Fourth Presbyterian Church: A Light in the City

Sunday, October 23, 2022 | 10:00 a.m.

Weeping and Laughing

Shannon Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 65
Ezra 1:1–4; 3:1–4, 10–13

This is the season for homecoming. I learned from some friends that Spellman and Morehouse are having their annual SpellHouse weekend in Atlanta right now. And I see pictures all over my Facebook feed of my friends’ children dressed up and heading out to their own high school homecoming celebrations. Just yesterday, my sister texted me a picture of the nosegay bouquet she just bought for her senior son so he could give it to his date last night for their own homecoming dance. For many, this homecoming time is a time of celebration and reunion and just plain fun.

But homecoming can also be complicated. And by this, I don’t mean the actual events called homecoming. I mean when you go back to a place where you spent significant time growing up only to notice that it feels like everything has changed. For example, for the first ten years or so after my father’s retirement from ministry in Waco, Texas, we would occasionally go and drive by our old church and our old church manse whenever we were nearby.

And with each year, things looked more and more different. The buildings around the church were changing. Some of the buildings that had once stood were gone, and other things now stood in their place. The sign no longer had my father’s name on it, and the once-new playground seemed to be feeling its age. The changes to what had been our home were even more striking. The new owners painted it a color I personally did not like, and they did not keep up the plants in the yard the way my mother did. I could only imagine the changes they made on the inside to what used to be my room and to the bathroom I shared with my sister for more than a decade. Quite a bit had changed since I left Waco for college in 1990, yet so have I.

Things have changed for the returning Israelites as well. A reminder of what preceded our reading for today: Over the course of more than sixty years and three different deportations, most of the residents of Jerusalem had been taken to Babylon to live in exile. Yet once Persia conquered Babylon, King Cyrus declared that finally, after all those generations of exilic living, the Israelites were welcome to go back home to Jerusalem.

Now, not everyone chose to return. Some of them had done exactly what Jeremiah had told them to do. They had married and had families. Their lives and livelihoods were now tied to that new place, the place they had made into home. And yet many other folks were more than ready to finally get back to the land that was etched onto their hearts, and so, as a friend writes, “the homecoming parade began winding its way across hundreds of miles of desert wilderness” (Ellen Crawford True, in a Well Paper). If I had read to you from the second chapter, we would have heard this: “The whole assembly together totaled 42,360, not including their 7,337 male and female servants; they also had 200 male and female singers, 736 horses, 245 mules, 435 camels, and 6,720 donkeys” (Ezra 2:64–67, Common English Bible).

In other words, they had everything and everyone they needed to rebuild and reknit their once-exiled community back together again. Well, almost. They did not have their place of worship, which for them was the most central part of their homecoming plan. They had to have a place to gather in worship, to offer sacrifice and praise, to listen to God’s Word, and to be able to respond to what they heard with deep gratitude and commitment.

For this returning group of exiles, that act of rebuilding God’s house was a primary reason to go back in the first place. In their religious worldview, the temple was understood to be the place where heaven and earth meet, the sacred space where God promises to be present. So while they knew that God was everywhere with them, including in exile, and that the presence of the Holy could never be contained in or by a building, the temple was that sacred space set aside at God’s direction where God promised to dwell.

Therefore, as soon as they got home, they immediately got to the business of worshiping. They celebrated the Festival of Booths, the Sukkot, which centers on giving thanks to God for the gift of the harvest and remembering the miraculous protection God gave to the people Israel when they were liberated from Egypt and led into the wilderness towards freedom. And those newly returned exiles celebrated that festival by building a new altar on the foundations of the old one. It was clearly important to them to immediately remember who and whose they were and to once again tie their present circumstance into their history. And then, some time later, it was time to focus their energy, their time, and their resources on rebuilding the entire temple. As we heard in our text today, once that new foundation was laid, a loud celebration began.

And yet, right in the middle of that celebration, we are told that “many of the priests and Levites and heads of families, old people who had seen the first house on its foundations, wept with a loud voice when they saw this house, though many others shouted for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping.” I find that statement so powerful.

Why do you think the older leaders wept? Was it because they could not imagine this second temple being as beautiful as the first one? Was it because they did not think they would live long enough to see it to completion? Was it because it was only at that moment when they finally allowed themselves to grieve all that had been lost for so many decades? Was it because everything in their lives felt so different now and so unfamiliar and they could not find their bearings in that new day, for the landscape of their lives was so dramatically different? Why do you think they wept, especially on a day that was supposed to mark a brand-new beginning?

And why did the others shout for joy? Was it because they were so glad to have a fresh start, a new chance? Was it because they did not remember what the good old days had been like, because either they had not yet been born or because those good old days weren’t good for them? Was it because they sensed in that time of change a genuine possibility to experiment with how they could live out their faith in new ways? Or was it just because they were glad to finally be in that place everyone had always told them was their heart’s home? Why do you think many of them shouted for joy?

