Everyday Ethics and the Life of Faith
John Wilkinson Third
Presbyterian Church September 26, 2004
I Timothy 6:6-19
For 18 years, from 1946 to 1964, William Hudnut served with
distinction as the pastor of Third Presbyterian Church. For
every moment of that important tenure, Elizabeth Kilborne Hudnut
served with distinction and grace as Dr. Hudnut’s partner
and companion. A week ago today, Mrs. Hudnut, known to many
of us as Betsy, died at the age of 96 in Evanston, Illinois.
Those of us who knew her knew a woman of singular grace and
faithfulness. I had the honor of meeting her once, in the days
before I moved to Rochester. We shared a lovely meal and visit,
and she shared many fond recollections of Rochester and Third
Church. Though her health had been declining in recent years,
she maintained a faithful disposition until her final moments.
I have been in touch with several of the Hudnut children this
week – they are grateful for our prayers and remembrances,
of which I have assured them there are many. Service arrangements
are pending; as we learn anything, we will pass the information
on to the congregation.
Let us pray. Gracious and eternal God, we thank you for all
the saints, who from their labors rest, and we thank you this
day for Elizabeth Hudnut, whose race has been run, and who rests
now with you. We thank you for her long and faithful life, and
for the ways she touched us in this community of faith. Be with
those who mourn and comfort them with your presence, that they,
and all of us, may know again of your great love, O shepherd
of us all. Amen.
***
This morning is what we have called Spotlight Sunday. It is
a day intended to give focus to the program life of this congregation,
to shine a little light on what goes on here. The light has
two focal points. The first, and primary, is visitors. We are
unsure how many of you visitors there are this morning. Presbyterian
technology cannot yet identify those who are and those who are
simply us regular old-timers. There may also be a stray Icelandic
soccer player or two. To them and all of you, we simply say
welcome!
Welcome to you who may be visiting with us this morning –
friend, neighbor, new to town or new to us. We are very glad
you are here with us today. We have made many plans to make
you feel especially welcome this morning. We ask all of us to
fill out a name tag, for example, enclosed in our worship bulletin.
We contemplated giving everyone in the congregation a brand
new Pontiac G6 until we heard that Oprah Winfrey did the same
thing several days ago. It seemed so passé! But we have
something infinitely more interesting to offer. A full-scale
and very extensive information fair – to be held following
this service of worship in the Sanctuary, Johnston Hall and
parlor. Refreshments will be available, as will literally dozens
of people ready and willing to share information about the vast,
growing and exciting program life of this vast, growing and
exciting congregation.
That’s the second focus of the spotlight, by the way,
the rest of us who are not visitors. It’s a perfect time
to learn more about a program, to meet leaders, to volunteer
even. Thanks to many people for sharing their time and energy
in making this thing work this morning, led by Maryjane Link
and the Evangelism Committee. Debra Bishop has devoted countless
hours in organizing, and we are extremely grateful for her efforts.
And for those of you who are visiting, whether for the first
time this morning or after many times, and who are considering
a church home where your gifts and journey may find a place
to abide for a while, I would encourage you to consider membership
at Third Presbyterian Church. Members of the Membership Committee
are posted at a table in the information fair. Talk to them
or one of the ministers. The next series of membership classes
is October 17 and 24. We welcome you and invite you, even as
we encourage all of us to let our journey of faith take wings
through a program or volunteer opportunity at Third Church.
***
One of the unexpected by-products of parenthood is the opportunity
to re-visit experiences from your own childhood and youth even
as your children have them. Sometimes the opportunity is welcome;
other times I am not so sure. Some memories re-emerge after
years and decades that you are very glad to remember. Others
work their way up, like a rock buried deep within a field that
clangs against the lawn mower of your life, denting the blade
just a bit, memories that you might have preferred never to
have again.
In our house, I have been preparing for the next wave of memories
through a series of movies, very few of which I would recommend
to anyone. We check them out from Blockbuster and see them,
seemingly, several hundred times, enough for the rest of us.
An interesting genre. Several of them involve teenaged girls,
and feature young actresses and attendant fashion and hairstyles.
They all, unwittingly or not, feature a variation of the Cinderella
theme, and that’s often where the memories of high school
past come into play. The Princess Diaries, and of course, the
Princess Diaries 2. Ella Enchanted. A Cinderella Story. Confessions
of a Teenage Drama Queen.
A bright, attractive, but attractive in an unconventional way,
young woman. Usually a sibling or two, who in the beginning
of the movie is hateful or spiteful but who typically comes
around later. A best friend, sometimes a girl , sometimes a
boy – who puts up with more than any friend should. Parents
who are lovable in their denseness and who all end up being
parented in some way by the more enlightened child. A series
of teachers – some cool and understanding and some un-cool
and un-understanding. A catty clique of other young girls who
all seem to wear Chanel or Prada or Abercrombie and Fitch or
whatever, and who ostracize our protagonist but who always at
the end either come around or are humiliated, or come around
by being humiliated. The requisite big game, which now every
once in awhile is a soccer game rather than a football game.
And the big dance, where romantic awkwardness evolves into string
music and a happily ever fade to credits.
Now these are the movies. Our lives don’t come with an
incredible wardrobe or a music soundtrack available on Amazon.
