“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief. It was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of hope. It was the season of despair.”

That’s how Charles Dickens began his book, “A Tale of Two Cities,” said Bishop Woody W. White, a bishop in residence at Candler School of Theology.

And that’s how White began his sermon at the Proclamation Celebration Service on Monday night at the 35th session of the South Carolina Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, which is being held at Claflin University. The session ends Wednesday.

With “these contrasting, contradictory views ... (Dickens) could have been describing the era in which we now live,” White said.

“Most of us are living far better than we ever dreamed or imagined,” he said. “I can’t believe all of the gadgetry and all of the things we have to make life so much better for us. We have so much food in the refrigerator that we need to buy a freezer to put the leftovers.”

Truly, these are “the best of times,” he said.

“And yet we don’t have to go too very far to find people who don’t know where their next meal is coming from. We live in a world where people starve because they don’t have enough to eat.”

For them, it’s the worst of times.

We are living in an “age of wisdom” and modern enlightenment, White said. Knowledge is but a few keystrokes away on the Web.

He spoke of breathtaking medical achievements. “I know some of you have a hip that’s not yours, or a knee that’s not yours, or if you’re really lucky, a heart or a kidney that’s not yours. And people still have the nerve to ask, ’Is God still making miracles?’”

“At the same time, we have an alarming dropout rate and an alarming rate of pregnancy out of wedlock,” White said. Every 13 seconds, on average, in the U.S. a child is abused. Four million women are battered every year.

“In this nation, we have so much knowledge, yet so much foolishness,” White said.

“A few years back, when the church was not as good as it is today,” police blocked him and several colleagues from entering a Methodist church because the congregation did not have “this wonderful tan” that White and his colleagues had, he said.

“We said we just wanted to worship. I said. ‘I’m a Methodist preacher.’ They said, ‘You’re not going to worship in this church.’ We got arrested, put in jail and fined, each of us, $1,000 for disturbing divine worship and $1,000 for trespassing.”

Thirty years later, White attended a council of bishops in that city and was assigned to preach in the church whose parishioners had ordered his arrest.

“So the young preacher who could not worship in the church was the honored guest,” the bishop said. “Don’t tell me we don’t serve an awesome God!”

“When I got in that pulpit, I wanted to (ask), ‘Do you know who I am? Do you know what you did to me 30 years ago?’ That’s what Satan wanted me to do. Then God whispered in my ear: ‘You don’t have to mention it. I’ve already taken care of it.’”

“No matter how dark it might look, no matter how difficult, you just hold on long enough. It’s going to get all right. Right will ultimately triumph,” he said.

However, White said vestiges of discrimination remain.

“What happens,” he asked, “when somebody takes seriously the sign outside your church that says, ‘All welcome’? What happens when somebody comes to your church and doesn’t look like you? ... Are you so in touch with the hurts of the world that you bleed for anybody?”

That reached the core of his message about commitment to Jesus Christ and the call to preach the gospel.

“Are you sure you want to be in ministry in times like these?” he asked.

Satan will challenge God’s followers, the bishop warned. “You’d better take seriously the power of evil,” he said.

Sometimes it hits close to home. He told about his reaction upon hearing that his senior citizen mother had been physically assaulted. “I’ve never known such anger as I had that day,” he recalled.

He hopped aboard the next train to his hometown and walked into his mother’s house. He found her in the kitchen.

“She was frying chicken,” he recalled. “She said, ‘I thought you’d want something to eat when you got here.’”

“I held her, held her tight, as the tears flowed down my cheeks,” he said. “I’m the one with the theological degree and I was (speechless).”

“And she said, ‘Now, son, don’t forget: God is good.’”

White said he has never forgotten that lesson. Regardless of the circumstances, “God is good. It’s our job (as Christians) to say to the world, ‘God is good.’ Ultimately, truth will prevail.”

Retiring clergy ‘pass the mantle’ to newly ordained

A highlight of Tuesday’s session was a service of recognition for retiring ministers and the “Passing of the Mantle” ceremony. Among this year’s retirees with local connections are:

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