First Presbyterian Church
Fort Lauderdale, Florida

GOS CURTOUS CHOICES
OR WHAT I WANT TO BE WHEN I GROW Up

February 4, 1990
Church Officers Presentatian

John ™. Buchanan, Pastor ~
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

scripture
Mark 7:1-8

"You leave the commandments of God, and hold
fast. human tradition."
—-Mark 7:8 (Inclusive Language Lectionary)
Abraham Lincoln, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow
Wilson, Dwight Eisenhower, WilTiam Jennings Bryan,
Norman Thomas, John Foster Duties; John Wanamaker,
Andrew Metion, George Westinghouse, Thomas Watson,
Frederick Weyerhauser, Louis Severance. Cyrus and
Nettie McCormick... McGuffey. whose readers define
an era in education, Poet Marianne Moore, Kar)
Menninger, publishers Gilbert Hovey (National
Geographic), Henry R. Luce (Time), Dewitt
Wallace (Readers Digest); Justices William 0.
Douglas and Tom Clark; Generals Stonewall] Jackson
and George MacClellan; J. Howard Pew and John
Glenn and Arnold Palmer and John Dancy and Mr.
Rogers and Dean Rusk and Walter Mondale and Dan
Quayle and Catherine Marshal? and Orel Hershiser...
all of them intentional Presbyterian Tay people,

tike salt of the earth, jJeaven in the loaf and on
occasion, Tight in the darkness.

Two hundred and one years ago, 1789, thirty-
four Presbyterians met in Philadeiphia and decided
that they were a national organization... the
Presbyterian Church. They represented 420
congregations scattered throughout the new nation
and its frontier. Together they were the largest,
best educated, most orderty church in the new
world. They had a strong sense that they were a
part of the new era in world history which was
coming to pass with the birth of the American
Republic, and so they dated the documents from that
meeting, not May 1789, but "In the thirteenth year
of the Independence of the United States of
America." They had been there from the beginning.
Two Presbyterian churches, established in 1640,
were already nearly 150 years old in 1789.

Today, there are 11,600 congregations which
comprise the Presbyterian Church (U.5.A.) in a
worid which is radically different and from a
Posture in the world which has changed radically
and is sti11 changing. We are, almost everyone
agrees, no longer at the center of things... Last
May Time Magazine featured a major article, “Those
Mainiine Blues" which explored the phenomenon now

familiar to alt observers of our culture.

The old established churches are declining in
real numbers and perhaps influence. Even if you
don't agree with the doom-sayers who predict that
at the current rate of decline the last
Presbyterian will expire sometime in the second
decade of the next century... everyone agrees that
things are different today from the day a few
decades ago when the Stated Clerk af the
Presbyterian Church was on the cover of Time and
President Eisenhower took time off ta help the
Presbyterians dedicate a new office building in New
York City.

T submit, in a way I hope is not overtly
parochial. that the role of mainline churches in
general and the Presbyterian Church in particular,
Is critical, worth being concerned about.

I come to that conclusion not, IT hope, on
the basis of pride or nostaigia alone, although I
have plenty of both for the church that baptized
me, appropriated the Gospel to me, nurtured me,
aggravated and agitated me on occasion... the
church which attended to the baptism of my own
children, the funerais of my parents and in which
my younger brother and oldest daughter are now
Ruling Elders... So it runs deeply and I care
deeply. But my conclusion that the Presbyerian

Ethos is worth working to preserve is based on the

values which Presbyterians have conceived, loved.
nurtured, fought for and sometimes suffered far.
You can see them early in our story.

The group that met in Phildelphia in 1789
understood that it was tite to think anew. The
presiding officer was John Witherspoon, President
of the Cotlege of New Jersey at Princeton. To show
fis support of the order which was emerging,
Witherspoon and several of the others had stopped
wearing their wigs in 1776. Thirteen years earlier
he had signed his name to the Declaration of
Independence, just two blocks down the street, the
only clergyman to do so.

