A Fourth Church Sermon by Dana Ferguson

January 2, 2005 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Home by Another Way

Dana Ferguson
Executive Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 72:1–7
Isaiah 60:1–6
Matthew 2:1–12

Everlasting God,
the radiance of faithful souls,
who brought the nations to your light
and kings to the brightness of your rising:
Fill the world with your glory,
and show yourself to all the nations;
through him who is the true light
and the bright morning star,
Jesus Christ your Son, our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever. Amen.

Book of Common Worship

It has been more than two years since I have been in this pulpit on a Sunday morning.
I just returned with great joy to full-time work here at the church this past month, having had an extended struggle with cancer and the treatment. So I wanted to take this opportunity to say
thank you. Thank you for all of your care and concern and most of all for your prayers, which were crucial to my recovery. My family and I are deeply grateful. I can’t imagine a better way to start the new year than being here with you to worship. You look marvelous to me and I am thrilled to be back living and working among you. Thank you.

In this new year, we come to you, O God, for direction.
And so we pray that you would speak to us a word of your truth and grace,
for you alone are our rock and salvation. Amen.

Some years ago, my then not-yet-husband, Wayne, and I spent a summer in Memphis, Tennessee. It was the summer before our senior year of seminary. I was to serve as a hospital chaplain in a Memphis hospital. Wayne searched for an internship in a church in the area. He found one with a suburban church, Germantown Presbyterian Church. Not only did they invite him to serve as an intern for the summer, they fixed up the little house next door for him to live in. One of his duties that summer was to chaperone the youth group on their annual trip to the Montreat Youth Conference in North Carolina. He boarded a bus with twentysome youth and other adult chaperones. He called at the end of the week, when they finally returned to Memphis, to fill me in on the trip. “We left one behind,” he said. “You what?” “We left one of the kids behind at Montreat.” “Wayne, you can’t be serious. You’ll never get a job this way!”

But he was serious. He described the scene when he returned to the bus after having had lunch. People were gathering in what appeared to be somewhat of a frenzy. They were huddled around a video camera. Turns out they had just made the discovery that Chris wasn’t with them. They were replaying the video of the morning that recorded their leaving. Chris was in the group picture before leaving but no one had seen him at lunch. As kids continued to turn up from their lunch experience, Chris didn’t turn up. So the phone calls began, and indeed Chris had been left behind.

Well, as it turns out, Chris’s grandfather bought him a plane ticket, and Chris beat the group home. And, believe it or not, Wayne did get a job after seminary and at the same church, Germantown Presbyterian. That next summer, newly married, Wayne and I set off with the youth group to again attend the Montreat Youth Conference. The theme that year: “Home by Another Way.” Yes, it’s true, “Home by Another Way.” The kids thought it was the funniest thing and spent the whole time trying to figure out which kid would go home by another way that year. Luckily, at the end of the week, we all went home by bus.

This sermon isn’t actually about bus trips or youth conferences or leaving kids behind. It’s actually about what that summer youth conference was about: epiphanies, moments when God’s light shines into our lives and we leave different than before—we go home by another way.

That’s where we find ourselves now in the liturgical calendar, on the Sunday before Epiphany, which is actually this Thursday, but we are celebrating it today as we gather to worship. If your house is like ours, the tree still stands. Baby Jesus has arrived in the crèche. Mary and Joseph seem to be doing OK. So now we await the wise men. They come from the East, bringing with them gifts, rich gifts of frankincense and myrrh and gold. King Herod sends them to find the child so that they can report back and King Herod, too, can visit. They arrive—and what would an Epiphany sermon be without the same old joke John Buchanan has told for years (at least his assistant didn’t have to type it this year and ask, “Surely you aren’t going to tell that again?”). But you know how it goes: Had the wise men been women, they would have brought practical gifts—a casserole or two—and helped clean up, and being women they surely would have asked for directions and shown up on time.

