Church Anniversary: Where We Have Been and Where We Are Going (Matthew 1:1-17)
By John P. Rossing
You have a responsibility to your young people, to prepare them for what they will face in life. You have a responsibility to your old people, to help meet their needs in a changing world. You have a responsibility to the community around you, to proclaim the good news of salvation and to be examples of Christ's love. Let the stories of faith, commitment, and service that are told today as we recite the history of this congregation strengthen you, prepare you, and propel you into the next century of your ministry in this place.
And the question "Where are we going?" has a still greater significance, because as Christians we know that our history has an eternal direction, an ultimate goal. In the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ the world has been set toward its final moment, in which it will be both finished and begun anew. We -- along with Abraham and Sarah, Boaz and Ruth, Joseph and Mary, and hundreds of generations of the sons and daughters of God -- are part of the history that flows into God's own eternity.
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One of the most important theological books of the last twenty-five years is Theology of Hope, by Jurgen Moltmann. "From first to last," wrote Moltmann, "Christianity is ... hope, forward looking and forward moving." The promise that the future is ultimately in God's hands is "the glow that suffuses everything here in the dawn of an expected new day." It is our faith in the end of time that directs our journey through time. (Theology of Hope. New York: Harper & Row, 1967, p. 16.)
The Church is the first-fruits of the Kingdom of God, the first dawning of God's presence in the world in our day. Its purpose is both to remember God's faithfulness, kindness, mercy, and providence through our history up to now, and to move us and our world toward the goal God has given us.
So during this anniversary celebration we stand at a place like the place from which Matthew told the story of Jesus. We look to our history -- the history of God's people, of the Christian Church, of this congregation -- remembering who we are and where we have been. And at the same time we look to the future, remembering what we have been put here to do and where we are going. Our history is always leading us somewhere; our glory as God's children is always yet to come.