Sometime ago, I heard the story of a man who loved to read mystery novels. You may remember the story. There was something unique about the way he read them, though. He would first read the last chapter and find out what happened and who had done it, and then go back and read the rest of the book. What a crazy way to read a mystery, you say. This man said no. In fact, he insisted that it is better to read the book that way, because that's how the novel got conceived in the author's mind, in the first place. Before the author sat down to write one word, she knew that the butler did it. And when you know that, and you read the book from the beginning, and come to the place where on a dark and stormy night, the telephone rings, you know where that fits into the entire scheme of things, which ends by saying that the butler did it.

So you know what I did? I went and looked at the last chapter. You know what it says? "Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the city. On either side of the river, is the tree of life, with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations." What a fascinating picture! Can you imagine a refreshing river of life flowing down Ellis Avenue? On either side of the river are trees of abundance, with 12 kinds of fruit -- that is to say the full complement of fruits, being produced every month, meaning with complete dependability. Can you imagine a variety of locally owned businesses, dependable and just, and healthy and vibrant communities, with children playing carefree and happily in the parks. Can you imagine them learning in state of the art schools and families happy and content, not worried about when the next terrorist strike will come. And like the leaves of the tree, can you imagine congregations, providing opportunities for forgiveness from sin and reconciliation of relationships, working together to dismantle systemic evils in our society, bringing healing to people and institutions -- to the nations sick with the cancer of greed and violence.

We must keep the last chapter in our sights, because that's how the author conceived the story. When we start from there and look at where we are now, it makes much more sense to understand why we are here and where we are gong. It’s 51 years since we were born. It's 23 years after moving to this strategic location. On a dark and stormy night the telephone is ringing. Do you know where that fits in the story which at the end will say the butler did it? Can we look from the perspective of God's city and begin to understand who we are and why God has put us in this place at this time?

It took us several long meetings for us to discern this. Our new identity, we thought, would be something that not only says something about who we are, but about what God wants us to become. We remembered that we stood in a tradition of bold initiatives. When our founding members -- eleven of them came together at Anton and Lenore Stonfel's house on September 7, 1950 and formed themselves as the First Southern Baptist Church, they were not creating a nice and comfortable little niche of southern culture for themselves. They had an organizing principle, a mission statement. And that was to be a "Lighthouse to the south side of Chicago." And they worked hard at that. By the end of the decade of the 50s, Cornell Avenue Baptist Church, now meeting at 82^nd and Cornell Avenue was running 300 people a Sunday.

Then in the 1960s the community changed rather drastically. Black folks were moving in, and white folks were fleeing to the suburbs. A young African American pastor came and asked if his church could use our building for worship. Pretty soon, Faith Tabernacle Baptist Church was growing by leaps and bounds and Cornell Avenue was dwindling. In the late 1960s they tried a bold experiment of bringing the congregations together. You can imagine, for that time this was a rather a bold move. They worked at it for a couple of years. But the worship styles and congregational polity were too different for them to have a real merger.

It was clear that Cornell Avenue had to move. They had two choices before them One was to move to the south suburbs like most of the members had, and the other was to move to Hyde Park where they had begun a student ministry to the UC campus. Hyde Park was a scary place for many of them. It was culturally diverse, religiously pluralistic, politically connected and it had that once Baptist, but now quite pagan University. So, what do you think: the church at its Wednesday night Business Meeting decided to move to the south suburbs. The following Sunday, Rev. John Brubaker got up to the pulpit and said, "I know, we decided to move to the south suburbs, but I have been praying about this, and God told me, that we should move to Hyde Park!" Talk about bold moves -- when the church was veering away from its vision, this pastor jerked the church back to where it needed to be.

We came to this building in 1978. Quickly we discovered that there were lots of hungry people around us who came to us seeking food. So, in 1981 we started a food pantry, which we housed in this building until 1994. Now run by the Hyde Park and Kenwood Interfaith Council, it is located elsewhere, continues to serve many needy families. We began Strive Tutoring Program in 1988, which continues to tutor and mentor students from our neighborhood every school day.

