Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Notes:

This sermon would get off to a lot better start if we were all enjoying hors d’oeuvres. I’m afraid that as host I was stumped by trying figure out what to serve you at this hour of the morning to get you in the mood. So I am going to have to rely on you to be forgiving guests and for now to just imagine that  it is already bunch time you have your favorite beverage or appetizer in hand. Now we can start.

Most Christians know that before Easter comes a season of preparation, the season of Lent, a 40 day period of getting ourselves ready for Easter, many people think of a time of repentance. But it is a little complicated. If you take your calendar and start on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent and start counting 40 days you only get to Palm Sunday, not Easter. So what’s up with that?

The reason is that when you are counting the days of Lent, you don’t count the Sundays. And the reason you don’t count the Sundays is because of what the father told the elder son in the reading from Luke this morning, “But we had to celebrate and rejoice.” Christian gatherings and especially Sunday worship have always been times to celebrate and rejoice. We don’t usually think of Christians as such party animals, but that is a big part of our heritage. What we learn from Paul’s letters to the church in Corinth is that it was sometimes taken too far, but they weren’t altogether on the wrong track, and let me tell you, those Corinthians knew how to party.

In the story Jesus told, the son who had turned his back on his family and squandered his half of their wealth was received back with joy and celebration. The father explained to the elder, respectful, dutiful son, But we had to celebrate and rejoice.

Well, the father said it, but you know the elder son was thinking, No we don’t! We don’t have to celebrate this irresponsible, ignorant low-life, just because he figured out he could come home and get a meal. There’s nothing to celebrate here.
But in this story Luke shows us Jesus teaching the church to find joy in the lost being found, in the dead coming alive. Jesus calls the church to celebrate God’s work in the world. That is a big part of our worship and that is the reason Sundays could never be counted as days of repentance. Sunday is the day we rejoice in what God has done. First, Sunday is the day we celebrate God raising Jesus from the dead. Then Sunday is the day we celebrate what God has been doing in our lives and in the world around us. Our liberating, creative God has been at work and we honor God by celebrating. We continue the ministry of Jesus by inviting people to celebrate with us.

Now, not everyone is on board with this. For sure there are people who want to put off any celebrating until there is a little more of a track record for this young man. Certainly some would want to see some data showing what impact any church outreach ministry might have had in bringing him to make such a positive decision. And in the story we haven’t heard how he is going to be accountable for how he lives from now on. We haven’t really even heard his testimony so that we know what we did right and who to congratulate. And shouldn’t this young man have to play by the rules we follow for a while to show that he has made a serious commitment? Shouldn’t he have to live a life that contributes to the church as we have conceived it and built it and practiced it and supported it and sacrificed for it before we throw him a party? As I said, not everyone is on board with this celebrate thing.

There are lots of church ministries and a wide variety of social service agencies which do commendable work building up the community as they help people in a wide variety of ways to be more whole and healthy. Lots of Christians find a calling in this work both as professionals and as volunteers. Christians respond to what God has done by being the best human being we can be, mourning with those who mourn and sharing one another’s burdens. It isn’t that we do this better than others, but we do make it our religious duty to be the best human beings we know how, we mourn with those who mourn and share one another’s burdens.

But Jesus invites his followers to the specific work of celebrating what God has done and is doing  The church is on the lookout for God raising the dead, finding the lost, healing, restoring, reconciling, redeeming. (We aren’t looking for the inexplicable, but the work that is God’s and God’s alone,  the impact of the whole on the part, the ultimate on the temporal.)  And we celebrate that wherever it appears. In this state the torture of young Black men by police under Jon Burge has resulted in an astounding number of instances when our community has welcomed back men who have spent years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit. For the church this is an opportunity to celebrate God at work slowly healing our community. In a nation suffering from an irrationally high rate of incarceration  it is all too common for a young man to find himself in prison and have to work through the death of who he has been and find in God liberation and healing in the life he will have behind bars. The church’s job is to be there to celebrate life with him. In a society where violence toward women is far too common many women have to struggle for wholeness and health after being victimized. The church has the opportunity to be with them and to celebrate all the victories of re-establishing a sense of self and empowerment. When people who have died to the community because of drug use or any other addiction find that God has freed them from such their addicted behavior and they are alive again, and the church celebrates. When in the passing of a loved one, family, friends, and even the church itself finds an affirmation of the love that God gives us in life and death, then we throw a dinner celebration. When any of us finds that God gives us new freedom from the bonds and stresses that restrain us from loving freely, then the church celebrates. That’s a lot of parties.

