“Love Divine All Love’s Excelling – Terry Coley’s Final Sunday”

Christopher H. Edmonston

1 Corinthians 13

February 26, 2006

I.

Here in great American southland, place occupies very important space. Where we are from, where we live and have lived, the places from where “our people come from” each are very important in southern culture. From Virginia west to Arkansas, then south in all directions from there, we talk about place a lot.

For example, if someone asks me, “Where are you from?” I give them at least two answers (and sometimes more): “Well, I live in Tarboro, NC, but I am from south Louisiana.” Even though I haven’t lived in Louisiana for 16 years it is still home and it’s still where I am from. I know that I am not alone in this feeling or outlook, because in the South we do love places and families and histories and, to be honest, we love memories of home.

I suspect that one of the reasons why I am committed to that idea of place, this somewhat romanticized version of home is because in 34 years of life I have lived in 12 different places. There are folks I know here in Tarboro who have lived in 1 place or 2 places, and for whom 12 places would be an awful lot.

II.

My favorite children’s book is called All the Places to Love. It’s a book about a grandmother and a grandson who live on a farm. The boy’s mother is expecting a second child, and he is feeling neglected. So the grandmother takes the boy under-wing and shows him all the places to love on the farm: the hill side, the creek, the great trees with their breezes under bough. The book is a beautiful panorama of color and diversity – it is a hymn to the beauty of places and place and familiar spaces and they way we pass on “the why we love something” to those whom we love. The book ends with a beautiful testimony to lessons learned and then taught – the little boy showing his baby sister all the places to love.

True love just might have very little to do with puppy-dog eyes and being swept off our feet (even though it is wonderful to be in love like that and I wouldn’t wish that experience away from anyone!). True love most probably consists in keeping something close to heart; in shepherding and stewarding something that we know is greater than ourselves; true love just might consist in insisting that someone gets the credit for our gifts and our service; true love just might be found in singular and inspiration dedication to place and people, like the grandmother passed onto her son, or, in the case of what we are about today, to a church and to God.

III.

Today is a day set apart in the life of Howard Memorial Presbyterian Church, here in this place of faith, ministry, and worship.

To be sure, when the third volume of our church’s history is written, I hope that the witness of Terry Coley is given the fullest treatment it can be given. For my part, I am far too smart to stand in this pulpit and say whose, which man or woman’s service here at 303 St. James Street has been the most important and the most influential over the past years.

I will stand in the pulpit and say, however, that when the story is written and the conversation is had, that Terry Michael Coley:

· Director of music

· Leader of the choir

· Organist

· Director of Christian Education

· Recital player, voice instructor, piano teacher

· Mission trip leader, and youth advisor

· Writer of opera and anthems and choral calls to worship and benedictions

· Terry Coley, who has played at weddings and funerals

· Set up and taken down risers and chairs and tables

· Survived the great flood of the Eastern United States and the challenges of working in small spaces and rebuilding an organ twice

· Terry Coley the virtuoso of church breakfasts and children’s choirs and maker of recordings and compact discs of lovely and beautiful music

Yes, when the story is written about this place for the last 45 years, 540 months, 16,425 days and some amazing number of hours and minutes Terry Coley’s name will be part of the conversation about the servants whose lives shaped this place, those who left their indelible stamp here at this Howard Memorial Presbyterian Church.

It is almost too incredible to talk about or too overwhelming to try and describe – from June 1961 to February of 2006.

IV.

To be sure I should probably say that today is Terry’s day at Howard Memorial Presbyterian. But that is not the case. Terry himself would tell you that it is the Lord’s day. Just like if I said that that was Terry’s organ up in the choir left – Terry would say that it was first the Lord’s organ, then the church’s organ. He would say that he was only a keeper of it for a time and player on it for a season.

This is perhaps to say that this place, this place that Terry has loved and that has loved Terry will continue on after he turns in his keys on Tuesday, is a place not because of the people who call it a spiritual home, but because of the God in whose name it was consecrated and the Christ whom it serves. Terry Coley knows this better than most of us, I am proud to say. He has spent the last 45 years teaching us this lesson over and over again.

Are we sad to see him leave our staff? Yes.

Are we excited that he is going to enjoy some well earned retirement and time off? Yes.

Do we celebrate before God his gifts and his legacy and his ministry with us? Yes.

And must we be willing to make a space, to carve some room, here in this place by welcoming those who come after Terry? Yes.

For we honor the past in the greatest fashion by securing the future. We honor the foundation layers by building higher, and higher, and higher, and higher, and higher than they built all the while saying thank you to God for their witness and asking God where we should go next.

By coming to this place, Terry Coley changed it. When he walked into Howard Memorial under the eye of Welford Hobbie the minister who helped bring him here, Terry brought his gifts and his loves and made it his home. We most honor Terry by allowing his successors to do the same: to make a mark upon this place that we might one day see and honor in a fashion similar to what we are about in this hour.

V.

In a way that is what the apostle is driving at in this most famous, most familiar, most read section of 1 Corinthians. We honor God most not by only loving God, but by finding in God the source for our love and then using that source to go and love others.

One wonders how many times Terry has heard 1 Corinthians 13 read at weddings over the years. I wonder if he has heard it in his sleep (I imagine he can recite it for us)?

There was an idea, early on, as we were planning today. An idea that all the brides that Terry had played for in all their weddings – all the times he had heard marriage vows exchanged as he occupied his seat on the organ bench. An idea that all those girls, ladies, and now, older women, would wear their wedding dresses on this last Sunday of Terry’s ministry. When told of this, Terry said something like, “O please, no!” I suspect either the thought of that spectacle or decorum itself welled up in his reaction, and we are doing things as best we are able. Though that would have been unforgettable, we are sure!

VI.

Well, even if there is not a bride in the house, the point remains that Terry has loved this place with patience and kindness. Terry has not been arrogant or rude. Other than proper consonants, good phrasing, and the proper care of the instruments in the church he has not too often insisted on his own way. Indeed Terry almost universally has deferred to the will of God and the authority of the church.

He has, most importantly, loved you all, he has loved us. In turn we have loved him and prayed for him and wished him well. Let us continue to do so always for there is greatness in our midst and a servant’s heart in Terry Coley that none of us might ever see again.

1 Corinthians 13 knows what we all inherently know but usually never get around to name. It knows that love is the greatest attribute of the Christian life: love is greatest of hope and faith. What I know from ministry and my faith though, is similar to a realization that I have observed in Terry Coley since the day I met him: love is the greatest of hope and faith not because it is the easiest or least labor intensive; it is the greatest because it is the most difficult of the three. Love involves risk and risks disappointment and failure. Love is thus the most difficult.

To be sure there are many divine loves – one of them is the love of God that grows out of our love for the church. Insofar as that love might excel other loves, then we are, and have been for the last 45 years, in the presence of excellence.

Thanks be to God for the gifts and ministry of Terry Coley. Thanks be to God for his love and dedication to this place. Thanks be to God that of all the places to love, Terry was chosen, and in turn chose Howard Memorial as his place to love. Thanks be to God, indeed.

Amen and amen.