We’ve reached a milestone, a real milestone. Seventy years old. That’s a good long while. That is, in fact, a lifetime, according to one of the Scriptures I’m going to read, the typical, average lifetime of a human being. And it’s not too bad for an institution like a church.
We’ve been here, or somebody has been here, in this community, preaching the Gospel and praying and serving and being church for seventy years. That’s a long time.
Oh, I know there are others who can beat the record by a long shot. About a month ago we hosted a preaching conference here in this room, and one of the teachers was the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia. He told us that his congregation had been in business for 290 years. Still, for you and me, seventy years is a lifetime, almost, and it’s hard to get our minds around that much activity and history and relationship.
As a matter of fact, it helps me to get a grasp of how long and yet how short seventy years is when I think back to an experience my wife and I had a few years ago. She and I were spending about three weeks touring Britain, getting her accent refurbished and doing all the tourist things. And one day as we were leaving the Tower of London, happily with our heads still on our shoulders, I looked across the road and saw an old parish church, and on the wall of that church a large poster. The poster read, "Jesus Christ has been worshipped in this building for 300 years, on this site for 900 years, and in Britain for 1300 years. Isn’t it about time you got started?" What a history, what a tremendous heritage! It makes me reflect that if we are today celebrating seventy years of ministry, well, as the title of my message last week put it, "You ain’t seen nothin’ yet".
Wouldn’t you like to know a few of the things that had happened over nine hundred years? Wouldn’t it be fascinating to get a picture of the history and the style of such a congregation? How many sermons were preached there in nine hundred years? How many Gospel birds do you think those folks have consumed? I don’t know whether dinner on the grounds was done in the 11th century!
But this I can tell you for sure: they more than likely had a few fights, more than likely they have their share of conflict; my guess is that it has not been nine centuries of uninterrupted bliss, because human beings are just not like that. Human beings struggle and fight; human beings, even Christians, or maybe I should say especially Christians, fight. They fight about church because church is important to them. You don’t fight about things that don’t matter, and so if Christians squabble instead of living in harmony, sometimes that’s all to the good, sometimes that just means, "We care too much to stand by and shut up". So I imagine they fought at this ancient parish in London.
Any lifetime has its conflicts, doesn’t it? Any lifetime has its low moments, and I think that’s what the Psalmist is saying to us in the first text I’m going to read, the first text that contains the number seventy. The psalmist looks at a seventy year life span and is more than a little dismayed by the way it seems to add up!
Ps 90: 1-4, 10-12: Isn’t that pessimistic? Isn’t that negative? Just think about it: the years of our life are threescore and ten – that I S seventy, for those who need a little help with the math – yet their span is but toil and trouble. Very pessimistic.
And yet, you see, what the Psalmist wants us to do is to look realistically at our lives over our threescore and ten years, or, if by reason of strength, fourscore or more; he wants us to look back over these years and to learn from them. “So teach us to number our days, and get a heart of wisdom." Learn from seventy years of living.
You see, one of the hardest things to do is to take a realistic look at our own histories, whether we are talking about our individual lives or the life of an institution like the church. We just don’t want to tell the truth to each other, out loud, up front.
When did you ever go to a funeral where they told the whole truth? No, funerals are a time to remember fondly and maybe to think about somebody’s peculiarities, but with a light touch, with a smile, but never with a frown, never with hammer blows. Do you know the story about the preacher who was burying the town bully, and because custom says you do not speak ill of the dead, about all the preacher could do was to say, “Well, he wasn’t the absolutely meanest man I ever knew.”
We just don’t like to tell the whole truth about people toward the end of their lives, and we don’t like to tell the truth about churches after threescore and ten, either. Yet is there something in this Scripture for us today? "The years of our life together have been threescore and ten •• and their span is toil and trouble"
Threescore and ten years of living and sometimes conflicting might, for example, teach us some things about being a missionary church. We have always kept to a missionary stance, at least officially; we have always prided ourselves on doing things for others in need, but not without conflict. And we need to learn from our threescore and ten years of experience and get a heart of wisdom about missions. Mrs. Myers gave me not too long ago a journal in which the history of the Margaret Pearce Sunday School class is recorded; it also has much of the early history of the church. One memorable entry in the journal: within a few months after the organization of the church, it was agreed that a Woman’s Missionary Society be formed, missions at the very beginning of the life of the church, you see, and, says the journal entry, every woman of the church except one joined that society. Maybe we’ve always had missions in our hearts, but we’ve also always had the independent-minded person who would say, "Not me" to missions ventures. And that is still true today; as we move toward an era in which we can use our properties, our resources, our energies, for missions, I know we are not going to agree completely. But let’s at least learn from our missionary history over threescore and ten years and get a heart of wisdom.
Or again, we need to learn from our threescore and ten years something about racial reconciliation, something about being a house of prayer for all people. Recently I read a book about black Baptist history, and the author, Leroy Fitts, stated that the year 1919 was the worst year in American history for racial conflict, that in the year 1919 there were 25 major race riots across the United States. I have to wonder what that little band of white folks, constituting this church, knew about that, felt about that. But isn’t it a fascinating historical coincidence that in the very year that was a low, low point in American race relations, a church was being founded, which, in the providence of God, would become a witness for reconciliation? To God be the glory, great things he hath done.
