A Fourth Church Sermon by Dana Ferguson

June 16, 2002 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Parenting Hope

Dana Ferguson
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Romans 5:1–8
Matthew 9:35–10:8

Father’s Day. Mother’s Day. They’re what I call contrived holidays. And they don’t always turn out like the Hallmark commercials depict them. Well, I don’t know about yours, but at least not in our household. Years ago, after three agonizing years of fertility treatments, drugs, and procedures—with no children—I thought there would be idyllic holidays if we just had children. And, then, finally, there were children in our house and I discovered that the picture of reality is a lot different than idyllic.

When our two-pastor household finishes a Sunday morning, fighting brunch crowds isn’t first on the list. A nap sounds like a lot better gift. I thought about changing these contrived Sunday holidays to Saturday in our household. But after a little more thought, I’ve just decided to sort of ignore them until our kids figure out that there’s another thing in our household not functioning as the rest of the country does.

Now don’t get me wrong. We love our boys. And, we love the fact that after years of our waiting, they came to us. But there are other reasons beyond my own little self-absorbed world why I realize that these holidays can at times be more painful than celebratory. Wayne and I had dinner last week with a couple who has suffered two miscarriages in the last nine months. During these months too, they went through the illness and death of one of their fathers.

“Being in church is the hardest,” she said. “The hardest part for me isn’t just the loss of a baby. It’s the loss of the possibility of being a parent.” I suspect it’s true for lots of folks sitting in church pews this morning: this day can be hard when grief and loss of what was or might have been is stronger than the reality of what has been good and loving and cherished in life.

So I’m launching a campaign to change Father’s and Mother’s Day to Parent’s Day. It’s designed to be about the family of faith, the Christian community and the faith that has been entrusted to us. So what you have today may not at all be a sermon but instead a campaign speech. And, I’m hoping at the end of your morning you’ll cast your vote for Parent’s Day! We’ll be taking signatures on petitions at the Advocacy Table after worship.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit St. Paul’s Chapel in New York City. The occasion was a worship service commemorating the closing of Ground Zero. As you may know, St. Paul’s became a central hub for the relief and recovery workers after September 11. The chapel was open seven days a week for 24 hours a day providing food, cots, coffee, shelter, even massages and doctor’s care. More than 3000 meals were served each day, 40,000 in all, and countless greetings from around the world were received and displayed at St. Paul’s.

This small chapel, a little larger than our Blair Chapel, with a balcony circling the main floor, was transformed into a multiservice facility. There was a pharmacy table, with aspirin, cough syrup, and whatever else you might need for what ails you; a clothing table where fresh socks and boots were plenty just as sweatshirts, scarves and gloves were in winter; a coffee table; and even a health table staffed by a podiatrist. The service that grew with popularity as the weeks dragged on was massage therapy. As people become more and more comfortable in their surroundings, shedding more and more clothing for their massages, more and more privacy panels were set up. Upstairs in the balconies were cots for sleeping.

At 10:00, people had started to gather for the 11:00 worship service. It was a private service for relief workers and volunteers. I attended with a group of theologians from Auburn Seminary. We sat in our pews, quietly observing as firefighters and police officers, clergy and volunteers filtered into the room, greeting one another. There were lots of hugs and long embraces. I had a very clear sense of being an outsider.

During the course of the service, six individuals were invited to share their reflections. A young police officer was the first to speak. Frank Accardi nervously unfolded sheets of notebook paper and shyly started to speak to the congregation gathered there. He talked first about 9/11—about standing outside the World Trade Center, watching the building crumble and thinking about, as he said it, his “beautiful sister-in-law dying inside the building.” He still wore a button on his shirt with her picture. “I was angry,” he said. “I was mad at God.” He said it more than once. “I was mad at God.” So he wasn’t sure about coming to a church, wasn’t sure about spending time in a chapel. But he came—for food and rest. Day after day, as he worked at the site, he came on breaks. And he came to know the staff and the volunteers.

