CHICAGO SINAI CONGREGATION DEDICATION
September 26, 1997

John M, Buchanan

The telephone call I received and the discussion and decision it precipitated turned out to be one
of the most interesting and important in my ministry. I had just arrived in Chicago to begin my
new work at Fourth Presbyterian Church. The call was from Rabbi Howard Berman of Chicago
Sinai Congregation in Hyde Park inquiring whether Fourth Presbyterian Church might have any
available space on Friday evenings for a service. Some of Rabbi Berman’s congregation lived in
our neighborhood and it would, he said, be a great convenience to them if they could attend a
Sabbath service here.

In the course of that conversation, I found a new friend, a brother, a kind of instant vocational
rapport that has continued happily in friendship with Michael Sternfield as well.

Well — Fourth Presbyterian Church had never done anything quite like that before. Presbyterians
are an orderly and deliberate people. We don’t do anything quickly so it took a while. Our
officers heard the proposal and decided that it was a good idea and since that time it has been our
privilege to welcome you in our building and our chapel on a regular basis and in our sanctuary
for your high and important holidays.

It has been an important relationship for us, expressing eloquently the common historical, spiritual
and theological ground upon which Jews and Christians stand, or try to stand, with varying
degrees of success.

We have valued the relationship. Our congregation has loved the very gracious gesture of a gift
of flowers for our Sunday service near the Fourth of July from your congregation to ours. It is to
express your gratitude the nice note always says — but I always knew it as a symbol of the
precious heritage of liberty which we share and which guarantees to all of us our right to
assemble, to worship, to teach and to proclaim our faith in the free market of ideas.

And so it is my first and most important duty to bring you the greetings of the officers, staff and
members of the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, our congratulations on the completion of
this handsome new facility, and our sincere and heartfelt prayer for God’s blessing on this place
and on your ministry here in all the days ahead. |

I am deeply honored to have been invited to speak this evening. You got me into the /ne. column
this morning, a first for me. My stock has never been higher. I was in /nc. That’s where we find
out what Dennis Rodman and George Clooney did last night. One of my sons called me from
New York and said, “Dad, you’re in /ne. Aren’t the Rabbis a little miffed?”

You may not know this, but we Protestant preachers have been known to go on a bit actually,
when we’re invited to speak, a phenomenon I’m sure your distinguished Rabbis, Berman and
Sternfield, avoid.

I love the story about the two young boys — one Jewish, the other Presbyterian, who were good
friends. One day they began to talk about their religions and they came up with a plan to visit one
another’s religious services. First they went to a Sabbath service at the Synagogue. Afterward,
the Jewish boy showed his Presbyterian pal around and explained the Ark and the scrolls and all
the wonderful symbolism and traditions, And then they went together to the Presbyterian service
on Sunday morning. Presbyterian worship services are pretty simple, no fancy horns, no incense
or bells, just hymns, scripture, prayers, sermon, offering, benediction. After the service, the
Presbyterian boy asked if his Jewish friend had any questions.

“Not really,” the boy said. “It all seemed pretty clear. One thing, though: just before he started
to talk, the minister reached under his robe and pulled out a pocket watch and wound it and
placed it on the pulpit. What did that mean?”

“Qh,” said the Presbyterian, “he puts that watch up there every Sunday and it doesn’t mean a darn
thing.”

KAR RK ROX

What we are doing this evening is very important and unique. In fact, ’'d propose that this
gathering may be the most important event in the city tonight. Thank you for inviting the
ecumenical community to celebrate this holy occasion with you.

Last April | was in Vukovar — which used to be Croatia and is now Sector E, a strip of land
claimed by both Serbians and Croatians. 1 was there representing the Presbyterian Church
(U.S.A.) and never was I more grateful for my country and its tradition of equal justice and
separation of church and state, its ideal of equal treatment of all religions and its nurturing of a
community of common ground and affection, imperfect as it is, which holds us all together and
transcends our particular ideology, dogma, ethnicity, race. Vukover is where the UN Command
Post is, headquarters for troops from Pakistan, Ukraine, Poland. A U.S. Air Force Reserve
General, Jacques Klein, is the Commanding Officer.

