Transcription
Think about that. When you can’t think about what’s going on in the church because you’re uncomfortable because you’ve been sitting there for so long, your mind doesn’t tell you what you’re supposed to hear and you go home saying it was a rotten day. So I’m not going to do all the things that I wanted to do. I started over and over again several times to develop my theme and develop this particular things that I’m going to share with you. I’m going to share some stories with you, but I’m going to share with you the fact that I see in living out the theme serving God and serving our neighbors since 1801.
That’s something to celebrate, an appreciation of God’s love and God’s blessing. When you stop and reflect upon that in the years that were there, I wonder how many lives this church has really touched. Just think how many people came through these doors in the years this church has been here.
You’re here this morning because you want to be a part of this congregation, because you want to be a place to worship God. Over the years in the life of the church, the church has touched the lives of a multitude of people. I realized that and I went back in time and I said to myself, I think that’s sort of what I define as tell and show. That brought me back to the nursery school below this building in the basement of this sanctuary. One of the highlights of the children in nursery school was show-and-tell time. I never missed show-and-tell time. I always went. I still have people come up to me today. I can’t recognize them by their face and they say to me, I remember you from nursery school. And I heard one little girl at one time in a restaurant when we were sitting having dinner who came over to me and said, I remember you. And their father came back to her and said, I’m sorry she interrupted you, Rev. And I said, she interrupted me because what? And he said, the father said, she’s been talking about you for the last 15 minutes. She said, that’s the man who goes to my nursery school. And that’s what I did with the nursery school. Show-and-tell. I turned that around and I said, what I see in the things that you are celebrating is this. It’s not show-and-tell. It’s tell-and-show. You tell to the world that you are the Church of Jesus Christ. You’re saying to the community, to the world, that here is the presence of God in the midst of God’s people.
I’m going to take you back in time. The first old church raised her steeple with a rooster on it, the apex of it, steeple in the center of the community in 1801. I read someplace that the location of the church in the early days was always in the center of the community. I’ve always wondered why on one side of the corner is a Catholic church, on the other side of the corner is a Methodist church, and on the other side of that stained block is a Reformed church. Why all three churches in the center? Because that was the idea. The church was to be in the center of the community. The church was being the focal place of the life of those people who were there in that community.
That was happening here. The old church was built on Main Street in the midst of the heart of the stone houses, which were there in 1801. But then in 1850, when the stone church began to crack, the church began to see they got to relocate. Where were they going to relocate? They wanted to relocate now in a different place, but still in the focus and in the center of the community. And that saw the rooster and becoming down, not on the steeple when the steeple was raised because the rooster was lost.
I want to tell you a story about the rooster. I went to visit Ike and Catherine Rosa, who lived down in old 209. Ike Rosa was the person who took care of the cemetery in Hurley. And as I’m sitting with Ike and Catherine, we were talking about the things going on in the cemetery, and I was congratulating Ike on the fact that the cemetery always looked perfect. It was taken care of. And he said, but that’s the hardest thing I have been doing. What I have to do with that cemetery is to get people to work in the cemetery. I can’t get people to mow. I can’t get people to trim. And it’s frustrating. We can’t even find new grave grass. And I said, what, what do you mean with grave grass? And he said, the thing that we put over the dirt, we can’t even find one of those anymore. And I want them to buy one, but they won’t buy one. And I said, okay, then just keep up working on that Ike. And we weren’t talking again. And then he said something about a rooster. And I said, what are you talking about? Ike? And he said, I have the rooster from the old church. And I said, where? He said, in my barn. Then the conversation changed. And I went home and say to myself, what is happening with the rooster? Who is the rooster? Why is the rooster so important? I remember seeing the picture of the old church with the rooster on the steeple.