Witherspoon preached the sermon, then
presided as the Assembly elected cone of its own as
Moderator, Joann Rodgers. Historians sometimes like
to note the similarities between Presbyterian
Church structure and the Federal Government. In
fact two years earlier, in the same city, meetings
were held just two blocks apart in which the
concepts were hammered out which resulted in the
Constitution and Bil? of Rights, and the structure
of the National Presbyterian Church. The central
issue for both groups was the matter of authority:
wno gets it, how it is to be exercised and how
limited or cantrolied. Both chase a strong central
authority, but limited by checks and balances and

Jocal autonomy: neither a monarchy, king nor
bishops, which they had enough of, nor a pure
democracy - but something in between, a Repubtic.
And then the Presbyterians went to work.
They apeointed a few missionaries to organize
churches on the frontier: they commissioned
several representatives to open discussions with
other Christian churches, they had a fierce
argument about a hymnal, they discussed the schoais
and colleges they had founded and they composed a
letter to the President of the United States,
George Washington. Calvinists that they were, they
presumed not only to speak to their congregations,
they spoke for the church to the world, always very
risky business. “We ought not to forget our
consequence in the Republic,” they said. It is one
of our traditions.

Presbyterian values have been like seasoning
in the larger context of American culture. We have
never been as prominent numerically as we were mm
1789, but we have always been a critical minority,
a lively source of flavor for the rest of the
culture:

1) The Heart/Mind Connection. We have from
the beginning emphasized education — understanding
— in the earliest days the ability to read

Scripture and understand: today, the necessity of

comprehending what we believe and how we believe it
1n our complex world.

2) The Deliberative Process as a fairly
dependable way to arrive at the truth. consensus and
therefore the ability to live together - critical
today when it is fashionable ta shout one's truth
ta the other side through a 6ull horn.

3) The Faith/Life Connection. Calvin said
you can't isolate religion from life - so, we've
been sticking our ecclesiastical nose inta the
world’s business for centuries. It may not always
make you happy - but I don't want to live ina
society where religion is domesticated, tame,
compliant.

4) Our Theology of Vocation — perhaps our
most precious possession - you - laity - officers,
elected by the congregation ~ you are church, not

we ~ clergy,

hard bed

meets with mother al
bad food / So “

I quit

You've’ been around Aer

"doesn't surprise me 4 bit.

You are our genius._ \ You are one of our unique
contributions to the church universal. \ We are not
noted for our elaborate liturgies ~ like
Episcopalians, or our muscular missionary activity, brke. Ptopnsnrd
or our heroic Tife styles Tike the Seventh Day
Adventists or the more honest Methodists who hew to
the party Tine about this world's pleasures...
Our major contriébution has been you — the
Jatty ~ lay people ordained to office, with om
authority and responsibility for the church
Almost Unisuertiy 8 authority in the church is
lodged in clergy -
in hierarchial system — intentionally —
but just as efficiently in the free church
tradition.{ when without structure or theological

—

rationale the preacher still runs the show —
But not here — <gg¥ can't do much without

Dice
Can't have a meeting — pass a budget —
probably better not spend money or receive members

4

YOU —

without you...

You are our genius -

So it seems appropriate to think a bit on
expresses your faith both in the church but also

not in the church — where, after all, you spend the

vast majority of your time.
The topic is VOCATION - the title is

Wi1Tt I Bo When I Grow Up? Sela
_—_ Vocation - Webster says — means Met Li- Ele

baie
Come It's i the ‘Sten vocatus — vocare is
~ to call. | voce oo voice ~ ~ vocation —

to have a vocation is to be stummoned { 0 hea hear a

Gad 5 Cyne, 3

voice ~ to have acall. lsom-far so good.
Then Webster reflects the biggest
theological error in the history of Christiandom -

—_—-__.-

(" an entry — into the priesthood or religious order"

Finally ~ Webster returns to_ the point -

"a vocation is the work in which a person is iLslog”

regularly ene toyed.’

hear voices calling - them to their “vocations” -
while al] the rest simply do whatever puts bread
and butter on the table?

Our tradition has a radical, ‘important

and redeeming word to say on the topic...

3

But first — deciding what to do when you
grow Up is not as Simple as tt used to be...

Time was when you had to know what you
wanted to do - in high schoo?. | When T went to
college ~ people in the Blue Collar town asked
“why? y What do you want to do?" fie. the reason to
go to college was to acquire marketable skills ina
vocation you had already chosen - at the wise old

age of 17.