Then, among Baptists, we helped form and gave significant leadership to the Alliance of Baptists. We've been in the forefront of affirming women in ministry. We hired Rev. Susan Lockwood as our pastor in 1983 when women pastors were rare in Baptist churches. And we've ordained several women in the 1990s. We've also been highly mission conscious. In addition to supporting various mission causes, we have planted 12 churches now. And in the past 6 years we've been engaged in organizing our community to stand powerfully against the systemic racism that keeps our neighborhoods down. These are just a few highlights -- but as you can see, yes, we have a tradition of being bold.

So we chose Ellis Avenue Church -- a name that firmly locates us on a street that runs right through the south side of Chicago, and the now famous tag-line -- "Celebrating Diversity, Building Community in Christ." We came to believe that this tag line describes what God wants us to become at this time. Look at the verbs. We are celebrating and building. We haven't arrived yet. If we begin to think so, we become static and would soon fossilize! No, God is not done with us yet, and this tag-line is about God's hope for us. In fact, isn't it true that at bottom, the church is a community of hope?

Let me tell you about hope through a story you know well. There was once an elder brother. He stayed home with his father and managed his livestock and property and did everything that the father asked him to do. He was a very obedient son, religious boy too. He just wanted to make sure that he was OK is this life and OK in the next! He had a younger brother who had left home some time back and the news they were getting implied that he was in real bad shape. He was living in sin, and they thought he would never return home. Think of the shame! Where he was concerned the younger brother was dead. The older brother probably had some sadness at this thought, but the sadness quickly disappeared when he remembered that when the father died, the entire property would belong to him. Right now, he only had to make sure that the dad was happy with him. So one day he was happily coming home from the field, whistling "in the sweet by and by," when his whistling was harshly interrupted by the jarring sounds of a rock band coming from the house. "Has dad gone mad?" he wondered. He stopped at the gate and asked the security guard what was going on, and he said that his brother was back and that the dad was throwing a party. In fact the fatted calf had been killed. And didn't he blow his top! You see, immediately, the castles he had built in the air, began to crumble. And when the father came out to invite him in, he laid into him? He had assumed that there wasn't even a remote chance that the younger brother would return. Because he reasoned, the father would surely refuse to take him in. How could he take back such a sinner! Not so. The father really surprised him. It certainly looked now he would have to share everything, including the fatted calf. Sadly he turned away from his own home.

Now, you understand, don't you, that if we began to feel that we have arrived, that God is done with us, and that all we needed to do was to bask in that glory and our hope was simply a matter of going to heaven, we run the risk of being like our elder brother? Because we would do that right religious it may seem to us that we are close to the father, but in reality very far from the father's heart.

