A Fourth Church Sermon by K.C. Ptomey Jr.

July 23, 2006 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

A Blessing, an Offering, a Burden

Installation of Adam Fronczek as Associate Pastor for Adult Education and Worship

K. C. Ptomey, Jr.
Pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church
Nashville, Tennessee

preaching at
Fourth Presbyterian Church

2 Timothy 1:3–9a
Hebrews 12:1–2

The ordained consent to be visible in a way that the baptized do not.
They agree to let people look at them as they struggle with
their own baptismal vows: to continue in the apostles’ teaching
and fellowship, to resist evil, to proclaim the good news of God in Christ,
to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to strive for justice and peace. . . .
Those are not the vows of the ordained, but the baptized.

Barbara Brown Taylor
The Preaching Life

. . . Into the church of their fathers,
the place they had all felt the call,
the old home church
where thousands of hands had pressed
on the bowed heads of new preacher boys,
of sun-reddened young men called by the Lord,
called from the cotton fields to preach the Word.
They had felt the hands,
these old preachers,
felt those blunt-fingered, work-hardened hands,
felt them like a blessing,
like an offering,
like a burden. . . .

And now the old preachers come to lay their hands
on the head of a new kind of preacher,
a preacher from the seminary,
a preacher who studied the Bible in Greek and Hebrew,
who knew about religions they never heard of,
who knew about computers
and memory banks full of sermons
and many other modern things.
A new kind of preacher,
and yet,
a preacher who still would feel on her head
the hands
like a commandment
from all the preachers and deacons who ever were.

(James Autry, “Ordination,” from Life After Mississippi)

Several weeks ago, Adam, in your home church in Indianapolis, hands were laid on you in a service of ordination, and now the members of Fourth Church have reached out to lay hands on you in a call to be an Associate Pastor in this congregation. I want to suggest that they are hands heavy with a blessing, an offering, and a burden.

Many blessings accrue to those who are privileged to serve this great church but none more important for you, Adam, in your role as an educator, than this: the people of this congregation take seriously that aspect of the Reformed tradition that insists that we bring both head and heart to the practice of our faith. Once, after John Wesley had returned from one of the preaching missions for which he was so famous, he received a letter from a coal miner in Wales who had attended one of his services. The words were crudely scribbled on the page. “Dear Dr. Wesley, God don’t need your book learning.” Wesley wrote back, “My dear sir, God may not need my book learning but neither does God need your ignorance.”

Adam, this congregation understands that God doesn’t need our ignorance. It is a blessing to be privileged to serve such a congregation. But there is more to it than simply gaining knowledge about the Bible, about Christian theology, about the tradition in which we stand.

Our Book of Order has a little section called “The Historic Principles of Church Order.” It is one of the oldest sections of our constitution and unfamiliar to most Presbyterians. Hidden among the seven principles of church order is a little gem under the rubric of principle four, “That truth is in order to goodness.”

Truth is in order to goodness, or another way to put it, education leads to servanthood. Fourth Church is justifiably well known for its deep commitment to the mission and ministry of the Presbyterian church as well as to this city through the multitude of ways in which Fourth Church reaches out in compassion and hospitality to the women and men and children God has placed on its doorstep. This commitment reflects the understanding that truth is in order to goodness. The goal of Christian education is formation, being shaped into more faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.

The hands laid upon you at ordination and extended to you in the call of this church will grow heavier as the years pass, and their weight will be a blessing of serving people who know that God doesn’t need our ignorance and who appreciate the relationship between the life of the mind and servanthood in the name of the servant Christ.

But the hands are also heavy with an offering.

Paul writes to Timothy, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.” Timothy’s faith, and ultimately his call to ministry, did not come like a voice in the lonely confines of his closet where he withdrew to pray. His faith and call came, in part, from his mother and grandmother. He learned from them—probably more from their living than from their words—about the grace of God and joy of discipleship. The hands that were laid on Timothy were symbolic of the mysterious way that God reaches out to us and claims us in and through the lives of others. It is in their example, their acceptance of us, their love for us, that we come to know how much we count with God. It is in the lives of other Christians that we begin to glimpse what God might be able to do with our own lives.

