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The setting and shape of this sermon are obvious. It was preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the founding of that congregation.

The church was officially organized on January 30, 1949. I was the first pastor. I remained pastor until May, 1964.

The sermon itself is mostly a narrative of how I came to accept the call, and the early days of the church's life. I felt that many people in the present congregation knew very little, if anything, about the beginnings of Covenant, and that it would be appropriate for them to learn something of the rock from which they were hewn. The scripture text itself is not dealt with directly until the conclusion of the sermon.



It was December, 1948 - Christmastime. I was a young, skinny preacher barely in my twenties. (I won't say which end of the twenties I was in, but I was in them.) I had already served one pastorate and was fresh from a year at Princeton Seminary where I had received a Th.M. degree. Well, I was not all that "fresh from." I had been unemployed for several months, sponging off my schoolteacher mother in a tiny apartment in Marion, Alabama. I had met with search committees and preached in vacant pulpits all over the Southeast, but nothing ever came of it. If I liked them, they didn't like me. If they liked me, I didn't like them. I felt no particular excitement or challenge about any of the places I had visited. I was beginning to wonder about this preaching business, and my part in it.

Then one day in December a phone call came. Could I come to Tuscaloosa the next Sunday and preach for a small group of people who were meeting in the Red Cross Auditorium at Northington? They were considering starting a new church.

Well, I had heard of that crowd before. While I was still at Princeton, Mr. Partridge, the Superintendent of Home Missions for old Tuscaloosa Presbytery, had written me about a proposed new work in east Tuscaloosa and wanted to know if I would be interested.

Of course, I wasn't interested. I could not see myself as a pioneer or innovator. I had no intention of starting from scratch. I wanted a real church, a well--established congregation, a beautiful building, preferably paid for, stained--glass windows, a robed choir, a pipe organ, a paneled study with plenty of bookshelves, and a secretary in the next office.

When I got home Mr. Partridge kept pestering me about east Tuscaloosa. Finally in near desperation I drove to Tuscaloosa one day and rode around with Mr. Partridge, C. E. Williams, John Weaver, and Gordon Langford. We saw the little lot which the presbytery had purchased at the corner of Hargrove Road and Prince Avenue. It was ridiculously small. We drove around the neighborhood. I went back to Marion not much impressed.

Now here they came again. They had started to meet and they wanted me to come preach next Sunday. "All right, I'll go and get it over with. After all, I've got nothing else to do next Sunday, and I need the money."

That day was gray, gloomy, and chilly with a drizzle of rain. I had some difficulty finding Northington. Northington was a big, sprawling building all under one roof. It had been a military hospital during World War II. Now it housed the city hospital, an elementary school, student housing for university students, a cafeteria, a cleaning plant, and the Red Cross Auditorium.

One needed a guiding star to find the auditorium through twists and turns and long corridors.

Finally there it was - the most unattractive place for worship I had ever seen. Bare, dim, ugly. Clanging folding metal chairs; a makeshift pulpit. I think there was a crude manger with hay and some canned goods piled in it for the poor. There may have been a pot of red poinsettias, but if so, that was the only touch of beauty in the place. The most striking feature of the room was the stage curtain. It was made like a crazy quilt with all kinds of material in various colors and shapes sewed together. Two masks - comedy and tragedy - leered down at us from the curtain. That was the background before which I was to lead worship.

A little group of about 25 people was almost lost in that big, empty auditorium. They greeted me cordially, and almost immediately I began to experience an "at home" feeling. I conferred with Mrs. C. E. Williams about the hymns, and the service began with Mrs. C. E. Williams playing the somewhat out of tune piano.

I had brought no particular enthusiasm to this service, but as it moved along something began to happen. The singing of Christmas carols filled that bare room with beauty. As I read the familiar Christmas story I began to be aware again of its wonder and joy, and I felt that the people felt it, too. I remember nothing specific about the sermon except that I began to sense a freedom that I had not known in months.

