It’s a very great joy for Carol and
me to be with all of you to
celebrate the long and fruitful history of the American Church in
Paris— the grandmother of all similar international congregations
around the world. I feel very honored and grateful to be
asked to
stand in this pulpit again, where for more than nine years, I had the
privilege of serving as pastor, not only to those of you who are the
more-or-less permanent members of this church, but to all those for
whom this church was their spiritual home during their sojourns in
Paris for however long or short a time it was. One of our
colleagues who was serving the International Church in Antwerp when we
first came to Paris summed up the experience of being the pastor of an
international congregation very succinctly: “Serving an
international church,” he said, “is like preaching to a
parade.” And he was right. For 150 years, and more
if
you count the years of ministry from 1814 to the official chartering of
the church in 1857, this church has provided a place of spiritual
nurture, cultural enrichment, and the warm embrace of hospitality to a
great parade of people from all walks of life, many denominational or
religious traditions, and a very large number of countries of origin.
Nowhere was that passing parade more visibly evident than in the Bloom
Where You’re Planted program every year, when many newly arrived,
English-speaking expatriates would gather here for three days to learn
how to survive and thrive in Paris.
So it’s great to be back, and to celebrate all that this church
has meant to so many over the years. It’s especially
satisfying to renew so many friendships and relationships that continue
to be important to us.
As I thought about what might be an appropriate word for this
anniversary service, the two texts that have been read this morning
seemed to me to fit the occasion. Both have something
important
to say about the relationship between God’s people and the place
where that people gathers to worship and to engage in their common
mission.
The Old Testament lesson from the Book of the Kings tells the story of
the dedication of King Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem— the
first great edifice of worship that the ancient Israelites built, which
quickly became the focal point of both their national religious and
political life.
The long prayer which King Solomon prays on the occasion of the
dedication of the temple may offer us some points on which to hang our
reflections about who we are as a community of faith, and the
relationship we have to this particular place of worship. The
entire prayer is too long to read this morning (If we read the whole
thing there’d be no time left for a sermon, and then I
wouldn’t have had an good excuse to come back to Paris in
October!). But the parts I’ve selected for reading carry the main
points of the prayer.
There are essentially four key things that this prayer reveals about
the relationship between a worshiping community and their place of
worship, and which I believe are vitally important for understanding
the significant role of the American Church in Paris, not only in its
past, but more importantly, in its present and future mission.
The first is that while God can never be contained within the house in
which his people worship, God nevertheless is pleased to dwell with
them and to make his presence known in specific places. If we
need a single word to describe this it would be the word
PRESENCE. “But will God indeed dwell on the earth?
Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this
house that I have built! Regard your servant’s prayer and
his plea, O Lord my God, heeding the cry and the prayer that your
servant prays to you today, that your eyes may be open night and day
toward this place. Hear the plea of your servant and of your
people Israel when they pray toward this place.”
Solomon’s plea for God’s listening presence among his
people reminds us that while God transcends any human claims, any human
places of worship, any rituals, any religious symbols, any theological
notions or doctrines, or any cultural tradition, yet God attends to his
people when they gather in a sacred place. The memories of the
experience of God in that place creates a powerful sense of identity.
That experience of presence is a vital attraction for those who worship
here at the American Church Sunday after Sunday. This church
exists to be a spiritual home for people on the move. Most
who
pass through these doors are in transition; we are strangers in a
foreign land, and here we discover that we have not left God behind in
our home countries, but when we come here to worship, we discover that
God has been here before we got here, and is here with us
now.
One of the things that I used to hear frequently in our New Member
orientation classes was “When I came to the American Church in
Paris, I felt like I was coming home. The worship here was
just
like back home.” I think I knew what they meant: despite
obvious differences in the style of worship or music from what
“back home” was— whether “back home” was
the United States or New York or Australia or Sierra Leone or Cameroon,
or Presbyterian or Methodist or Baptist or Roman Catholic, the sense of
being part of a community of faith where God was present was the same.
Carol and I attended the National Synod of our denomination this past
June in Hartford, Connecticut. More than 10,000 people were
gathered in the civic arena to hear challenging speakers, to worship
together, and conduct the business of the denomination. As we
were coming out of one of the sessions, we went to the information
table in the lobby of the arena to pick up some brochures, and were
astonished to discover that one of the volunteers at the table was a
woman who had been part of the parade here at the American Church about
ten years ago. She’d come to Paris following a painful
divorce. Feeling lost and alone, she came here to worship and
even though she was only here with us for about six months, during that
time, her experience of God’s presence in the community of
believers in this house was an extremely important part of her healing
process. I’m sure that most of you here this morning could
tell your own story of what that experience of God’s presence in
this place has meant to you in your own journey. Those of us
who
were here in 2001 following the terrorist attacks in New York and
Washington will vividly remember the strength we drew from spending
time just sitting in this sanctuary, and watching hundreds of people
from all over Paris come here to light candles and pray and reassure
their hearts in God’s presence.
The second thing we learn from Solomon’s prayer is that the house
where God is worshiped is a place where God’s people gather to do
the special work they are called to do. The church building
is a
workplace. What is that special work of the people?
It is
the work of praying for one another and the world. A single
word
that describes this work is INTERCESSION. “If there is
famine in the land, if there is plague, blight, mildew, locust, or
caterpillar; if their enemy besieges them in any of their cities;
whatever plague, whatever sickness there is; whatever prayer, whatever
plea there is from any individual or from all your people, all knowing
the afflictions of their own hearts so that they stretch out their
hands toward this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling place,
forgive, act, and render to all whose hearts you know.”
What a powerful description of the work of the people of God!
