The Right Reverend Andrew D. Smith
September 13, 2009
The 150th Anniversary of the Dedication of Trinity Church

This is a dangerous moment.  Our archives are full of pamphlets of many pages, which are the printed record of speeches given by bishops on the occasions of church anniversaries in the past; and this is a doubly dangerous moment because the thickest of those pamphlets are speeches which also contain reminiscences given by a bishop who has had a part in the history with the parish.

Tensions were far higher in those days in 1859, one hundred fifty years ago, far higher than we can imagine, as the young fabric of this country was being pulled and stretched.  The political unpleasantnesses of our day pale compared with the controversies that gripped the nation in that time.  It was 1859, just 71 years since the designing of the experiment called the United States.  And the compromises made at that beginning were unraveling at the seams:   little would anyone imagine – that two short years later the national cloth would tear with the outbreak of the Civil War.  1859. 

Some more context.  Christ Church had been founded in old Hartford in 1762 – and there had been other Episcopal church-founding in the capitol area in the mid-nineteenth century:  Saint John’s in Hartford, 1841; Saint James’s West Hartford, 1843; Saint John’s East Hartford, 1854.

Jacob on his way to Haran came to a certain place and stayed there for the night … And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.  And the Lord stood by him and said, …”Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go…; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised to you.”  Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not realize it!”  And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place!  This is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven!”

Why does the Church leave out the next part:  not just what Jacob said to himself, but what Jacob actually did in return for the blessing of his dream?  The next morning Jacob did three things.
 He set up a stone pillar.  To establish the place as holy
 He gave the place a name.  He called it Bethel.  The House of God
 He made a promise.  “Of all that you give me I will surely give one tenth to you.”

So in 1859 on this very weekend twelve men – it had to be men in those olden days – gathered in the tradition of Jacob to form a new Episcopal congregation – a church plant! – on the western hill just above the center of Hartford, in a newly developing and prosperous neighborhood.  They followed the work of Jacob.

 They set up not a stone pillar but a stone and brick building.
 The gave this place a name:     Trinity Church.
So far so good.  It’s the third thing, the promise (“Of all that you give me I will surely give one tenth to you”) that we still have some trouble with, but I pray by God’s grace we will fill out the story in our day…

Admitted into union with the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut in 1860, it was a church plant, and radically liberal for its day.  The architecture of the building was to reflect the grandeur of the great churches of England.  Soaring gothic arches and of course no pews.  And also no pew rents; people could sit wherever they chose, not where they could afford.  It was a place where the socially prominent could mix with the socially un-prominent. 

That openness to all was to become a hallmark to the parish’s life.  Over the years, as the city and its suburbs developed and its residents and culture changed, this parish was in the vanguard, in its openness and dedication to the ministry for not just its own members, but for the city as well. 

I did some personal arithmetic, and found that I have shared history with Trinity Church for about forty-five years.  It was in 1964, as a student at Trinity College – over there – that I first walked through the doors of this place.  That time to this covers almost a third of the parish’s history.  (Yikes.) 

You welcomed me as a college student.  You sponsored me as a candidate for the ordained ministry, and took a further gamble in asking Bishop Gray to assign me here in 1968 right out of seminary.  It was here that I was ordained a priest in March of 1969.  It was here that I met Kate, and here in 1971 that we were married.  Fourteen years ago Kate returned here to her parish home.

I remember when I was serving as Curate in Trinity that our rector, my boss and mentor, the Rev. Kingsland Van Winkle (Rip) was remarking how many people were leaving Trinity Church.  It wasn’t because they were disaffected or had theological axes to grind or drifted away; in those days members were leaving because they had moved out from the city, and household by household were transferring to suburban or in some cases rural parishes.  He said, “I guess we are an incubator church:  we welcome and train people and equip them to be leaders elsewhere when they move on.”  That was true for so many of us who have been assisting clergy too.  (I am looking forward to October 4 when we will have an opportunity to gather.) 

When I was thinking of Trinity Church for today, the image that came to me is that of a nest.  Much like the image of the sparrow’s and swallow’s finding a nest from the psalm.  A nest:  a safe and good and holy place over which God broods and where people and ideas and projects get born, or born again, and are nurtured and fledged.  An incubator church, a nest. 