When the Serbian army attacked Vukover, the bombardment specifically targeted public
buildings: libraries, schools, churches. The Croatian army counter-attacked. In that part of the
world, Serbian orthodox Christian fanatics target Roman Catholic churches and Muslim mosques:
Roman Catholic fanatics retaliate against Orthodox Cathedrals. Reformed Christians are not
prominently involved, but as Northern Ireland attests, only because there aren’t very many of us.

I will not forget our meeting with General Klein. “When will this end?” we asked and his answer
was chilling. “This is about centuries of resentment and hatred. It’s about land, and nationalism
and religion.”

“I’m an Armenian Christian,” he went on. “I figured the one thing the Serbs and Croats have in
common is that they’re Christian. So I figured we'd start there. I went to the clergy and asked
them to schedule a joint Community Easter service. I said the U. N. would pay for it, provide a
tent. But I couldn’t even get them to talk about it. So it didn’t happen. To tell the truth, religion
doesn’t help around here and often makes things a lot worse.”

So what we are doing this evening ~ my being here is important. It says a critical word about
who we are and what our community is and the role religion can play in its health and well-being.

One of our biblical scholars, Walter Brueggemann, says that one of the gifts Judaism gives
Christianity is “Judaism always reminds Christianity that faith is not private spirituality — a
personal ticket to heaven.” Judaism reminds Christianity that “communion with God cannot be
celebrated without attention to the nature of the community. Religious hungers in Israel never
preclude justice questions. Indeed, it is through the question of justice that communion is
mediated.”

Two weeks ago, Michael and Howard gave me a private tour of this wonderful building. And
even though I loved what I saw and listened to their brave confidence that all would be in place by
tonight, I confess that was not at all certain that it would all be finished. What touched me most
deeply were the inscriptions over our heads ... etched here in the sanctuary — the heart of the
community — deeply in the very stones of the building,

Proclaim Liberty

Justice, Justice you shall pursue

That which is hateful to you, to not do
to others

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Michael Lerner, philosopher, publisher, psychologist, disciple of the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua
Heschel, one of the great scholarly and prophetic voices of this century, observes that people are
desperate for hope and more than anything want meaning and purpose for their lives. In his
brilliant book, 7he Politics of Meaning, Lerner says, “We hunger for communities of meaning that
can transcend the individualism and selfishness that we see around us.” [p, 4]

Lerner and many others observe and document the loss of community, the celebration of the
individual, autonomous, successful, wrapped tightly in a cocoon of expensive acquisitions, living
in splendid isolation from other people, untouched by — unfazed by the human condition, riding in
cars with darkened windows, living in gated communities,

It’s terrible for our souls, Michael Lerner says — all this turning away from one another — and it’s
bad for our mental and physical health.

So here we are, religious communities who do stand together with respect and affection for one
another, on common ground. Here we are in the middle of one of the most extraordinary urban
environments in the world.

Our task and our great privilege is to stand as a reminder of the holy — the transcendent in the
midst of life. Our task and our mission is to reach out to the ones who are overlooked, forgotten,
passed by — the homeless, the alone, the children at Cabrini, the despondent. And our task and
privilege is to be a reminder to the busy, affluent and successful thousands who hurry past our
front doors, that we are all in this together and that our Creator has made us one family, brothers
and sisters.

I love the way Michael Lerner puts it,

“T am calling for a politics of the image of God; an attempt to reconstruct the world in a

way that really takes seriously the uniqueness and preciousness of every human being

and our connection to a higher ethical and spiritual purpose that gives meaning to our

lives.”
We share that. We are messianic people who believe that the one God of all humankind has a will
and an intent and that it has everything in the world to do with a reign of peace and justice and
wholeness and happiness: a time when children play safely in the streets and the elders sit
securely and talk with one another, a state of being for which there is no lovelier word in any
language than ‘shalom’.

“What life have you if you have not life in community?” T.S. Eliot asked, “What life have you if
you have not life together?”

And answered — eloquently, “There is no life that is not in community and no community not lived
in praise to God.”

You say that gorgeously — right on the front of your beautiful new building as it has been
inscribed on the facade of every Sinai Temple throughout your history.

“My House shall be a House of Prayer for all People.”
Thank you for saying that mn this community.

Thank you for beginning your life in this wonderful new home by inviting all your neighbors in to
celebrate with you.

Thank you for inviting a Presbyterian into your pulpit.
Thanks be to God for all you have been, all you are, and all you shall be.

God bless this place. God bless you in all the days ahead.