After the service the people and I seemed reluctant to leave. We stood around and talked. They asked me to come back the next Sunday, and without hesitation I said I would. As I drove back to Marion my heart was strangely warmed, and I tried to figure out what had happened that day.

The next Sunday the Red Cross Auditorium was still ugly, but somehow I did not notice it quite so much. I was looking forward to seeing those people again, people whom I already felt were my friends - folk like C. E. and Clara Williams, George and Adalaide Howard, John and Oliver Weaver, George and Catherine Johnson, Bob and Helen Ross, and others whom there is not time to mention.

Again there was that Mysterious Presence, an intangible quality of awe, a feeling of the rightness of things. I agreed to come back for a third Sunday. "What am I doing?" I asked myself. "I had intended to come up here once and that would be it. Why do I keep coming back?"

After the third service the group met, came to me and said, "We want you to come be our preacher."

I did not say, "Thank you, but I'm not interested. This just isn't my kind of situation." I did not say, "Well, let me think about it and pray about it. I'll let you know." Rather I said, "Yes, I'll come!"

On my way back to Marion that afternoon I began to think "What have I done? How crazy can you get? Where am I going to live? (Housing was hard to find in Tuscaloosa in 1949.) How am I going to get around? (I did not own a car. I had borrowed my mother's car to make those trips to Tuscaloosa.) What have I got to buy a car with? And what about salary? (Nothing had been said about salary.) And another thing - how long are we going to have to stay at Northington? How can that little group of people ever raise enough money to build a church? And what about that little lot on Prince Avenue? It is not big enough for a church, and where are we going to park?"

But in spite of all the questions and the uncertainties I had no doubts. This was the place for me, as unlikely as it seemed and as unsuited as I seemed for the situation.

What had happened in those three Sundays was that I learned something that I should already have known about what makes a church. It isn't beautiful buildings, stained--glass windows, a pipe organ, a comfortable study, as significant and helpful as all these are. A church can have all this and still be as dull and dead as yesterday's newspaper.

What it takes to make a church is people committed to Jesus Christ, dedicated, enthusiastic, who have a vision and are determined to spend time and energy toward it; who are willing to take risks, to put their faith into practice, and who love each other. That's what I had discovered in that little group at Northington.

But how did they get that way? Not because they were better than anybody else, but because the Spirit of God had gotten hold of them, brought them together, and given them a mission. It was the Holy Spirit at work in, among, and through that group of people - and an even greater miracle is that by contagion the Holy Spirit got hold of me, too, at least for a while.

We thought it would take several months before the congregation was ready officially to form a church, but things moved more rapidly than any of us expected. On the last Sunday in January, 1949, a commission of Tuscaloosa Presbytery met at the Red Cross Auditorium to constitute the congregation into Covenant Presbyterian Church.

It was a cold, stormy day. It had snowed the night before; ice covered the trees and the roads. But in spite of the weather and dangerous driving conditions the auditorium was almost full. We went through the Book of Church Order and performed almost every ritual except a wedding, a funeral, and the Lord's Supper. We organized the church; we received 91 charter members, most by letter, some by reaffirmation of faith, some by profession of faith and baptism; we elected, ordained, and installed elders and deacons; and we called and installed a minister. I'm not sure it was legal to do all that in one service, but we did it.

I've thought back on the place where it all began and have concluded that Northington Red Cross Auditorium was not an inappropriate place after all for a church to be born, and that it was surrounded by a good many unorthodox Christian symbols.

It began at Christmastime - the season when we celebrate the birth of Christ. And where was Christ born? Not in a cathedral; not in a palace; not surrounded by beauty. He was born in a place about as bare and dim and uninviting as was that auditorium.

And what about that crazy quilt curtain? What was it made of? It was made of all sorts of different fabrics, colors, shapes, and sizes which came from different places. But all these were sewn together to make a unity. Those pieces sewn together were one; the curtain could do what no one of those pieces could do alone. What better picture of the church - diverse, varied, maybe even some clashing shapes and colors - but all one and working together.