“You are my family,” he said to them. “You have become my family, greeting me with warm food and open arms, smiles of welcome and care. St. Paul’s has become family.”

As I listened to firefighters, police officers, construction workers, and volunteers speak, I wondered what would happen to it all. What would happen to the hundreds of note cards and letters taped to the pews? We were told later that some of these would be stored to display later in a memorial to be created at Ground Zero. Some were going to the Smithsonian.

Would they be able to tell, I wondered, those hundreds and thousands that would later file past these mementos, what it all conveyed? Would they be able to sense the family that had formed in the place where these once hung? Would they be able to feel the healing and the hope, the compassion and the grace that lived in these walls through the words on paper and the outstretched arms offered at St. Paul’s Chapel?

St. Paul’s had become new parents—parents of hospitality and compassion, of service and giving, of hope and healing. They had grown into parenthood as many of us do in the traditional sense: not sure what we’re getting into, living it day by day, doing it the best we know how, and trusting God to bring good from it.

The white backs of the pews were scuffed and marked by the boots of sleeping relief workers in those first days, much like the sofas in our house are still stained by spilled bottles of formula. And then St. Paul’s pews for sleeping were replaced by cots spread with fresh sheets and massage tables assembled for comfort, like the cribs in our house that were replaced with big boy beds. St. Paul’s had grown into parenthood as their family grew, some 5000 volunteers laboring there through the eight months, loving and giving the best they knew how.

In the scripture lessons we read today, we encounter the first Christians, the first disciples and the early church. “Proclaim the good news. Give without payment.” The disciples are told to go out to share the good news. To go to the lost sheep and claim the love of God in their lives and in the world. And, then the early church: “Share the glory of God.” “Share. Give.” Commands that send followers out in the name of Christ to all the world, even to the places of hurt and anger and fear. Theologian Walter Brueggemann wrote a book some years ago titled Hope within History. Writing about faith in the midst of grief, he writes, “Hope emerges among those who publicly articulate and process their grief over suffering.” In this book, he poses the question “Will our faith have children?” Yes, he argues. Faith will have children in the places where people claim their grief, for only then will they be able to open their eyes to possibility of hope.

The most precious gift of the household of God, faith, has been entrusted to us to parent. All of us, each and every one of us, are called to be parents of faith and hope, compassion and hospitality, belief and possibility.

New members, you have come to be a part of a family this day, this family of the Christian church, this body of Christ known in the world as Fourth Church. And we, the people of this body, have made a promise to these new members: to welcome them into this fellowship—not because it is ours, but because it is God’s and we are called to share it. We have made a commitment together, to labor in this world for goodness and justice and compassion. As the people of Fourth Church, we have committed ourselves to parenting hope in this world.

When talking with parents who bring their children to be baptized in this church, I am often asked about godparents. “We’ve asked friends to be our child’s godparents. Will they be a part of the baptism?” or “Why don’t Presbyterians have godparents?” My answer is this: Everyone who is in the congregation on the day of baptism is a part of it. All are welcome, for we Presbyterians do have godparents. They come in the form of a congregation. When your children are baptized, they get 4500 godparents. Just the same for adults who come to be baptized, too. The people in the congregation make a pledge for the whole of the church to love and nurture new disciples as they grow. Parenthood. We, this body of Fourth Church, claim each Baptism Sunday our commitment not to parent people but to parent the faith, to grow our faith, in study and worship and service, and to nurture the faith of those around us, in this community and in this city and in this world.

Faith has been placed in our hands, and it call us to hold the hands of all around—to hold the hand of the parents who have suffered another miscarriage and tell them that no matter how it feels, God loves them. To hold the hands of the grieving widow and to tell her that healing will come in the love of God and the love of the community of God. To hold the hand of the one whose lifelong partner has called it quits and tell him he is loved—by the family of faith and by a Savior who brings new life in the midst of crumbled dreams. And that will be exactly the moment, according to Bruggeman, that our faith produces offspring.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a member of this congregation. For years, Sam’s work has taken him across the globe to the Middle East, where he is involved with interfaith work. He works alongside those who care for children in one of the few places in Jerusalem where Christians and Jews and Muslims come together—where they work together, where they trust their children to a childcare center that welcomes people of differing faiths, people who many in their own faiths know as the enemy. “What can we do?” I asked. This congregation has taken seriously its obligation to be a part of the difficult conversation, to work hard at hearing all the voices in the conflict and agony of these days. “What now?” I asked. “What can we do?” “Don’t give up,” was the answer. “Don’t give up hope.”

