Bankrupting the Company

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
January 30, 2005

Bankrupting the Company
Romans 7, 15; 8:
Matthew 4:15-22

We heard a different call narrative today,
different from the one we heard two weeks ago in John’s gospel.
This is the one we tend to know:
the story of Peter the fisherman.
He and his brother made their living fishing the Sea of Galilee.
Most mornings they would climb into their boat and head out into
deep waters, where they would let their nets over the side
and, they hoped, haul up a good catch.
On other mornings, especially when the Sea was too rough for them,
they would simply stand on the shoreline
and cast their nets out into the surf.

Fishing was physically demanding, dangerous work.
The nets they threw into the waters were made from heavy coarse rope
and they grew heavier as they became waterlogged.
If they rowed their small boat far from shore,
and the winds picked up,
even the small Sea of Galilee could turn deadly.

As Peter and Andrew, John and James hauled in their nets,
they’d take the fish and place them on racks
and shovel coarse salt over them.
Two thousand years ago no one knew anything about refrigeration,
or even ice.
Fish was laid out in the sun to dry
and then sold to travelers, merchants and others who passed their way.
Dried, salted fish could last for days;
It was the precursor of freeze-dried food for the traveler:
light and long lasting,
even if the taste may have left something to be desired.

And so in the early morning, as the sun was just starting to warm the air,
and people were just beginning to stir,
Jesus walked along the shore of the Sea of Galilee
and saw Peter and his brother Andrew,
and then another pair of fishermen: John and James.
And Jesus said to them, “follow me.”
Nothing more.
No promises of riches, or salvation, or fame.
No rituals, no altar calls…
Just, “follow me.”

Why did Jesus call these men?
Why wasn’t Jesus at the Temple, conversing with those who were learned
in Scripture and the laws, and the teachings of the rabbis?
At the very least, why wasn’t Jesus talking with men of money,
of power, of influence?
Surely, that region had its celebrities, its wealthy,
its athletes and entertainers,
its politicians and powerbrokers.
What was Jesus doing with ordinary fishermen?
Men whose most distinguishing feature was their
pungent cologne of sweat, brine, and fish.
What did Jesus see in the man Peter, and his brother Andrew?
What did Jesus see when he went a little farther down the beach
and saw two more brothers, James and John?
These were strangers to our Lord,
men he’d never met before.
But he saw in them what we should see in all men and women:
he saw potential,
potential and promise.

Jesus could not have cared less about their education, their family backgrounds,
the neighborhoods they lived in, what schools they went to,
who they were married to, their political persuasions,
the color of their hair, or even their theology:
all those tools that we use to make judgments about people.

Jesus saw them as children of God
men created in God’s image,
men with potential, the potential that is in every one of us,
every one of God’s children:
the potential to be good men, faithful men,
men who would follow him, listen to him, and learn from him.
Men who would help others to follow.

Once he selected his disciples,
he didn’t send them off to a two-week disciple training program;
he just had the four follow him.
They added others, of course, until there were twelve.
And they followed Jesus,
listened to him, and learned from him.
Learned from his words, and learned from his actions.

They didn’t get everything right.
They often displayed weak faith.
They often seemed to pay no attention to his teachings.
Jesus lost his temper with them on more than few occasions;
Not because they were incapable,
but because they weren’t trying,
they weren’t listening;
they were more focused on themselves than they were on God
and faithful discipleship.

It was selfishness, self-centered behavior that distressed Jesus the most.
Behavior that is so common.
Behavior that is so hard to avoid.
hard for the disciples, hard for each of us.
We have heard Jesus’ commandment to us that we are to love our neighbor
as ourselves, but we want what we want,
and if our neighbor differs with us,
then we are quick to turn away from him or her.

