The Joyful Witness of My Great-Grandpa

What a joy to celebrate with you your 350^th year of ministry. I bring greetings from Faith Lutheran Church in Chico, California where my husband Reg and I serve as co-pastors.  Chico is in Northern California, surrounded by rice fields and walnut groves and almond groves and mandarin orange groves, and of course, California wineries.  

In the Bible, wine is a symbol of joy. The Bible also tells us we can’t pour new wine into old wineskins, or they burst. What we can do is learn from the old, glean from its wisdom, and be inspired by its great cloud of witnesses to live fully in the contexts of our day. I can’t tell you how tickled I am to find I’m a kind of living link to some of your history here at Old First Church. 

As some of you know, my father’s name was Norman Carter Schultz, M.D.  He was named after his uncle, Norman Carter who died of TB about ten years after graduating from Princeton.  My dad’s mother, Emma, had taken care of her brother Norman for the ten years he was sick.  My dad’s mother Emma and his uncle Norman were two of Rev. Samuel T. Carter’s children. 

Rev. Carter served as pastor of First Church for 33 years – into 1901 when he retired. Of course, like you, I never knew him, but he was my dad’s grandpa, my great-grandpa.  What I know about him comes from things written by him or about him or said about him by my dad.  From all accounts, Rev. Carter was a cherished person, spreading joy to his family, church and the Huntington community as a whole.  He’s also known for his feisty challenge to old wineskins of doctrine – the Westminster Confession. 

My great-grandpa believed God is love and he took issue with any doctrine that wasn’t rooted in a joyful response to that divine love.  Especially abhorrent to him was the Confession’s eternal damnation of infants and other innocent people.  How could a God of love do such a thing? The Westminster Doctrine he was bound to as a Presbyterian pastor taught such damnation and of it he wrote:

“How different the Gospel is from this Confession.  It is as if one had a beautiful picture painted by a master painter, perfect in every way, and a beginning painter makes a copy, poorly drawn, out of perspective, wretchedly colored and ugly all through, and we framed the beginners work and threw out the true picture.”  (What Love Will Do, 95)

Rev. Carter wanted to help people cling to the love of the Gospels rather than beat them down with the Confessions.  He tells stories to get his point across including the story of the “thrifty Scotsman who bought a new home and decided to move his own furniture.  He carried chairs and tables to the new house. When it came to the Grandfather Clock he carried that too, but it was tough work.  He stopped to rest and as he picked it up again, he met the philosopher of the village who said, “Friend, would ye not do better with a watch?” (What Love Will Do, 96)  Rev. Carter reflects, “So might the church do better with a short creed than with its Westminster Confession.” 

Well the condemnation of infants was removed from the Confession over a hundred years ago, during Rev. Carter’s life time. How much of that was due to his protests we don’t know. He had more objections and the Confession was changed again, more to his liking. But being the stickler he was, he didn’t want it changed, he wanted it obliterated.  Part of the joyful witness of my great-grandfather is that he never gave up on the love of God; nor on the power of joy to bring about change. 

The two characteristics Rev. Carter valued most were “joy and confidence.” He recommended they be the church’s motto: “joy and confidence!”  The writer of the Book of Hebrews whose words are before us this morning must have believed much the same. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and sin that clings so closely, and run with perseverance the race set before us, looking to Jesus, who for the sake of the joy set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of God.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)

Christian joy and confidence in the face of challenge is all over this passage and all over your celebration this 350^th year.  Therefore, since we are surrounded by 350 years of faithful witness, including Rev. Carter’s witness, let us lay aside whatever weighs us down.  Or, from the New International Version “let us throw off everything that hinders and easily entangles.”  As you on the East Coast and my congregation on the West Coast seek to be faithful today – what hinders us, what entangles us that, like Samuel Carter, the joy of Christ is motivating us to throw off or lay aside or disentangle? 

