Annual State of the Church Address

Habakkuk 2:1-3

It’s my distinct pleasure this morning to introduce some of you, at least, to the very small and seemingly insignificant book of Habakkuk, called by some Hā’bu’kuk. 

However you decide we should pronounce its name, you probably won’t hear it often.  Habakkuk is a little tiny book located right near the end of the Hebrew scripture, in part of the Bible commonly referred to as The Minor Prophets.  Because of its size and its difficult message, Habakkuk doesn’t come up too often in worship.  I would say, though, that that’s a shame; it’s worth another look.  Today a portion of Habakkuk appears in the Lectionary readings, giving us the opportunity to take a closer look.

Habakkuk was a real person, and his Hebrew name meant “embracer.” Modern scholarship would say that he was a cult prophet.  That is, instead of wandering around the streets, living in the wilderness, stirring up trouble and yelling about repentance, Habakkuk was an employee of the temple, the main religious institution of the Jewish people.  Part of the reason we believe this is that his book includes markings for musical accompaniments, suggesting that he wrote it to be used as liturgy in worship—maybe like sermon notes or a sermon manuscript.

Because he was a cult prophet, Habakkuk knew the people to whom he was preaching.  He was intimately involved in helping them practice their faith.  He was not shouting an anonymous message from a street corner; instead he was teaching and living a message among the people who made up his community.  Maybe that’s why his name was “embracer.”  He was not a condemner; he was a leader and a shepherd.

But . . . he was still a prophet, and in the ancient prophetic tradition that means that he was called by God to bring a message to his community, a message that spoke of something they needed to hear but couldn’t always see all that clearly in the circumstances in which they found themselves. 

In other words, sometimes the message of the prophet seemed strange, out of reach, unrealistic in the situation of the people who were listening.

And what a situation it was when Habakkuk was prophet in Jerusalem. 

Most scholars agree that his oracle was written right before 597 BC, that fateful year that the Babylonians (called the Chaldeans here), at the direction of their king Nebuchadnezzar, first sacked Jerusalem and took the people into exile in Babylon.  It was a time of great national strife and uncertainty—you may recall that another attack by the Chaldeans in 586, eleven years later, almost completely decimated Jerusalem.

But all that happened, remember, after Habakkuk preached.  At the time Habakkuk was working in the temple, the threat had heightened; things were rather unstable in Jerusalem’s society: lots of violence; lots of injustice; lots of people who could care less about God’s direction for their lives.  For the faithful, Habakkuk’s message was summed up in this phrase: “keep the faith.”

Perhaps in our world Habakkuk’s message could be summed up like this:

I don’t care if it seems like the world around you is going to pot.  I don’t care if the systems that create and promote poverty and injustice and pain seem strong and growing.  This is what I am saying to you, people of faith: your faith has relevance for this world.  If it did not, what would be the point of practicing?  More than that, people, it’s your holy calling to stalwartly resist the structures that seem evil and insurmountable.  Don’t give in.  Rather, it’s your mission to live by faith, to live believing that your faith informs the desperation all around you and, more than that, that your faith brings light, even just a little bit of light, into this world. 

You see, Habakkuk’s goal as prophet of the temple was not to spend his time trying to reform society to avert disaster; no, the fate of Jerusalem was by then a foregone conclusion.  Instead, Habakkuk’s message was a call to the faithful who found themselves in such a difficult situation.  And his call was a call to keep the faith . . . even when it seemed like everything was going downhill all around them.

It was into this context that Habakkuk heard a word from God . . . and it was a word that offered some direction for how it was the people could learn to live by faith in the middle of an uncertain situation.  God said: “write the vision!”  No matter what it seems all around you, articulate what it is God has called you to do.  And, keep reminding each other of that vision, even when the vision seems far, far away.  This was the job of the prophet who could see the vision coming to be, even as it was far off, and worked to keep the people believing in and expecting the birth of that vision.

Pastor Edgar and I spent a great portion of the week a few weeks ago looking closely at the Calvary’s large library collection in an effort to see what resources might be appropriate for our new Sunday School resource center—stay tuned for more information on that.  It was an instructive exercise to sort through box after box of books in the collection, many of which came to the collection in the 1950s and 1960s.  I looked through box after box and discovered many treasures, including a book published in the 1961 entitled: The Care and Feeding of the Minister, from the Minister’s Wife’s Perspective (see me if you want to borrow that one).