So I said to myself, how can I get that rooster from Ike? I called Bob McConaughey, who was a friend of mine who ran a car in front of some funeral homes on Lucas Avenue. I said, Bob, how much does it cost for grave grass? And he said, what are you talking about buying grave grass for? I said, well, I have a need for some grave grass. And he said, I have two sets. One has never been used. I’m going to get it. And I said, how much are you going to charge me? And he said, no, don’t charge at all. I’ll give it to your free. Okay. I thanked him. I went and picked it up, came back to Hurley and drove to Ike Rosa and said, Ike, I have a gift for you. He said, what is the gift? And I said, grave grass. But I said, Ike, if I give you the grass, I want the rooster. And he said, okay, it’s a deal. I gave him the grass. He gave me the rooster. I brought home the rooster and said to Esther, this was on the original church. And she said, now, what are you going to do with it? I didn’t know, but I said, someplace we’re going to put this rooster up so I can say, this was a part of the old reformed church. And I said to say, okay, that’s fine. The rooster would be fine. He’s been here since 1801. He’s still here. He’s a little rusted and there’s one spot where somebody shot him with a BB gun or something, but he’s still alive. He’s well, he’s someplace in the sanctuary or on the someplace in the church. And if you see the sign, you see the holder for the old rooster from 1801.
That says something to me, that this church was a part of the community and the foundation of where you now sit is formed by the stones from the original church. The rest of the stones are retaining wall for the new cemetery. As you come down Zandhoek Road and come off Zandhoek Road on the one way street, all of those stones are from the foundation of the old church. This foundation of this church are built from the stones of the old church. The pews that you’re sitting in came from the old church. All of that happened because now it was time to move.
They moved. But the message still remained the same and the message of the steeple proclaimed and it still does that in the midst of the residents and the beacon of this church and this community is the saying that says to people, this is a place where you share God’s mercy, God’s love, God’s compassion, and know the experience of that encounter. Strangers.
Someplace in this church is a poem that was written by a man coming down 209 who was having a difficult time in his life and he’s coming down 209 and in the middle of the night the church steeple was lit and he saw the steeple and he said, I have to pull in. He pulled into the parking lot, according to the story that I was told and sat in the parking lot and prayed and all of a sudden he felt the presence of God and he felt like my burdens were lifted. He said, I did something that I’ve never done in my life before. I sat and talked with God on a one to one basis and he said that was all because I saw that steeple and that was the thing that he did as he came to find the thing that was saying to this community and to strangers, here’s the church and it’s a little thing that we always did when we were kids. Here’s the church. This is the steeple. Open the church and there’s all the people. That was something what happened with the steeple.
Another thing with the steeple on a very cold rainy day, the doorbell rings at the parsonage. I go to the door and there’s a man standing there with a five gallon gas tan. And he said, I, I’m here because I need your help, Reverend. And I said, what are you, what are you, what can I do for you? I ran out of gas on the thruway and I started walking up the thruway. And as I walked up the thruway at one point between the trees, I could see a steeple. I said, that’s where I need to go. He said, I followed the steeple all the way here and I’m standing before you and I’m asking you to help me. And I said, okay, let’s go to Stewart’s. We’ll work it out and we’ll fill it, fulfill everything that you want to do. At that point, I had a, I had a, a deal with Stewart’s that I would write on the back of my card, which is my personal card, whatever was supposed to be given to the person who brought that card down to Stewart. Sometimes it would be sandwiches. Sometimes it would be gas. And at the end of the month, I would go down to Stewart’s and say, what’s the bill for the Hurley Reformed Church? I would pay the bill and the treasurer would give the money for the people that we served by, by the steeple again, by the steeple. So the steeple was a very important part and still is a part of this experience of knowing God’s love and knowing God, God’s presence in our world.
In the building I was a witness, the witness to the building that you’re sitting in right now says that the church has something to share and the message remains constant and also abiding by this church in the very presence that she has in the world. It is more than the identity with the community. It’s also service, having the ability to serve the community and to respond to the needs of that community. Jesus calls us to relate to him by relating to others. My model for the response that I found in my service to Jesus Christ has always been this. If you want to serve God, serve the people around you. Do that in his name. That’s how you serve that God. You say you confess and honor. Serve God. It was found in this congregation who reached out to invite others to things that were a part of the life of this church. It always reached out, not always coming in by itself. It always reached out to the community to say to the community, we are here. And that was felt and done multitudes of times in the 35 years that I was here as a pastor of this congregation.
