Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost
October 20, 2024

Fourth Church as a Place of Spiritual Formation

Part of the sermon series "Do the Good That Is Yours to Do"

Tom Are Jr.
Interim Pastor

Isaiah 40:1–8
Nehemiah 8:1–12

Today we are beginning a series we are calling “Do the Good That Is Yours to Do.” To be transparent, this is a stewardship series. So we are asking you, everyone who finds this church to be meaningful in their life, everyone who finds Fourth Church to make a difference in the world — we are asking you to make a pledge not only to empower Fourth Church to be Fourth Church, so that we can continue the ministry of Fourth Church and Chicago Lights, but also because making a pledge is a meaningful practice of faith. But we also want to take the next several weeks to talk about why it matters — to you as an individual and also to us as a church family.

This sermon series will explore the long-range plan that was discerned by over a year of research, conversation, and prayer; adopted by your Session this spring; and being implemented into ministry as we speak.

That long-range plan encourages us to be attentive to the relationships that we have here at Fourth Church. The wisdom there is that in a faith where we are called to love one another, the church is first a network of relationships. Here we practice friendship. I’ll talk about that next Sunday. The plan also reminds us of the importance of mission. One thing I so admire about you is how clearly you understand that God has not placed us on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Chestnut for our benefit alone. No, there is the work of mission that is our calling lived out through Meals Ministry and Chicago Lights and a variety of other ways. We will talk about that.

But today I want us to begin with what the plan calls the work of spiritual formation. It calls us not simply to know the story of faith but to allow that story to shape our lives.

Toward that end, let me read for us Nehemiah 8:1–12.

·   ·   ·

This moment in Israel’s story follows exile. Exile was the disorienting experience of Israel losing much of what had defined her as a people of faith. The temple was destroyed. The land, which they understood to be a gift of God, was taken away. And the people were marched to Babylon, where they had to figure out how to practice their faith when all the ways of being faithful heretofore had been taken away. What would you do if this sanctuary no longer existed?

After a generation in exile, the people returned. It is after they returned, it says, that all the people came to Ezra the priest and begged for Bible study. It happens all the time in church: the people plead for the preacher to read the Bible from morning to midday. Not only this, but Levites interpreted the meaning of the words. Three times the text says the people rejoiced because they understood the reading. One scholar says this is the moment when the sermon is born (James Newsome, Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary based on the NRSV, Year C, p. 114). Admittedly, the sermon doesn’t always cause rejoicing, but it did on that day.

When they heard and understood the word, the human response was overpowering. The people wept. Maybe because they realized they were not who God called them to be. More likely because, after life as they had known it had been washed away, they heard their own named in the story of God. They wept. But the Levites said, “There’s not crying in Bible study. … We should celebrate. Eat something.” So, they celebrated because in this word they found their lives. The lie of exile is that God has gone away. But in the word, they found a life that could not be taken away.

Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann says this is the moment when the people no longer understood themselves as a people of the land, nor a people of the nation state, but as people of the story. This moment, Brueggemann says, is the reconstitution of Judaism, post exile (Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, p. 446).

Times of disorientation, like exile, come to us all. We all know the temptation to assume that God has forgotten us, and no doubt there are the days we forget God. But this is also true: we too are people of this story. It is the story that promises that the love of God calls us by name. It is this love that encourages and inspires us to do the good that is ours to do; even in chaotic times, we respond to this story with the good that we can do.

My friend Bill Reno walked into church on the second Sunday of Advent and said, “I can never miss church on this day. This is the day that changed my life.” It was December 7. Bill was little more than a kid on December 7, 1941, and like so many others he enlisted. It turned out to be Bill’s experience of exile. He fought and saw terrible things. He was captured and spent sixteen months as a POW. He invited me to go with him to a ceremony of the missing man chair. He and other POWs gathered, and there was a single table with a single chair that remained empty as they paid tribute to POWs who did not come home.

After the ceremony he said, “Tom, for some of the guys that experience destroyed their faith, but not me. My faith is what carried me through. In the darkest times I just kept remembering the resurrection. I didn’t know if I would be raised to new life in this world or in the world beyond, but I trusted that God would not let go of me. Without my faith, I’m not sure I would have made it.”