One particularly interesting trend I noted was the many copies of Norman Vincent Peale’s classic The Power of Positive Thinking.  I knew this to be a very popular book during the last century, of course, but after I found at least 6 copies in Calvary’s collection, I took a few minutes to find out what the big deal was about this book.  This is what I learned: Norman Vincent Peale was a minister in the Reformed Church of America; he served as pastor of the Marble Collegiate Church on 5th Avenue in Manhattan for 52 years, during the years in which great preachers made significant impact on society (Calvary’s pastor at the time, Clarence Cranford, was among this group of influential pastors and preachers).

Peale was a prolific writer and made lasting contributions to culture, including starting Guideposts Magazine.  He also wrote many books, one of which was, of course, The Power of Positive Thinking.  Published in 1952, this book spent 186 consecutive weeks on the NY Times Bestseller list and has sold over 7 million copies.  The main idea of the book is the idea that thoughts are things—that we can choose the thoughts we have and by focusing on our goals and vision, we can, in a way, “speak them into being.”

There was quite a bit of controversy around Vincent Peale’s thesis statement, but what most people didn’t realize was that he was drawing on a pretty reputable source for his ideas.  It was God, in fact, who told Habakkuk to “write the vision”—to articulate over and over again the task to which God has called you, and as an act of faith, live it into being.

This is not some magical formula of pulling surprises out of the air.  No, God’s direction to Habakkuk (summarized in a way by Norman Vincent Peale) was that there is quite a lot of power in keeping the vision in the forefront of your mind, referring back to it over and over again, and hanging on tight when it seems like the vision could never come to be.

Here at Calvary we have a powerful vision statement, summarized every week at the top of our bulletins.  We have taken God’s advice to Habakkuk to “write this vision” this morning in our call to worship.  And, as we take stock of a year gone by, we now do it with our collective vision right in front of us.

We are an ecumenical, multi-racial, multi-ethnic Christian body that reaches out to the world with the good news of Jesus Christ: joint worship with other Christian churches in our city, participation in the 9/11 Unity Walk with people from many different faiths, collegial and missional partnerships with organizations like the National Council of Churches and Bread for the World, Shalom Scholarship Sunday, World Communion Sunday, prayers for Burma, Gospel music, different languages in worship, diversity on our staff, diversity throughout our community . . . all of these and more.  Led by the Mission Board, the Camp Committee and others, we’ve lived this year motivated by the commitment to share with others the good news of Jesus Christ—that he came to teach us a Gospel of love, cooperation, inclusivity and radical refusal to accept the world’s tendency to be in community only with people who are exactly like we are.

Our vision statement goes on: we are called to actively build an inter-generational membership that represents and values all age groups.  The deacons have taken on the challenge this year of regular, intergenerational events giving us all the opportunity to get to know each other, even though some are younger and newer and some have devoted whole lives to the work of God in this place.  On Sundays we pass the peace of Christ, hugging and shaking hands with people of all ages.  We’ve worked this year to value our children, by celebrating them and praying for them on Children’s Sabbath, by welcoming their participation in worship leadership, and by encouraging their presence in worship through children’s stories and children’s choir. 

This year Christian Education, led by Pastor Edgar and the Board of Christian Education, has grown to include several new Sunday School classes to meet the needs of our growing middle school and high school youth, and we spent the summer learning together, adults of all ages, in combined adult Sunday School. 

The deacons have organized a pastoral care rotation in which many of us have the holy opportunity to visit homebound members regularly and build rich relationships with them.  Our vision, and certainly one of the gifts of our community, is the unique opportunity to include each other in our lives.  What a gift.

And the vision continues: Maintain pastoral staff, worship services, programs, facilities, and administrative structures that promote unity and reach out to the immediate Penn Quarter community and throughout the Washington metropolitan area.  With our beautiful new space in full use this year we have seen this part of our vision come to colorful life in the partnerships we’ve cultivated with our resident partners: the Theatre Lab, the Washington Youth Choir, KidPower-DC and Brainfood. 

Through the dedication and commitment of all of you, Calvary members, the boards that lead us in these efforts are running smoothly and effectively.  Our staff works tirelessly to manage this huge facility and make it welcoming and ready to play its critical role in our neighborhood and city.  And this year we’ve grown our commitment to training new ministers by hosting a pastoral intern for a whole year as she learns what it’s like to be a pastor. 

We’ve consistently and repeatedly reminded each other that the administrative efforts we undertake, the worship services and music, building use and management—all of these are ministry, critical pieces of the vision God has given us as a community of faith.

