A Dream and a Journey
The following was originally preached as the Sermon at the 8 a.m. Service of Holy Eucharist on Sunday, September 13, as Trinity kicked off its 150th anniversary celebration.
This morning we hear the beginning of what would become a 20 year sojourn for Jacob, out of the land of Canaan and away from his brother Esau, who was out to kill him. On the first night of his journey, he falls asleep and has a dream: There was a ladder that stretched between heaven and earth, and on it the Angels of God were ascending and descending, going back and forth between heaven and earth. (We have a beautiful representation of this dream created by our banner guild which hangs in the stairway by the library.)
In this dream, God stands beside Jacob, places himself in Jacob’s family line, and makes a promise. Hear again what God says: I am the Lord, the God of Abraham, your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south. And all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and your offspring. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.
In the next twenty years, Jacob would gain wives, children, herds of goats and sheep and cattle, and accumulate great wealth. And his family would ultimately become the seed of the 12 great tribes of Israel, the forebears of King Saul, King David and King Solomon. Great indeed was God’s faithfulness to Jacob.
Today we begin the year-long celebration of the 150th anniversary of Trinity Episcopal Church as a parish in the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut. 150 years ago, almost to the day, 12 families gathered together and resolved to apply to the Diocese for recognition as a parish. It was a risky time: the nation was trending toward two inconsistent and incompatible systems of social expectations and mores, based in part on race but more especially on economics. Thus poised, the Union was on the road to the great War Between the States.
But the Episcopalians in Hartford had a different idea. Our parish founders had a dream for their community of faith: To establish one of the first “free churches” by not charging a fee to participate in worship. What’s more, they determined to build that community on the principal of the inherent equality of all of God’s children. One of the founders, Colonel Jacob Green, summed up this principal when he wrote: “Here no one is to be higher in right or privilege than another, this common and equal right being based on the common and equal need which each one has of divine help.”
These are the roots of this Tree of Life known as Trinity Episcopal Church. Like Jacob, our parish founders set out on a journey with a dream. Like Jacob, they could not be certain of what the future would bring, or how their vision for this fledgling church would unfold over time. Little could they have known that from a converted Unitarian meeting house would come what we know as Trinity Church today. Nor might they have expected that Trinity would be a welcoming place for refugees from around the world, people fleeing injustice and oppression and religious intolerance – places like Bosnia, Cuba, Liberia, and Burma. Nor might they have anticipated that through our commitment to bring God’s message of Love, equality, justice and compassion our mission, through the commitment of our own parishioners – would reach to such far-off places as Tanzania, Burma, the Middle East and South America – the east, west, south and north of which God spoke to Jacob. But it didn’t happen because they charted every step of the course. Like Jacob, they started with a dream, and trusted that God would be with them and would keep them wherever and whenever they walked in faith.
I suspect that if our founders could speak to us today we would hear that they are pleased to see the pictures of our 20 Tanzanian scholars from the Diocese of Tabora on the bulletin board in Goodwin Hall, and that they would like a lot of what we will be celebrating over the next 10 months. But God didn’t put us here to bask in the glories of the past or to be complacent about the possibilities that God still sets before us. As Christ insisted for the Temple, where he welcomed, cured and gave hope to the blind and the lame, so we must commit ourselves to continue Trinity’s tradition of welcome, hope and the healing of body, mind and spirit. These next months of celebration will also be months of discernment. With each event we celebrate we will be seeking wisdom – discerning what those events teach us about our core values as a community of faith, and where God is leading us to continue the work which was begun by our founders a century and a half ago. We have nothing to fear – we are not alone. For we know that God is with us and will keep us wherever we go, and that God will not leave us until His work is complete. May this 150th Anniversary celebration be not a bookend, but a bridge to the next phase of our sacred journey together. AMEN.
This morning we hear the beginning of what would become a 20 year sojourn for Jacob, out of the land of Canaan and away from his brother Esau, who was out to kill him. On the first night of his journey, he falls asleep and has a dream: There was a ladder that stretched between heaven and earth, and on it the Angels of God were ascending and descending, going back and forth between heaven and earth. (We have a beautiful representation of this dream created by our banner guild which hangs in the stairway by the library.)
In this dream, God stands beside Jacob, places himself in Jacob’s family line, and makes a promise. Hear again what God says: I am the Lord, the God of Abraham, your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south. And all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and your offspring. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.
In the next twenty years, Jacob would gain wives, children, herds of goats and sheep and cattle, and accumulate great wealth. And his family would ultimately become the seed of the 12 great tribes of Israel, the forebears of King Saul, King David and King Solomon. Great indeed was God’s faithfulness to Jacob.
Today we begin the year-long celebration of the 150th anniversary of Trinity Episcopal Church as a parish in the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut. 150 years ago, almost to the day, 12 families gathered together and resolved to apply to the Diocese for recognition as a parish. It was a risky time: the nation was trending toward two inconsistent and incompatible systems of social expectations and mores, based in part on race but more especially on economics. Thus poised, the Union was on the road to the great War Between the States.
But the Episcopalians in Hartford had a different idea. Our parish founders had a dream for their community of faith: To establish one of the first “free churches” by not charging a fee to participate in worship. What’s more, they determined to build that community on the principal of the inherent equality of all of God’s children. One of the founders, Colonel Jacob Green, summed up this principal when he wrote: “Here no one is to be higher in right or privilege than another, this common and equal right being based on the common and equal need which each one has of divine help.”
These are the roots of this Tree of Life known as Trinity Episcopal Church. Like Jacob, our parish founders set out on a journey with a dream. Like Jacob, they could not be certain of what the future would bring, or how their vision for this fledgling church would unfold over time. Little could they have known that from a converted Unitarian meeting house would come what we know as Trinity Church today. Nor might they have expected that Trinity would be a welcoming place for refugees from around the world, people fleeing injustice and oppression and religious intolerance – places like Bosnia, Cuba, Liberia, and Burma. Nor might they have anticipated that through our commitment to bring God’s message of Love, equality, justice and compassion our mission, through the commitment of our own parishioners – would reach to such far-off places as Tanzania, Burma, the Middle East and South America – the east, west, south and north of which God spoke to Jacob. But it didn’t happen because they charted every step of the course. Like Jacob, they started with a dream, and trusted that God would be with them and would keep them wherever and whenever they walked in faith.
I suspect that if our founders could speak to us today we would hear that they are pleased to see the pictures of our 20 Tanzanian scholars from the Diocese of Tabora on the bulletin board in Goodwin Hall, and that they would like a lot of what we will be celebrating over the next 10 months. But God didn’t put us here to bask in the glories of the past or to be complacent about the possibilities that God still sets before us. As Christ insisted for the Temple, where he welcomed, cured and gave hope to the blind and the lame, so we must commit ourselves to continue Trinity’s tradition of welcome, hope and the healing of body, mind and spirit. These next months of celebration will also be months of discernment. With each event we celebrate we will be seeking wisdom – discerning what those events teach us about our core values as a community of faith, and where God is leading us to continue the work which was begun by our founders a century and a half ago. We have nothing to fear – we are not alone. For we know that God is with us and will keep us wherever we go, and that God will not leave us until His work is complete. May this 150th Anniversary celebration be not a bookend, but a bridge to the next phase of our sacred journey together. AMEN.
posted by Don+ @ 4:17 PM
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