One of the things I hear the church weighed down by most – across our country and through my travel in Europe – is the decline in our churches.  Many fear the decline is due to the distractions of our day, be they recreational, occupational, Sunday brunches or just plain disinterest.  Numerous things are named as hindrances and barriers to church growth.  But church consultants call us to a fresh way of seeing the challenge. 

Alice Mann of the Alban Institute, a church consulting firm in Bethesda, writes that “vital congregations are those that are passionate about bringing faith to bear powerfully within their context.”  She says she believes this right down to her toes.  This is what I believe brought Samuel T. Carter’s ministry to life.  He believed down to his toes that the church holds a priceless gift.  He wrote of this, “sometimes in a religious service when I have felt even a little of what I might have felt, I have wished that I could have the grandest orchestra of the whole world with every instrument of music that was ever known, strained to its highest pitch and power to set forth the majestic grandeur and delight of [God’s love.]  Nothing ever advertises itself as does joy.” (Wanted a Theology, 129)    

The biggest challenges aren’t what is out there in the world. The biggest challenges for the church are to not give up on the incredibly joyful news of the Gospel and to trust God to help us discover new wineskins to bear this joyful news. How can we effectively communicate to our 21^st century world that God doesn’t judge the world nor is indifferent to the world, but that this is the world God so loves – and that this love is what the world most yearns for. 

There is a palpable yearning in our 21^st century world for real community, for deep joy, for being a part of something larger than ourselves. In a world filled with fracture and instability, there is a yearning for lasting love and authentic joy.  The church holds what the world longs for.  But what my great-grandpa wrote 100 years ago may still be true: “the love of God is the great undiscovered secret of the world.” (Ibid, 129)        

Samuel T. Carter had discovered this secret and he knew its joy down to his toes.  It is in your blood, too, Old First Church.  You’ve inherited this joy.  I’ve experienced it among you these past days.  You find joy in each other. You know the joy of the Gospel. You know God so loves the world. The challenge is how to best share this joy and love in our context today. 

My great-grandpa wrote over 100 years ago now, so his images aren’t ours. He wrote of railroads, telegraphs and the selling of horses, instead of airplanes and email and selling on e-bay, but he gives clues of how he dealt about the context of his day.  He writes, “At the top of Wall Street in New York stands Trinity Church.” (It is still there. Perhaps you’ve been there.) “Beneath its beautiful spire rush and hurry the crowds.  There is a little touch of the coming glory when a noon service is held in Trinity and people crowd it in the busiest day to hear the word of God.” (Wanted a Theology, 132) 

But Samuel goes on to paint how this will be a “constant feature” when the reign of God fully comes.  He says, using his late 19^th century images, “at the end of the service the preacher will say: “Now, you must go down to your stocks and bonds; railroads must run, telegraphs must flash, corner lots must be sold. You must not forget the importance of your [currencies of exchange] keeping it as you do, not above but below, it will do a fine service.  The congregation is dismissed and will be back very soon. And what merry faces will go thronging out to see that they do their neighbor no wrong in the buying of a railroad or the selling of a horse”

Or we might say today, we do no wrong, but rather good by relating lovingly and with joy to our world where it lives, through websites, or on soccer fields or hospital wards, or exercise gyms, even as we keep coming back to the church’s gifts to be replenished by God’s love, taking advantage of every creative opportunity to invite others to join us, learning from them what helps make the church and its ministry accessible to them. 

Rev. Carter, with joy in his eyes, pictures God’s love hovering over the world as Trinity hovers over Wall Street – sending us to bear witness in ways our context understands.   Thank you, Old First Church, for your faithful witness to the Gospel. 

Pray for us in the wilds of California that we would creatively witness to the diverse people of our context.  We pray the same for you in your lively, lovely context here. God’s love is our news.  How can we not be filled, as Samuel T. Carter was, with joy and confidence in that love, all the way down to our toes!          

God bless you all,  Amen

Pastor Peg Schultz-Akerson, to the glory of God

Faith Lutheran Church, Chico, California