How many times have you heard the words, “love your neighbor as yourself”
and then turned right around and treated someone rudely, abruptly
with disdain or contempt?
Yes, others have treated you that way,
but how many times have you treated someone else that way?
Think back just over the last 48 hours and there probably
isn’t one person among us here who hasn’t fallen well short
of living up to Jesus’ teaching.
Is it any wonder, then, that Paul should express his exasperation
with himself in his letter to his brothers and sisters in Rome:
“I do not understand my own actions.
For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Rom. 7:15)

As much as Paul tried to live his life according to Jesus’ teachings,
as much has he tried to be concerned with others,
look after others,
serve others,
Paul was often temperamental, peevish, sharp.
because Paul struggled, as we all do, to turn his focus
away from himself, away from what he wanted,
away from matters of the flesh,
to matters of the Spirit: to love.

We have all been called to follow Jesus Christ,
not because any of us has done something special to have earned such an honor.
No, we have been called because of God’s love for all of us, all his children.
Now you have heard me say many times
with our calling comes responsibility,
responsibility to learn from Christ, to learn from God.
We are to learn,
and be transformed as we grow in discipleship.
Have you taken stock of where you are in your faith journey
now compared with last year?
Are you different?
Have you been transformed even a little?
Are you more loving?
More forgiving?
More caring?
More concerned for others?
Are you less concerned for yourself, your reputation,
your position, your ego?
Only you know the answers to these questions;
you, and, of course, God.

Here in our church we are always working on transformation.
Anyone who looks at where this church was just five years ago,
knows that today we are in many ways different.
The Holy Spirit has called almost 100 new members to our family
over the past five years.
As of December 31, we counted our membership at more than 200.

Studies show that growing through that 200 member number
is the toughest transition a church can make;
more difficult than 200 to 300, or 400 to 500.
As we get bigger we need to work harder to assure that
we maintain an overall sense of community.
As churches grow, groups and factions grow.
Groups think of themselves as independent,
almost separate from the church,
and that causes problems.

Our focus must always be on the church, the congregation,
the community of faith and the Body of Christ that is First Presbyterian Church.
Our focus must always be on our church,
and on our transformation – both our own personal transformation,
and the transformation of our church.

I am about to start my sixth year as pastor of this congregation
and I have been praying over the past few weeks
seeking to discern where God wants me to focus
my energy in the coming year.
This past year much of my time and energy was spent on administrative matters,
building issues, and accounting and financial concerns.
It is my fervent hope and prayer to spend far less time on such matters
in the coming year.
Where I feel called to focus my energy is on how we do things.
Not on what we do, but on how we do things.

If we work well together as a community
then we will be faithful to Jesus,
and we will be successful.
If we lose sight of the larger picture,
we will fail.

When I lived in Buffalo, workers at a large manufacturing plant went on strike.
The company they worked for was struggling
and wanted to cut back on wages and employment.
The union said no and the two parties dug in for battle.
In a memorable moment, the leader of the union stood before a
bank of microphones and in a defiant tone said,
“We are going to get what we want
if we have to bankrupt the company to do it.”
The union was successful in their negotiations,
and kept the company from cutting back on wages or employment.
But two years later, the company shut down the plant
and laid off all the workers.
For the union leader, his triumph was short-lived.
He had lost site of the larger picture
as he focused on his own agenda

In our church, we must always be focused on the larger picture:
our own transformation as disciples of Christ
and our church’s transformation as we seek to find
new and better ways to engage in the missions and ministry
that our Lord calls us to.

We have such potential, and so much promise.
We are growing church, a healthy church.
But we can slip and fall quickly.

Each of us has been given the gift of grace by God through Jesus Christ.
It is up to each of us to extend that grace to our families
and to one another here in our church family.
Our calling is to build a grace-filled, gracious church.
Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer has written,
“It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christians…is a gift of grace,
a gift…that any day may be taken from us…
It is grace, nothing but grace that we are allowed
to live in community with [one another].” (Life Together, 20)

I would like to see us focus more intently on grace,
creating a more grace-filled, gracious church.
Peggy Wright, who has chaired our Christian Education committee,
has been working with me on a series of programs we plan to offer
during Lent, all focused on grace, and the last program in
the series addresses that specific topic:
how can we build a more grace-filled, gracious church.

