‘We’ve come this far by faith’ Louisville’s Grace Hope Presbyterian Church proclaims on its 125th birthday

When dealing with frenemies, can take our cue from Jesus, says the Rev. Jermaine Ross-Allam: ‘We come in peace, and we mean business’

by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service

LOUISVILLE — Blessed by insightful and prophetic preaching by the Rev. Jermaine Ross-Allam, the director of the PC(USA)’s Center for the Repair of Historic Harms, more than 100 people joined in a joyous worship service Sunday celebrating the first 125 years of service in the Louisville community by Grace Hope Presbyterian Church.

“That’s a long doggone time to be in service to the Lord,” said Grace Hope’s pastor, the Rev. Dr. Angela Johnson. “Today is not about us. It’s about what God is doing.”

The visitors were every bit as joyous as Grace Hope members and friends attending the 90-minute service. Among those in attendance were the Rev. Dr. Diane Givens Moffett, president and executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, and the Rev. Dr. John Odom, general presbyter of Mid-Kentucky Presbytery.

“Thank you for the work you’re doing,” Moffett said after being publicly thanked by Johnson for attending the celebration.

Among the hymns those gathered sang with gusto was “We’ve Come This Far by Faith,” which has been the church’s theme song. “Praise is what gets us through, in good times and in bad,” Johnson said. “We’ve been through some things and we’re still here.”

Ruling Elder Anna Bibbs shared a story depicting “Grace Hope at its best,” recalling how church members used to gather just before Thanksgiving to prepare food boxes each containing a complete meal for 25 or 30 families in need. “It was like an assembly line. We made sure every box got everything each family needed,” Bibbs said. “It used to take us all day. We were tired, but it was a good kind of tired because we were helping people. It never ceases to amaze me how God uses even the smallest thing for good.”

The Rev. Dr. Angela Johnson

“We don’t have to wait until we cross the chilly Jordan before we have hope!” Johnson said. “We praise God for 125 years of hope, and we pray that God keeps on keeping on.”

Ross-Allam used Luke 19:28-42, an account of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, as his preaching text. “It’s rare we tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth of how Jesus landed on the empire’s short list for a historical lynching,” he said.

Ross-Allam touched briefly on several Holy Week events, including Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, first asking God to “remove this cup from me,” then uttering what Ross-Allam called among the most holy words ever spoken: “yet not my will but yours be done.”

Before Good Friday, Jesus got himself into what the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis used to call “good trouble,” Ross-Allam said. “There is good trouble in the making once we turn our face to the Jerusalem of our time and place,” he said.

Jesus’ “frenemies,” the Pharisees, tried to warn Jesus after he’d entered the city to cries of “Hosanna,” Ross-Allam noted. Working people, the elderly and Jesus’ disciples “got so rowdy it made people a little bit nervous,” he said. It rankled them “that maybe someone was calling into question their legitimacy,” he said, when people in the crowd “removed articles of their humble outer clothing and laid them along the path where the Messiah was about to cross.”

The Pharisees “pulled Jesus to the side and said, ‘Teacher, make your disciples stop shouting,’” Ross-Allam said. “I think about this warning, putting a muzzle on Jesus’ fan club … Let us read ourselves into the text a little bit when the Pharisees say to Jesus, ‘Shush!’”

The Rev. Jermaine Ross-Allam (photo by Javier Lopez)

As the first director of the Center for the Repair of Historic Harms, Ross-Allam said he works “in the name of God and in service to God’s people” and operates with this message: “I come in peace, and I mean business.”

“I have eyes to see and ears to hear, just like everyone else,” he said. “It’s my prayer that God transforms the work of the Center into God’s holy work.”

Throughout history, he noted, powerful people have tried to shush justice efforts, including the work of repair and reparations. “Now’s not the time for all that divisive talk about repair and reparations,” they say. “Don’t you see this nation is once again a powder keg on the brink of another civil war?”

The sign outside Grace Hope Presbyterian Church invited the community to celebrate its 125th anniversary. (Photo by Mike Ferguson)

“My fellow disciples of Christ, we can understand why the frenemies of Christ wanted to shush the people,” Ross-Allam said. “Thanks be to God that Jesus understood that being fully available to God requires telling the truth and pursuing it even if you know crucifixion could be the consequence.”

“Being about our Creator’s business means doing God’s work in the neighborhood, in the nation and around the world,” he said, and transforming our long-neglected neighborhoods “requires a commitment that absolutely involves money. We must come in peace and still mean business.”

“Most important of all on this Palm Sunday,” he said, “we must get over the impulse to shush people. Let us be determined that through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we will demonstrate with our lives, our service and our relationships that it is indeed true that blessed are the ones who work in the service of our Lord. Amen.”