27/11/2021
100 years Parkdale Church of Christ 2021
We gather here this week a church family, as we have done so many times before. We have worked. Fought, loved & served alongside one another day in and day out since our churches first conception 100 years before. We gather to praise & worship. We gather to find joy in fellowship. We gather to serve the community about us. We gather to make known the glorious presence of our God.
What we do here is familiar. It is known & comfortable because we are known & comfortable, with that comfort stemming from the ongoing loving presence of our God. The community that surrounds this building is accepting of our presence. Tolerant of our practices, happy knowing we are here sharing in the community’s life.
What we do week by week has in some ways become the ordinary. The daily water to feed or quench our souls. Sometimes I find a drabness in the ordinary. Water is a necessity of life, but offered a choice, often people choose the more excitingly robust flavours of a cordial or wine.
I wonder how it was for that first set of Parkdalian Peoples 100 years ago. People on fire in their faith, who had a vision to see the Gospel preached & lived out in this space. What challenges they faced in finding the acceptances we hold so casually today.
I imagine these people were warriors. Prayer & love their weapons of choice. Fearless in stepping beyond the boundaries before them knowing their God was with them as a pillar of fire in the desert to light their path. This church a shouting presence demanding people ‘come and see’ what the Lord has done, as the exciting and robust miracles of Jesus feeding the 5000 turned multitudes of eyes to God. This church faced down challenges and took steps to building into the future. I look back and see equally the hard work, the years of building, the many times discouragement would have been faced down & the times of celebrations as they looked behind retrospectively to see how far they had come.
I look at our family here week by week & I wonder sometimes what others of our future will see when studying the choices we make today. I see the uncertainty that is before us. Our desire to serve God & see his kingdom flourish. The discouragement as families change or move away. As familiar faces find new homes & our work so familiar & comfortable becoming more mundane.
But then I remember again the Parkdalian Peoples - my warriors of old - from 100 years ago.
In their time their service was familiar. Their hands reaching into the community becoming comfortable. Practices that began new & became for them more routine. Making choices & struggling with the disappointments just as we do here today, and I realise that no matter the span of time that separates us we are just the same.
Christ’s first miracle was not a flashy storming of the temple, or as fundamentally impressive as walking on water. Instead Jesus’ first recorded act of divinity was quietly turning water to wine at a wedding. Serving a need, quietly creating for us a witness & marking the beginning of his ministry. He took the mundane, & created the extraordinary, & in doing so, under humble beginnings, began a path that culminated in our Salvation
These forbears of ours would not have seen themselves as fearless pioneers, because it is only in retrospect that we can see & appreciate the power of our witness. Day by day their witness in this place was done by acting in the ordinary. By making love & service the ordinary ‘mundane’ choice. The results of those choices is the path of history clearly laid out behind them in which we see the guiding hand of God, & with that realisation I then recognise we today are also warriors.
Our path to the future is not familiar. Comfort only comes after the hardwork is done. Change is inevitable & a sign of living. The familiar faces alter, but new ones take their place & become familiar in their time. Practices & traditions shift & flow forming new patterns. Miracles happen in the mundane.
I look at or recent history today, spelt out in the photos of people who walked for a time alongside us, & I can see the ripple effects or fingerprints of this community’s presence in their lives. I look at the community down the street with whom we have forged relationships over 100 years of this church’s life & I see the community we’ve supported in difficult times, the people who have turned to us when the need has been great. The lives turned to God. The witness provided & the comfort they have in knowing we will be there for them into the future should they need it.
I see the array of opportunities that still lay before us in making our God more readily known within Parkdale & I find comfort in the challenge. This church has stood here 100 years because this Church stands firm in its faith. Because our forebears listened to God’s leading & stepped through uncertainty to create a community to serve here. We stand on the shoulders of past warriors & build upon their achievements knowing that while the path is unclear our steps can be certain because we know our God is with us.
100 years of history has shown us that God will turn the mundane into the extraordinary, as water to wine. So I celebrate the history behind us for the lives impacted & the stories told, but I mostly I sit here in gratitude for those 100 years, for the hope that it grants & the assurance it weaves that although the journey is obscured from our sight, a pillar of fire guides our steps & maybe another 100 years into the future someone else will look back on our choices today & see God’s guiding hand in the journey.
