CONSECRATION SERVICE

Scripture: Joshua 4:1-8; Matthew 7:24-27

Bishop J. Lawrence McCleskey

Good Afternoon. I’ve been around churches a long time and I know what some of you are thinking: Doesn’t he know what time it is? I do. I’m grateful to be here and I’m not going to take a lot of time, but I’m going to ask you to give me about ten minutes. And then we won’t hold these young people and the meal up too long. We’ve done all the important things except for the consecration, and what a joy it is to participate in them and to see your appreciation for what your leaders have given to this church in this particular effort. I celebrate that and express to them as well, my own gratitude for their commitment and my gratitude to all of you for what you mean in this city of Lenoir as this church continues to make its witness.

It’s good to be here with you. It’s good to be here with John and with Liz and one of the joys that Margaret and I have experienced over the years of our ministry has been watching Cousin John. I know that you have enjoyed it for these six years. We are so grateful for him and share with you the joy of his accomplishments and leadership in this place.

Now I want to read just one of the passages of scripture. You read the other one later. I’m going to read the one from Joshua, from the 4th chapter of the Book of Joshua, the first 8 verses which describe a time in the life of the Israelite people when they have come to the end of their forty years wandering in the wilderness and they are ready to cross over the Jordan into the Promised Land towards which they had been journeying all these forty years.

Just about two hours drive west of here is a lovely valley just over the Cataloochee Ridge, down in the Smoky Mountain National Park, known as the Cataloochee Valley. Some of you may have been there. You have to drive over about eight miles of dirt road to get there from the east. You have to go over about sixteen miles of dirt road to get there from the west, up over Mt. Sterling and down into that valley. One of the trails in that valley passes the home place of a man named Carson Messer, who over a hundred and fifty years ago, when that area was being settled, took his family there, cleared land, built a cabin, raised crops, raised a family. He was one of the families that settled that lovely valley which is now part of our National Park. About all that remains of the Carson Messer home place now are a few logs from the old barn, foundation stones of the log house, and then, just a bit further up the trail, are the remnants of a rock wall, built when they pulled the rocks together to clear the land in order to plant their crops. The fields are now grown up with hardwood trees. It’s been a long time since Carson Messer farmed that land, but he left his mark. He left a wall. He left the wall as a symbol of his contribution to that valley — a symbol of his life and work.

I’ve hiked the trail by that wall many times and every time I walk along side it, I can’t help but think of all the living that those rocks have seen. And I have thought to myself on more occasions than one: what a story those stones could tell if they could speak. And yet, you know, stones do speak. They do tell stories. It was Shakespeare who talked about sermons in stones. And you look at them and know just a bit of the story of that valley, and those stones stacked there in a rock wall beside the trail speak volumes of the life that has lived there.

Which brings me to some other stones, and we are gathered inside them today: the stones that formed this church, this sanctuary, your family life and activities building, your educational building; the stones that are the walls and the foundations of the First United Church in Lenoir.

I often think that if bricks that come to build churches could think about it, they would give great thanks that they didn’t just end up in any old building someplace, but that they were blessed to be the bricks that build a church, the stones inside which we gather.

What do these stones mean? What do they mean to persons like yourselves? What do they mean to those who, before you, had been part of the life of this church? What will they mean, as has already been referred to, for generations to come, to those who will be part of the life of this church? What do these stones mean?

You heard me read that passage from Joshua that talks about how the Hebrew people, as they were crossing over into the Promised Land, at Joshua’s instruction, gathered up stones out of the river bed when the waters were held back — the second time that had happened for these Israelites — the first time when they had left Egypt. And now when they are crossing into the Promised Land, the waters are held back.

Joshua said, “‘Pick up stones,’ God said, ‘and take them over to the other side with you.’” and he built an alter there. He built an alter there. He raised an alter that is called the Stone of Help because he said, “You will remember, hitherto, the Lord has helped us.”

You know that hymn, “Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I’ve come,”? Did you ever wonder what an Ebenezer is? You know what an Ebenezer is? It’s a word for a “stone of help.”