As today you officially accept a call to Fourth Church, your thoughts turn in gratitude toward your parents, who nurtured you in the faith, the Sunday School teachers and pastors of Second Church, Indianapolis, and others, like the mentors your mother mentioned the other night who have helped to shape you at important moments in your life, people through whom God reached out to claim you. The hands reaching out to call you to ministry in this place are heavy with the reminder of an offering, the offering of faith bequeathed to you by others.

Like all of those ordained over the years, you have felt the hands, Adam, like a blessing, like an offering, and yes, like a burden.

Parker Palmer, in his insightful book The Courage to Teach, says that the most daunting thing about teaching is not the subject matter we seek to convey, though it can sometimes be difficult. The most daunting aspect of the vocation of the educator is that in the final analysis we teach who we are. “Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one’s inwardness, for better or worse. As I teach, I project the condition of my soul” (p. 2).

The temptation is to try to hide one’s soul. You’ll want people to think of you (and they will want to think of you) as an expert, one who’s been to seminary and acquired there not only a wealth of knowledge but also an invulnerable faith.

Ames, the aging preacher in Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead, recalls that when he was a young pastor, people would ask him what death is like. They would “hold on to my hands and look into my eyes with their old milky eyes, as if they knew I knew and they were going to make me tell them.” When one is a pastor, as one commentator puts it, “people seem to expect you to know the unknowable, as if you should be as much an expert on God as appliance salespeople are on the products they are pitching” (Martin B. Copenhaver, “Portrait of a Pastor,” Christian Century, 17 May 2006).

What you know of yourself, Adam, is that you have more questions than answers and you struggle with faith and with doubt. The burden you bear is to let your struggles show.

I find it instructive that Paul writes to Timothy that he remembers Timothy’s tears. What tears, we wonder? Perhaps tears he shed as he contemplated his call. Perhaps they were tears born of confusion, a sense of inadequacy, or a recognition of the weakness of his own faith. Maybe they were tears of anger that God would not speak more clearly to him, relieve his doubt, make his faith stronger.

A temptation the ordained are called to resist is that of being seduced into an imitation of the authors of those spiritual self-help books that crowd the shelves of Barnes and Nobles and Amazon.com; authors with answers, who somehow manage to find just the right words that make people feel good. The burden is to face honestly and openly the fact that Christianity raises questions as well as answers them. The burden of the ordained is that we are called to wrestle with the deepest issues of faith and life and invite our people to engage in this tough endeavor with us.

In just a moment we will install you, Adam, as an Associate Pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church. As you continue to live out your ministry in this place you will come to understand at ever-deeper levels the blessing, the offering, and the burden of ministry.

Oh yes, there is one more thing. Paul’s words again: “I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands.” Biblical scholars are pretty clear that Paul is referring to Timothy’s ordination, in which he, Paul, participated. But what also comes to my mind is baptism, because baptism involves a laying on of hands.

Barbara Brown Taylor, this time in her book about being a preacher, says,

I have often wondered whether the church would be even smaller . . . if [in baptism the] cross were made not with water [on our forehead] but with permanent ink . . . so that all who bore Christ’s mark bore it openly, visibly for the rest of our lives. In many ways, I think, that is the chief difference between the ministry of the baptized and the ministry of the ordained. The ordained consent to be visible in a way that the baptized do not. They agree to let people look at them as they struggle with their own baptismal vows: to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to resist evil, to proclaim the good news of God in Christ, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to strive for justice and peace. . . . Those are not the vows of the ordained, but the baptized. (The Preaching Life, p. 30).

As all of you have listened to my ramblings, you’ve been thinking—I know you have—that this sermon is all about Adam and his ministry. Truth is, it’s about you and your ministry. All of you are blessed to participate in a congregation that values the life of the mind and seeks truth in order to become more faithful disciples. All of you are the recipients of a faith that was bequeathed to you by parents, mentors, teachers, and friends. All of you bear the burden of allowing the cross of Jesus Christ to become more visible in your life.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.