It came as we invited others to be a part of this church and come and share the dinners that were prepared. In this little room underneath you, there was a small kitchen in the nursery school. In that little space with that one room and that small kitchen, this church began to serve its community. They served chicken dinners, and they invited all the people from the community to that one little room. And that became the formation of the addition of the reality of reaching out and the things that are there in the church. It came in the form of a nursery school that still thrives today. Responding to the rapid growth, Myer Elementary School, we were called upon by a congregation to house the kindergarten from the Myer school for three years. The Sunday school rooms are built with walls that are contained and could be taken out very easily and very quickly to accommodate all the kids that came to this church as kids from the nursery school, but also the kids from Myer school. For several years, we were a part of the Myer school.
But it came beyond the community and the early church itself. In her neighborhood, she found her mission. But she went beyond that in a thing called missions. To places like Africa, India, Japan, we supported the sharing of God’s love as an important part of our vital witnesses. A broad and deep financial support of missions enabled us to reach out to those who we’d never meet, much like the story of the Good Samaritan. When you read the story of the Good Samaritan, you forget something. You just do everybody’s thing. I would try to find my neighbor. But the Good Samaritan walked along the road. What he saw in the ditch was not a neighbor who lived across the road from him. It was a Jew. It was a Samaritan. And those two people should never talk to each other. But the Samaritan reached down and felt compassion for the Jew. And he picks him up and he takes care of him. And Jesus says, who did the thing for the neighbor? The Levite, the priest, all the others who passed him by? No, the Samaritan. And the Samaritan said, here, the money, take care of him. We’ve served and reached out to people we will never know, people like we will never meet in all of the lives that we live. But the broad and deep financial support of missions enabled this church to say who they were as they reached out with the Good Samaritan idea. And then came a dream, a dream in the life and in the ministry of a man by the name of Harold Shadewald, who saw the need for the young people of Hurley. And he said, we’d have to do something for the children of this city and the city of Hurley in reaching out to them. After much sacrifice and dedication, that dream was fulfilled in the hall that now bears his name, Shadewald Hall. It was a facility that meant many things to different people. All of a sudden, it was a place for kids to come and play basketball. I remember fixing the tiles in the ceiling on a 50-foot step ladder that we bought from the church so we could replace the tiles when the kids were playing basketball. Somehow, they arced it so high they would hit the ceiling and that tile would be broken. So I would climb up the ladder, take that out, put a new tile in. Next week, I’d do it the same thing all over again. But it was not just basketball. It was shuffleboard. Then it became volleyball. And so there were other kinds of things that were going on on that church reaching out to the kids of this community. It was an expansion of the larger church. It was a community which was now famous because of the things that it was doing for the people in this community. It found itself being lived out in turkey dinners, in church chicken dinners, cooked out under the pine trees in a pit with a barbecue and the charcoal. It came to be staffed by various volunteers like people that I remember, and many of you don’t even know them, Edna and Burt Giles, who cooked the best roast beef that God ever put on this earth in Shadewald Hall. And it would pack that place with all these people coming to just get that roast beef. And then all of a sudden, it came different. And then it came John Pickley from Sea Deli bringing loads of fish out here and helping us to learn how to fry fish in Shadewald Hall.
And I remember working with some of the people in the pit, and in the cookers, and you’d go home after the fish dinner, and three days later, you could still smell it in your hair, even after you had showered. And you’d go back into Shadewald Hall, and you would smell the fish for days. We would go in there with air fresheners and everything, but you never got to smell the fish out. But the place would be packed again with two seating’s of the people for fish and dinners. All of a sudden, there was something going on in Shadewald Hall. Then came a Scottish marching band who marched back and forth, back and forth, rehearsing.
Then came a dance group called Left Footers, who danced every Friday and Saturday, every Saturday night. And you’d have to go back and see where they were dancing. You could see the circles in Shadewald Hall on the floor, where all the sets were, where they were dancing on the night before.
It came, we reached out to the community and found that we had many Indian and Pakistani people who are part of the Hurley area and also the Kingston area. And we reached out to them and said, if we can serve you in any way, we’re here to serve you. So they celebrated many of their high and holy days in Shadewald Hall. And next day, it was Saturday, they would be there until late in the evening. And then Sunday, you would come in and you could smell curry all over the place.
