A Fourth Church Sermon by John Buchanan and Joanna M. Adams

January 4, 2004 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

A Change of Plans

John Buchanan and Joanna M. Adams
Pastors, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 147:1–11
Isaiah 60:1–6
Matthew 2:1–12

“They left for their own country by a different road.”

Matthew 2:12 (NRSV)

O Christ, let your gospel shine in every place where darkness reigns.
Draw us into the circle of your light,
that our lives might be illuminated with your radiance. Amen.

There are a lot of exciting things going on up in the sky these days.

On Friday, a spacecraft called Stardust, equipped with a scoop about the size of a tennis racket, flew through a cloud of dust surrounding a comet and captured the first material ever captured in deep space. The trip out from earth was two billion miles in length, and it will take three years for Stardust to loop around the sun and journey back to the Utah desert with its precious cargo.

Yesterday, another spacecraft, one with a rover on board named Spirit, landed on the ruddy surface of Mars. Launched last June, it entered the Martian atmosphere last night. Its impact cushioned by parachutes, reverse thrusters and airbags, it was nevertheless expected to bounce as high as a four-story building. If all goes well, signals back to earth will commence in a few days. If not, then comfort can be taken in the fact that a companion spaceship with a rover named Opportunity was launched in July and is expected to land on Mars in three weeks.

I mention these space missions this morning not only because I love their names—Stardust, Spirit, and Opportunity—but because they are, to me, thrilling signs that the adventurous impulse to seek and to explore, to push beyond known boundaries still lives in the human heart.

Two years ago, this congregation and its senior pastor, John Buchanan, became captured by a spirit of adventure and envisioned a new model of co-leadership, one rarely attempted by most other congregations and almost unheard of in large congregations. A little while later, in my own life and ministry, Spirit, as in the Holy Spirit, and Opportunity, as in a call to serve this great church, converged. Just as the star went before the Magi and led them to Bethlehem, the steady light of this congregation led me to Chicago. Your unflagging commitment to inclusiveness, your brave urban mission, your clear Christian voice that never disrespects people of other faiths, your beautiful combination of honoring tradition and being willing to stand out on the cutting edge had inspired me for years. And so when the Pastor Nominating Committee asked me to come and participate in a bold, new venture called the co-pastorate, I said yes. After more than thirty years of living in Atlanta and serving three wonderful churches there, I said yes to the Spirit, yes to the opportunity, yes to you whom I didn’t know but whom I have come to love as if you were my own family.

For two years, we have explored what it means to be the people of God together. I am sure that our adventure together was meant to be, and though my time as your pastor has been briefer than you or I anticipated, I am convinced that it has been good and enriching and useful to the purposes of God. Things have happened that never would have happened if I had not been in your life and you in mine. The rich memories we now have to treasure for the rest of our lives would not even exist. I think about that scoop of comet dust that is coming and how it contains answers to questions about the origins of the universe that have never been available before and how if nothing had been ventured, then nothing would have been gained.

To my mind, it is a fitting thing that our time together comes to a conclusion on what is designated as the brightest Sunday in the Christian year, the Sunday on which the festival of Epiphany is observed, commemorating the journey of the Magi to pay homage to the Christ child, who is the manifestation of the glory of God. Three pilgrims on the road followed the star they had seen in the sky. Tradition calls them kings, but they were in fact court priests, probably from the ancient land of Parthia, which corresponds roughly to one of the provinces of modern Iran. (God bless the people of Iran in the wake of last week’s devastating earthquake.) The Magi were experts in astrology. They believed that the stars influenced and explained human events. Kings sought their counsel. People revered them for their prescience and wisdom. In our mind’s eye, we see them traveling through the desert night on camels, a bright steady light shining down from the heaven above them.

Was what they saw a convergence of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, as happened early in the first century? Scientists would say yes. To the Magi, the brightness was a sign of divine promise, such unprecedented promise that they were willing to follow it wherever it led.

When they began, they had no idea where their journey would end, though they assumed that it would end in the elegance and splendor of Herod’s palace in Jerusalem. The gifts they brought—gold, frankincense, and myrrh—were fit for a king. But instead, their travels took them to the decidedly inelegant little village of Bethlehem. When the star stopped and they beheld the child, they were “overwhelmed with delight and knelt down and worshiped him.” The encountered a different kind of king, a different kind of power, a force of love they had never expected to find on this earth.

Let the Magi’s journey be a reminder to us that Christ is most likely to be found, as Elam Davies was fond of saying, among the least and the lost and the left out.

Let their journey remind us also that finally none of us is following our own plan. I know that many of you track your horoscope religiously, but I wouldn’t give you two cents for astrology. Whether or not two planets converged or a new star appeared in the sky 2,000 years ago doesn’t interest me much either, but I have bet my entire life on the meaning of the star that guided the Magi. Its meaning is that God’s providence in our lives is real. Its meaning is that God is at work in human events and was uniquely and profoundly at work in the events surrounding the birth, life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The star tells us that history does not stand still and that therefore we need to step out in faith. The star tells us that we live in grace and participate in a story that is infinitely more full of promise than we could ever imagine.

