ECUMENICAL SERVICE
DECEMBER 31, 1999
JOHN M. BUCHANAN, PASTOR
FOURTH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

How good it is to be here together. I can’t think of any place I’d rather be

I’m grateful to our friend, and neighbor and brother in Christ, Cardinal George, for his
gracious willingness to be here and to share his reflection and insights on this occasion.
The fact that he and we choose to end a century and begin a new one ecumenically is
stunning, and I am deeply touched and deeply grateful.

I am also grateful to a very good friend and colleague in ministry, Father Robert
McLauglin, man of great faith and hope who, with me, actually hopes that sometime in the
21" century the World Series will be played at Wrigley Field, pastor of Holy Name
Cathedral, who with our own John Wilkinson, Associate Pastor of Fourth Presbyterian
Church, had a vision for this ecumenical witness and carefully planned the service.
Everybody knows that the laity is ahead of church authorities when it comes to
ecumenism. And so Holy Name and Fourth Presbyterian share a kind of moveable
ecumenical congregation, a small but hearty group of souls who identify with both of us,
attend worship and mass - sometimes both on the same Sunday, and who are “Catholic
Presbyterians” or “Presbyterian Catholics” and who, even though we're not quite sure
what to do with them, just may be showing us a new way to be Christian. Thanks be to
God that neither of the churches is nearly as confident as we used to be that such behavior
was not only unacceptable but dangerous for the health of your soul and prospects for
salvation.

And thank you for your decision to be here this evening and not somewhere else. There is
no poverty of alternatives. You could have been on a cruise ship crossing the
international dateline at midnight and then doubling back to celebrate the Millenium
twice at a cost of $100,000. Or you could be on the Concorde winging your way around
the world for $75,000.

I’m glad you’re here and you will be too in the morning, considering those prices.

Actually 72% of us have decided to stay home and take a pass on the big bash.. It even has
a name - Y2Kocooning. Trend analyst, Faith Popcorn - who created the concept of
cocooning says “many are opting not to go to the big party. They’re staying at home hiding
under their beds, playing with their cats or dogs or children, and wishing it was 1954”
(See Time, 11/29/99}.

1000 years ago, on the last day of the year 999, the old Basilica of St. Peter’s in Rome was
thronged with a mass of weeping and trembling worshippers awaiting the end of the world
- the dreaded “day of wrath” when the earth-would dissolve in ashes. Pope Sylvester II, a
wise man of great learning and sophistication, who did not share his flock’s terror,
celebrated a midnight mass for a worried throng, some wearing sackcloth and ashes in
penance for their sins, who believed that judgement day was nigh. In fact, a church

council, before his papacy, had predicted the end of history, literally, at the end of the

Millenium. (Wall Street Journal, 12/21/99 George Melloan, A Lot Has Changed Since
1000, But Not E verything).

100 years ago, December 31, 1899, the same thing happened. People took out full page ads

in Chicago newspapers anticipating the second coming of Jesus Christ and the end of the
world.

Some scientists were predicting that as the clock struck midnight the sun would become

solid and go out, leaving the solar system in darkness and the earth a lifeless ice ball. (See
Time 1/11/99)

Harvard’s Harvey Cox, looking back over the 20" century, points cut that Marxists were
widely confident that they had seen the beginning of the end of religion, and at the other
end of the spectrum, a group of progressive Protestants here in Chicago organized a new

magazine and called it The Christian Century. Neither prediction came true, Cox
observes.

In fact, for what it’s worth Y2K has already come:

* at 5:00 a.m. this morning in New Zealand, and the news assured us that the
lights and ATM machines were working.

¢ at 9:00 a.m. in Japan
at 10:00 a.m. China, where airline executives were required to be in planes, in
flight to show how Y2K ready they are.

e 12:30 p.m. - India

¢ 6:00 p.m. - Britain

A columnist for the Wall Street Journal editorialized a week ago “Probably we will escape
once more. Just as those Christians of New Year’s 1000 ran out into the streets of Rome
and celebrated still being alive, probably we will find out with joy and relief that all the
wonders science has created are still in working order.”

