Hilton Head Island, SC – January 8, 2023
The Chapel Without Walls
Ecclesiastes 1:1-9; Ecclesiastes 3:1-9
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die. – Ecclesiastes 3:1-2a (RSV)
On January 5, 2004, The Chapel Without Walls held its first service in the auditorium of the Hilton Head Middle School. There were over a hundred people in attendance.
When I established this congregation nineteen years ago, I naively assumed we would perhaps eventually have a hundred to three hundred people coming to worship every Sunday. That never came close to happening. That faulty assumption was based on my experience as pastor for seventeen years of the First Presbyterian Church here on the island. That church had 650 members when our family moved here in 1979, and by 1988, there were 1800 members. However, the island population grew the fastest in the Eighties, and since then it has considerably slowed down, until now its population is fairly static. Nevertheless, I supposed we too would grow, but that didn’t happen. “A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever” (Eccles. 1:4).
In the past quarter of a century, as American Christianity has continued its long, slow decline, an increasing number of denominationally-affiliated and nondenominational congregations have held their worship services in rented space. Almost all of them are small. The advantage to small congregations not owning a building is that they are not financially anchored to a structure. The disadvantage is that they are not anchored to a structure. In nineteen years we have held services in ten different locations. I was less than a month short of 65 years of age when I preached that first sermon, and I figured it was too risky to try to saddle a group of Christians of indeterminate size and commitment with a mortgage. However, all of us discovered that continuity is a challenge under such unsettled circumstances --- to say the least.
The average age of those who regularly attended The Chapel in its early years was probably in the low seventies. Now it is in the high seventies or low eighties. Maybe we should have had more activities, but I – and perhaps you too – are now too old and crotchety to institute a new modus operandi. Besides, when the primary preacher was 65 when The Chapel started, and he is now a month short of 84, it is not surprising that everyone is getting older along with that elderly codger, who every year is becoming ever-less-likely to attract younger parishioners.
Furthermore, the style of preaching I heard growing up and I learned in seminary sixty years ago is no longer popular in Mainline Christianity. I have always tried to appeal far more to the mind than to the heart or the emotions, and contemporary worship is geared more to feelings than to thoughts. Small or medium-sized orchestras and words printed on large screens throughout the church sanctuary with dramatized scenes create a different kind of worship experience from what most of us have ever known, or which Christianity in general has known for the past nineteen hundred years. The Chapel Without Walls is a throw-back to the more predictable traditional earlier form of Christian worship. In addition, my kind of preaching intentionally focuses more on what is said than on how or in what surroundings it is said.
Whoever wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes is known in Hebrew as Koheleth, a word which means “The Preacher.” Sometimes among Christians he is also identified simply as Ecclesiastes, a Greek word which connotes “the assembly” or perhaps “the assembler.” By deduction, the Preacher assembled the assembly, which is also what the word “church” means, more or less. Although the first verse suggests that the writer was Solomon, almost all scholars deny that, and many claim that the book was written sometime in the third century BCE, seven centuries after Solomon died.
The Preacher’s opening words are memorable: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” The “vanity” referred to here is not what we mean by vanity. Here its closest English equivalent is “breath.” Three weeks ago, when a Bomb Cyclone reached as far south as South Carolina and beyond, if you went outside in the early morning or evening, you could breathe and actually see your breath as you exhaled. Instantly it became tiny frozen crystals. But as quickly as you exhaled, your visible breath vanished.
Ecclesiastes postulates that everything on earth is vain like a breath, which exists for a moment and then disappears into non-existence in the surrounding atmosphere. This is not the most cheerful book in the Bible, but in my opinion it is one of the most profound. It is that way because its writer, whoever he was, had lived for many decades, and had encountered nearly everything that anyone is likely to encounter. “The wind blows to the south, and comes round to the north….All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full….All things are full of weariness,; no one can utter it” (Ecc. 1:6,7,8).
Koheleth couldn’t have known that the universe is seventeen and a half billion years old. Like all his contemporaries, he probably thought Earth was only a few thousand years old. Nevertheless, his main theological point is contained in his first verse: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” Then, as though that bleak statement does not capture his essential thesis, he goes on to say, “All things are full of weariness….What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun” (1:8,9).
By now you may be asking yourself, “What does all this have to do with ‘The Chapel Without Walls at Nineteen: What’s Next?’” Here is how I shall answer that question. Nearly every congregation of every religion that ever existed came into being and then ceased to exist or will cease its existence, like a breath. There are many thousands of extant synagogues, churches, and mosques, but all of them shall cease to be at some point in the future. As Tennyson noted to God in his poem, “Our little systems have their day,/ They have their day, and cease to be;/ They are but broken lights of Thee/ And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.”