We celebrate because the church is where we value the journey to God. We encourage one another in the journey. We value  and pay attention to God in our lives and at work in the world. No one else is going to do this. This is the church’s work, we value the God we know God in Jesus. We claim the reality of God. We make this who we are.

We are formed around taking the time to know joy. Setting aside the distractions and tasks of the day for a moment, to let joy in. Deciding to be shaped by the joy more that the problems.

We support the church because we want to celebrate what God is doing (we love a good party and this is the best kind). We support the church because we think it is important to be with people on their journey to God (not because we are better at fixing them. ) It is the church’s job to put together the party for the one who was dead and now is alive and a ring on their finger.

Enjoy, we just have to celebrate and rejoice.

Fifty years ago [that is, in 1860] Hyde ark was a cluster of scattered houses, less than a score, dropped down among the oak trees.  There was no store, no post office, no market, and a single passenger car on the Illinois Central, three times a day, was the only connection with the city except Purcell’s ox-cart, which served as an express to bring from the city barrels of flour and groceries.  The one sidewalk, a board walk on Lake Avenue, was fringed with ferns and violets, wild flowers and strawberries.

The little white chapel was built by Mr. Paul Cornell, and stood in a grove of oak trees near the present site of the Hyde Park Bank, standing back from the street, which was merely a sandy country road.   There was no janitor or other official, and the building was kept in order by the faithful care of families living near.

[By 1867] the country had already passed through its years of conflict in the Civil War, and its surviving soldiers were returning north, again to take up their interrupted tasks or studies….But this little church and retired community, like every other throughout the land, had been called upon for a sacrifice of its youth.

For, early in 1868, it had been decided to build a new house of worship.  Subscriptions were started and the ground broken at the corner of 53rd St. and Washington [now Blackstone] Avenue, in May, 1869.  In July of the same year the corner stone was laid with impressive ceremonies….The ‘stone church,’ stately and commodious, quickly rose to its completion and was dedicated on October 30.  …It was a great day and one of rejoicing, which marked the beginning of greater zeal and spirituality in the church.

We have a church manual issued in 1873 which shows a membership of 173…..How deeply the pastor and the elders felt their dependence upon the great Head of the Church during these years can be partly estimated from two events that followed the bewildering effect of the great fire [of October 1871].  Pew holders could not pay the rent, and pews were being surrendered.  The trustees and session, in joint conference, after seeking Divine guidance in prayer, decided to change the financial plan and to depend upon volunteer offerings for the support of the church, allowing all to retain their pews.

[In the 1880s] the Hyde Park Church sent out its first missionary to a foreign land.  Miss Sarah Wirt…..was fitted by experience…..for the wider field of Siam and Laos.  The ladies of the church assumed her outfit, and the sum required for her sustenance was provided by the church.  In 1882 she left us for that distant land, where for twenty-eight years she has labored faithfully and successfully.

In October, 1888….the necessity for an enlarged edifice [became] fully understood by all, and the decision was made not to colonize, but to enlarge the church edifice or to remove it entirely and buildup on the same site.  …The building committee…after much consideration, adopted the latter plan.  A tabernacle was built for the temporary use of the congregation..and demolition began.  …At this juncture the church experienced a great loss in the death of Wm. H. Ray (the Principal of the High School), who had been for years one of the most enthusiastic workers in the bible school and in all church life….His class has perpetuated his name up a memorial window in the Sunday School room, and by the single word “service his rightly characterized his beautiful life among us.    In 1990 the new edifice was completed and dedicated with appropriate ceremony.



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