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