Personally, at that moment, I probably would have done both. Truthfully, I have done both. As I have returned from sabbatical and we have continued to emerge from COVID, even as we have been going about the work of rebuilding and reknitting ourselves back together, I have had days on which I have grieved all we have lost, or at least what I fear we have lost— momentum, more deeply engaged membership, the regular routine of gathering for worship and programs, the importance of giving to this work, a stronger sense of team amongst staff, a higher number of volunteers who felt called to the work of ministry.

And I have had moments when I have grieved what I feel is a lessening trust in each other, a lower tolerance for different opinions, a distancing or disconnection driven by COVID, yes, but also by all the partisan headwinds that keep blowing in our faces. It is hard to know how to come back to each other, and I am not just talking physically. I am talking spiritually. We have not had to do it in this way before.

But I have also had days post-sabbatical, in these rebuilding and reknitting times, on which I have shouted out with joy. One hundred percent of our Elders, Deacons, Trustees, and Stewardship and Giving Council members have already made a pledge for 2023, something that signals a renewed commitment and, frankly, something that hasn’t happened in the last few years. And just a few weeks ago, Greg and I got to host new members at our home and get to know them face-to-face; and we had a great hybrid Session meeting on Friday night that was full of good conversation and energy; and people still want their babies baptized and their eighth graders confirmed; and Family Night on Friday was a full room of parents and little kids and joyful chaos, as that same evening fourth- and fifth-graders and middle school students had lock-ins here at the church again.

Furthermore, the whole Program Staff is working together on common priorities for next year that include being very intentional on helping us all come back to each other again, and just last week I got three different monetary gifts with notes from people across the country who discovered us during COVID and have decided we are their spiritual home in which they find beauty and are both comforted and challenged by the gospel of Christ each time they worship alongside us online. And though we have not had to be rebuilt and reknitted together in this way before, I know that God is at work in and through us and will not fail us.

And as all of that weeping and joy swirled around in my head and heart yesterday morning, I realized something: we actually have been here before, kind of. As a faith community, we actually have been in a space where our weeping and our joyful shouts got all mixed up together as we took turns experiencing both. On October 8, 1871, we worshiped for the first time in our refurbished building as the Fourth Presbyterian Church, a merger of two congregations. It was a day of great celebration and great hope.

And after twenty-five hours of the Great Chicago Fire that broke out that same evening, it seemed that all that was gone forever. Our church burned down by 3:30 a.m. that morning. Out of our 130 member families, 125 lost homes in the fire. And yet do you know what happened next? Even though almost every member was homeless and many did not have any economic resources left, two weeks later, on October 22, we gathered back together for worship in another church’s building. Our pastor at the time, Reverend Swing, preached, and we prayed, and I am sure we sang.

And I have no doubt that the sounds of weeping were present, along with some joy at just seeing each other’s faces and being reminded that despite any appearance to the contrary, God would not forsake us. After that service, we had a small Session meeting in which we decided to start asking churches from around the country to help us come back to each other and to rebuild. And congregations and people from all over responded. And we learned that our story was far from over.

For here we are, 150 years later, still worshiping, still praying, still learning, still serving, still giving, still singing, still determined to be as faithful as we can be and to run the part of the race that God has given us to run, just like those returning exiles that Ezra describes.

And so today I ask you — whether you are one of the weeping ones or one of the joyful ones or one who does both — will you once again commit to being a part of this work? Will you commit to helping this spiritual family find a way to come back to each other, to be reknit and rebuilt together as we move into 2023? Will you make a pledge that will enable us to keep all of this going as we seek out how to be Fourth Church in such a new day?

It is a historic fact here at Fourth Church that only 30 percent of our active members make a pledge. But I would love to see that change, because what we receive in pledges has a direct impact on what we are able to imagine doing. What we receive in pledges directly shapes how we do or do not make plans. But if you do not want to make a pledge or cannot make a pledge, would you let us know how much you hope to give? We will count that in our budgetary and mission planning, too.

For just as those newly returned exiles had to decide to be a part of that rebuilding project, and just as our spiritual ancestors 150 years ago had to decide to again be a part of the Fourth Church rebuilding project, so we also have to decide if we are ready and willing to be a part of this group project called Fourth Church as we continue moving forward into this new day, weeping and shouting with joy with each step on our way.

The work of rebuilding and reknitting our community back together again will take all of us, just as it did with Ezra’s community, just as it did 150 years ago. Stewardship Commitment Sunday is next week. Please prayerfully consider if you will once again be “all in.” For our God still is. Just as God always has been and always will be. And we are invited to join in — whether we are weeping, shouting with joy, trying to figure out where we fit now, or a combination of all of it, depending on the day. All of it is received, accepted, and appreciated as we reengage in this rebuilding, reknitting project called Fourth Church. So I ask you again — please consider how you might be a part of whatever God is doing in and through us next. For as the people surrounding Ezra claimed, “God is good. And God’s steadfast love endures forever!” Amen.