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VOL.
6, NO. 43
TREASURE
For where your treasure
is, there your heart will be also. –
Luke 12
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Scripture: Hebrews 11
1.
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do
not see.
2.
This is what the ancients were commended for.
3.
By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command,
so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
8.
By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive
as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was
going.
9.
By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a
foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with
him of the same promise.
10.
For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose
architect and builder is God.
11.
By faith Abraham, even though he was past age--and Sarah herself was
barren--was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who
had made the promise.
12.
And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as
numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.
13.
All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did
not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a
distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.
14.
People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of
their own.
15.
If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have
had opportunity to return.
16.
Instead, they were longing for a better country--a heavenly one.
Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city
for them.
Luke 12
32.
"Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased
to give you the kingdom.
33.
Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for
yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be
exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.
34.
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
35.
"Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning,
36.
like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so
that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him.
37.
It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching
when he comes. I tell you the truth, he will dress himself to serve, will have
them recline at the table and will come and wait on them.
38.
It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even
if he comes in the second or third watch of the night.
39.
But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour
the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.
40.
You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour
when you do not expect him."
W
Gold fever brought people to the American west in search of
instant wealth. Some found it, others went home without it. But when the gold
ran out, most stayed because they discovered a magnificent banquet for their
descendants and
for generations to come that was far more valuable than the gold that brought
them there.
♫ MUSIC: SHENANDOAH ♫
GOLD RUSH PASTORS
In January of 1848, James Marshall had a
work crew camped on the American River at Coloma near Sacramento. The crew was building a
sawmill for John Sutter. On the cold, clear morning of January 24, Marshall found a few tiny gold
nuggets.
Word soon
leaked out, first to the rest of California, and then to the world. Thus began one of the
largest human migrations in history as a half-million people from around the
world descended upon California, drawn by “gold fever” in
search of instant wealth.
In another dozen years, towns would be
born along rivers, in sea ports, and in places where agriculture could be
supported.
In another dozen years the railroads would
bring settlers and their families, as the ownership of the American west was
about to change hands.
How it changed hands, from the Indians to
the white men is a sad story in itself.
DEPARTURE SERMONS
The Protestant ministers of the East Coast
were generally suspicious of the Gold Rush in California. In the departure sermons
they preached to groups of parishioners before they headed west for Northern California, by and large, they warned
their young men and women not to lose themselves in Egyptian or Babylonian
bondage in California. Their words were generally
unheeded.
They warned:
·
that the quest for gold can do horrible things to a person,
·
that the Indians to whom the land belonged would be a problem at the
very least, not to mention the violent ambitions of the very people with whom
they traveled.
·
They knew about the lawless, faithless, and often heartless shanty
towns that spring up at the edge of civilization. These were rough towns along
the trails where the covered wagons took families, and in ports where the ships
and their crews stopped after the end of a long journey. It was in the sea ports that weary travelers
cut loose to raise a lot of hell. In the 1840’s, one of those intractable ports
was San Francisco, gateway to Northern California.
·
The Protestant ministers who traveled to California in 1849, 1850, and 1851
found themselves in a maelstrom, in a gold-crazed world of inflated prices and
misplaced values. Disease and death were everywhere, including the ministers
own families. In one ghastly week, Dr. Jean Leonhard ver Mehr of Grace Church, San Francisco, buried four of his five
daughters, dead from diphtheria. Twice, the Reverend James Woods of First Presbyterian, Stockton, conducted
impromptu funeral services in a brothel.
That was just a year before Rev. James Woods came to Santa Rosa to establish the First
Presbyterian Church.
♫ MUSIC: SIMPLE GIFTS ♫
But these gold rush ministers quickly
created the busy parish life of an active church. The Reverend Albert Williams of First
Presbyterian, San Francisco, for
example, performed 150 weddings between 1849 and 1852.
San Francisco attracted many first-rate
ministerial talents, figures such as Samuel Hopkins Willey of Howard Street
Presbyterian; Methodist William Taylor of the Seamen’s Bethel; Bishop William
Ingraham Kip of Grace Cathedral; Timothy Dwight Hunt of First Congregational;
and William Anderson Scott of Calvary Presbyterian. Each of these ministers
brought to San Francisco rich and
complex inner worlds and cultural visions, which they sought to externalize.
Timothy Dwight Hunt, for example, urged
his parishioners “to make California the Massachusetts of the Pacific.”
William Scott celebrated the age of
progressive urbanism he saw dawning in San Francisco, “an Athenian time of trade
and culture.” Almost single-handedly, this Presbyterian minister founded and
edited The Pacific Expositor, more
than fifty pages per issue, sent to subscribers throughout the country. The
paper was based on strong cultural premises, with no apologies for the
frontier, the newness of the region, the overnight nature of the city.
Called to Cavalry Presbyterian in 1862,
Charles Wadsworth of Philadelphia is typical of the second
generation of ministers who came not so much to a frontier as to a province.
Whereas in the 1850’s
Scott sought
to direct emerging energies,
Wadsworth in 1868 could thank God for a city “not yet twenty years old, with a
population as large and an architecture surpassing all that Paris could show
after a thousand years of progress, and all around, spreading away in matchless
loveliness, these valleys, where our
merchant-princes even now delight to
plant gardens like Eden and to build palaces to embosom a new social life and
enshrine
coming types of art fairer than the Greek.”
♫ MUSIC: JUST A CLOSER
WALK ♫
SANTA ROSA
Rev.
James Woods was born in Massachusetts. After completing his seminary training, he served
churches in Alabama. Then in
1849, the Presbyterian mission board called him to serve in California. So Woods
sailed around the Horn of South America, and stayed for a period of time in San
Francisco, prior to the stepping into
his first western pulpit in Stockton.
