Wednesday Worship with the Rev. Dr. Richard Allen Hyde

The Institute on Religion and Democracy hosted the Rev. Dr. Richard Allen Hyde, Pastor of Community United Church of Christ of San Carlos, to deliver our Wednesday Worship sermon on June 3.

Dr. Hyde, a Congregationalist minister, spoke to the IRD staff on the passages of Isaiah 28:14-19 and 1 Peter 4:12-14, “Do not Be Surprised at the Fiery Ordeal.”

The monthly gathering aims to foster Christian fellowship within the greater Washington area. IRD hosts prominent Christian leaders to deliver sermons, pray, and facilitate worship.

Video of the worship service can be accessed below via IRD’s YouTube channel or as downloadable podcast audio via IRD’s SoundCloud account. Sermon text is posted below.

If you are interested in joining IRD for worship, please contact Events and Outreach Director Sarah Stewart at SStewart@TheIRD.org.

The IRD · Wednesday Worship with the Rev. Dr. Richard Allen Hyde

Sermon text :

Do not Be Surprised at the Fiery Ordeal

Is there any word from the Lord?

As always there is a word of warning and a word of comfort:

Therefore, hear the word of the LORD, you scoffers,

Because you have said,

‘We have made a covenant with death, and with Hell we have an agreement; when the overwhelming scourge passes through it will not come to us; for we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter’

• Isaiah

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.

– 1 Peter 4:12-14

Do not be surprised

Some of you may remember that the first time I spoke here at noon worship I featured the words of President John Sloan Dickey from his Dartmouth College Convocation in September of 1950:

“What is new is not the evil in man, but the range of its opportunity and the immensity of its consequences. Within the last 50 years alone the destructive potentialities of human error and evil have been increased beyond calculation. I shall cite here only three of the principal factors in that development:

First, the opening of the widest chasm of ideological conflict the world has ever known.

Second, the fantastic increase in the destructive power possessed by men as contrasted with the relatively static state of the moral and political controls governing such power.

Thirdly, the rise of the mass media of communication, making the emotions and minds of millions the constant prey of the few.”

Almost 76 years later, just a bit longer than the span of my entire life, these words ring as true as ever. That chasm of ideological conflict seemed briefly to come to an end; but then opened again and released a whole pandora’s box of ideological chasms. The destructive power of weaponry and the methods of delivery have vastly increased; likewise, the power and variety of mass media; all vexing the ability of any government or collectivity to guide.

We know that people under stress need help and can seek help in the worst ways. Drowning people desperately cling to the people who attempt to rescue them, sometimes causing both persons sink to the bottom.

The human condition is an ordeal – fiery, watery, whatever – from start to finish. We risk burning ourselves with our own passions and drowning in other peoples’ woes. When we are in the midst of an ordeal, we want it to stop and we reach for solutions. In an age when the destructive potentialities of human error and evil have been increased beyond calculation, the solutions offered also increase beyond calculation, causing even greater confusion.

TS Eliot wrote sometime around World War II:

“. . . the cultural health of Europe . . . is incompatible with extreme forms of nationalism and internationalism. But the cause of that disease, which destroys the very soil in which culture has its roots, is not so much extreme ideas, and the fanaticism which they stimulate, as the relentless pressure of modern industrialism, setting the problems which the ideas attempt to solve. Not least of the effects of industrialism is that we become mechanized in mind, and consequently attempt to provide solutions in terms of engineering, for problems which are essentially problems of life.”

Year in and year out, we make covenants with technologies and techniques that offer us the world, as the devil offered the world to Jesus, that do not fulfill their promises and unleash as many problems as they solve.

Perhaps, we think, mechanically, we can make a covenant with Artificial Intelligence.

Perhaps it will do our work for us and unleash economic growth beyond our wildest imaginings.

Perhaps we can make a covenant with the latest propaganda techniques and so we win every election – literally making lies our refuge and with falsehood taking shelter –

Perhaps we can put together a sure-fire coalition of our friends and so we will defeat our enemies.

So we think and hope; nonetheless, we should not be surprised if we try all these things and find that they cause as many problems as they solve; as the Lord said through Saint Peter long ago:

“. . . do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.”

Thus saith the Lord today and every day.

Is that all?

Fortunately no.

Is there any further word from the Lord?

Of course there is:

That word isRejoice. Rejoice says the Lord, through Saint Peter, insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed.

Behold , says the Lord GOD, through the prophet Isaiah:

Behold, I am laying in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation.

We know that life is an ordeal;

We know that the whole creation is groaning in travail; it was ever thus; it always will be.

Yet we also know that the love that moves the sun and stars became flesh and dwelt among us;

We know that the beating heart of the living God became flesh and walked among us and dwells among us still.

We know that Jesus was, and is, and ever will be this precious cornerstone, this sure foundation

We know that our redeemer lives and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.

When our Savior entered Jerusalem amid the rejoicing of his disciples, he was asked to silence them, but instead he said:

I tell you, if my disciples keep silent, the stones will cry out!”

(Everyone of us is a cornerstone that cries out and proclaims the glory of the Lord enthroned in heaven and still amongst us.)

We today rejoice and cry out and tell the world that we have not made a covenant with death, but we have made a covenant with the living God. Our covenant does not guarantee us a smooth ride through life; it makes of human n life no less a fiery ordeal, but our covenant bids us Rejoice as we share Christ’s sufferings, so that we shout for joy shout for joy as God’s glory is revealed.

We Americans will endure this latest fiery ordeal. We have been through many before. nd there will be more to come. Now is as good a time as any to rejoice at this wonderful time and in this wonderful place where the Lord has put us.

Now hear the word of the Lord through Walt Saint Paul Whitman, the rhapsodizer of America:

“The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations. Here are action and details magnificently moving in vast masses.

Here is the hospitality which forever indicates heroes …

These all are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it.”

The epic poem of America awaits the next chapter.

Rejoice that we here are playing a part.

Rejoice at the sufferings we share and shout for joy as God’s glory is revealed.

More from IRD :

Wednesday Worship with Richard Allen Hyde (March 27, 2025)

Wednesday Worship with the Rev. Dr. Richard Allen Hyde (September 12, 2022)

Church Planting Interview: Glenn Hoburg of Grace DC

The post Wednesday Worship with the Rev. Dr. Richard Allen Hyde appeared first on Juicy Ecumenism.