Nehemiah 12:27-30.

Originally, we were going to have two events. One was going to be a big open house weekend to celebrate our moving into the new facilities. Then, in November, we were going to have a weekend to celebrate our sixtieth anniversary and to dedicate the new facilities. When I read this text from Scripture, I said, "Why not do it all at the same time?" Already, various youth and children's concerts, service projects and tours of the facilities had been scheduled. Why not postpone one week for communion and make this all a big weekend of dedication, celebration and consecration, ending up not only with children's and youths concerts, but one the big band of Ralph Carmichael, if we could get him? And that's what we're doing this weekend. Hundreds of high school and junior highers have already been hosted in our new youth facilities. Our children now have as fine a Sunday school and preschool facilities as you could desire. And there's been a whole refurbishment of the campus, both in terms of the sanctuary and preexisting buildings, as well as a complete re-do of the landscaping and external painting that pulls this whole campus together for the decades ahead.

Instead of having a time of reminiscence in the plaza between the two services, we decided as part of our time to share this eight-minute video of dedication, celebration and consecration.

You may play the video from this website.

Now let me share some specific words from the table before we participate in the Lord's Supper, followed by our prayer and litany of dedication.

Word #1: The greatest privilege of my professional life has been that of being your pastor for over half of the history of this church!

Next to my personal commitment to Jesus Christ and my love of Anne, my daughters and the rest of our extended family, the highlight of my life has been and always will be these thirty-plus years with you.

I say this with deep emotion! You are a great and wonderful people! To have lived the rhythms of life with you and others who have already gone to be with Christ in these three-plus decades has been a sacred honor! As I prepared these remarks, on several occasions, I came to tears, my heart filled with emotion and my mind with nostalgia as I thought back on the ups and downs of these decades of life together. I have deep gratitude for colleagues in ministry with whom I have worked shoulder to shoulder, and every man, woman and child who has been part of this community called St. Andrew's.

Two and a half years ago, I agreed to walk through this four-year transition period with you in order to complete these buildings, to facilitate the visioning to enable a valued colleague to be considered in the national search for a successor, and to help address some of the painful realities of life lived within our beloved denomination. Now, in a year and a half, I'll hand the baton over to another. Anne and I will slip into the background, prayerfully cheering on your new leadership and savoring the memories of these years of service together.

Word #2: Don't forget, these buildings are only facilities!

I remember in the early 1980s how seriously I took that building program. There were so many varied opinions as to what the new sanctuary should look like and what buildings we should build and controversy over how we could pay for them. I took to grinding my teeth at night, the pressure was so great.

Every so often, Anne would sit me down and say, "John, remember, as important as this project is, these are only facilities." And you know what facilities do, don't you? They facilitate. This is a mission center, a home base to facilitate ministry here and throughout the world. Let's never forget that.

Look up the history of the Temple in Jerusalem. It came on times of disrepair. The walls protecting it were destroyed. The Temple had to be refurbished, the walls rebuilt. Finally, the Temple was totally destroyed and finally rebuilt by King Herod almost a thousand years after its initial building. Buildings can outlive their usefulness and need to be torn down and replaced. The physical structure of the church my father pastored some fourteen years in Cambridge, Massachusetts--a hundred-year-old-plus structure--was finally bulldozed down. In its place is an apartment building called "Cornerstone Apartments." It used to be Cornerstone Church. But the reality is all over New England and even the world, there are ministries that were launched from that strategic mission base. One of the strongest churches today in New England is Grace Chapel of Lexington, Massachusetts, established by half a dozen couples my dad and mom were privileged to lead to the Lord, who developed a burden for the town in which they lived several miles away, planting a house church, which today is having such a strategic ministry in the Boston area.

Word #3: This weekend marks the beginning of a new future for St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church.

This event in some ways is about the past, but only wherein it is a prelude to the future.

Yes, we have looked back a bit, but if we linger too long, it will be of little use to the present and future generations who need to be touched with the presence of St. Andrew's here in the Harbor Area.