And that’s how they reached out in the residence. It was Boy Scouts meeting. It was the Genealogical Society. It was the Hurley Heritage Society. The Hurley Senior Citizens. And it goes on and on and on. Far too many churches never reached their call to serve, and a building sat all week long, dark and deserted.
But the best and the unique special thing called Shadwell Hall is that that building never saw very many dark nights in the 35 years I was here. It became a focal point not only for members, but for people and organizations, as the church found instilled within them a call to reach out and to serve others as to witness to God’s love. As a result, you could open the church door and you could see all the people. And you could join them as the church grew in excitement, as people who came in these pews went into their lives and share the joy and the wonder of an excited faith. And people somehow reacted and responded to that. I did not bring a lot of people into this church, but the people brought people into this church.
They would be at the softball or the little league baseball games and say to people in the friends and neighbors, come and see us at the church in Hurley. We’d like to have you. And all of a sudden they would be here with their family.
It was seeing people in nursery school who somehow didn’t have a church and then said, that sounds like a great place to go. So they would come to church and they became a part of this congregation. And the congregation grew by leaps and bounds, not because of me, but because of the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit and a group of people called the Hurley Reformed Church who shared that faith with people around them.
One lady called me one day and said, Reverend Stickley, I would like to send my son to your Sunday school. I said, okay. She said, but I have a problem. He came home and said, Mom, they have a church school on Sunday. I’d like to go to that. I go to nursery school there. Why can’t I go to their Sunday school? And she said, well, let’s see if we can work something out with the church. She said, I’m Jewish. Is it okay if my son comes to your church Sunday school? And I said, well, we’re going to talk about Jesus. Is that a problem? And she said, well, he knows all about the Jewish faith. A little bit of Jesus won’t hurt him either. He came to this nursery school and then came to our Sunday school for three years until his family moved south with IBM and he was gone. But three years, there was a little Jewish boy who came to Sunday school and nursery school because he started in nursery school and wanted to go to Sunday school. That’s the way the church grew. That’s the way the church shone and showed to the community and to the world that this was an active and alive people, excited as the church, as they served God, as they served each other, as they served the community, and they served the world.
To be a servant people who had found the wonder and the joy of their faith as they saw that in the recognition of Jesus Christ. So today we come to celebrate 225 years. But what looms on the horizon for the church in approaching 250 years? In an era that has seen the church decline in attendance and the impact upon society, what is the future of the church? Jesus told the story of a master leaving and relying upon his servants who he left behind. It shows that the call is the same with or without the master. And when his return comes and takes place, he sees the servants as those who served, as those who didn’t serve. This church found this chance and the ideology of serving God and sharing God’s love in his call that came to us in the same theme as the 25th, 225th motto.
God, our neighbors, and our world. That was always the priority of this church. God first, neighbors second, world third. But we always sought to know and to live out our will that God revealed to us. Revealed to us in Jesus Christ who says to us, go, love each other, love God, love others wherever you are and whenever you can. As shown by this church in 225 years, it’s the sole purpose given to followers of Jesus Christ. I’ve chosen you, you’ve not chosen me. You are now sent in my name. You are called a Christian to love as I have loved you and to love and serve others in my name. That call that comes to us as Jesus Christ gives it to us is the foundation of the church of Jesus Christ. It has been the foundation of this church for 225 years and it goes beyond even 225 years. It’s more than just a call or a belief. It’s a way of life that’s based upon service and dedication, not to ourselves but to others and to honoring our God and serving our Christ. It’s something found by a group of people 225 years ago and it’s just as vital today in a world that’s still seeking to find what they found in the birth of the Protestant Dutch Reformed Church, reformed according to the word of God, known as the Hurley Reformed Church. That’s where you are, that’s where you’re worshiping this morning. May she grow, may she prosper, may she make known to the world that the Hurley Church is still alive and still doing what God has called her to do. She will prosper in all the years before her until he comes again to say to her, come my children, inherit the kingdom of God which I have prepared for you from the foundation of the world. The church says back to him, even so, come Lord Jesus. We’re ready, we serve you, we welcome you as you welcome us home and we thank you for the opportunity to serve you, to honor you and to be a part of your kingdom now and forevermore. Amen.
Let us pray.