And if you keep reading the vision statement you’ll see this: Facilitate community ministries that include and value youth and people of all age groups, the homeless and working poor; promoting efforts toward social justice; and supporting new work among those with special needs . . . and you’ll think of: mission groups experiencing urban missions with Calvary’s help and support, our community walking together in the Walk for the Homeless, picking up garbage from the streets of our city, serving dinner once a month at Calvary Women’s Shelter, learning about injustice in Zimbabwe and how we can help, rolling bandages for those who would otherwise not have access to such, participating with the Downtown Cluster of Congregations to provide social work services to the homeless and working poor of our neighborhood, setting up a booth at Capital Pride and offering a kind word and the sharing of communion to those who have been excluded from their communities of faith, welcoming patients from St. Elizabeth’s hospital to our church every week so they can experience a few hours out of the hospital, working hard to prepare Camp Fraser for the hundreds of inner city kids who will squeal with glee at their very first glimpse of a real live deer, ever.  The list goes on and on and on.

And finally, our mission statement reads: Generously support home and foreign mission work through local and national denominational groups.  This year that has meant giving money, as usual.  But we have also hosted the Alliance of Baptists annual meeting; provided space for the Baptist Joint Committee’s board to meet; welcomed the General Board of American Baptists; offered placement for Cooperative Baptist Fellowship missionaries; helped host the 100th anniversary of American Baptists here in DC last June.  Calvary is increasingly becoming a voice for Baptists in this city and beyond, as we keep trying to live the vision God has given to us as a congregation.

There is so much to celebrate.

And there is so much more to do.

This year, we’ll keep working on these different areas of our mission statement in many of the same ways we have this year, and in new and spirit-inspired ways that come to us through the gifts and callings of those who join us here in our community this year.  As we work to live out the larger mission, here are two specific challenges I’d challenge us all to keep in mind:

First, we want to continue building and promoting diversity within our congregation.  This means living out our calling and conviction and making this tent as large as we can in order to include everyone who wants to live in radical, life-changing relationship with Jesus in this place.  This will mean continuing the messy work of welcoming people who don’t look like us, talk like us, vote like us or spend their money like us.  It will mean a conscious commitment to inviting people who are different into leadership, trying new things, respectfully disagreeing and intentionally nurturing the wildly diverse community we have become.  Our tendency as humans is to revert back to what we know, to fall back into the familiar.  This year we’ll keep trying to intentionally welcome the different so that we can learn again and again the vast variety of God’s family right here at Calvary and feel our hearts and our minds stretching and growing to see the world more like God sees it.

Second, we’ll be working very hard this year to grow this church.  By the end of 2008, I’d like to see at least 200 people in these pews every Sunday in worship.  There’s too much wonderful here to keep to ourselves—we must share with those who have felt discouraged about the role of the church in the society and ambivalent about the transforming power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in this world.  Calvary is a place where the relevance of the church and the life-changing power of the Gospel should be seen and felt, and offered to the many who long for it in their lives. 

And, while we welcome any and all to worship here, I will keep introducing those who come to the rigorous challenge of membership.  I’d like for us to continue developing our view of membership away from the idea that we belong to an exclusive club that exists to meet our needs and move more toward that idea that we are privileged to be committed and active participants in the great work of God right here at Calvary . . . and because of that, this work requires of us our best efforts, our strong commitment and our generous participation. 

To be a member of Calvary Baptist Church is, increasingly, a holy and rigorous challenge to embrace the vision and to participate in our corporate expression of that vision.  It’s not an easy, convenient, a-few-Sundays-a-month, come to Calvary and your life will be perfect kind of invitation. 

Rather, it’s a challenge to live a radical faith and embrace this expansive and ambitious vision.  200 people.  Here.  Every week. (Invite your friends.)

And so, we press on into the year ahead.  December 2nd marks the beginning of a new liturgical calendar and a whole new year of living the vision God has given us.  In the year ahead, when it feels like the results we’d like to see are far-off and the message we claim seems to have no relevance for the society in which we live, the prophet would remind us of the words of God: that there is still a vision for our time; it’s a powerfully true vision that will transform the world in which we live; if it seems far-off, well, keep the faith because it’s coming . . . there’s no doubt about that.  The vision is on its way.

You’ve heard about the vision of this congregation, about how we hope and pray and live in anticipation of God’s ongoing work in this place.  And if you stop to talk to, well, probably the person sitting right next to you, you will likely hear a moving story of how their life has intersected the life of this community of faith in powerful and tangible ways. 

The vision we have is powerful . . . and we are being called to live it faithfully into being.

But what about you?  What about me?

What if our lives are such that we cannot see the vision God has for our lives mapped out in clear relief right in front of us?  The message of Habakkuk is an invitation for you and for me to remember that the vision is a picture far larger than we can see right at this moment.  Our challenge is to hang on . . . to keep believing.  Surely the vision God has given for our lives, for this church, will not tarry.  It is coming to be, even as we speak. 

Calvary Baptist Church, keep writing, saying, thinking, praying the vision.  And then, live it into real and colorful life in this place.  Amen.

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