I look to the past this evening in gratitude. My father told me one time that he wanted to
live ong enough to see it - see the 21" Century. He didn’t, but I did and ’m grateful for
him tonight and for the gift of being alive at this extraordinary moment.

I'm grateful for history: for those who preceded us - our families, our civic leaders who
built this city strong and vital and hopeful. For people who believed deeply and gave their
lives to the church - this church, Holy Name Cathedral - all the churches.

And as the calendar changes and we learn to say 2000 instead of 1999 - I’m grateful for the
Christian content of those 1000 years. Martin Marty published a Millennial Balance
Sheet, analyzing Christian faith’s contribution to history.

From a small band of followers 2000 years ago we have grown to 2.2 billion adherents,
33% of the world’s population. Our record is a long way from perfection.

As dominators and rulers we have been no better or worse than Muslims, Buddhists or
Hindus. “The record of Holy Wars, Jihads and Human Sacrifice is ecumenical” Marty
observes.

But the good news is that Christian faith has given very significant gifts to the world:
modern liberty, for instance.

e The modern concept of liberty is from Catholic notions of human dignity and
the Protestant impulse for freedom of conscience.

e An artistic heritage, without which Western Civilization is not conceivable,
from Gregorian Chant to J.S. Bach, from Boticelli to Michelangelo

e Healing Influence. In the year 1000 the only healing institutions in England
were Monastery Infirmities(?) where the infirm and old were welcome and
cared for. Throughout the world, current health care systems grew from 19"
century missionary hospitals in Korea, Thailand, Zaire, Zimbabwe.

e The Liberation of the Mind. The only schools in England in 1000 were in the
monasteries. Christian faith gave the western world all the first universities
and organized the vast majority of colleges and universities in the New World.

e Martyrs and Mystics from Frances of Assisi to Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Martin
Luther King, Jr. to Mother Teresa.

¢ Notions of justice and mercy, which sooner or later hold the body politic to
account for civil rights, equal justice, health care and education for all.

I’m grateful for that as one Millenium evolves into another.

And as we look forward, I do so with confidence and hope, but also a sense of vocation
and duty.

Unfortunately, most of the public religious rhetoric about the Millenium has been the same
genre as the “dread of the end” which surfaced 1000 and 100 years ago.

My friend Joanna Adams said recently that the world is loaded with millenialists drooling
over the prospect of the end of the world and it can’t come too soon for them. Joanna tells
about seeing a sign in front of a bait shop on a country road in Georgia. “Smile, Your God
is a consuming fire.” “That is not a thought that puts a smile on my face,” she quipped.
(See 11/29/99 The End of History as We Know It, a sermon.)

That kind of apocalypticism has been part of our tradition for 2000 years. But tonight,
locking forward, let it be said here that this overwhelming testimony of our scripture, and
our tradition and our experience, is that God loves the world. God loves the world so
much that God sent God’s only son - not to condemn the world, but to save the world. Of
course, history doesn’t always reflect God’s love and of course we human beings regularly
disappoint and confound our creator. But let it be said, in confidence this evening, that
our God is a God of love, that God’s judgement is an expression of God’s love. Let it be
said here, that far more important to Christians than the millenium, is the event we
celebrated a week ago - the birth of a baby in Bethlehem, the birth of God’s love and mercy
and grace into our history.

And as we look forward, let us do so in gratitude for the diversity and pluralism in which
we live and which will intensify in the future. The challenge before us, Catholics and
Protestants, is to hold on to our truth claims with integrity - but also respect those whose
truth claims are different, and who hold on to theirs with as much tenacity and
commitment, as we hold ours. We Protestants and Catholics are no longer the whole
show. So let us live into the fature with a new openness to one another and a new
openness to the possibility that diversity is a gift of God to be embraced, not overcome,

and that this multi-colored, multi-faithful emerging society just may be part of God’s will
for creation.

And let us live into the future ecumenically. This service would not and could not have
happened 100 years ago, or even 40 years ago. There were wonderful exceptions, but
many of us here this evening were taught to eye one another suspiciously, to regard one
another as somehow less than fully Christian, and our church something less than the
church of Jesus Christ. Some of us were taught that to worship together, to enter one
another’s places of worship was sinful. This service would not have happened 100 years
ago. But thanks be to God, it is happening tonight.