But the wise men do arrive, and there they find the babe and something happens to them—a moment of epiphany happens to them. When they saw the place where the star had stopped and the baby lying in the manager, they were overwhelmed with joy. And then came their dream and a warning not to return to Herod. It turns out that Herod hadn’t planned to come pay homage to the newborn one all along. Herod had planned to come and lay harm to this new one. And so the wise men departed for their own country by another road.

Epiphany. Light shining in the darkness. New awarenesses. New realities. Change in plans. Home by a different way. It’s what this Epiphany celebration is all about, and it seems that at this point, our secular calendar and our liturgical calendar merge right at the same point. We come to a new year, having been to the stable and seen the light, and ask, “What now?”

For some of us, it’s an easy answer but for others a not-so-easy answer. For many of us, we will return to our lives as they were—our jobs, our friends, our schools, our families, whatever it was that we were doing before we headed off for Bethlehem. For some that’s hard, and for some that’s easy. And yet, this passage is to inspire us to return by a different way, to recognize we are different. We may return to our lives as they were, but we will be different, for we have seen the Christ child; we have experienced the great blessing of giving; we have been given the promise of hope for tomorrow. We can’t walk away unscathed or unchanged. We’ve received the light, and now it’s our turn to share, to move forward in this new year assured that God continues to lead, that century after century God has a plan for this world, for this congregation, for our lives. It is our job to live in the light, to embrace the new little one born in a stable, born to bring new things, to embrace this little one and to listen to God’s voice as we move into yet a new year.

It happened in a dramatic way at Fourth Church some few years ago. Church members and leaders, one hundred or so of them, gathered to listen for that voice of God, to experience a moment of Epiphany. And so they went to work asking the question “What next?” And answers came, and programs were designed, and Project Light became a reality, and the capital campaign was launched, and plans to sell air rights were initiated. What moments of Epiphany we have experienced together—holding to the light, sharing the light, listening for that voice of God transforming who we are in the world, calling us to new ministries and new challenges, calling us to be stewards of the light of Epiphany in this world. So what now?

Some of it is waiting. To me it’s the hardest part. Right now we are waiting for the city to review our plans for construction on Michigan Avenue and make their decision about whether we can go forward. While we are waiting, others are making their voice known in opposition to our plans and in support of our plans. In fact, we recently received an endorsement from The Metropolitan Planning Council. At a Project Light staff meeting a couple of weeks ago, we talked about the entire ministry that happens here in this building during a week when protesters invest their time in making their voice known. While they are signing letters, holding community forums, arranging protests, hundreds and hundreds of people are experiencing the light at Fourth Church. In a typical week around this place,

85 guests are served a hot meal at Sunday Night Supper
100 people gather in fellowship and Faith Builder groups
we welcome more than 2,200 worshipers on Sunday morning
75 advocacy letters are signed on issues from domestic abuse to world hunger
volunteers tutor inmates at the Cook County jail preparing for their GED
15 people are provided with bags of groceries
400 students are tutored
volunteers hold babies with HIV/AIDS at The Children’s Place
25 guests are provided with clothing
45 youth attend Sunday school and youth fellowship activities
160 babies and children gather for Sunday School
those who are hospitalized and grieving are visited by a pastor
64 children are welcomed to the Day School
52 guests are served Monday Night Supper
volunteers sort and pack food at the Greater Chicago Food Depository
125 adults gather for education on a Sunday morning
more than 100 people or couples are provided an hour of therapeutic counseling
75 people receive a sack lunch
individuals and families experiencing health or other challenges are cared for by a team of Fourth Church volunteers arranged into what we call “Care Teams”
300 students eat a hot meal at the Kids’ Cafe
5 people are referred to a shelter
100 older adults are welcomed to education, exercise, foreign language, and art classes
600 students in the Cabrini-Green schools improve their reading skills through a program provided by Fourth Church

Not only all of this, but we share numerous donations with the community. At the end of last year, 38 unsolicited tickets turned up on our doorstep: “to be used to entertain or reward some children in one of your programs” were the words of the donor. And they were. Children from Cabrini-Green schools and our Tutoring Program were thrilled to actually be in the United Center and watch professional basketball.