So much of my life was “hatched” and formed in this nest.  And each of us here has his or her own story to tell, of how we have been tended by God in this nest, fed and formed, and have learned how to fly for the glory and purpose of God.

Grand ideas and schemes as well as quiet and simple ministries have been birthed and nurtured here.  Trinity was among the founders of the Episcopal Metropolitan Mission, which gathered Capitol region Episcopal parishes and sponsored social programs for the city’s young people and built and rehabbed housing in both North and South Hartford.  The homeless often were guests in our offices and are guests in our kitchen and Goodwin Hall.  The Education Building, built fifty years ago at the hundredth anniversary, and the library and Goodwin Hall, have been places where we have been taught and formed; and the Education Building has housed the Episcopal Metropolitan Mission and the Society for the Increase of the Ministry and other programs devoted to the welfare of the city.  Light and Peace in recent years, and now the music school, have reached into the Asylum Hill neighborhood and the whole city to serve the children. 

This is a place where in response to God’s Word and the Holy Spirit, both people and good works are born and reborn for the mission of Christ.  I pray that, as First Peter says, we here always may be “like newborn infants, long(ing) for spiritual milk” from Christ, that there always will be a readiness, a childlike openness to hear, to believe, to respond with God’s blessing to the world’s need.  Again, from Scripture, Ready to “come to God in Christ, to Christ who is a living stone, that we too may be living stones, built up into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, every one of and all together,
 To offer spiritual sacrifices.  Sacrifices.
 To proclaim the mighty acts of the One who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light...”

But in all and above all, this nest and its community are dedicated for worship and prayer.  It is so easy for churches to become pre-occupied and to drift and morph, into – what? -- business enterprises, or social clubs, or museums, or racial enclaves or cultural centers or personal fulfillment programs.  Remember the Temple in Jerusalem and that scene of Jesus in the grandest set of buildings for God imaginable –– and how in no uncertain terms – is there any place in Scripture where Jesus acts so openly in anger? –he called its occupants to wake up – John says he braided a whip as he invaded the areas for changing money for the Temple tax and for selling animals for the required sacrifices – remember how he said, What are you doing?  It’s written that ‘My house is to be a house of prayer’ – get these things out of here -- you’ve turned it into – a marketplace – a den of robbers.”

So, with concerns about budgets and staff, membership, program, roofs, fund-raising, the “Am I getting what I need out of here?” -- remember that the heart and soul of Trinity Church is what happens right here, day by day, week by week, year by year.  It’s the worship and prayer of God of heaven and earth, whom we know in Jesus Christ.  The Trinity whom we adore is not the parish church but God, by whom we are made and formed and reformed in the Creator’s Love, and Word, and Holy Spirit.  We are here, not for ourselves, nor for Trinity Church, but for the worship of God and for the blessing of our neighbors.  If the tower should lean, or the roofs leak, or the windows buckle, or the heat fail, or whatever might come, the heart of Trinity is the worship and prayer, and service, offered to our God who is love.

And so.  Now begins the second one hundred fifty years in the nest which is Trinity Church, Hartford.  I wonder what and who will be, are being, hatched in this nest even right now.  Are there future leaders whom God will raise up?  And what are the new ideas which the Lord will incubate among us here?  New partnerships with the community and the city?  Leadership in the diocese and the Church?  Deep spiritual and personal and material connections with Christians in Tabora, or Congo?  Personal and community sacrifice for the Millennium Development goals?  I have heard of dreams for an urban community school which could be born from within this parish??!!

We are far from 1859, and we are in the midst of the issues in our own time; and who knows what the next years may bring?  Like Jacob at Bethel, and the twelve families who founded Trinity we see here the glory of heaven.  Like Jacob, the stones have been set in place.  And there is the name that has been given.  And like Jacob, we each of us have made our vows and promise to God.

Come then to the One who is a living stone, though rejected by the world, yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood every one of us, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 

Trinity Church, Hartford:  Our one hundred fiftieth anniversary Celebration begins today.  And today in Christ we move on into our future.  In everything, pray that we who are Trinity always will look to be reborn, and formed at the leading edge, for the love of God, and for the blessing of the world.

Copyright © 2009 by the Right Reverend Andrew D. Smith