And then you graduated at 2 and if Uncle
Sam didn’t need your services ~ you either stateg
doing what your have prepared to do ~- teach school,
for instance, or you entered Grad Schoo] for a few
more years and began doing Cre at 24 or 25.

Think of the revolution in our culture in

vocation? \ at tS Now standard for Kids to graduate
— come home — hang out — and decide what to do
next. | And then for 5 or 4 years to agonize. Many

professional schools don't really want them unti7 |ecutta tht

they have hung out for 3 years. Pray 4poveste™ we tale pr_ a 1

And the reason behind it all is that
today ~ the average American worker will change
jobs abour 4 or 5 times..| Many of them ena!
changes. , — OX

( BRokeER - bought sheep farm in up-state New York
, if
eee

\ sells sheep WU yogurt, loves it.

VIS Cee Ab tinued (AC OL

Presbyterian minister and author, Fred
Buechner, aiding seminary graduates once, admitted
that at 50 he 43 still not sure he hag! resolved the
matter af what to be when he grows up. (‘Peoote

read my books, want my to autograph them, Tisten to

me speak, ask my opinions... If_they only knew how

unsure I am..."
What does our faith tradition acutally

Say about the natter | First of all _it_ says, that

God is interested - in fact is involved in vocation

~ does call people ta do things, go places, become
people they don't necessarily want to become.

On of the best«stories of all is about
Moses,

You may recall the preface: \ Moses is
saved, as an infant, from the paranoid genocide of
the Pharaoh by being placed in a basket in the
bulirushes, 7s rescued by Pharaoh's daughter, grows
up in the royal court, Kills_an Egyptian, is a
refugee, marries and settles down, has a son, goes
into business with his father—in-taw! And then one
day he sees a burning bush jin the desert and hears
a voice that says “I have heard the cry of my
People in Egypt... Come I will send you to Pharaoh
that you may bring forth my recpte") To which
Moses says, with considerable understatement, but

with absolute clarity, “who, me?"

id

o

“Who am I that I should go?" and there begins
the kind of dialogue between Moses and God that you

and I can understand... {
“Who me?" asks Moses. Tm not qualified for

that." "I'll go with you," God says...

"What if I go; what will I say to them? I'm

not a theologian... I'm not even very religious.”
And God says “Tel] them 'I Am‘ sent you."
And Mases says, “If I say that, they won't

beljeve me.” And God says "I'11 help you.”

And Moses says (“But I'm not eloquent.» as a
matter of fact I'm a Tousy public speaker." And
God: "I will teach you what to say.”

Finally, Raving exhausted a1] the reasons he
can think of for not going Moses puts it as Clearly
aS anyone could, without adornment or rationale:
"Gh my Lord, send, I pray. some ather person.”

Now I don't know about you, But preceding

most of the interesting things I've ever done, I

engaged in something like that dialogue. lIf it was

not with God, at_least with the person on the other
end of the telephone asking me to do a job I didn't
think I could do, and therefore didn't think I
wanted to do.

“Why -ne2( 1 don't know how to do it — I’m not
qualified. TI don't have any experience. And —
how about Joe, or Sally - Oh, my Lord ~ send some

other person."

You see, we have not ever been able to shake

the notion that God has something to do with who we

are and where we are and what we are to do with our
‘lives. \ We have not been able to think about the
matter of our vocation without some sense that
something, \ someone is part of the dynamic —

pushing, prodding, stirring us up, showing us

tantalizing possibilities, opening a door here,

Slamming a door there. | We have not_been able to
avoid the mysterious possibility that God has
something in mind for us and that God's coming to

us in Jesus Christ is in some way a summons to our

vocation - a calling to become what God means for
Us to become.

John Updike keeps writing about things like
that with considerable beauty, I think. In his
latest book, Self Consciousness, which is a kind of
personal memoir, he writes about spending an
evening walking the streets of the smal]
Pennsylvania town where he grew Up... about the
school and five and dime store, the fabulously fat
policeman. the luncheonette, the people and the
houses... the town where he was secure “in the
belief that I was known, watched, placed."