There was the week, too, when a family lost all that they had to a house fire. For this family of five, which includes three sons, Fourth Church members donated furniture to completely furnish a three-bedroom apartment, a washer and dryer, a stove and refrigerator, a computer, clothes for all five, the first month’s apartment rent and deposit, and cash to “fill in the gaps.” The thank-you note from the father read, “Here’s to unsung angels who spread sweet love on earth with caring acts of kindness all year through, who go about their daily lives with thoughtfulness and grace. Here’s to unsung angels such as you.” The son’s thank-you read, “What a wonderful world this would be if everyone’s life could be touched by someone as kind and as caring as you.”

All of this happens—Fourth Church sharing God’s light in this city and in this broken world. And yet, we ask, “What now?” We wait and we work. We wait and we listen for God’s voice to us as we move forward, confident that God does continue to speak to us and to lead. We go into each new day believing in the moments of Epiphany—that God’s light does shine anew in our church lives and in our individual lives, reshaping us and reclaiming us for God’s work in this world.

A couple of years ago, my husband, a pastor in Oak Park, was visited by a man named Anton. Anton knew about living in the land of darkness and death. He rang the church bell and asked for help, help getting away from gang life in Chicago. That day he rang the doorbell at Wayne’s church, Anton was ordered by his general to eliminate a rival. As a good gang lieutenant, like so many times before, he said, “Yes, sir.” On the way, suddenly out of the blue he screamed, “No!” He abandoned his Lexus, hopped on a bus, and ended up in Oak Park. He wandered around, scared and uncertain, until he saw a church and rang the bell. He doesn’t know exactly why, but he’s now pretty sure God had something to do with it. He spent ten hours in the church hiding from his gang and then Wayne drove him to the airport and purchased him a ticket. That day he saw a person living in darkness, on the slow road to death. That day on him did light shine. Epiphany happened. And Anton went home by another way.

He is married now and has a baby daughter. He started up a shoe repair business. Some three years after he rang the doorbell at Wayne’s church, Anton, his wife, Amanda, and daughter, Rachel, lit the Christ candle at his church on Christmas Eve. They opened presents around their tree. And at some point, probably quietly, Anton celebrated two years of sobriety.

Sometimes the moments of Epiphany are dramatic ones like this, and other times they are more subtle. No matter how dramatic or undramatic, we can believe they happen. Sometimes we are waiting and listening attentively, and sometimes we are so totally absorbed in our own worries and thoughts that we are caught off guard. But, no matter where you might be found, you can believe that in this life of ours, moments of discovery happen over and over again.

Anne Lamont tells in Traveling Mercies about a moment of Epiphany following a health scare. She writes, “The afternoon the doctor called to tell me that my mole was benign, Sam asked me if I had been brave during the stitching. I said I was very brave. We were sitting outside looking at things. And it was as if the lighting director had turned the lights up full force, because all these small things were showing up more brightly—a yellow house finch, the tiny pink buds of the scraggly wild rose, a patch of ivy on our dirty-blonde hill” (pp. 182–183).

There are those moments of Epiphany that enlighten our everyday experiences, that help us to see the goodness of the world that God has created, to see the best in those that surround us daily in our lives, to count our blessings, to give thanks for those who love us. And that show us new ways to live and serve God. Some times they’re big moments, and sometimes they are new little insights, but all of them are important, for they are God’s light shining anew in our lives.

So, what now? It’s time to go out and share that light. Just as the wise men came bearing their gifts, it’s time for us to go into the world to share our gifts and to believe that as we travel the familiar roads of service to God that we, too, might go home by another way. All to God’s glory and honor and praise. Amen.