Home
Minister
Young Church
Music
Governance
Calendar
This Week
This House
November 3, 2002
Words for Groundbreaking Ceremony, Nov. 3, 2002
This morning's groundbreaking ceremony and celebration is an opportunity most importantly to thank all those who have worked hard and long on this building renovation project. I won't attempt to name them all, but there is in your orders of service a list of those who have served in leadership positions on this endeavor over the past seven years. (I apologize if anyone has inadvertantly been left out.) This is also an opportunity to thank everyone whose pledges are making this project possible, and to ask you, if you have not yet made one, to consider making a contribution to this project, and to leave a visible mark of your generosity on the future of the First Religious Society and, indeed, of Newburyport itself.We give thanks for the founders of this great church and the builders of this wonderful building we are privileged to inhabit for a brief time. This renovation project will create much needed programming space for adults, children, and the community. It will create new and more efficient office space for your staff. It will provide handicap accessability to our buildings. Most important, it will help us to extend the Liberal Religious Gospel further into the future.
For we do have good news! Freedom, reason, and tolerance in religion proclaimed for over 450 years, here and in Transylvania, is not a thing to take lightly. It is, I think you will agree, a message that is desperately needed in the world we live in today. Let us give thanks that we have been brought to this important day in the life of our beloved church, as we go forward in our life together and strive together to build the beloved community.
At this time, I would like to turn to Bill Heenehan, Chair of the Renovation Steering Committee, and ask him to do the honor, on behalf of the entire congregation, of breaking ground for our project. I have asked Bill to say a few words as well.
Sermon
"This house is a cradle for our dreams,Ken Patton's responsive reading, which we shared this morning, is a reminder of what our Puritan forebears knew well: the “church” is not a building. The church is made up of people, what our Calvinist ancestors in their fear and hopefulness of salvation called “a company of visible saints.” The building, they were careful to point out, is a “meeting house.” As Patton's reading makes clear, it is what happens inside “this house” that is most important, not the building itself.
the workshop of our common endeavor."--Kenneth L. Patton
That is easier to believe when your building is not an architectural gem, or even what I called in a sermon last year “a visible prayer,” which this building most certainly is. Truly, we are blessed by “this house” in which we meet each Sunday. It is a pleasure just to be in this space. But it is what happens inside it each week, what has happened in it now for over two centuries, that makes it special.
As Patton points out, it is the friendships and the encouragement in the struggle that we find here that are most important. It is the celebration, the freedom to pursue our own religious journey, the opportunity for growth, and the intellectual challenge that really matters. It is the dreams we dream and the works we hope to see to fruition that make this house special, indeed, that make it unlike any other house I know of.
Nor, beautiful and historic and architecturally important as it is, is this building a museum. The day this ancient meeting house becomes one, is the day “the church” is officially declared dead. Alas, I have seen it happen. This can be difficult to grasp, especially by those who only know the building from the outside, without knowing or understanding what goes on inside.
Bert Steeves has told me how, when he first announced his intention to come here to Newburyport, to serve as minister of the First Religious Society, his colleagues asked him why he wanted to come up here with “all those steeple worshippers.” Fortunately, Bert understood that it was what went on inside this building that was most important, not the steeple, and he saved it from becoming a museum, and saved us from death by “steeple worship.” He recognized that the church is not a building, and while I am sure that he loved this building as much or more than most, he spent his ministry worrying about the church, not worshipping the meeting house.
We should be proud of the use this building still gets. We should be thrilled that it is still being used for what it was intended: a place for the church to meet. Not an end in itself. We should be glad that this is still a place of tears, and that it still echoes with laughter and with the sounds of children's voices and footsteps. That is what it was intended for, and we honor its builders and the spirit in which it was raised when we use it often and well.
Yes, it is old, and it deserves our care and attention and love and respect, as old things and old people do. But it is what goes on here that makes this a sacred space. Take away the people--take away the church--and all you really have is an empty shell. Just another pretty old building. I can't imagine that is what any of us want to see! We love the building because it holds our precious memories and reminds us from whence we've come, and yes, of where we are going. We love it because of the spirit it contains.
Speaking of old, some of us thought that we would never live to see this day! After all, you began discussing this project well before I arrived here in 1995, and we've been discussing it ever since--that's seven-plus years by my count, and you know how many more. When I talked about today's service with our Administrator and lifetime member John Mercer--there, John, I've mentioned your name in church once again, I trust not in vain!--John said that a great topic might be, and I quote, “patience, the kind of combination of goodwill and patience that it takes to get anything done, anything like a renovation or an education or even social advances like racial and sexual equality. It seems to me,” John continued, “that our building project is a great example of patient, persistent goodwill--the ability of a vision finally to overcome the usual inertia of what is.”
Not surprisingly, I could not have said it better. And what a wonderful example for our children, the next generation and we fondly hope the inheritors and protectors of this great institution, of what it takes to do anything that is truly important. Good things do occasionally happen overnight, but not often, and usually they take the kind of vision and patience and perseverance that John describes. Sometimes it takes not just years, but entire lifetimes.
It is said, with truth, that “patience is a virtue.” It's never been one of mine, particularly, and there were many nights, over the last seven years, when I went home from yet another space needs or comprehensive planning committee meeting, or yet another Parish Committee discussion of why we could, or couldn't, or shouldn't attempt a project like the one we are breaking ground for today, with frustration in my countenance and despair in my heart. There were many nights when I thought this project would never happen in my lifetime, or at least never during my ministry. I am not a patient man by nature, but I have learned the importance of patience and persistence. Some things are slow to come, like mercy and justice “rolling down like waters,” like racial and gender equality, like gay rights, even like a humble building project, but we must never give up, we must go on with the struggle, we must fight the good fight,-- which sometimes means not to fight at all. The most important things are often those which are the hardest to attain. But, ah, the rewards if we stay the course!
When I arrived in Newburyport, my colleague Kent Allen of the Central Congregational Church, who has been here about twice as long as I have, was in the middle of a process which would eventually culminate in the renovation of their building on Titcomb Street. Kent had been at this for about eight years when I first met him, with no end yet in sight. He told me that when he came to Central Church, one of his colleagues asked him how he liked it. Kent said he liked it a lot, and his colleague said, “Yeah, but it's an elephant.” Kent asked him what he meant, and his colleague said, “Ever try to move an elephant?”
These old Yankee institutions are like elephants, I guess; they are pretty hard to move, sometimes; but elephants are pretty likable creatures, after all! And somehow, when you are spending over a million dollars, it is good to know that the elephants are on your side. I honestly can say that I haven't lost a lot of sleep over the financing of this project, because I know the old and not so old Yankees around here have checked and rechecked all the figures more than just a few times, and they will see to it that we come out of this project in as fiscally sound a position as it is possible under the present circumstances to attain.
What was it that Kenneth Patton said?
This house is a cradle for our dreams,We have much reason to be proud, on this day of groundbreaking, for all that has been accomplished, and for all that will be accomplished, and for all has been and will be dreamed in this place. Let us go forth then, in faith, hope, and love, giving thanks for this house we cherish and love so well. May we use it well for many years to come! So may it be. Amen.
the workshop of our common endeavor.
The Rev. Harold E. Babcock