As he walks the dark streets Updike ‘invokes
the German word which Ties at the heart of

12.

DA-2IWE
philosophy - ‘Dasein... the first mystery that
confronts us is “why me?" The next is "why here?"
Haven't you asked that? “Why me? Why here?” [p.6]
And then at the end he provides a kind of answer
which I found both provocative and moving.

“Dasein (why me - why here?)... Isn't ita
miracte, the oddity of consciousness being placed
qn one body rather than another, in one place and
not somewhere else, in one handful of decades
rather than in ancient Egypt, or ninth-century
Wessex, or Samoa before the missionaries came, or
Bulgaria under the Turkish Yoke, or the Ob River
Valley in the days of the wooly mammoths? Billions
of consciousnesses silt history full and every one
of them the center of the universe. What can we do
in the face of this unthinkable truth but scream or
take refuge in God?" [p. 40]

So we take refuse... from the beginning our
stories tell us that God has a part in who we are,
where we are and what we become. | God makes

ee

choices... God meant for it to be Moses... chose

fim for a set of reasons. Peter and Andrew, James
and John are not simply the first four men Jesus
meets on the day he decides to recruit disciples...
They are intended by God, gifted by God in ways
they don‘t even understand, particularly skilled to
do work they don't begin to comprehend.

are Somer! es Wery Uimonk,

Shortly after the Christian Church got going,

yt adopted a very peculiar idea: namely that there

were two kinds of Christians — clergy and lay

people. \te adopted that notion because the world
in wirich it lived loved to set up dichotomies like
that, dualities: ight and darkness, body and
spirit, sacred and secular. \nt got that notion,
not from Jesus, but from the Greek philosophers.

in any event, it wasn't jong before the young
church had a full-fledged caste system: clergy and
laity. Clergy live in the world of the spirit, the cues? p
church. Laity live in the other, real world. ys ca

Tt may have been the worst mistake we ever

made. | Because it wasn't very Tong until we
compounded it with an even worse error. | Namely,
the notion that God chooses the clergy to be
clergy, but leaves every other person up to his/her
own wits to decide what to do| Vocation became
calling to priesthood. It took more than a

thousand years to undo the damage and we are stil]

trying to deal with jt.

“We are all priests” said John Catvin and
Martin Luther. And by that they did net mean that
you don’t need a priest to intercede with God — the
traditional, belligerent Protestant battle cry.
What they meant is something far more important;
namely, that every man and woman is called by God

2 14

to ministry... not just the professional clergy,
but ministry in the broader sense of doing God's
work, Every life has meaning. and significant and
important work to do. There is no such thing as a
sacred as opposed to a secular vocation.

The radical Protestant principal is that
God's work is done when faithful people do the
world's work with mercy and justice and dedication

and Tove. | Building walls, washing clothes, arguing

cases, performing surgery, selling stocks, taking
blood. having babies, Playing a violin, teaching
chifdren, fighting fires, negotiating contracts,
flying airplanes... and preaching sermons.

Madeleine L'Engle wrote: ("We are aT asked
to do more than we can do. Every hero and heroine
of the Bible does more than he would have thought
possible to do from Gideon to Esther to Mary."
[Walking on Water, p. 6] None of them were
qualified... it would appear.

Curious _choices. Morton Kelsey has written
about why Jesus chose ishermen instead of lawyers
or architects. | He suggests that it wasn't a bad
decision at a17 when you consider the patience,
dedication, and stubbornness which you have to
have to fish with any success. And their age -

young peopie, all of them, probably late twenties.

Kelsey writes: “speaking as one in his late

18

sixties, I know that I have learned much in the
fast 25 years but I have also realized that there
1s a dedication, energy and power in young men and
women... Would Christianity have spread, had most
of Jesus' disciples been in their sixties?"
CResurrection, Pp. 122]

Think of how many of the wonderfully gifted

seem at first totally unequipped to do what they do
bri iant ly... Jim Abbott pitching magnificent Ty
with no right hand... Beethoven writing the
passionate Ninth Symphony as deafness closes in...