But some of us still have problems with our multiracial style, and we need to learn from our threescore and ten to gain a heart of wisdom.
Seventy: toil and trouble, maybe so, but the chance to learn and gain a heart of wisdom.
This leads me to the second time in which the number seventy appears, in Matthew. One day the boisterous Peter, who probably needed to be forgiven more than he needed to forgive, asked Jesus, "How often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven"
Seventy times seven is a lot of forgiveness; it really means open-ended forgiveness. Just keep on forgiving. The key to this teaching of Jesus lies in the way Peter asked the question, “How often shall my brother sin against me?" My brother sin against me. Jesus says, if it is your brother or your sister, then there is to be no limit to your forgiveness. Seventy times seven.
In our threescore years and ten a lot of things have happened among brothers and sisters that need forgiving. You cannot have hundreds of people together, working and talking and just being together, without misunderstanding and conflict. But if we are brothers and sisters, then seventy years of being church is going to call for seventy times seven measures of forgiveness.
Some five and a half to six years ago now you went through a particular period of conflict. You argued about a lot of things, you got tangled up in power plays, you fought about worship style, you squabbled over such things as how money would be spent, and you gave walking papers to a pastor, an associate pastor, and a minister of music. I am told that some got into name-calling, some became very suspicious of others. It’s part of the threescore and ten; it may not be what we print in annual anniversary histories, but it happened.
And today as we come to the end of threescore and ten I want to plead with everyone who still harbors some fear, every one who still feels anger: I want to urge every one who still experiences resentment about what was said or done – I want to urge every one of us to forgive. Do not say to me, well, I am still waiting for signs of repentance. I hear the Lord say, when your brother/sister sins against you, just forgive. Seventy times seven, forgive.
I am so serious about our need to do this, because I still hear among some of our folks the echoes of those days, and I still hear some fears coming out after five, six years. I am so serious about the need for our forgiving seventy times seven, that I am making this proposal: if every one who needs to forgive will today do that forgiving, will put all those resentments in the past, then I too will put discussion of this problem in the past. I will quit talking about it.
You see, I’ve found that when people say, "Tell me about Takoma Park Church" I find myself saying, It’s a church that went through a serious time of conflict in 1983-1984. I find myself telling what I know of that history, and I find myself using all that happened in those days to explain where we are now and why we do some of the things we do. I talk about that history, even though I did not live through it.
But I propose to you today that if we can find it in our hearts to do some genuine loving forgiving, if we can search one another out and look one another in the eye, and say, openly, forthrightly, "I’ve held negative thoughts about you, but you are my brother I forgive you … you are my sister, I will forgive and love you ," then as your pastor I will shut up about the whole thing. I will never again publicly speak about that period of conflict, because forgiveness means putting it all behind us, doesn’t it?
And now for the third seventy. This is the one I’ve been waiting for. This is the great one. But we had to experience the first two seventies before we could let the Lord of the church give us this one.
From the prophecy of Jeremiah: the prophet is speaking to a people under duress, a people in exile in Babylon. And he is trying to assure them that their nation is not going to go down the tubes. Listen to this "seventy" promise:
Jeremiah 29:4-7, 10-14a
For thus says the Lord, when seventy years are completed,
I will fulfill to you my promise, for I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
My friends, I cannot know the future of this church or what the next seventy years will bring, but I can believe the promise of the Lord of the church that He knows the plans that He has for us, plans for a future and a hope.
The second seventy years will doubtless bring turmoil, just as some of the first seventy did; but remember, we argue because church is worth arguing about. We fight because the Kingdom matters above all things.
I cannot perceive what this church will look like on Anniversary Sunday in the year 2059, and I do not know whether you will want your 121 year old pastor to preach that day, but I believe that the Lord who moved in the hearts of a group of folks seventy years ago, the Lord who brought you into this house of faith today, that same Lord knows the plans that He has for then, and those plans are to give a future filled with hope.
Threescore and ten years from now, if we are faithful to that future, we will have taken so seriously the community where we are planted, that we will be working to care for all sorts of human needs: for the hungry, the homeless, the confused, the lonely, to give them a future and a hope.
If we see the future our God knows for us, in another threescore and ten we’ll have a network of witness so strong and so pervasive that in every corner of this community little groups of believers will be sharing good news, teaching the scriptures, bringing men and women into a saving knowledge of Christ, so that they might have an eternal future, an eternal hope.
This Lord who is working toward a future that we can only dimly see may yet in the next seventy bring us to the place where we would become stewards of our resources, giving, sharing, offering our buildings and our dollars, meeting needs, responding to and caring for not only black and white, but also Asians and Hispanics and young and old and healthy and sick and all…all who come within these gates.
And, praise God, can you not see: when seventy years are completed, I will visit you, he says, and fulfill my promise, for I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
The years of our lives: the life of this church has been threescore and ten, and despite sane days of toil and trouble, that’s not the whole story, for we are going to forgive one another seventy times seven, we’re going to get ready for the next seventy. Hang on; for if Jesus Christ has been worshipped in this place for seventy years and will be during the next seventy as well, isn’t it time we all got on board with Him?!