The Psalmist has written, “how very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity…” (Psalm 133.1)
We won’t always agree on everything anymore than
the 12 disciples always agreed with one another,
or even agree with Jesus.
But if we are ground our actions and words on grace and Jesus’ commandments,
if we keep our focus on the Body of Christ that is this church,
then our community will flourish.

Jesus called each disciple for the same reason he called you and me:
because of his love for us.
We are called to share that love in everything we do
and everything we say.
We honor Christ not by saying we believe in him;
words are easy.
We honor Christ by responding faithfully to his words to
follow him: to live our lives as he lived his:
filled with grace, and sharing that grace
with all God’s children.
AMEN

Call For You On Line One

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
January 16, 2005

Call for You on Line One
1 John 2:1-11
John 1:35-51

I sat there in the gothic splendor,
the late afternoon light radiating through the windows.
I was sitting in a row that ran along the length of the nave in the chapel.
It felt strange for this Presbyterian;
after all I was used to sitting in pews that faced
a chancel at the front of the church.
But there in the glorious Chapel at Kings College in Cambridge, England,
there was no nave.
In fact it felt like the church was just one large hall,
long and narrow,
with rows of chairs running the length facing a center aisle.

It was a Saturday afternoon, tea time for most Britons.
But there in that chapel, it was time for the daily Evensong service.
It was back in 1995 when I worked for the Economist, a British business journal.
I had been in London on business all that previous week
and I had more meetings scheduled for the first part of the week following.
I had always wanted to visit the great university at Cambridge
so I decided take the train north and spend the weekend seeing the sights,
and of course, checking out the bookstores.
It was while I was touring through the chapel early on Saturday that I saw
the notice regarding the Evensong service.
I resolved to return.

I sat there in the quiet splendor of a church
that had been built more than 500 years earlier.
It was early spring – not a favorite time of year for tourists,
and students were busy with their studies at mid-term,
so there were only a handful of worshipers there,
but we all seemed filled with a sense of eager anticipation.

The mighty pipe organ sang out in its glorious voice
as the processional began.
The music was everywhere, notes flying out from the thousands of pipes
tucked behind screens in the organ loft.
The glorious sounds bounced off the crenellations,
the mullions, the carvings and the timbers,
running the length and breadth of the chapel
before settling on the congregation.
We stood to sing.
For that Saturday service, only small group of the famous
Kings College singers were in the choir,
but together, we raised our voices to the stone vaults
that soared high above our heads.

It was a magnificent service:
magnificent in its ordinariness.
This was not Christmas Eve, not Easter;
just an ordinary Evensong service on Saturday afternoon.
But still, it was special because it was clearly filled
with God’s spirit, God’s palpable presence.

Forty-five minutes later the service was over and we worshipers
all went our separate ways.
I walked out into the yard in front of the chapel
as I headed back to my hotel.
I had planned to eat dinner at the hotel
and then catch up on some of my reading.
But as I walked back, I knew something was different.

I knew even before I left the chapel in the fading afternoon light
that my path had been changed.
In the middle of that Evensong service,
God and I had gone head-to-head in the debate
we’d been having for more than a decade.
But this time, my stubbornness melted away;
more likely it had been carried away
with each note from the organ.
This time, I stopped saying, “you’ve picked the wrong person”
stopped saying, “now isn’t a good time”,
stopped saying, “no!”.
This time I finally said, “yes, God, I hear your call to ministry,
the call you’ve been trying to get me to hear
for all these years, the call I have resisted all these years.
This time, I hear your call. This time, I will say yes.”
The following year I began my work at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Call stories fascinate me.
The Bible is filled with them,
in both the Old and New Testaments.
Stories of how God calls men and women, ordinary men and women,
people just like you and me, to service.
Service in countless ways.
Read through these Call stories and it is easy to see the one feature
that almost all have in common, regardless of the person,
the time, the place, or the circumstances.
With only a very few exceptions,
almost every time God called someone in the Bible to service,
the person’s response was an adamant,
“No! No Way! Not Me! Pick someone else.
Try me again next year;
No!”
Almost everyone resisted and tried to run from God.
Almost everyone responded in the same way I did all those years.

