A Fourth Church Sermon by Dana Ferguson

May 7 , 2006 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It

Dana Ferguson
Executive Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Micah 6:1–8
John 13:3–11

The same Spirit
who inspired the prophets and apostles
rules our faith and life in Christ through Scripture,
engages us through the Word proclaimed,
claims us in the waters of baptism,
feeds us with the bread of life and the cup of salvation
and calls women and men to all ministries of the Church.

from a Brief Statement of Faith (PCUSA)

Author Kathleen Norris writes,

I often think that if I’m a Christian, I’ll be the last to know. I try to take the Incarnation seriously; by that I mean that I look to the local, the particular, the specific, to determine how to express my Christian faith. It’s always a humbling exercise, because I can point to any number of people in my small town who are much better Christians than I, in the sense that they devote themselves to the love and service of others in ways that put me to shame. I may have a bit more knowledge of church history and doctrine, and certain basics of biblical interpretation that I find useful when I’m called upon to preach. But, when it comes to Christian faith as lived for others, as everyday ministry, I am far from the most dedicated or reliable person in my congregation. (Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith)

It’s what I’ve heard preachers say time and again. The real pastors are the ones in the pews, the ones serving up hospitality, opening the doors to strangers, sitting around committee tables, praying and worshiping faithfully. That’s what makes this day of ordination and installation so important. So know that we are grateful to all of you, whether this is your day of installation or not, for the many ways that you make ministry happen in this community and congregation.

The passage we encounter today has an important message for all of us—for those of us who think we’ve mastered what it is to be Christian and for those of us still struggling and yet committed to getting it right. We encounter a memorable scene from the end of Jesus’ earthly life—his washing the feet of the disciples. It’s a story full of exacting details, and they are important ones. The symbolism runs deep, and if we skip too quickly over the details, we run the risk of missing the very essence of the story.

At the beginning of the passage, we encounter Jesus preparing for the ritual. He removes his outer garment. It is a moment loaded with meaning. In what might seem an insignificant detail, he signals to the disciples that he may not be what they want him to be. When Jesus wraps himself in a towel, he assumes the garb of a servant.

Peter refuses to allow Jesus to wash his feet. Maybe the fact of the matter is that Peter is still hanging on to the hope that Jesus will become a grand leader, a triumphant warrior, a majestic ruler. But that couldn’t possibly be if Jesus is willing to be so lowly as to wash feet. And what further complicates things is the fact that if Jesus’ identity isn’t a grandiose one, then the identity of the disciples changes as well. If they are following a lowly servant, then what is implied is that they, too, are called to be lowly. This act of foot washing then undoes the predictable, hoped-for world order of hierarchy.

Hierarchy. Order. The disciples have been arguing about it for their whole journey of discipleship. “Who is the greatest among us?” they asked Jesus. “Grant us to sit, one on your right and one on your left, in glory,” they demanded.

Richard Foster, author of the classic Celebration of Discipline, writes, “Whenever there is trouble over who is the greatest, there is trouble over who is the least. That’s the crux of the matter really, isn’t it? Most of us know we will never be the greatest; just don’t let us be the least.” And that is the crux of the matter. Jesus, by assuming the role of foot washer, becomes the least. It has radical implications about his identity and, therefore, that of those who will follow, including us.

There are only a number of occasions upon which I have participated in foot washing. Twice it was an enactment out of this very story we read today. One of those occasions was part of a retreat of the Session of Fourth Church. On both occasions, those gathered voluntarily took turns washing one another’s feet and hands as they felt comfortable. You couldn’t be part of it and not be moved by the deep meaning of service in the life of discipleship.

Another of my experiences of foot washing was what I refer to as involuntary, and through it, a new notion of hospitality set in for me. In Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts, there were varying purposes for foot washing. Because the scene we encountered today takes place during a meal, its purpose was to provide hospitality.

Hospitality. It’s service. But it comes in a specific form. It comes in the form of opening up—opening up our doors to welcome, opening up our lives to others, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and humble. This is where service and hospitality can be separated. We can serve. Serve on committees, serve as tutors, serve warm meals to the hungry. We can serve and still be in charge of how and when and who we serve. But hospitality is a little different. It can be a little more risky. It can mean receiving from others things we might not choose to receive—to receive messages or challenges or tasks that would not be our first choice. It can mean putting first the needs of others to be heard or to serve or to lead.

Hospitality. It’s service but a certain kind. It’s the kind we discover Jesus enacting in this story today. It’s the kind that undoes the order we may have put into life. It’s the kind that declares that none are first. It’s the kind that sets the established pecking order on its head and calls us to redefine what we value in ourselves and our neighbors. It’s the kind that sets in at the very soul of our identity.

My involuntary, as I call it, foot washing occurred when I was in the hospital bed of an intensive care unit. It certainly would not have been my first choice of places to be. Nor was it my choice to be physically unable to care for myself. The nurses were gracious and kind, and yet having someone else wash your feet, your hands, and your hair is certainly humbling. In those days of limitations and others, I thought long and hard about—prayed about, was angry about—my lack of ability, in my mind, to be useful as a servant of God, to live out my identity as a pastor and disciple of Christ. It wasn’t an easy struggle but one through which I finally came to realize that in those moments I did have a job. I did have an opportunity to be a servant, an identity I could claim as a disciple. My job was to receive and to do it as graciously as this stubborn, not prone to be a good patient could. It wasn’t who I imagined myself to be, who I wanted to be, or how I defined myself, and yet it seemed to me that in those moments, that was who I was being called to be.