When Cardinal George preached from this pulpit on February 15, 1998, he graciously
agreed to meet over lunch with some of the leaders of this congregation and to respond to
questions. Someone asked him what he thought the future held for ecumenical relations
between Catholics and Protestants - I will never forget his answer.

He said it is helpful to remember that no one in the Vatican in the year 1515, could have
predicted or imagined what the church would look like in just 10 years. What happened
in that interval, of course, was the Protestant Reformation.

it was a gracious reminder to Protestants from a Roman Catholic Archbishop that we may
be responsible for our behavior in the future - but we do not control history. There is
another player, one who says:

“Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. I am about to de
a new thing, now it springs forth, do you not perceive it.”

In the exciting world of the Third Millenium, 21° Century, year 2000, I believe God is
calling us to perceive a new creation, to follow with courage and boldness, to be open to
new possibilities, new forms of the church, new mission, new responsibilities in the city
and world to be embraced together. I think God is calling us to stop living out of the past
and to begin living into the future, to acknowledge, for instance, that in this newly
pluralistic, diverse world, old categories are not very important any more, and that what
once defined us as Catholic and Protestant is not nearly as important as our common faith
in Jesus Christ and our common commitment to be his people in the days ahead.

That is an exciting prospect and I’m grateful to begin it here, together, tonight.

Thanks be to God.

Fourth Presbyterian Church
New Year’s Eve, 1999

In the beginning, God created time itself by separating light from darkness and establishing
a rhythm of alternation between them. But this cycle is only the occasion for our personal

sense of time. What brings each of us light, what are the moments of brilliance which light
our way? What are the signposts in the field of time which define our life - the events and

anniversaries that shape our lives, personally and together?

In the beginning, with God is the eternal word, his Son, who, in the fullness of time was
born of the Virgin Mary. Jesus, Son of David, the archangel Gabriel calls him when
speaking to his mother. Savior we name him in the recesses of our hearts. Light from
Light, we call him in the Nicene Creed, with words which have echoed through the last two
millennia.

At the end of time, this Jesus will return in glory to judge the living and the dead. Then
there will be only light, and time will cease. In the meantime, our time, this time marked
by the anniversary of Jesus’ birth, we begin a year of Jubilee, a year to walk with God, so
that time will be shaped by eternity, so that our time may be flooded with light.

At this time, I thank pastor John Buchanan and the ministers and people of Fourth
Presbyterian Church for the invitation to be together in praise of God as we begin a new
millennium. If our time is to be a time of grace, then we must together search for light
along the way, together walk with the Lord in the light he gives us as his disciples. We
thank God together tonight for the light of life given each of us as pure gift, without our
asking. We thank God together tonight for the light of new life given us in Jesus Christ, our
Lord and Savior. We thank God together tonight for the promise of eternal life in his
heavenly kingdom. Made conscious of the passage of time by this New Year, the beginning
of a new century and a new millennium, we are made conscious as well of the light and
darkness that mark our lives; we are made conscious of how we spend the time that is
God’s gift to us; we are made conscious of the promise of a new millennium.

As we strain to look toward the future, what can we see? With the light of reason, we note
the much discussed phenomenon of globalization. Many fear the closer integration of the
economic and political and cultural structures of the world, for the experience of many
millennia has been that some are always ground up in the crunch that benefits others, some
are left out of the opportunities and wealth that new organization brings. In the past, ina
less than global society, there was always a way out, a new country to immigrate to, a new
opening not yet exploited in a conceptual space still unfilled. This country, because it was
for many years a world apart, was built on the promise of freedom and opportunity, and the
promise has been fulfilled for many, but not for all. There is reason to fear that the globe.
might now become a prison for many of its inhabitants, with no space left, no way out.

