Sunday, June 26, 2005

When Is Graduation?

0The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
June 26, 2005

When Is Graduation?
Isaiah 1:1-3
Matthew 25:14-30

The comic strip “The Far Side” featured a wonderful cartoon
a few years ago:
A teacher is standing in front of a classroom, book in hand,
leading the class in the day’s lesson,
when she is interrupted by a boy seated at a desk
in the middle of the room who raises his hand and says,
“May I be excused? My brain is full.”
That’s what I felt like after three weeks in my doctoral workshop
at Princeton.
It was full-immersion learning with 30 other students,
all clergy serving congregations as solo pastors, senior pastors,
and associate pastors, in Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian,
Congregational, and Baptist churches.
We also had an international feeling to the setting
with about a dozen clergy from churches in England and Scotland.

There were 7 of us in my group:
one from Hawaii, one from California,
two from North Carolina, one from Maryland,
and one from Connecticut.
We were in class all day each day, with two professors as our leaders,
as we discussed the research papers each of us was required to write
and submit in early May.
This past winter and spring when I wasn’t attending to family matters,
I was either in my study at home or at the library in Princeton,
researching and writing three different 20-page papers.
One of my papers was on preaching:
what is preaching – what are preachers called to do
in the 15 to 20 minutes we have each Sunday;
My second paper was on organizational leadership,
and the challenges churches have as a community of volunteers.
My third paper was on the debate over whether the Bible
is the inspired word of God as we think it is,
or the literal word of God,
as the more fundamentalist churches think it is.

In addition to our classroom time we attended lectures,
spent hours and hours in the library,
and chatted a great deal over breakfast, lunch, and dinner
in the Seminary’s dining hall.

Our focus was always on ministry: learning about ministry,
learning more about the changing nature of the church;
and learning more about ourselves as ministers.

This was Workshop 2 of a total of three that are required.
I will participate in my final workshop next June.
Between now and then I will continue to do my required reading,
an average of a book a week,
books from the list I prepared and submitted last fall
after I completed my first Workshop.
The titles reflect my interest:
I have wanted to learn more about marital counseling:
issues that need to be discussed and considered before a marriage;
problems that occur in a more mature marriage;
and how to pick up the pieces following the collapse of a marriage.
I have wanted to learn more about the enormous sociological change
we are just beginning to witness as the vanguard of the Baby Boom
moves from careers to retirement.
There are lots of bankers, stockbrokers and insurance agents
helping people to prepare financially for retirement,
but I am not hearing any discussion in churches
about how we in the clergy can help folks navigate
what promises to be an enormous transition
emotionally and spiritually.
Retirement from a career can have a profound impact
on a person’s life and sense of self, especially
for those who have been at one job
for 30 or 40 years.

I have also wanted to dig more deeply into theology:
theology that is Trinitarian: focused equally on the Trinity –
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
God the Creator,
Jesus the Redeemer,
and the Holy Spirit as Sustainer.
Leaders of the church debated the person of Jesus Christ
and the role of the Spirit for the better part of 400 years following
our Lord’s crucifixion.
I have wanted to become more familiar with some of the ideas
and theories our earliest church leaders had.
The first 400 years of Christianity were rich in debate;
there was an intellectual liveliness I don’t think
we have not seen since,
as elders, ministers, deacons, and bishops all tried to create
a church when the Head of the Church,
our Lord Jesus Christ, left no manual or instructions.
Every three months I prepare and submit a report on my readings:
what I have read and what I have learned from the books.
My focus has been and will continue to be on breadth through next June.
Then following the last workshop, my focus will shift to depth
when I turn my attention to my dissertation,
the lengthy research paper I will spend the next year or so writing.
My focus is practical: I want to learn more about
how we develop lay leadership in the church.
This has become a popular topic in churches of all shapes and sizes,
but especially in smaller churches like ours.

Our church has a problem we share with lots of other churches:
simply finding people willing to serve as Elders.
Every year over the past few years our Nominating Committee
has averaged two to three “no’s” for every one “yes”
as they have sought folks willing to serve.
My final product will be a book-length research paper,
a report that will hopefully help both me and the church
develop new tools for developing and nurturing leadership.