But stripping away all of that, I, and perhaps all of us, can
still wonder. Was life like that? Is life like that? Of course
not. But then again, there are these issues: Who we are. The
choices we make. The ways we fit in or do not fit in. How we
connect with friends and family.
The cycles and patterns of life that we experience in our childhood
and youth are just that, are they not? Cycles and patterns,
and a lifetime of negotiating them, and a lifetime of living
with our decisions, and discovering day by day who we are, and
who we are to become.
I am sure the metaphor breaks down at some point, and I certainly
know that Hollywood likes tidier endings to its movies than
life ever can offer. But at the same time, do we not seek resources
and sustenance for the living of our days. So can we try this
on for size? “Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith,
love, endurance, gentleness.”
You would expect the first three in church, I suppose –
righteousness, godliness, faith. But love, endurance, gentleness?
These are the ethics, the values, that will make a difference
in the every day ways in which we live our lives.
The biblical letters to a person named Timothy are attributed
to the Apostle Paul, or else someone in Paul’s theological
constellation. They are concerned with two things, church administration,
with which we might deal on another day, and the moral life.
Timothy is concerned about money, for example. We might have
attributed “the love of money is the root of evil”
to Shakespeare or Ben Franklin, but here it is as a biblical
truth. It seems difficult to understand, but is certainly a
revelation, that alongside the lofty theological notions of
sanctification and justification and atonement is a theological
concern for money.
As we said last week, Jesus did not talk about S-E-X too much,
but he did talk about money. And here is this letter, reminding
all of us that in our eagerness to be rich, we wander away from
our faith, we wander away from the things that matter. That
could be portrayed as a pious message, and perhaps it is.
We are not so sure about piety these days. Barnes and Noble
and Borders have huge product movement in the “spirituality”
section, not so great in the “piety” section. Fair
enough. But we know that it is these dynamics, echoed, perhaps,
from our childhood and youth, that continue to motivate us,
for good and ill. Money. Worth. Power. Influence. The “Trumpificaiton”
of all things. The message that we send to our children and
to one another that our value is all tied up in things and patterns
of consumption. We are presented with more and more things to
consume, and we feel rather that there is less and less.
And so our faith offers up these alternatives: love, endurance,
gentleness. Love in the face of hate. That’s a clear one,
or so it would seem. Easy on global levels and perhaps on more
localized ones. But the real question is how that love plays
itself out in the relationships we foster, in the decisions
we make, in the choices that present themselves to us.
And endurance, endurance in the face of a world that encourages
short term, quick gain, that encourages a throw-away approach
to things, a get-everything-out-of-it-you-can approach followed
by quick discarding. How can we teach our children endurance,
and how can we encourage it in one another. Long term solutions
to problems that have been decades in the making.
And gentleness. Who dares talk about gentleness these days?
And yet here it is, an anecdote to screaming at the top of your
lungs to solve problems by wearing them down, discrediting the
opponent, breeding cynicism and negativity. Who dares talk about
gentleness these days? Even more so, who dares to be a person
of gentleness?
Why not us? Why not the church? Theology – what we think
about God – and ethics – how we live in the world
– are, for us, integrally related. James Dunn reminds
us that for Timothy, “ethics were not a nervous conformity
to bourgeois ideals, but deeply rooted in the gospel.”
(New Interpreters Bible Commentary, Volume XI, page 795)
How counter-cultural that would be, and how revolutionary,
to live our lives based on a vision of faith and endurance and
gentleness, dictated not by convention or the market or the
latest DVD, dictated not by a campaign that seems to be getting
shriller by the moment, but rather by a life that lives such
endurance and gentleness, and love.
Imagine that. Imagine lives lived by such a vision. Imagine
a collections of lives lived by such a vision. The church, we
might call it. Imagine what those lives could do in the world,
what a difference they could make. Imagine the lives our children
could live, and our grand-children, if we could help to form
in them this vision. Imagine.
Theologian Miroslav Volf offers one version: “All the
churches of Jesus Christ, scattered in diverse cultures, have
been redeemed by God…to form one multicultural community
of faith. The “blood’ that binds them as brothers
and sisters is more precious than the ‘blood,’ the
language, the customs, political allegiances, or economic interests
that may separate them.” (Exclusion and Embrace, page
54)
Whether we can imagine that or not, that is indeed what we
are called to imagine, and that vision begins with a story,
and a life, and then it folds in all of our lives and all of
our stories. And we know it is a vision of a better, a more
excellent way. We know that.
Who dares talk about gentleness these days, or endurance, or
faith, or love. And who dares seek to live them? We do. We do,
not because we have achieved these things, not even because
we are so good at them, because so often we are not, but because
we have received this vision as a gift from God who loves us
deeply, from God who longs for something transforming for each
of us, from God who loves this world so much.
Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers, said one time that “understanding
love is one of the hardest things in the world.” (The
World According to Mister Rogers, page 51) He was right, of
course. And yet that journey, that struggle, that test of endurance,
is worth everything, everything. That is the invitation to church
this day, an invitation to church not for church’s sake,
bur for the sake of this vision and for the sake of the world.
That we this day may clothe ourselves with love, gentle, enduring
love, the love we have been given, and the love to which we
are called. Amen.