We as a church endeavor to be a place where the story of this powerful love of God is rehearsed, remembered, and trusted. That’s why the people wept. It’s why the people laughed. It’s why they feasted. Because in this story they found their life.

It says they responded because they understood the word. But it’s more than simply understanding. That sounds like it’s simply a cognitive response: oh, I get it. No, not just understand, but rather stand under these words. They trusted what they heard.

When I was in middle school, I watched my gym teacher, Mr. Dunning, spin a basketball on his finger. He had dipped the ball in water, so as it spun drops of water would fly off the ball in every direction. He then told us the earth is spinning just like that basketball and the only reason that middle schoolers weren’t flying off the face of the earth in the general direction of Venus like these drops of water is because of gravity. I don’t quite understood gravity. I know about Sir Isaac Newton, but my knowledge of just how this law of physics works is quite limited. Nevertheless, I trust gravity.

Years ago, Carol and I packed our kids into our minivan, and we headed to the Grand Canyon. I had never been before, and when we arrived, I was not prepared. This sculpted canyon was stunning. Its colors and contrasts were striking. But there was another thing that caught me by surprise. There are no safety rails at this national park. You can walk right up and dangle your toes over the edge of the canyon and look straight down hundreds, sometimes thousands, of feet, if you are the type. Turned out, I am not the type. No, no. I started backing up and holding on to shrubbery.

Why did I react this way. Because I trust gravity. It shapes my choices.

Faith is like gravity. This is not simply a story we recite like we have memorized the words for the spelling bee. No, this is a truth that lives in us and shapes who we are. That’s what happens when we trust.

Fourth Church is committed to being a place where faith like that is formed, is nourished, is cultivated. Because when exile comes, we will need this to carry us through.

Stormy was a saint at Village Church in Kansas City. Every time I saw her she said, “Hey there, fun fella.” Stormy lived into her nineties, and she lived fully. She processed with the choir right in front of my director of music. He was amazing, but his piety sometimes requires him to believe that nothing has value unless it is witnessed with a serious expression. He processed in on Sunday morning, often looking like he was coming for a root canal. I called him my melancholy man. Contrastingly, Stormy processed right in front of him glad-handing everyone she sees like she’s running for office. She would hug friends. Kiss babies. One time we had completely finished singing “Holy, Holy, Holy,” and Stormy was still in the center aisle, yet to make her way to the choir loft.

She entered the house of the Lord with joy every week. She inspired me, because I knew she knew the disorienting experiences of exile.

She had grown up all but abandoned by her parents, treated as the surprise child that wasn’t wanted. She married and buried two husbands, both dying far too young. She sent her only son to Viet Nam and now his name is etched on black granite in DC. Her macular degeneration advanced so severely that she could no longer see the music to sing. So when she didn’t know the piece, she would just stand in the loft beaming like an angel, mouthing “watermelon, watermelon, watermelon.” She said, “No one knows I have no idea what we are singing.”

But when she knew the piece, as if she was certain God was listening, she would sing, “No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that Rock I’m clinging. Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?”

As much as anyone I have known, she had reason to be cynical, but she was happy, even joyful, because she trusted the story that the love of God called her by name, and it empowered her to do the good that was hers to do. And on days when my faith feels fragile I remember her.

But I will also remember you.

But I will also remember Linda and Phil Gibboney and the team who will meet our neighbors and serve them through the Shower Ministry.

And I will remember Jenny Giblin, who led the Nominating Committee to identify an amazing PNC.

I will remember Tasha Ward, who will stand at the door and make sure everyone who enters this place knows that it matters to us and to God that they are here.

And I will remember Dennis and Ann Canfield, who spend Sunday after Sunday making sure our children in Sunday school know that they are loved, and Katy Sinclair, who teaches them to sing that love.

I will remember Allison Thomas and Pam Baker and all who show up week after week for Meals Ministry.

I could go on and speak of tutors and singers. I could speak of ushers and committee leaders. I could speak of those who gather to pray and those who carry sack lunches around the neighborhood for those who are in need.

What I am saying is that when we become formed by the story of this faith, it shows up in us and we do the good that is ours to do. It may not change everything. It may even seem so small that you might be temped to think it doesn’t matter. But Bill and Stormy and countless others would promise us, even in exile, do the good that is yours to do. It adds up. It matters. It will be a source of joy for you, and it will certainly be a source of joy for God.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church