When is graduation?
When will Pat have to start calling me “Dr. Ferguson”?
An ambitious date is May 2007; a realistic date is May 2008.
But really, I will never graduate.
None of us ever graduates;
We may complete formal schooling,
but as disciples of Jesus Christ,
our learning should never end.
I have learned that the more I know, the more I don’t know.
And that to me is the beginning of wisdom.
The Proverbs are filled with aphorisms reminding us that
with learning comes understanding.
Our faith is a subject we will never master.
It is something we will always be working on
from the moment we enter the church through our baptism.
Martin Luther once said of baptism that it is
“a once in a lifetime experience
that takes our entire lives to complete.”
(as quoted in A. Robinson, Transforming Congregational Culture, 37)

Part of working out our faith is discerning what gifts God has given us
through the Holy Spirit, and then listening for God’s voice
as to how God wants us use our gifts,
use them not for our own comfort,
but to bring honor and glory to God,
as we follow Jesus Christ.
Now I know that God did not bless me with any mechanical skills,
I can’t fix much of anything around the house.
And God did not bless me with the kind of athletic skills
that would have allowed me to make my fortune on the playing fields.
I love music, but there too I learned early on
that while I might be able to play the piano
moderately well, I was never going to be a great musician.

God blessed me with a good mind,
a mind that I know God wants me to use
for more than just a go on Jeopardy.
God calls me to grow in my own understanding
so I can help others grow in faithfulness and understanding.
In the Presbyterian Church, one of the most important
hats a minister wears is that of teacher,
and teaching is something I’ve been doing in the church
for more than 15 years.
And as every teacher knows, just when you think you finally know
all there is to know about the subject you are called to teach,
a curtain in pulled back revealing just how much you don’t know.

If I stopped learning, I would be ignoring what Jesus
was trying to teach us
in our second lesson: When we are given gifts by God,
we are expected to use them; use them not for our own sake;
but for God’s sake.
In the movie “Chariots of Fire”, Eric Liddell,
known back in the 1920s as “The Flying Scotsman”
for his prowess on the running track,
acknowledged that God was the one who had made him fast,
and so every time he took his place in his lane to run a race,
he did so to bring glory to God.

Each of us has been blessed with different gifts.
That’s how we make up the Body of Christ –
each of us a different part of the Body,
Each of us necessary, each of us vital to this Body;
no one more important and no one less important than others.
We are to use our gifts to help us grow in faith
to help us grow in understanding.

One of God’s most frequent laments expressed
again and again is the complaint we heard through the prophet Isaiah:
“The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib,
but Israel does not know; my people do not understand.”
(Isaiah 1:3)
In other words: ‘my people think they know me,
they think they know what I want,
what I want for them and from them,
but they don’t have a clue.’

The only way we can know God is to learn about God
learn about Jesus, learn about the Holy Spirit.
It can be hard work.
But the more we learn, the more faithfully we can serve.

Summertime is a wonderful time to read, to learn,
to renew and refresh ourselves as a disciple of Jesus Christ.
We are lights and we are called to shine brightly.
In Jesus’ time lamps burned oil derived from the olive tree;
eventually the lamp would exhaust it supply of oil
and have to be refilled.
In the same way, our lamps dim as we spend our oil;
we need to refill our lamps, refresh them.
That’s why I chose to go back to school for my doctorate,
to refresh and renew myself,
to invest so much of my time and my money,
to step back and look afresh at what I do, how I do things,
so that I can serve our Lord more faithfully.

What do you want to do to enhance the gifts God has given you?
What do you want to do to help you to grow in knowledge
and faithfulness?
I invite you in the week ahead to think about it, pray about it;
come talk with me if I can help;
And then go back to school
We are never too old, never too far removed from our need to learn.

Graduation day will come;
it will come on that day when we stand before our Lord
in God’s heavenly kingdom.
On that day we will give an account of how we used our gifts
and how well we multiplied our gifts,
each of us eager to hear our Lord say,
“well done good and faithful servant.”
Amen.