Here we are, a village church, surrounded by major high-ways on a wonderfully busy main street--actually, the only main street--in the Valhalla, New York. We're not stuck out in the middle of the northern pastures of the county; we're not one of those postcard New England-styled white clapboard churches on the village green, a relic to be admired. We're situated a half hour from Grand Central Station and the center of the universe; we're seven minutes from downtown White Plains; three miles from Westchester Medical Center. It is a gift from God and a tribute to the vision of those who have gone before us that we are where we are--that we are in the place that we're supposed to be.

I remember when Peter Gomes, the minister of the Me-morial Church at Harvard and the university chaplain, told the story of his visit with one of the random deans of that hallowed institution. The dean beckoned Gomes over the window, inviting him to admire the wonderful view of Me-morial Church from the window of a dean's vantage point. "You know" remarked the dean, "I'm sure if we were doing this again, we would never put Memorial Church in so prominent a location, right in the middle of Harvard Yard." Rev. Gomes didn't pause for a moment. "Well, we're here", he growled. "Get used to it."

So here we are in Valhalla--even though many of you reading this live elsewhere. You live in Hawthorne and White Plains, and even Yonkers or Yorktown Heights. It takes a significant amount of time and energy for you to come to church. And perhaps you've noticed how difficult it is to come lately. This isn't the 1960's or even the 1970's, when all we have to do is open the doors to the sanctuary and families come flooding into church. George Hunter has called it the loss of the home court advantage. Doing church is counter cultural. It means standing against the tide. And often it means taking a principled stand when other voices seem to dominate.

Several weeks ago, my family and I watched Invictus, set during the early days of Nelson Mandela's presidency about the South African rugby team, called the Spring-boks. People are always commenting how sports is a unifying force in human relationships, but in those days, whites rooted for rugby and blacks cheered for soccer. The Springboks were an almost all-white team (one player was black) and in the political climate that followed the well deserved death of the apartheid systems of racial discrimination, the South African sports authority decided that a name change and image overhaul of the Spring-boks was a necessity. But President Mandela had been reaching out to the team's captain, encouraging him to be a leader, for it was Mandela's desire that the Springboks win the 1995 World Rugby Cup. But the prospects were far from promising.

So when the sports committee of South Africa voted al-most unanimously to change the Springbok's name and team colors, inevitably alienating their white fans, Mande-la stepped into the fray. He personally intervened in the process against all the best advice of his cabinet. If we alienate the white majority, he said, if we take away their beloved Springboks, then we are no better than the op-pressors who used apartheid against us. "It does not serve the nation", Mandela says (played by Morgan Freeman). And then he speaks with principled authority: "We have to surprise (South Africa's whites) with restraint and generosity."

I am certain that there are many among us who believe that standing on principle and living and dying for one's beliefs is a long lost art. Is there an American today who would say with that schoolteacher from Connecticut, Na-than Hale, "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country"? Even JFK's words about asking "not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" rings hollow these days. I have been reading Taylor Branch's great biography of Dr. King these past months, and after he returned to America upon being awarded the Nobel Prize, Dr. King was granted an inter-view with President Johnson. The preacher took the op-portunity to push for a voting rights act--a law that would ensure poor people the right to cast a ballot for their elected leaders, regardless of their color. LBJ said, "I've used up all my political capital in the Civil Rights Act last year. The country isn't ready for this. Maybe it will be in 5 or 10 years." So Dr. King went home and organized a march to register voters in Selma, Alabama. He and his followers were greeted with police dogs and violence. Two weeks later, they tried again, but this time ministers and priests and rabbis from all over the country joined them. Five months--not five years!-later the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed. Someone remarked that this was a great example of a time when Christians didn't test the wind to see which way it was blowing. They changed the wind's direction

I think that one of the major reasons that churches are struggling in this post Christian era is that we've lost the desire to be leaders. We want to be indistinguishable from the world around us. We want to fit in so badly that we're afraid to take stands that are unpopular. We listen to the voice of cable news to determine our perspectives on the world around us, rather than listening to the voice of God. But we have a faith worth living for. We have a foundation that is unassailable. We have the same rela-tionship with God that gave the early believers strength and courage enough to face whatever adversity came their way. What was it that Paul--or one of his disciples--wrote to Timothy? "God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power and love and self-control."

Was this coincidence? Did he strike out on purpose? It is the stuff of baseball legend, so no one really knows for sure. But they say that Larry Doby never went on the baseball field except that he did not reach down and pick up the glove of his teammate, Joe Gordon, and hand it to him. Gordon's actions certainly didn't solve the problem of racial prejudice in the big leagues, but it did make a difference in Doby's life. And it told the kind of man that Gordon was. He knew when it was time to step up to the plate. He knew that some things in life are bigger than public opinion. He knew that some causes and some beliefs are more precious than what people think about you.

We are here, in Valhalla as a church, and wherever your hometown may be, for a purpose. Let us stand for what we believe. Let us affirm that we belong to God. Let us hold fast to a faith worth living for.