At one point, the controversy was the greatest with the neighbors. Some suggested that we leave Newport Beach, find land elsewhere in Orange County and build a megachurch there. That idea had very little traction. We knew our calling was to this community. Orange County didn't need one more megachurch. It needed a faithful witness of the type we were able to provide right here in Newport Beach, serving this community and those adjacent communities from which people would be drawn to this ministry.

St. Andrew's will be dead ten years from now if we try to simply replicate the past. I direct your thoughts to these words God shared with the people of Israel through the prophet Isaiah and share with us once again today. "Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do an new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" Isaiah 43:18.

This is why we're having these Visioning Together forums. This next weekend, the theme will be "Worship."

What I appreciate about St. Andrew's has been your willingness as individual members to see beyond your own vested interest, your own ways of doing things, your own ways of preferred worship, to embrace the younger generation.

I'm right now in the middle of reading a book by Gordon MacDonald titled, Who Stole My Church?: What to Do When the Church You Love Tries to Enter the 21^st Century. Gordon MacDonald has written this true-to-life fictional book describing how set in their ways some churches can become, to the point that they're dying out, irrelevant to the younger generation. At the same time, a church that is going to be truly intergenerational has to understand that, as it adapts itself to the needs of a younger generation, it still needs to understand the values, worship forms and ministry styles that have been so relevant to those of the older generation. In his preface, he writes:

@QUOTIND = "You need to think about the fact that any church that has not turned its face toward the younger generation and the new challenges of reaching unchurched people in this world will simply cease to exist. We're not talking decades--we're talking just a few years."

@QUOTIND = How many people of varying ages are feeling out of alignment with their churches today? Some of them think that their churches aren't adapting fast enough to new realities, and others think their churches have simply changed too much. Sadly, more than a few at both of these extremes address the "problem" by just dropping out. Some stick in there but take on the role of bitter critics, and they sap the strength of the community in their own way.

We'll be getting copies of this book, and I hope many of you will prayerfully read it and help implement the results of this visioning process, even in ways that at times may be a bit uncomfortable, but will help us move forward strategically for Jesus Christ in this new century.

Are you open to a new thing, a fresh leading of the Holy Spirit in these next decades of St. Andrew's life?

Word #4: Live up to your name "St. Andrew's"!

I went to my files this week and got out an old sermon that I preached on the day that we carried the Bible from the old sanctuary into the new sanctuary on December 16, 1984. It's titled "Meet St. Andrew."

The text was John 1:40-42. It reads, "One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, 'We have found the Messiah' (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, 'You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas' (which is translated Peter)."

This describes a man who was excited about his faith and who shared it, first with his brother Peter and then with many others. Church tradition says that St. Andrew, one of the disciples, ministered after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in the area of Greece and Turkey and that, in the year A.D. 60, he was crucified spread-eagle. Therefore, you see the St. Andrew's cross a very different shape than the traditional cross. In the fourth century, his remains were carried to Constantinople. In the thirteenth century, they were transferred to Amalfi, Italy. As you know, the Church of Scotland has appropriated St. Andrew as the patron saint of Scotland. Our church is named after him. Wherever you travel in the world and come to places settled by Scots, there's always a St. Andrew's Church named after this disciple.

What we do know about him was that he was not as eloquent as some of the disciples. But he was faithful in sharing his faith with others. He told his brother Simon about Jesus and, as a result, we have the man we know as St. Peter because of the faithful witness of this fellow fisherman by the name of Andrew.

Every one of us who is a follower of Jesus Christ is called to share our faith with someone else. You may not feel that you have the eloquence to do that well. But the fact is, God has given you a way of communicating honestly, genuinely with others.

Every one of us who is a follower of Jesus had someone who shared Jesus with us. My prayer for you and myself is that in whatever years you and I have left, we may be faithful sharers with others of our faith. When you hear the name of our church, St. Andrew's, try not to think of the town or a golf course in Scotland or even a man who never visited there but is called its patron saint. Instead, think of a common fisherman from Galilee who took seriously his experience with Jesus and shared it with others. That's your calling and mine.

Word #5: An invitation to dedicate/celebrate/consecrate.