And that is precisely our job—to never give up hope, to hope against all odds, to proclaim redemption even on the bleakest of days. “Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.” God doesn’t bring suffering or pain and anguish into our lives. This isn’t a test of our endurance or our fortitude or our faith. But, as Paul makes clear, it is a reality.

It is part of this world that God holds, embracing the hurt and grief and agony and calling us to hold the hand of the bereft, to hold hands and claim boldly in the midst of pain God’s great mercy—the gift of Jesus Christ, the reality of redemption, of believing in a Christ that can make all things new, that can bring healing in the midst of hurt, can bring justice in places fraught with injustice.

Sam just returned from Jerusalem this past week. He traveled to settlements in the outlying areas of Jerusalem. He was greeted with these words, “We can have hope when Sam comes.” Because someone was willing to believe that the work to be done was important and full of possibility, then hope was possible. Because those on the other side of the globe had not thrown up their hands and said it was hopeless, those in the midst of it could hope. Because of the faith of one, others could have faith.

We are called, just as those first disciples were called, to cast out the demons of doubt, to heal the hurt places of greed and resentment and pride, to proclaim the good news of hope and possibility. And so the call comes to go out into the world in the name of Christ, to go out to the children of Cabrini-Green and Guatemala and Africa to tell them that they are loved, to tell them that they can dream, to tell them that their futures do have possibilities. To go out to neighbors in Cabrini and Honduras and West Virginia to claim with them a new tomorrow where people live in homes fit for human habitation and children go to school in classrooms equipped for learning, to claim the possibility of people living together in respect and dignity and hope.

This congregation took a bold step of faith last week, voting to purchase property just a mile or so away on Chicago Avenue to build a community sometime in the future. By this action, Fourth Church claimed boldly the belief in a future filled with hope for the Cabrini-Green community. Fourth Church made a vote and in so doing cast our place with those who believe in the possibility of change in a community troubled by poverty and violence and crime for decades. This is not a naïve hope that ignores the difficulty of transforming public housing into a mixed-income community or ignores the injustice of today or the pain and struggle of the past. But it is a profound hope, deeply rooted in our calling and our belief in what can be, in God’s power to transform, to bring new life and new beginnings and new relationships even in the bleakest of circumstances.

“This was our home,” declared one of the construction workers. “The people of St. Paul’s have become my family,” announced a firefighter. His first words had been “I was angry with God. I couldn’t believe what had happened around me. I couldn’t believe the loss and anguish and devastation. I couldn’t believe in God.” But God’s people came to him, reaching out in a quite shelter from the chaos, in a warm cup of coffee, a soft bed, reaching out to hold hands and share God’s love, to claim the possibility of a different tomorrow. And that tomorrow came. The hope that was nurtured and loved grew up. The parents of faith shared freely and boldly. And disbelief became belief. Anger became thanksgiving. “Thank you,” were Frank’s words. “God is in this place.”

The household of God. Parents of hope and believers of faith. To such is the kingdom of God. A place where disciples held in their hands the fragile gifts of compassion and grief, care and anguish, faith and hope.

Will our faith have children? Indeed it will. Indeed the household will grow. The faith will deepen as disciples go into the world to give freely, to heed the command of Christ to open wide the home of faith, to hold hands and parent hope for all the world to see and believe. Will our faith have children? Indeed it will, by the power of a God spread out on a cross that all might know new life. Indeed our faith will have children in the world of those who hope for and believe in the power of faith to bring new life. All to God’s glory and honor and praise. World without end. Faith without end. Amen.