Originally preached on May 11, 2008, Pentecost Sunday, and the day on which the Confirmation Class became members of the church, at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC.
Acts 2:2-21
Dedicated to the twenty-three students of the Confirmation II Class; and always to the glory of God.
In the gospels of the New Testament, we hear the story of God’s good news revealed through Jesus Christ, the son of God. In the book of Acts, we still hear the story of God’s good news, but now it is revealed through the church. Pentecost is a story that reminds us that the church is created by God’s Holy Spirit, and held together by God’s Holy Spirit. The book of Acts says that when the Holy Spirit came among them, it was like a rushing wind, like flames of fire that landed above each person. In other words, it was difficult to explain; it was energizing, illuminating, and unpredictable.
I’m interested in what happened right after God’s spirit swept into their lives. The very first thing that happens is that a whole list of people from nations, tribes and ethnicities that we can’t fully pronounce all began to hear the good news of Jesus Christ in their own languages. Now, don’t get caught up trying to work out how that happened or you’ll miss the point! When God’s spirit moves in our lives, it doesn’t matter what barriers of history, culture, war, or language have divided us. We will all hear the good news in a way we can understand. We will be united. We will be the church.
Today, these students of the Confirmation class are joining this congregation as members. You are joining the church, and it doesn’t matter if you understand God with a different language shaped by your generation and your life’s experience. Just remember the story of God’s spirit on Pentecost. That’s our story. That’s us.
This year in Confirmation, we have been learning about the First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, the history of Congregationalism, and the character of our denomination, the United Church of Christ.
One evening in Boston, near the end of our year, we reflected on our experiences. We had been talking about what it was like to visit these historic places that they had learned about in school. It was in the congregational church that the sons of liberty met before the Boston tea party; it was in our church that they protested slavery, reached out to the Native Americans, and continued to stand up in God’s name for freedom and the equality for all people. One of them said that she was amazed to learn that those people from history class were our Congregationalist ancestors. She said “that’s us!” and in those words she summed up the entire year.
We who make up the First Congregational Church of Tallmadge have been shaped by our past, and this gives us strength and courage to shape our future.
We are shaped by those who worked and sacrificed for a church building to center our life of worship here in Tallmadge. Our first members donated lumber from their own trees, and they worked from 1821 until 1825, when surely their own new homes still needed much attention, to complete the church on the circle. Over the years the congregation had to make changes to keep the church open and inviting. They installed stoves, and later a furnace. They changed the box pews (with the walls to keep in heat) for open pews. They put up space in other buildings for offices, classes, and fellowship across the street. In the 1960’s, they (and many of you) constructed this building for the generations to follow. Now after four decades, we have broken ground for the first expansion to that building, so that we can continue to invite people to worship. That’s our story. That’s us.
In Boston we visited Harvard University, founded in 1636 – 1636! – by our Congregationalist ancestors. It was the first institution of higher learning in the colonies. Education has always been important in our tradition. It needs to be for a church in which the members make decisions. Our church members helped to found the college of the Western Reserve in 1826, and served on its faculty.
We continue to value education in this church. We celebrate and bless our high school graduates; we provide opportunities at church for all ages to learn about our faith. One of our confirmation students, writing about why she wants to join this church wrote, “I’ve learned that we’re never done learning, and there’s always going to be something new for God to teach us.” That is very true. In fact, when the Pilgrims came on the Mayflower, their minister John Robinson did not make the journey, but he told them “God hath yet more truth and light to break forth from his holy word.” Or, to put it in the words that we use in the United Church of Christ, “God is still speaking.” That’s our story. That’s us.
In 1833, not long after the College of the Western Reserve was founded, some of our church’s members on the faculty resigned in protest because they favored immediate emancipation of slaves, while a majority of trustees disagree, favoring instead the slaves’ eventual return to Africa.
The president of the college resigned with him, and later that year he came to the historic church on the circle to speak on the abolition of slavery. This is one of my favorite stories in our history. It seems that some local opposition to the abolitionist cause got to the church building and boarded up the doors and all the windows in order to prevent the speech. But the abolitionist movement had a great many supporters who went to work and quickly to remove the barricades. An eyewitness recalls “what a racket there was as the rails came flying out of the windows on top of each other and men shouting and some I fear were swearing.”
We are shaped by our past – by our ancestors who have stood up for anyone who was excluded from freedom and full participation in the life of faith. That’s our story. That’s us.
God founded the church on Pentecost by bringing people together, despite all their differences, and we hold to that promise. We in this church don’t all have the same experiences or points of view. We have different languages of thought and perspective. But God’s spirit binds us together. That’s the promise of Pentecost.
Another of our Confirmands had this to say about the class. She wrote about how we had fun together, made trips, and learned about God. Then she observed “In the beginning we all didn’t really know each other that well, ut in the end, we all became good friends.”
That is a gift from God. It is what happened on Pentecost, and it is what happens still. That’s our story. That’s us.