That’s what makes the lesson we heard from John’s gospel so interesting.
John tells us the story of the first disciples as they began to follow Jesus.
But John’s version is quite different from the versions found
in the other gospels.
Did you hear the difference:
At first Jesus didn’t say a word to anyone.
No, “follow me”
No, “I will make you fishers of men and women.”
Nothing.
John the Baptizer points to Jesus and says to his own followers,
“Look, here is the Lamb of God!..”
And off go two to follow Jesus,
Andrew and another unnamed disciple.
It is Andrew who then calls his brother Peter to join them,
but Jesus still doesn’t say, “follow me.”
It is only when he gets to Philip that he says those two words,
and then when we get to Nathanael,
we find such a wonderfully human reaction:
Disbelief, contempt, cynicism: “don’t bother me”.
God’s hope for us is that we will respond
much like Andrew – that we will follow without even being asked.
without hesitation, without argument.

God’s call to us doesn’t just come once in our lives
when he calls us to faith;
it comes repeatedly, constantly,
as we are called to new and different ways to serve.

Each year God calls men and women to service in our church,
service as teachers in Sunday School, helpers in Vacation Bible School,
singers in the Choir, ushers, greeters,
Christmas decorators,
chicken cookers or potato bakers.
The call to serve comes through rather ordinary voices,
when we ask one another for help on this task or that.
It may be another member of this congregation whose voice you hear,
but it is God doing the asking.

God has been working through our Nominating Committee
the past few months calling men and women to serve this church
as Elders and Deacons.
We’ve got a group of Elders and Deacons who will be completing
their terms at the end of this month,
and so we will elect new officers at our Annual Meeting
on Sunday, February 6th.

We have for the past few years struggled to find new officers for both boards.
Our Nominating Committee works hard to discern God’s will for this church.
As they listen for God’s voice and God’s will,
the committee then reaches out
to those whom we believe God is calling to serve.

What the Nominating Committee has been finding with increased
frequency is that folks are saying, “No” to the call to serve.
I am always troubled by this because the call to serve this church comes
not from the Nominating Committee, but from God.

There seems to be particular reluctance to serving as an Elder
on the Session of our church.
In the Presbyterian system, we are all called to ministry
and we are all responsible for the life and well-being of this church,
but we delegate specific responsibilities to those we elect each year
as Elders.
There is no mystery to what the Elders do as members of the Session;
We can see the results of their work all around us:
They make sure the building is kept up,
the parking lot is plowed in winter,
and the grass cut in summer.
They make sure our children have the resources they need
for their Christian Education.
They make sure our bills are paid:
vendors, suppliers, and our staff.
They make sure we have wine and bread
on Communion Sunday, and that there are ushers
and greeters at the door every time we gather to worship.
They make sure we share our own blessings with a larger community
through our Mission giving.
They keep our Cemetery in good shape.
And they exercise supervision and oversight
over the other groups that work in this church:
the Board of Deacons,
the Men’s Council, the Women’s Association,
the Youth Group, and the Vacation Bible School.

For all these tasks, the principle responsibility of our Elders
is simpler: it is “to strengthen and nurture
the faith and life of the congregation.”
“to strengthen and nurture
the faith and life of the congregation.”
My principal responsibilities are
“studying, teaching, and preaching the Word,
administering the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper,
and praying with and for the congregation.” (6.0202.b)
The leadership and governance I exercise in this church
in strengthening and nurturing the faith and life of this congregation
I do as part of the team of Elders in this church.