“Here I raise this stone of help, this monument of help, hitherto, the Lord has helped us,” they said, when they built that alter there.

In the magnificent journey from their slavery in Egypt through the forty years in the wilderness, now into the Promised Land, and what did they do? They gathered together some stones and they built an alter. And Joshua said to them, “Now when in time to come, your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ they look at that alter we have build as we have come into this land and say, ‘What is that all about? What do these stones mean?’”, he said, “Tell them that the Lord helped us; that the Lord helped us through the wilderness; that the Lord guided us through all the dangers of these forty years and brought us finally to this place of promise and celebration.”

Couldn’t that same thing be said of the stones that are this church. when your children ask in times to come, “What do these stones mean?” or when people who drive through Lenoir and see this building standing on this corner and ask, “What is that all about? What is that place? What do those stones mean? Anybody know what happens there?” Or when people you know find out you are associated with this church and say, “Tell me something about the bricks that have been raised on that corner, the bricks you call First United Methodist Church in Lenoir. Tell me about them. What does that mean?”

When in times to come, your children ask, “What do these stones mean?” oh, you can tell them a lot of things. You can tell them about your own wilderness journeys. Unless I miss my guess, you’ve been through some, and if you haven’t, you will; you’re just too young yet to experience the wilderness as life finally brings it to us. Or, unless I miss my guess, somebody here this morning is in the midst of the wilderness right now, some wilderness of some personal difficulty, crisis, challenge, illness, loss, pain that you are living through at this very moment and you come to this church because you find in the community of people and in the presence of God the sustaining grace and strength to help you through the wilderness.

When your children ask, “What are those stones on that corner all about?” tell them, “Oh, they are a symbol of the God who has taken us through our own wilderness journeys.”

Tell them that within these stones is a place in which children and young people are nurtured in faith and learn the values of our Christian life and faith and commit themselves to a faith journey that can sustain them and direct them and guide them all the days of their lives.

When someone asks, “Tell me about this place, these stones,” tell them that within these stones you receive here through the blessed sacraments the reminder that we are God’s chosen children as we remember with the baptism this morning and the reminder that we are nurtured and nourished by the sacred meal which symbolizes the gift of God to us in our Lord Jesus Christ. Tell them that that’s what these stones are; they are the place in which we gather to be reminded and to be nurtured.

When someone asks, “What are these stones on this corner that you call First United Methodist Church; what are they all about?”, tell them that this is the place where, I’m sure some of you here, or your children, or members of your family, have come and committed yourselves to one another in the sacred act of marriage before this alter, establishing a home in which children will be raised and nurtured in the Christian life.

When you are asked, “What do these stones mean? Tell us about this place you call First United Methodist Church,” tell them that this is the place where you bring your loved ones at the ends of their earthly journeys and here in this place and in this community of God’s people you commit them into God’s eternal keeping and care.

I don’t think there are any other buildings in our society that witness as much of life as do church buildings. The whole span, from being brought here as infants and baptized; being brought here as young adults and taught and nurtured and married; coming here with families for strength and focus and guidance; coming here to learn how it is we are to go out from here and, as one of your leaders said just a moment ago, be in this community the kind of people and the kind of church that Christ wants us to be; coming here at the end of life to be reminded as we are given into God’s eternal care that there is, beyond this life, the life for which we all hope and that promise which we all expect.

Do you know any stones, any buildings in our society that see more of life than one like this? I don’t. What you have done, what we consecrate, what we recognize, all of that — so rich, so significant, so broad in its application for the life and needs of this community and of the world.

So when in years to come, think about this part of it now, long after every one of us here — everyone of us here — is gone, I expect this place will still be here, nurturing, guiding and sustaining God’s people, God’s Church, and the witness to the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, in Lenoir and in the world. That’s what you have been about. That’s what you have built for. That’s what these stones mean. Thanks be to God.

Let us pray: O God, we give You thanks for the privilege that is ours of being part of the life of the ministry and the legacy of this place. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.