Litchfield Presbyterian

Today I want to offer you an interpretation of the earliest years of this congregation.  It’s certainly not the only interpretation possible, but it makes sense to me and it is, I think, quite instructive.  It has become cliché to say that those who do not learn from the past are bound to repeat it.  Cliché notwithstanding, it is in the hope of gaining some useful insights from our past that I ask you to turn your attention for a few minutes to the very brief career of the first minister settled in this town, the Reverend Mr. Joshua Tufts.

Tufts was not the first minister to preach to the people of Naticook – as this area was first known. There are indications that at least three ministers preached here in the 1730’s.  Nor was Joshua Tufts the townspeople’s first choice for a settled minister.  Mr. Josiah Brown and Mr. Isaac Merrill (see Rev. Newhall’s Address) both were extended calls to settle here, but both declined.  Maybe they were just not the right men for the times.  Maybe Joshua Tufts was.  The story goes like this… (more…)

This sermon was recorded on February 14, 2010. To listen to the audio recording of this sermon Click Here.

This sermon was recorded on Boy Scout Sunday, February 7, 2010. To listen to this Sermon Audio recording  Click Here.

This sermon was recorded on January 31, 2010. To listen to this Sermon Audio recording  Click Here.

This sermon was recorded on January 10, 2010. To listen to this Sermon Audio recording  Click Here.

Out of my distress I called on the LORD;
the LORD answered me and set me in a broad place.  Psalm 118:5

There once was a man named Hobson who owned a livery stable.  He had a few horses to rent out and in order to rotate the use of the animals, he would move them, each in turn, to a stall nearest the door of his establishment.  He would then offer his customers a choice.  They could take the animal in the stall nearest the door, or they could take no animal at all.

Thus, so the story goes, originated the term “a Hobson’s choice.”  It is a choice, which in point of fact, is no choice at all.  “Like it or lump it.” “Take it or leave it.”  It is the appearance of multiple options when there is actually only one.  As Henry Ford famously said of his Model T, you could choose to have it in any color you wanted, so long as it was black.

The hard economic times we are all facing reminds me of another story.  In Bisbee, Arizona, in the early years of the 20th century, a dispute between copper mining companies and mineworkers developed. In 1917, the workers had organized in labor unions and approached the company management with a list of demands for better pay and conditions. The mining companies responded by giving their workers a choice.  On the one hand, they could continue to accept the harsh and underpaid work at the rock-face of the copper mines or, on the other, they could accept unemployment and poverty.  The workers said that this choice put them “between a rock and a hard place.”
I hate to be “between a rock and a hard place” don’t you?   The worst part of hardship, economic or otherwise is to have no good choices.  It is horrible to feel hemmed in by circumstances, to feel stuck in a dead end situation, to feel powerless, constrained and constricted.  It is like the walls are closing in on you.  You feel hopeless, as though there is nothing you can do, or as though anything you try to do is futile.  Every option is a bad one.  Every human feels this way sometime.

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Here are some thoughts distilled from a recent sermon on Wisdom. The reading are from Proverbs 8 and John 1:1-3

Before the beginning of the cosmos, before physics or mathematics, certainly before geology or biology, and long before psychology, there was a reason, a purpose, a logic, a will, a desire, an intention.  In the New Testament this purposeful energy is personified as the “Logos” of God.  In the Old Testament, and especially in the book of Proverbs, purposeful energy is personified as the female principle, Sophia – Wisdom.

This logic, this wisdom, has to do with the right order of things.  It is the principle by which everything from subatomic particles to humans in society is intended to operate.  It is an intention of deep harmony, mutual care and interdependence.

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Scripture Lessons:    Geneis 2:7 “Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.”

Galatians 5:14 “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “The … great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; [is] that Unity, that Over-soul, within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other.”  (The Over-Soul, 1841)

Today I want to show the nature of our relationship to one another, and then based upon that relationship, I want to show our responsibility to one another.

Do you know what is the world’s largest creature?  We may think of elephants, giant squids, or whales, perhaps we’ll even think of a dinosaur. But we’d be wrong on every count.  It depends upon how you measure it, but by some measures, the world’s largest living organism is the Populus tremuloides (trem u low id eez).  It is 80,000 years old and  weighs 12 million pounds.  Imagine that!  Of course this creature is not an animal at all, but a giant grove of quaking aspen trees in the Rocky Mountains of Utah.  Extensive DNA testing has shown that the entire grove is in fact one vast male aspen tree with a huge interconnected root system.  This forest, which covers many acres of land, appears as many individual trees, but in fact it is only one giant organism.

I believe that the entire human race is connected in a way something like this.  We are one vast organism – in our case, not merely a biological organism, but a spiritual organism.  We all share the same life… we are animated by the same spirit.

The Source of our life is a Unitary Spirit.  It is a single Life Force, a single Creating Energy, a single Over-Soul (as Emerson called it).  In the language of the Bible, this creating, animating, life giving Source is called Elohim: the Divine One.  The Jewish name for Elohim is Yahweh, “I Am.”  In common parlance we call it God.  (more…)

Scripture Lesson: Matthew 7:1-5

Every society has norms.  A norm is “a principle of right action binding upon the members of a group and serving to guide, control, or regulate proper and acceptable behavior.”  Norms are the regulations by which a group of people play the game of life, so to speak. In his teaching, in his way of living and his way of dying, Jesus sought to renew human society according to its own best possibilities.  He sought to describe the norms by which humans could live together as the society of God – the kingdom of God.  This is his work as the Christ.

Our work as Christ’s followers is simply to live by those norms, to live as members of the heavenly society, as citizens of the kingdom of God.

This society is not utopian, but it is blessed and good.  It is not perfect, but it is positive and progressive.  It is not finished, it is evolving.  It is not arriving from somewhere else, it is emerging from within us.  This society is not exclusive, it is not for some select few, it is inclusive and is God’s intention for all.  It is not governed by a strictly enforced set of rules or laws, but it is guided along its way by certain principles of right acting and appropriate behavior, certain norms.  These are the ways of humane, or wholesome human society.
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Delivered on the Occasion
of the
Two-Hundredth Anniversary
Of the Founding of
THE LITCHFIELD PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
On February 20th 1809

By
The Reverend Stephen Quinlan
at the Church
On Founder’s Sunday
February 15th 2009

Behold! How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.
Psalm 133:1

On this morning of celebration, I do not propose to offer a history of this church, much less a history of this town.  There are some very fine histories of this sort already; and there are fine historians, who are much better equipped for those tasks than am I, some of whom, including Dr. Calawa, (who has helped me very much with my research,) are here this morning.  What I would offer to do in the next few minutes is to look closely at a particular moment in time and see what we might learn from it.  This moment took place 200 years ago, and for this church it was – well, perhaps it’s not too much to say that it was a defining moment.

It was on a winter day, like this day, in late February 1809, in the last weeks of Thomas Jefferson’s second term as president of the United States, that a group of prominent Litchfield residents, along with two clergymen from neighboring towns, met at the home of Dorothy Parker, widow of Dr. Jonathan Parker.  According to the ancient records, the purpose of the meeting was “to unite in and form a church, under gospel regulation.”  What sort of church it was to be became clear by the time the meeting was concluded with a prayer.

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