Serving as an Elder is a responsibility, and yes, it does require
time and energy, but no more than other activities within the church.
Over the past 5 years, we have shortened Session meetings,
and kept them more focused, as we have strengthened committees,
which is the place where most of the work is done.

Someday God may well call you to serve as an Elder,
or perhaps as a Deacon, or a chair of a committee.
When that call does come, will you say yes, or will you say
“Not now, try me next year, I can’t”.
Every one who has served on the Session over the past five years
has been a very busy person with lots on his or her plate,
but when the call came, they responded, they all said yes.

When I walked back to my hotel room in Cambridge,
after saying yes to God, I was filled with questions
not least of which was how was I going to leave work
and go back to school. How was I going to pay tuition
room, board, books.
But in my fretting, I overlooked something: God provides us with what we need
to do whatever job God calls us to. God doesn’t call us to service
and leave us with an empty toolbox.
God will grace you with the resources you’ll need
to serve this church in any capacity to which you might be called.

God has graced each of us with different gifts
and we need all the gifts we have among our membership
to carry out the ministry and the missions
of this church as we begin our 164th year.
We need leadership, a willingness to say, “Yes, I will serve.”

Our church continues to grow: we now have about 200 members.
One problem that comes as churches get bigger is a tendency
to think that someone else is taking care of things.
But tasks don’t get done unless you do them.

God will call you to serve this church in some capacity at some point in time.
The call may come through me, or through an Elder, or a Deacon,
or a committee member,
but while it may be a familiar voice you hear,
it will be God who is on the line.
And when God calls, how will you respond?
Like so many others whose stories fill the Bible: Not now, no, call back later?
Or like one yes in particular, the yes that came from that young unmarried
girl who learned she was going to have a baby,
and responded to God, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord.”
AMEN

Have You Seen The Stars Tonight?

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
January 9, 2005

Have You Seen the Stars Tonight?
Isaiah 60:1-6
Matthew 2:1-12

I have in my possession a powerful instrument:
an instrument that humanity has sought since the beginning of time.
It is a scientific tool, a great invention, that allows me to peer into the future.
With this extraordinary discovery, I can tell beforehand
whether the lottery ticket I am about to buy will be a winner.
I can predict whether I can expect to be successful
in my desire to lose 20 pounds by summer.
I can even tell whether the Publishers Clearing House
Prize Patrol is on its way to my house.

What is this magical marvel,
this incredible invention,
this covetous contraption, you ask?
Well, I will show you:
here it is, the Magic Eight-Ball.
Such an ordinary looking device,
yet ask it any question about the future and it will give you an answer.
Here: let me show you:
“Will we complete this service on time and allow Jan
to get to the Blooming Grove Church without having to rush?”
And the answer is: “Outlook Not So Good”

Since the dawn of time, we have tried to predict the future,
we have tried to divine the future.
Did you know that God forbade such practices?
God expects us to have faith,
faith in him, faith that no matter what comes our way,
we’ll be able to handle it with strength that comes only from God.

But those words Jesus spoke to Peter are just as applicable
to every one of us: “O you of little faith”.
And so we try to peer into the future;
We want to know what lies ahead of us:
Will good fortune come my way?
Will she get the job…
Will he marry the girl…
Will they win the big game?

Did you know that one of the most popular sections of any newspaper
are the horoscopes?
We can’t resist them, can we?
Those little scraps that tell us whether
we can expect good fortune, or an ill wind to come our way,
all based on the alignment of the stars.

I don’t know how astrologers ply their trade these days,
it is getting harder to see the stars in the night sky.
Even here in Washingtonville artificial lights wash out the sky,
making the stars more and more faint.
Long before we filled our lives with electric lights, car lights
lights in our homes and on the streets,
the night sky was ablaze with stars.
Countless stars.