But there is also reason to hope. A globalization created with attention to solidarity among
peoples, a globalization effected with the recognition that we are not all the same but we
are all brothers and sisters, would be a unification which brings new life to the human race.
To see by this light, however, more than reason is needed - we need the light of a faith that

tells us love is stronger than death, that life is not measured by our own limitations, that

time is not an endless trap of cycles, but an entry to eternity. We need to see with the eyes
of a genuinely universal love, and order our lives to act on it.

That universal love is made visible in an unexpected way in the child Jesus. Our plans, our
schemes, our hopes, our dreams are irreversibly altered by faith in Jesus Christ. We would
not have planned things this way. But if an eternal and infinite love is to enter time and
transform it, how else could God have acted? The power of strength we acknowledge
easily; the power of weakness is not of our making. Of our making at this time is the
commercialization of life and the trivialization of sexuality, the violence that still threatens
very ordinary activities and the fear that prevents trust among us. But these patches of
darkness are relieved by Light from Light. Because God has acted within the time he
himself created, we, God’s creatures, can see beyond time and we can hope beyond our own
horizons.

A pause between one millennium and another brings us to the threshold of eternity. But
eternity erupts in time whenever we welcome light - each day, each night. T. S. Eliot said it
well in Four Quartets:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

but neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

No believer in God, no disciple of Jesus Christ, dances alone. For that we thank God

together this evening and we look in hope to the coming of anew age of grace and hope and
love.

Francis Cardinal George

New Year’s Eve Ecumenical Prayer Service
December 31, 1999
7:30 p.m.

Prayers of the People
The Reverend John Wilkinson

Eternal God, God of eternity and God of every moment, on a night that lies between ending
and beginning, we thank you that in the beginning your word called creation into being out
of love and that your word redeems creation with grace and truth. We acknowledge the
significance of this moment, this millennium moment, even as we acknowledge the import
of each second of each minute of each day and decade and generation and century as gifts
from you, transforming gifts, invitations to receive your mercy with gratitude and to share
your good news with a world in need. How might we mark this moment, gracious God?
How might we re-commit ourselves to the vision of human family you so cherish?

How might we hear again ancient words of justice and righteousness and bring them to bear
on this world, this new day? How might we sing the new song of community and
neighborhood, your beloved city of shalom, made alive to us through the promise of a
carpenter? How might your creation say praise and thanks and joy and awe and grace and
love and life? And so with words never adequate, we say thank you for ages past, for
faithful ones who have gone before us, that great could of witnesses, saints and apostles,
martyrs and pioneers, grandmothers and grandfathers, teachers and preachers, who
captured the essence of your good news and lived it out, those who paid the costly price of
discipleship. May we have their integrity and hopefulness as faith calls us to new duties
this day.

We would pray for the church, the church of Christ in every age, the church of Christ here
and now. For moments when we have neglected your Call, stood as obstacles to your good
news, we ask your forgiveness. We pray for ministries of teaching and healing, of
proclaiming, of outreach and reconciliation, ministries that seek unity within our diversity.
Be with church leaders and members, with believers and doubters, all who carry the rich
tapestry of stores to share, experiences to celebrate, gifts to offer. Make the church bold to
challenge injustice, that, like the one whose name it carries, it may be poised always to take
up the cross of freedom and hope for the sake of the world. We pray for all cities, for towns
and hamlets around the world, for the global village, for this great city.

We pray for teachers and lawmakers, for laborers and restaurant workers, for scientists and
custodians, for secretaries and doctors. Bind us up one with another in our journeys and in
our vocations, as we seek the health and vitality and welfare of the city. In special ways this
night be with those whose days are numbered, by age or illness, and grant them your
healing presence, even as you prepare a home for them. And help us to prepare a happy
home for our children, for all the children of the city, your most precious gift and our
fondest hope. For this night is about them, the promise of the future. Loving God, as the
clock ticks away, as the pages of the calendar stand ready to turn, we gather in this place, in
prayer and song, to seek your blessing. We offer our celebrations, our journeys, our hopes
and fears, our relationships, our work, our very lives to you, to your grace, to your love.

Fill our future with hope, the hope of years to come, lived in the light of your covenant. For
we pray in the name of the bright morning st

at, come to us as the Prince of Peace, even
Jesus Christ our Lord, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.

Amen,