We are intentionally celebrating the Lord's Supper before we dedicate these new facilities. We're doing it in this order that we ourselves may think introspectively and bring ourselves before the crucified and risen Jesus Christ in a moment of consecration. I know that every single one of us is apprehensive about the future. Few of us in our lifetime have seen the kind of economic meltdown that has gone on in the last few weeks. None of us knows what the future holds for institutions we have taken for granted. Not only are we concerned for the future of our children and our grandchildren, we're apprehensive about our own jobs, retirement plans and other aspects of our economic futures.

My mother told me this week of her experiences in the Depression. She and her sister and her parents lived on a farm in Northern Michigan. Their life was quite humble. Yet, because of the agrarian lifestyle, they at least had food for their table. They had friends who had moved from the farm to New York City and had so prospered because of the thriving stock market of the 1920s. Some lost everything, and she recounted to me stories of family friends who jumped from New York skyscrapers, so depressed by their economic ruin.

It's in uncertain times as these that we do need to get on our knees and consecrate our lives to Jesus Christ.

Dr. Richard C. Halverson, who touched so many lives in his ministries at the Hollywood Presbyterian Church, the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland, and in his years as the Senate Chaplain, told a story I will never forget. The pastor had burned out in ministry. He felt like a failure. He was forced to resign his church in the eastern part of the country and had accepted a call to a church in the Midwest. As I remember the story, he was traveling alone by train to his new call. His family would be following him later with the family car and the moving van. It was a lonely, depressing train trip west. He was filled with second guesses about how he was living his life. His ministry had been powerless, the people nonresponsive. He was fearful of repeating his failing in the new call. What was there to keep that from happening?

He had to change trains in Chicago, which in those days was a major mid-continent changing station. With some time to kill between trains, he wandered around that great Grand Central Station. As he wandered alone with his thoughts, suddenly he was greeted by one of his former professors from Moody Bible Institute, who himself was waiting for a train. He asked how his ministry was going. And the pastor, in a moment of candor, let it all hang out and told him his sad story of failure. His former professor said, "I need to go and catch my train, but let me just share a scriptural word with you," and he quoted these words from Romans 12:1-2 KJV: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." Then the professor said, "Let me pray for you." He put his hand on his shoulders and prayed for God's blessing on this defeated man and then embraced and left to catch his train.

The pastor, who had tears in his eyes, no longer felt quite so alone. He stood in the center of that great train station. The word from the Lord, a prayer from a godly friend. Now, once again alone yet surrounded by a sense of the presence of God, people rushing by every which direction, with the toe of his foot he made the sign of the cross on the floor, declaring, "I present myself to you as a living sacrifice to be all you dream of me being, nothing more, nothing less." A new sense of hope sprung up within him, a new sense of purpose, and that pastor went on to his new charge, re-energized by the Spirit of God to what became a healthful, positive time of life for him and his family.

It's that kind of moment to which I'm inviting you today in this time of dedication, celebration and consecration.

Moments of decision are so important in our lives.

I don't know your spiritual autobiography, but you do. I do remember, as a 5-year-old, opening my heart to Jesus Christ. I do remember, as a 14-year-old, making a decision to allow Jesus Christ to be the Lord of my life. I do remember, as a 22-year-old, sensing God's call into the ministry. I do remember, as a 51-year-old father who had just lost his daughter to cancer, reconsecrating my life to Jesus Christ, determined to trust God for what I could not, in human terms, understand.

As we come to the Lord's table, I invite you to come as you are and urge you to open the very center of your life to Jesus Christ. You know the issues you face. You know your fears. You know that sin that needs to be confessed. You know that faith that needs to be renewed. I urge you to come to the table for the first time putting your trust in Jesus Christ, consecrating your life to Him, admitting your need, claiming His forgiveness and a new beginning. Or if you are follower of His but have gotten away from Him, I invite you to come back to Him. Or if you're walking with Him but are unnerved by the uncertainties of the economy, of the war, this election season, come and open yourself, allowing this day of dedication, of celebration and consecration to be a significant moment for you, realizing that the God of all human history took human form and went to the cross for you, suffered for you, died, and was buried for you and rose from the dead and is present in the Power and Person of His Holy Spirit for you. Then I urge you to join me together with others and move into the future, as we dedicate these facilities and celebrate these sixty years and trust God to do what He wants to do in and through us individually and corporately in the years ahead. Amen.