When I was young, I used to go to summer camp up in
Algonquin Park in Northern Ontario, and there,
hundreds of miles from the nearest town,
the sky was filled with God’s handiwork:
stars glittering across the heavens.

The night sky I looked at in the mid 1960s
was not all that different from the sky
that a group of astrologers looked upon some two thousand years ago.
But one night they noticed something different:
a star they had not seen before,
a star brighter than anyone had ever seen:
It glittered like a jewel,
brilliant, radiant, luminous.
For those astrologers who followed the stars,
something like that had special meaning.
But what? Why such a star?
What did it mean?
The star seemed to beckon;
It seemed to point the way to a place...
But where?
And so the group of astrologers decided to follow the star,
to find out why such a star might be shining so brightly.
And those astrologers, those Wise Men, those Magi, set out;

The Bible is skimpy on details.
We are not sure from where they began their journey.
We don’t know how they traveled,
or how long they traveled.
We don’t know how many there were, or their names.

We have filled in the story over the years.
We have concluded that there must have been three Wise Men,
decided that they must have come from the Orient,
and we have even given them names:
Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar.
We have also substituted the word King for Magi,
and so we think of the Three Kings coming from the Orient.

And where did the star lead those Wise Men?
To “a house” Matthew tells us.
There is nothing in Matthew’s story about a manger or a stable or an Inn,
Matthew just tells us of “a house, a home”;
But there in that home they found a young woman,
and a baby,
a baby who by then was probably more than few weeks old
perhaps even a few months old.
Again, we are not sure.

All we know is that the star hung high in the sky and
sent its radiant light down upon the house, the mother,
…. and the child.
And the Wise Men knew that this child was someone special:
A King;
And so they paid the baby homage,
worshiping him on bended knee
And then they opened their treasure chests,
and offered the child gifts.
Such strange gifts to give a baby:
Gold,
Frankincense,
And myrrh.
But they were fitting gifts:
Gold for the baby born to be King;
Frankincense for the baby born to be the Priest for all humanity;
And myrrh,…such a poignant gift:
perfumed ointment used to anoint the dead.
But then the child’s father knew his son, his only son,
would die so that all his children might have life.

On that dark night those three Wise Men
knelt there in the glow of the stars that filled the heavens.
Three older men, dusty and tired from their travels,
one young mother, wondering why these strangers were at her door,
and the child, the baby, with pink and wrinkled skin,
wrapped in swaddling clothes --
the King of Kings,
the one of whom Paul would one day write:
“God … gave him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil 2:9)


Our Christmas season comes to an end with Epiphany
and the story of the Wise Men’s visit.
Vacations are over, visiting relatives are gone home;
decorations put away until next year.
A new year has begun.

But in that baby born on that day,
new life has begun, new life for you and me,
and for all God’s children.
A life filled with hope,
even in seemingly hopeless situations,
such as those we have witnessed the past two weeks.
For in that baby’s birth came love and grace.
How else can we explain the outpouring of concern and
money for all those families and communities
devastated by the forces of nature?
At last count, $4 billion pledged, money from people like you and me,
money from every corner of the world,
to help people we don’t know in a part of the world
that seems so far away and so foreign to us.

Someone was asked on television whether that disaster might have been
God at work.
What a foolish, faithless question!
God’s hand was not what moved the tectonic plates
deep under the ocean.
No God’s hand is what moves us, his children,
to donate money for food, medicine, water, and clothing, for our hearts.
God’s grace through Jesus Christ fills our heart and calls us to act.

Come to this table like those astrologers of old
with head bowed,
and give honor and glory to our King.
Come to this table and give him your gift,
the one he wants more than any other gift,
your heart, your heart.
For he is our King, who rules not with crown and scepter,
not with sword and shield,
but with love and mercy,
forgiveness and grace.
whose throne is in our hearts (Van Dyke)

“Arise, shine, for our light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon us
Lift up your eyes and look around,
and then you shall see and be radiant....”

AMEN