I went to seminary thirty years ago, and when I began, just to let you know how things have changed in my lifetime, I had never heard a woman preach from a pulpit. When I was a little girl growing up, as far as I knew there were no such things as women who were ministers. But that did not keep me from playing a very wonderful game that I created. I called it church. I would go into my room, close the door, line my dolls up on the bed, and preach to them. Oh, the sermons that I preached! After a while, I would finish my sermon, serve them little cups of tea with my tea set, and then I would tuck them into their doll beds. That was just about my favorite part: getting them all settled down for their naps. But it turns out that the life of faith is hardly ever about being all tucked in. It is a matter of trusting that God has plans and that sometimes those plans call for change and for the willingness to let go of what is in order to receive that which is yet to be.

Sometimes, moving into God’s future requires a shift in plans. After the Magi had offered their gifts to the Christ child, they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, and so they left for their own country by another road. That resetting, of course, was a part of God’s plan, too. It was not what the wise men had expected, but because they were wise, they trusted that God who had led them to a place of such joy and promise beside the manger wasn’t going to steer them wrong in the future.

You and I have every reason to believe that that God who so graciously gave us the gift of these two years together isn’t about to steer us wrong either. Many of you have asked why I am leaving Chicago and Fourth Church. I can only say that I sense that just as God led me here, so God is leading me to begin a new chapter of life and ministry. My husband, Al, and I celebrated our thirty-eighth wedding anniversary on the Tuesday before Christmas. In 2003 alone, Al flew back and forth to Atlanta more than forty times because of his law practice, which remained grounded in the southeast much more than he or I had expected. The way it worked was that by the time Al had returned to Chicago after being out of town for most of the week, I was moving into the weekend, which is the busiest time in the life of a minister. He usually took the 6:20 a.m. Delta flight out of Midway on Monday morning, and that simply was no way for either of us to live, especially if one believes that joy in life is one of the gifts God offers to all who receive it.

As far as the co-pastorate is concerned, there is no question that it has been filled with both promise and challenge, as are all bold adventures. I hope that we have learned and grown from the experience of trying something new. We certainly have given it our best. I believe that God is like the woman Jesus spoke about in a parable, who kneaded the yeast into the dough. I believe that God will fold in what you and I have done together until, some day, the flour will be fully leavened, the bread will be baked, the feast will be ready, all the hungry souls will be fed, and the earth will be filled with the goodness of God.

As far as John Buchanan, my long-time friend, is concerned, my affection and admiration have only risen since we became colleagues. If we have had any serious disagreements, they all have been about baseball.

As far as this congregation is concerned, my regard for you had deepened immeasurably since I came to serve among you. And oh, the gifts you have given me! More valuable than gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Those shining, happy moments in my morning Bible study with the wonderful women of Fourth Presbyterian Church; the Thanksgiving dinners in Anderson Hall; the singing around the fire under the stars on the beach at Saugatuck; the trip to Cuba with all twenty of you this October, learning afresh about the power of faith and community; sitting with you under these stars and offering our praises to God; seeing your faces illumined by candlelight as we stood in the Garth and turned on the lights for Project Light. When I came, I didn’t even know what a Garth was, but now I know that it is a place of beauty and peace, which lies at the heart of this church and which serves as the very spiritual heart of this city.
Spirit and Opportunity: Fourth Presbyterian Church is filled with the former and poised on the threshold of the latter. Just do it. Just do it now. Make Project Light a reality. Like the Magi, step out of your comfort zone. Push beyond the known boundaries. You can do it. I know you can.

Listen. Not only did the Magi return home a different way, they returned as transformed people. That is how I will be: forever transformed by the joy and promise we have shared. I trust the same will be true for you.

Over the fireplace in my study here at Fourth Church is a seragraph by John August Swanson. It is full of color and life. In its center is a circle of people holding candles. The circle is open, and on the path leading up to the circle are people carrying their own candles, bringing their own light into the group. The name of this joyous work of art is “Celebration.” I think of it as a celebration of gifts, which is what life is all about, isn’t it? It is a gift that I have been privileged to join this circle of light for a time. I hope I have brought a bit of light myself. I believe that is true for every single person who comes to be a part of this faith community. We all bring light and spirit, but finally the church is not about our light or our spirit. It is about God, in whom we live and move and have our being. It is about the spirit of the savior born in Bethlehem, the one who is and who will always be the light of the world.

Loving God, we ask that in your gracious providence, we may meet again on some bright highway—where there will be no need for a star to guide us, for we will bask in your eternal glory. World without end.

Amen.