And Comedy and Tragedy - those masks that we tried to cover up on special occasions like Easter and Christmas? Well, isn't the gospel a paradox of comedy and tragedy?

What could be more illogical, even comical, than the way God decided to redeem the world? Couldn't he have set everything right with one fell swoop of majestic power? But he chose to come himself in human flesh and walk among us, to be one of us, to be with us, to share our lot. What a strange role for God.

What does comedy do? It makes us laugh; it brings joy; it gives an exhilarating lift to life. Does not the deepest joy in life come from the gospel of Jesus Christ? And, of course, the gospel involves tragedy. It takes evil and suffering, sin and death seriously, and weeps because of them. It takes all these things upon itself and agonizes over them. What is the central Christian symbol? The cross - the symbol of the ultimate tragedy, the symbol of what human evil can do to divine goodness.

But comedy triumphs in the end. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the epitome of victory and the final assurance of hope.

Now let me recall one more thing. I've talked a good deal about the unprepossessing appearance of the place of Covenant's birth. Well, I wasn't all that much of a promising, prepossessing preacher either. This was brought home to me a few years later.

On the day the church was organized a photographer from the Tuscaloosa News was present and took some pictures. These appeared in the paper the next day. One of them was of the group of newly--elected officers - all men in those benighted days. And there I was in the midst of them, skinny, scared, with the expression of a bewildered owl on my face.

For several years after that someone would put these pictures on the bulletin board during the month of January. One day I was standing there looking at them along with Bob Ross. Bob studied the pictures for a while, then said, "When this church started we must have been hard up for a preacher to take you."

And all I could say was, "You were."

Now perhaps all this, especially to the more recent members of this community of faith, has seemed the reminiscence of an old man come back after forty years to talk about the olden days. And to some degree that is true. But the remembering I have been doing is far more than reminiscence. I am trying to remember and to encourage you to remember in the biblical meaning of remembering.

Have you ever thought about what a significant role remembering plays in the history of God's people, both in the Old and the New Testaments? The people of Israel were always being called to remember the mighty acts of God, to remember what God had done for and through them. Remember how God called Abraham and Sarah to go to a new land, how he made promises to them which included blessings through them for all the nations of the earth. Remember in particular the Exodus when God by a powerful hand led Israel out of bondage in Egypt, across the wilderness for forty years, and into the Promised Land. The prophets were always calling upon Israel to remember the covenant and to remember God's commandments and keep them. And in the New Testament. Remember the words and the works of Jesus. At the empty tomb the angel said to the women, "Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee ..." And they remembered his words. At the Table of the Lord, "This do in remembrance of me."

Remembering in the biblical sense is not nostalgia; it is not recalling a romantic golden age. It is bringing the past into the present; it is making the past alive again; it is remembering the foundation upon which the future is to be built.

The congregation at Philippi was the apostle Paul's favorite church. He had a more cordial and close relationship with them than with any other congregation he had founded. That is not to say that the Philippian Church was perfect, without problems, tensions, misunderstandings. For it was made up of human beings as are all churches.

Paul maintained an affectionate relationship with them through the years. He revisited them several times. They sent representatives to visit him in prison, and they expressed their concern for him in tangible ways. He wrote letters to them. In the letter to the Philippians which has been preserved Paul talks about remembering and he talks about his confidence for the future.

"I thank my God for every remembrance of you...." One reason he remembered with joy and thanksgiving was because of their participation in the gospel from the beginning until the present. Because of their strong and vital past he could express confidence concerning them for the future. Not so much confidence in them alone as confidence in God who had called them together in the first place and who had been working through them all these years.

"I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ," he wrote. Paul could not predict their future in specifics, but he could be confident about it because he knew that the God who had begun it all was faithful.

My message to you this day echoes that of Paul to the Philippians: "Remember with thanksgiving and with joy."

"I am sure that the God who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ."

And in that case, the best is yet to be.