When we gather and read the scriptures, sing hymns, preach and pray for
one another and for the world, we are partners in God’s work of
salvation, or as our ancestral Jewish tradition refers to it so
appropriately, we are assisting God in repairing and restoring the
world. There’s all too plentiful evidence that the world
needs repairing and restoring, isn’t there? And it
is
both our duty and our high calling to intercede before God.
That
is the work we have to do in this house.
In the third place, the house of God is not a proprietary or exclusive
club for a select group of people; it is a place to offer weary
travelers HOSPITALITY. “When a foreigner, who is not of
your people, comes from a distant land because of your name– for
they shall hear of your great name– when a foreigner comes and
prays toward this house, then hear in heaven and do according to all
that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the peoples of the earth
may know your name and revere you.”
During the height of Ghandi’s non-violent campaign for
independence for India, the Methodist missionary E. Stanley
Jones, was puzzled by what he perceived as a rather anti-Christian tone
in his campaign. So he asked him on one occasion,
“Mr. Ghandi, why is it that you seem to be so opposed to
our Christ.” Ghandi replied, “Oh, I’m not
opposed to your Christ; I love your Christ. It’s just that
so few of you Christians act anything like your Christ.”
And Ghandi had reason to say that; many years earlier, he had tried to
attend a worship service in an all-white church in South Africa, and
had been physically manhandled and thrown out by members of the
congregation who couldn’t open their doors to a person of color.
This is the real point of Jesus’ action in driving the
moneychangers out of the Temple, according to St. Mark’s
account of that incident. It is not that people were doing
business within sacred space; it was that that space had become
exclusive space, space where only those Israelites who had the money to
buy the sacrificial animals could get inside the doors, and
Gentiles— non-Jews— couldn’t get in at all. So
when Jesus drives the animal sellers and moneychangers out, he says,
“It is written, ‘My house is a house of prayer for all
nations, but you have made it a den of thieves.”
God’s house is, and always has been, a house for all nations.
In a day when whole denominations are tearing themselves apart over who
is to be welcomed into the fellowship or into the ministry of the
church and who is to be excluded, we would do well to remember that the
house of God is just that— the house of God, and that from the
beginning, it is a place where strangers, where foreigners, where the
outsiders— which includes most of us here— are to be
welcomed and invited to sit down at the family table.
In international congregations like this one, our very faces testify to
this truth. The old song we sang in Sunday School, “Jesus
loves the little children, all the children of the world; Red and
yellow, black and white, all are precious in his sight; Jesus loves the
little children of the world,” is a song that takes on very
tangible shape in this house, doesn’t it? Being a place of
welcome to the foreigner, the stranger, is what international
congregations are chiefly about. It is, in fact, the aspect I
miss the most back in the United States.
One of the most meaningful and positive memories I have of my time here
as pastor was at a luncheon of the African fellowship after church one
Sunday, when several members said to me, “Pastor, you know that
in Africa, we all belong to different tribes, and many of our societies
back home are divided by tribalism. Well, here in this fellowship, we
come from a variety of different tribes, but we’ve decided that
since we’re all here together, we’re just going to think of
ourselves as all members of one tribe— the African tribe of the
American Church in Paris.” I hope and pray that is still
true. Gospel hospitality has to be our normal way of life—
a hospitality so deep that it bridges the gulfs, not only between
tribes or ethnic origins, but the gulfs of doctrinal differences,
sexual orientation, gender differences and political
philosophies. As St. Paul put it so simply, “Welcome one
another, as God in Christ, has welcomed you.”
Finally, the house of God is to be a place of TRANSFORMATION.
Solomon prays, “If your people sin against you– for there
is no one who does not sin– yet if they come to their senses and
repent and plead with you, saying, ‘We have sinned and have done
wrong; we have acted wickedly’; if they repent with all their
heart and soul and pray to you and the house that I have built for your
name, then hear in heaven your dwelling place their prayer and maintain
their cause and forgive your people and all their transgressions and
grant them compassion.”
Someone has said that the church is not a haven for saints but a
hospital for sinners. This house is a place for
saints-in-the-making, but the emphasis is on the
“-in-the-making.” When we forget that “there is
no one who does not sin,” then we forget that we ourselves would
not have a place at the table of the Lord were it not for the grace and
mercy of God.
None of us knows what deep hurts, struggles, or pains are represented
in the lives of the people who sit beside us every Sunday.
Each
week, all of us dressed up in our Sunday best, singing hymns and
praying the prayers, looking for all the world like saints, are in
fact, people who are struggling with disintegrating marriages,
difficult relationships with our children, fighting against a variety
of addictions and compulsive behaviors that defeat us time and time
again, people who are engaging in business practices that go against
all our ethical principles and which create tremendous internal
conflicts– we’re all just a bunch of redeemed sinners on
our way to heaven and that is why we come week after week to pray and
sing and bear witness and confess our failures and seek forgiveness
from one another and from God. How could we live if we did
not? Forgiveness is something that all of us need and
something
we always need to extend to one another. It is only as we
forgive
one another that we experience the transforming forgiveness of God.
So we have this house by the grace of God and the generosity, the hard
work and sacrificial love of many people over the years. It
is
here that you will find your source of energy and spiritual power to be
God’s people. It is here that you will discern God’s
presence among you, here that you will discover your true identity as
God’s own people, here where you will engage in the work of
interceding for the world, here you will practice hospitality to the
stranger, and here where you will find transformation and healing for
yourself. It is my prayer for you that God will continue to
bless
you in this place, the place of his name, and that God will use this
house of prayer for all nations to bring great good, not only to you
who are here now, but to all those in the parade who have yet to come
through your doors.