Over the past ten thousand years, most humans have felt connected to God or “the gods” to one degree or another, and most of them worshiped God with other people rather than by themselves. It seemed a natural thing to do. Still, no religion remains unchanged, and every community of believers eventually alters and then ultimately loses its unique identity. I have a seminary friend who spent his entire ministerial career in Scotland. In retirement he and his wife attended a church northwest of Edinburgh, which was a thousand years old. Last year it closed its doors forever. Two or three congregations of the Church of Scotland in that area were merged into one. That pattern has occurred innumerable times over the past fifty years in Scotland.. Recently I read an article in The Economist magazine which said that a recent poll revealed that only 5% of Britons attend church regularly. That is profoundly dismaying.
It is not only in the UK where this is happening, however; it is also occurring at a slower pace in the USA. A third of our citizens say they have no religious affiliation whatever. Even the evangelical churches are also losing members now, but it is Mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics who have been the most adversely affected.
Before Christmas, The Chapel board of trustees met to discuss our future. It was decided that for the sake of continuity, we should keep on holding our services here in the Island Funeral Home. We are very grateful to this institution allowing us to use their facility. Because we had met together in nine previous locations, this was just another location to us. However, to others it may seem an odd place in which a church holds its services. Looking forward, though, this may be exactly the most fitting place for us to spend the final years of our ecclesiastical existence.
Many years ago I knew a couple who lived on the island. Over thirty years ago they moved away, but they moved back last year, although I was unaware of it. A few weeks ago I saw his obituary in the paper, and I called his wife to express my condolences. In the conversation I told her about The Chapel. She asked where we hold services, and I told her at the funeral home. She emitted an instantaneous chuckle, and intimated I should not expect to see her here. Because it seems like such an unlikely location for a church, we shall see few if any church shoppers.
Through the years, various people have told me, in words to this effect: “John Miller is The Chapel Without Walls.” Nothing distresses me more than to hear those words. I always hoped that The Chapel would continue long after I am gone, either by retirement or by Ultimate Retirement. As a result of that board meeting, I have sadly concluded that this congregation shall last only as long as I am able to last as its pastor.
Recently I had a conversation with a man I greatly respect who is quite familiar with both me and The Chapel Without Walls. It suddenly occurred to me while we were talking why it is that I grow melancholy when I think about The Chapel ceasing to exist. It is because up until The Chapel was founded, for more than 90% of my ministry I had been associated only with large congregations. I could not conceive that any church with which I was pastorally affiliated could ever cease to be. But in preparation for this sermon, Koheleth’s words shouted out to me from the sacred book, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die.”
In a sermon I preached a few months ago, I said that I intend to be here through our twentieth anniversary a year from now, and through the sixtieth anniversary of my ordination as a minister two years from now, on December 19, 2024. To that end, I want to pledge to you that, assuming I am still alive then and still possess a sufficient number of mental marbles for leading worship, I shall sally forth to do that as best I can. As Robert Browning said, “Grow old along with me/ The best is yet to be/ The last of life for which the first was made.”
Three weeks ago, I took a memory test in the office of my primary care doctor. I was supposed to take it four weeks ago, but I forgot to go to my appointment. That probably says why I needed to take the test. I had written the date in my daily calendar, but on that day I didn’t remember to look at my daily calendar. Therefore I made another appointment, and even remembered to go to it. After taking the memory test, the nurse told me I did about as well as I had the two previous times I had taken the test. Perhaps not so strangely, I only remembered having taken it once. If the patient answers thirty of the questions correctly, he or she is reckoned not to have memory problems. I was told that the first time I got 27, the next time 28, and this time another 27. From that I deduce that by no means have I lost all my marbles, but that a few of them seem to have become dislodged somewhere in the unceasing advancement of old age.
Nonetheless, as long as I am able, I shall continue to be here every Sunday morning until it becomes evident to those who are still hanging on with me that the time has come to pull up stakes and individually move into the unknowable and unknown future. Jesus said, “Wherever two three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” In those words we can all take comfort and hope.
The apostle Paul described the Church as “the body of Christ,” and he said that we are individually members of it. If so, it would be fair to say that most of us are finding ourselves to inhabit increasingly fragile bodies. My guess is that Koheleth was especially aware of that about himself when he wrote Ecclesiastes. In his last chapter, he elucidates that concept in exquisite poetic detail, and at least twice I have preached a sermon from that passage in this congregation.
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die.” Nineteen years ago, The Chapel Without Walls came into being. At some point in the future, it shall pass away like a breath, because, as with everyone who once had life, we shall all die. But human beings are not the epitome of creation, nor are churches. God alone, the Creator, is the epitome of the universe. Therefore, Hallelu-Jah; praise God.