The Rock of Ages

Pastor Jay Petrella
Graceham Moravian Church

(10/1) As I write this article, I sit at my desk, sipping a pumpkin spice coffee contemplating the signs of passing time. The heat of summer is waning. Halloween stores are opening up. Pumpkins and other squash are for sale in grocery stores and roadside stands. The scent of cinnamon, nutmeg and clove cling to the air in your favorite coffee shop. Fall is here.

It wasn’t that long ago when stores prominently displayed sunblock, pool floaties, and sand buckets. Then snow shovels and sleds before that.

Go and open up a photo album or your phone’s picture folder, and be reminded of that apartment you used to live in, of the time when your kids were young, or of that vacation you forgot about even taking.

My office here at Graceham Moravian Church is in what used to be the pastor’s house. In those days it was common for churches to have living quarters for the pastor and family on church grounds, even attached directly to the church building itself as is the case here. There is a small brick fireplace just in front of my desk, my office once being a bedroom. I sometimes imagine Graceham’s pastor 200 years ago sitting in front of this fireplace on a cold winter night with a heart and mind heavy with worry about whatever concerns the community was facing at the time. And now here I sit, completely oblivious to what those concerns even were.

Reflecting on the unrelenting passing of time can, for some, cause a bit of an existential crisis. We mourn what once was, but is no longer. We become saddened thinking about what we once had but have no longer. Time drags us along despite our best efforts to slow or stop it. We may feel out of control as we tumble headlong into an unknown future, leaving behind a well worn past.

Culture, language, technology, politics, the economy, nearly everything really, changes with time. But for some reason, there seems to be a tendency to feel as though things are generally always changing for the worse.

For example, I can’t tell you how many articles I’ve seen blaming Millennials for ruining literally everything from the economy, to music, to society itself. Housing problems? Millennials. Population decline? Millennials. The death of job loyalty? You guessed it. Millennials. The thing is though, people have said this about younger generations for all of recorded human history.

Rev. Enos Hitchcock in 1790 wrote, "The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth." All you have to do is replace "plays" and "novels" with "video games" and you have a perfect modern adaptation to an age-old complaint.

Another writer, Horace, self-deprecates way back in the year 20 BC when he wrote, "Our sires’ age was worse than our grandsires’. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt."

Here is what Aristotle had to say 2,300 years ago. "[Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances.

They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it."

All of these folks might be surprised and relieved to hear that human civilization still exists in the mysterious and distant year of 2023. One would think enough history has passed for humankind to have learned that times change, and it's not necessarily for the better or worse. Change can just mean different. So we can ease up on younger generations, as we were all once a part of the younger generation who also were getting blamed for the ruination of everything sacred.

Speaking of sacred, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the church has also been changing, and like everything else in the universe, it’s been changing since its conception.

In the Early Church period, you have tight-knit clusters of Christians living and worshiping together. In various places and at various times, they endured persecution together and suffered the social isolation that comes with being different. They survived by helping and supporting each other.

Then in the 300’s Christianity started to become more and more the religion of the Roman Empire. The politics of the empire, along with its legislative, judicial, and education systems began to blend with church politics and theology, with one shaping the other. Life and faith got more and more entangled with one’s citizenship and civic duty. Faith in God became almost an obligation as opposed to a personal choice.

Within the last few hundred years in colonial and more modern America, the church took on a more central, social role in the community. Nearly every little town, borough and settlement had at least one church. It was where the people worshiped on Sunday mornings. It was also where they socialized, and likely where they met their spouse. The church was the center of the community. The churches would host the community dinners, festivals and dances as there might not have been any other public gathering spaces nearby. The relationships one formed in the church on Sundays were with the same people one worked with/for come Monday.

Nowadays, that is less and less the case. Historically, speaking, it wasn’t that long ago when you’d be the odd one out if you weren’t a church member and regular church attender. But in this day and age there isn’t the social pressure, which kept the Early Church together. There isn’t a governmental or ecclesiastical power demanding one confess to being a Christian as in the middle ages. (Thank goodness.)

Because of modern technology like cars and the internet, almost no one is stuck within a geographical bubble that only extends a few miles from their home. Everyday people have options for communication, leisure and entertainment so numerous it’s impossible to pursue even a small percentage of them. To compensate, some churches have tried to compete with the endless array of options by trying to make their worship services and events more exciting or entertaining in the hopes of attracting new crowds. Nevertheless, survey after survey in the US shows a decline in not just church attendance, but association with the Christian faith in general.

All of this leads some to believe the Church is coming to an end. "This new generation is destroying Christianity," they say. But before you entertain such an idea, remember our friend Aristotle from earlier. Before you pronounce doom, consider perhaps things may not be better or worse, just different. Perhaps things are just still evolving.

After all, what’s so wrong about people having the freedom to choose to be active in their faith community because they, in and of themselves, choose to make it a priority in their lives as opposed to being pressed into it by some outside force? This was one of Jesus’ beefs with the Pharisees. Their religion was all empty obedience with no heart or compassion.

Clocks tick. Seasons change. Technology and culture evolves. Times, good and bad, wax and wane. The only constant is God’s presence and God’s love. We can make peace with this chaos because the Rock of Ages has clefted for us.