Like Peter, I struggled and resisted. I wanted the story to be a different one. But the story was what it was, and I was called to rethink my expectations and hopes about what exactly servanthood meant for me. In accepting the gesture of foot washing, I was challenged to accept the whole—not just a part, but the whole—of Jesus’ notion of servant.

One of my favorite parts of mission trip commissioning that happens here at Fourth Church—that moment when we call upon those who will serve in the name of Fourth Church in corners around this country and globe—is when we ask this question: “Will you be open to ministering as well as being ministered unto?” It gets to the heart of the purpose of mission trips and of Christian service.

It’s what happens day in and day out through Chicago Lights, our outreach arm. Many of you who enter the doors of this church during the week will know the work of the Elam Davies Social Service Center by the long lines of those waiting for a bag lunch. Abdual, a guest of the Social Service Center, is just that—a guest. But not only that, he also is a volunteer, coming regularly to the Center a couple of times a week to volunteer in the Share Shop, sorting and arranging donations to the clothing closet, organizing toiletries, and cleaning up the pantry. Some of the best banquets that happen here at Fourth Church happen during the closing week of the Tutoring Program. The menu and the entertainment are planned by the Student Leadership Council, consisting of high school students enrolled in the Tutoring Program. These SLC members not only put together banquet skits to teach character education lessons, they also serve as peer-educators throughout the school year and provide feedback for addressing programmatic problems and implementing improvements for Tutoring. These young leaders inspire such in the younger students whose lives they touch.

Giving and receiving. It’s how service—and more specifically, hospitality—is defined in God’s economy. For in God’s economy, there is no least or no greatest. In God’s economy, every gift, every service that builds up the community of faith is equally valued. In God’s economy, no one is too big or too important or too elevated to grab a towel or receive a foot washing. And so we come to that bigger message that Jesus has for us in this story. It began when he removed his robe—an act that commentators tell us is really about Christ laying down his life. The act of this foot washing is Jesus’ act of inviting the disciples into his death and into his life, into service and into eternal life. It is about inviting them into relationship in a new way with Christ. That, my friends, is exactly what the whole of Christian ministry is about: relationship. Not about the first or the last—status or lack thereof—but about moving in alongside friend and stranger alike to walk through this journey of life without regard to status or position or gain.

The Newsweek column “My Turn” features essays submitted by readers. The January 30, 2006, column was titled “I Was Out of a Job—and an Identity” and was submitted by Peter Borghesi. He writes about his first days of unemployment and early morning drives to the local Dunkin Donuts “just to have a purposeful destination.” He writes,

Once there, I’d feed, not on the glazed donuts or bagels, but on the high-powered energy of the men and women in business attire. They were the ones with cell phones fixed to their ears while their cars idled in the parking lot. Being in the same frenetic flow of the working people comforted me. But while they were stopping in on their way to somewhere much more important, Dunkin Donuts was where my journey ended. When I’d return home, I was met by the framed sales awards and the shiny merit plaques that had once adorned my office walls. Stuffed in the garage and partially hidden by the lawn mover, they were a haunting reminder of what I no longer was.

In the hard days ahead, what Borghesi came to realize is that what he’d really always wanted to do with his life was to teach. He went to work at an inner-city school teaching eight-year-old autistic boys. “Facing the darker side of their disability is like nothing I experienced in the business world,” he writes. On his second day of school, he was “slapped in the face by a child who was frightened by his new surroundings.” He learned that Freddy had a vocabulary limited to fifteen words. Another student, in the throes of a temper tantrum, had to be restrained after biting a classroom aide. Borghesi explains, “Despite my efforts, I believed that I was not doing anything for my students. Worst of all, I could not escape that inner voice that kept questioning my decision to leave my former career.”

He reflects upon not only his challenges but also finally his growth:

I stopped beating myself up over things I couldn’t control. When Freddy began to point to a letter A or trace a number by himself, we celebrated together with a gleeful embrace. As I began to change my teaching style, I no longer saw my students as autistic kids, but rather as kids who happened to have autism. And I no longer yearned for the glory of my old job.

He concludes, “Not long ago, when someone would ask what I did for a living, I’d say, ‘I teach, but once worked in the corporate world.’ It was as if I was saying, ‘I used to be somebody, but I’m not anymore.’ Now, when asked that same question, I simply say, ‘I am a teacher.’ That’s it. No caveats, no qualifiers, no need to say more.”

And so it is in the kingdom of God, where everybody is somebody—no caveats, no qualifiers, no pecking order, no special ranking. And so it is in the kingdom of God, where each of us is invited into the life of Christ—to share in it, to receive it graciously, and to share it compassionately. And so it is in the kingdom of God, where our identity doesn’t depend on what we have accomplished or can accomplish but upon the identity of the one we follow.

All to God’s glory and honor and praise. Amen.