Yan Gogh painting sunflowers while descending into
the dark night of the soul, a
T con't Know about you but Lt ne fa

Beethoven or VenGosh ~ or Abbott = Bes
ee ears to led ae Ria

How do you and I know what to do, where to

0... What God wants us to become? |For some people
it comes dramatically... a man walks by and says
“Follow me." \Sometimes it is a voice in the dark,

—

a burning bush, a close brush with death| For
some, says Fred Buechner, it begins with a lump in

the throat or a tear in the eye.

And. for others it is a matter of simply and

———

honestly surveying the gifts you have been given

and asking a most simple question: "To what

16

purpose should J be putting the gifts God has given
me?"
And for others it is a matter of responding

to the insistent voices -— sometimes, frequently in

fact, contained in the cries of pain and anguish
that haunt us in the night:\the cries of the
hungry, and homeless, and sick and oppressed. \ God

calis us, I do believe, through our own uneasy
conscience, our own passion for justice -- our own
anger even, our impatience with structures of
injustice in the world.

And God calls us through our Tove. \ God, I

nal

believe, uses our loves, our passions, our hopes,

our dreams... God puts them in our hearts.
God's work is done, not just when people
ten
decide to become clergy, but when the world's work
is done with mercy and love and dedication and
justice.
What we actually believe is that God has

chosen you, elected you, in Jesus Christ caTied

you. | You are a chosen one. | We say that ina

universal sense, in a way that exceeds our ability
to comprehend. \_ But also in a very personal sense.
God calls you to ministry.

It is a matter of very great importance to
each one of us to listen, to know and to respond.

For, in the final analysis it is our own identity

7

that is at stake. God can probably find someone
eise to do our work. In fact, finding substitutes
to do the work people refuse to do is probably one
of God's major activities. What is really at stake
1S us: the meaning and purpose of our lives, our

joy, our Jove, our fulfiliment, our peace at the \:

end of the day... | a
In his journal for May 6, 1854, Thoreau wrote

- (

“All that a man (or woman) has to say or do aw
that can possibly concern mankind, is in some shape Ne WY
or other to tell the story of his Tove,... tosing, ~ 4 N
and if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be ae

—_— oreve ove. e alive... \ } :
o>. _ forever in Igve. This alone is to be alive XR.

13

When I was struggling with my own sense of
vocation, trying to decide whether or not to go
through with this ministry business, someone gave
me a copy of Markings, Dag Hammarskjoid’s personal
Journal. He was the Secretary General of the
United Nations from 1953 until his death in 1961,
in an airplane crash while on a peace-making
mission in Africa.

The book reveals a deeply thoughtful man who
in the midst of his distinguished career as a civil
servant was still struggling with his sense of
vocation.

What he wrote was important to me because it
helped me to see that there is a question to be
answered before we decide what to do - that whether
or not we are ministers, doctors, lawyers,
construction workers, iS really not as important as
the question of who we are. And so for thirty
years this famous Hammarskjold vignette has been
waportant to me:

"T don’t Know who or what put the question, I
don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember
answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to
someone or Something and from that hour I was
certain that existence is meaninful and that,
therefore, my life in self-surrender, had a goal."
(Markings, p. 205)

19

Aer) That's what is at stake. \ Tt is both the

invitation and the promise of discipleship... At
the beginning of the story Jesus chooses people and
calls them to follow. \ pn at the end. at the table
of the Last Supper, he says it again: “You did not
choose me. I chose you."

You may not always see it clearly, as they
did not. Yhe voice may ‘not be terribly loud and
distinct. And you may find yourself arguing with
it a lot ~ in ways you'd be too embarrassed to
discuss with anyone. [m God means for there to be

a you...
God has something in mind.

God has tasks which you are uniquely equipped
to do... And therefore there is @_reason for your
being.

God has chosen you... a curious choice
perhaps, but we do believe that. | In Jesus Christ
God has called you.

The adventure starts when you Tay down nets
and follow; when you say “here I am, send me..."
when in some way or another you say yes to the
voice of God calling your name.

Again ~\thank you for your service to the

church \- You ~ expressing at least part of your
calling, your vocation — through ‘the church - aH OA4,
our Presbyterian genius.

ao