In October 1855, six years before Lincoln
became president in 1861, Rev. Woods brought religious services to the
courthouse that sat at the
center of a small frontier city, Santa Rosa.
Over time, this
courthouse congregation would become the First Presbyterian Church
of Santa
Rosa
according to the record of Presbytery of the Redwoods.
People came
from ten miles away for religious services and education. A man named Cyrus
Alexander had been a mountain man, but now he and his family came to the church
from a fertile valley north of the city where Alexander lived, and had planted
some crops. John Treadwell from Santa
Rosa became Rev. Woods’ Sunday School superintendent.
The people living on the Santa Rosa
plain had been hoping for a Protestant church that would minister to their
families for a long time. In 1855 they finally had one.
♫ MUSIC: SIMPLE GIFTS ♫
You all know that I have given you a very
sanitized and superficial version of the Protestant ministers and the
challenges of the churches of Northern California in the 1850’s.
Why? Because our church is an heir to that
historic legacy. In fact, Church of the Roses resembles the frontier churches
more than do the more established churches in our community. We are hungry for
the Lord’s work, obstacles are many, we need each other more than ever before,
and we are scrappy and inventive because we have to be to survive.
Are we part
of organized religion? Well, some days are better organized than others. And
why do we keep at it?
A BANQUET OF GOOD THINGS
God has invited us to a banquet of good
things. They are spiritual things that are more valuable than gold, and we are
hungry to enjoy them. Yet there are some who stay at home, who do not accept
God’s invitation; they find excuses, they do not join the battle, and they do
not make the trip to the Promised Land with us. In the end, it is their own
choice.
Jesus frequently compared his invitation
to the kingdom of God to a generous landlord who
invited everyone he could think of to banquet in his home. As I read this
lesson to you, think about the invitations you have heard from Jim, Amy and
Karen over the last three weeks. Our banquet is tonight.
16. Jesus
replied: "A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many
guests.
17. At the time of the banquet he sent his servant
to tell those who had been invited, `Come, for everything is now ready.'
18. "But
they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, `I have just bought a
field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.'
19. "Another
said, `I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I'm on my way to try them out.
Please excuse me.'
20. "Still
another said, `I just got married, so I can't come.'
21. "The
servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house
became angry and ordered his servant, `Go out quickly into the streets and
alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the
lame.'
22. “‘Sir,’
the servant said, ‘what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.’
23. "Then
the master told his servant, `Go out to the roads and country lanes and make
them come in, so that my house will be full.
24. I tell you, not one of those men who were
invited will get a taste of my banquet.'" Luke 14:16-24
The message of our stewardship drive has
been profoundly simple. We have invited you to a family dinner at the church.
It will be a banquet, and the banquet will be filled with good things. And
frankly it will be a little bit fancy.
Our stewardship banquet comes right out of
the scripture. God has invited us to a banquet. It is a sit down meal and you
will be served; all you have to do is come. There will be no trickery. We will
save discussions of the budget for another time. We will not be making
impassioned speeches about our programs, our missions, our staff, and how much
money we have in the bank. Our invitation is like the owner of the house who did
not invite the people to discuss his crops, his family, nor the furnishings of
his house. He just wanted them to join him in the celebration of all that the
land had to offer.
That is our plan tonight.
Not only do we plan to share dinner with
you, but Betty Witchey and I are going to play music for you. The choir is
going to sing to you, the children are going to sing to you, and the youth
group has a little skit. Althea will play for us while we eat and visit.
Pledge cards will be on the table, or you
may bring the one sent from the office. We tried to make it as easy as
possible..
While we have much to celebrate, we have
highlighted just one program this year. It is the same program celebrated by
Chris Smith in the Press Democrat three days ago. And it is the program honored
the week before by the Board of Education of Santa Rosa. They said we are doing
a good job feeding breakfast to seventy or more kids each morning. They said
other churches should follow that example.
And that is the church we want to be.
We have a treasure in this church… don’t
we.
Our treasure is not our building, not even
the money we give away. Our treasure is that for fifty-five years, people have
gathered here to worship God and be involved in God’s kingdom. We have been of
service to God in our community.
You and I are part of that treasure. The
gold in California is the faith God has lead us to, and yet it is as
delicate as a flower and as temporary as one generation. Our memory is also our
hope.
Maybe you came to California for gold. The gold is in
the ground. But treasure is in your heart. The most important treasure in California is sitting beside you. Our
gold is in the faith of God’s people.
There is still so much to be done for those people, for their children,
and for our future.
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
-- Robert Frost
The gold is not the gift,
The
people are not the gift
The
faith of the people
That
is the gift outright.
-- John
Cushman
And so…
A certain man prepared a great banquet and invited many guests. Jim and
Amy and Karen and I have represented the man. He sent his helpers to tell those
who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ Thanks to the people in the office, to Marge
Snater on the phone, and to Dolores Borchers and her friends in the kitchen, to
the sextons and volunteers. Thanks to our musicians who will inspire us
tonight.
And they prepared the banquet so that they
could enjoy each other and think about God. I’ve asked my friend, Frank
Hamilton to remind us about God tonight.
So do not
find excuses like the people in the parable, but come join us for a celebration
of our frontier church on the western edge where our county began.
Presbyterians were here when California became a state, and they
are part of our future.
This is not an invitation I am ashamed to
make, and it is an offer you should not refuse. It is a simple gift. Come and eat,
and visit, and sing with us.
The table is ready; let the banquet begin.
♫ CLOSING MUSIC: JUST A CLOSER WALK ♫
(The music listed
during the sermon was beautifully played on the clavinova keyboard by Althea
Wright who will be our new organist beginning in November.)
Dr. John H. Cushman
Presbyterian Church of the Roses
2500 Patio Court
Santa Rosa, CA 95405
October
22, 2006
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