When I think of hope, the person who immediately comes to mind is German theologian Jurgen Moltmann. Back in 1967, he wrote a classic book based called The Theology of Hope. He points out that like our reader of mystery novels, we must look at life from God's end-time perspective, from eschatology. Hope, he argues is the foundation of Christian experience. It begins at the place of saying that this present experience of life is sinful, oppressive and enslaving. The basis of the Christian experience is the coming to terms with that unsatisfactoriness, or the sinfulness of the present existential reality. Then there was the younger brother who took the father's wealth and went to a far country and squandered it. Very soon he found himself working for a pig farmer and eating the food that was to be given to the pigs. That may seem gross to you and me, but this is the worst possible humiliation a Jewish person could undergo. But that was the existential reality. Moltmann says that those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is. This is particularly true when you know that in your father's house there is food left over and thrown away after the servants have eaten. So a struggle begins between the protestations of the youthful self that wants independence and the utter degradation of his existential reality - pig food. But the struggle is possible because there is hope. You see, somewhere in the remote areas of the young man's mind is the knowledge of the character of the father. But of course the father will be entirely justified in saying to him, son, you left me and went away and squandered your wealth, you brought shame on me, I cannot have you back. Don't we know of parents who say things like that to their children? Ah, but there is hope! May be, just may be, he will accept me. Indeed if he accepts me as a servant I'll be more than happy. Moltmann says that hope is the struggle against the unsatisfactory reality. The sad thing is that in this struggle, sometimes hopelessness wins and some people get stuck in a depression from which they can never get up and go. In the course of my ministry, I meet numerous people who are stuck in sinful behaviors and oppressive structures and cannot or will not do anything about it - and I am sure you can think of some too. Their condition is as if the younger son felt content to stay in the pig farm, eating pig food. They do not have hope. Not so, our younger brother. He knows hope. Its not an easy hope for him. Think of how scary it must have been for him to get up one morning and say "I will get up and go to my father and say father I have sinned against heaven and against you." It isn't too difficult to understand why it took him such a long time to come to his senses, is it? But praise the Lord, he did. Unfortunately some don't. And sadly some don't because those who are like the elder brother, who know the father's love, do not seek out the younger brother. They are more keen on maintaining the status quo. All the younger brothers out there cannot get up one morning and say, today, I am going to my father. Some need to know, some need to be pushed and prodded, others need to be led by hand. Celebrating Diversity and Building Community in Christ is about doing exactly that. It is about bringing people in to the father's house.

Here's my favorite quote from Moltmann. "Hope finds in Christ not only a consolation in suffering, but also a protest of the divine promise against suffering.....This is why faith wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the quiet heart, but is itself the unquiet heart. Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present." I think that's a powerful word. When I see someone who is struggling like the younger brother, unable to get out of the bind of sin, the hope that I have protests against it, struggles with it, suffers under it. Because I know that this is not what God wants. I know that there is a promised future for this person out there, and that promised future goads into the flesh of the unfulfilled present, goads into my flesh, not the other person's, but mine. I feel similarly when I see people who are caught in situations of oppression and injustice. A part of my own elder-brother type sinfulness tells me to keep away from that encounter, because I don't know if I have or anybody else has the energy to do anything about it. And when I hear and see of people getting killed in terrorist attacks, wars and even street crime, my whole being wants to protest at the violence. When I see and hear the manifestations of racism, sexism and violence against homosexual persons, I want to protest because I know how God loves all people. Being attuned to the hope in Christ one cannot put up with reality as it is. The goad of the promised future stabs inexorably to the flesh of every unfilled present. At bottom, the church is a community of hope. We know that because each one of us at some point of our lives has been like the younger brother wondering in sin, struggling between our yearning for independence and the existential reality of eating pig food. And like the younger brother we had some inkling of the father's love, some hope against hope that he may not reject us, so we went and lo and behold, he threw a party. We've all been there -- each one of us. But when we've enjoyed living in the father's house for awhile, we forget that we are a community of hope; and begin to think that we are a community of the status quo. We become like the elder brother and feel like we do not need to get the message out to the younger brothers out there. Not because we are uncaring people, but simply because we easily forget the days we ate pig food and lived in sin.

When we said, "Ellis Avenue Church: Celebrating Diversity, Building Community in Christ," we chose words that indicate hope. They are not static words: they indicate movement. They indicate that we have not arrived -- that God is not done with us yet. Each one of us fits in that equation somewhere, because none of us has arrived. But it puts us together in one community of bold people often moving enthusiastically, and at other times being pushed and prodded, towards God's dream. These words make us look forward and work towards a day when Ellis Avenue will be transformed in to a river of the water of life, bright as crystal flowing from the throne of God. That's God's vision and we are God's instruments. It’s a dark and stormy night and the telephone is ringing. Do you know where you fit into the story that ends by saying the butler did it? Its our 51^st birthday, and we have just got ourselves a new name and a tag-line. Do you know where that fits in the story that ends with a river of the water of life, bright as crystal flowing down the middle of the street of the city?