A Sermon from the First Church….       

A sermon offered by the Rev. Ian F. “Jack” Steeves in the public worship of the First Congregational Church of Scarborough, Maine on Sunday, January 27, 2008.  The principal readings were 1 Corinthians 1:10-18 and Matthew 4:18-23. 
 

“Four Who Walked with Christ” 

“At once they left their nets and followed him” (Matthew 4:20). 

I cannot help but wonder, “Did Peter, Andrew, James and John really know what they were getting into, when they dropped everything and followed Jesus?”   

Whether one has been a pastor in two churches or twenty, starting out in a new pastorate always has its spiritual dangers.  Oh, it’s exciting enough.  There are new people with new strengths, new dreams, and new problems.  Every congregation has its own personality, for good or ill or indifference. 

There is usually a short, initial period called “the honeymoon,” where everything and almost everyone will go the new pastor’s way, more than they will with the passage of two or three years.  People will come up to you and tell you how refreshing your presence is, compared to the Reverend So-and-so.  Just then and there, the pastor’s temptation begins. 

Obviously, one’s predecessor did not met everyone’s needs or wants, although there will always be a group for whom “The Good Reverend” is, was, and will always be irreplaceable.  Those who disliked or were just uncomfortable with a particular pastor will also make their feelings perfectly clear.  You begin to wonder why the pastor-in-question did this or did not do that.  But, most of all, you begin to wonder why the congregation does things in a certain, sometimes mysterious way.  Maybe it revolves around worship or building use or committee meetings or “Neighboring.”  There is always something that “we have always done this way,” and that translates into “Don’t You Dare Touch!” 

The creeping thought enters one’s mind, “Why did the Church ever allow this or that to start in the first place?”  The next step in this downward spiral is to wonder, “What idiot (What kind of pastor) would encourage such activity?”  The obvious mental reply is, “Certainly not one as competent as me.”  After that, it’s all down-hill.  You, the Pastor, are riding in a “Semi” without brakes.  The temptation has taken hold and Hell is just beyond the next intersection. 

There are several ways a new pastor can deal effectively with such temptations.  To counter them I always try to remember that just perhaps my predecessors (all of them) worked a transformation or two, not immediately apparent to me.   

There is also a more biblical approach to this problem. 

Today’s epistle reading says, “I belong to Apollos,” “I belong to Paul,” “I belong to Peter.”  Here was a congregation in Corinth that (to put it politely) was split.  Each group knew what was right because the pastor they liked best was like that. 

In his usual, direct manner, Paul destroys all allegiances but one: “Is Christ divided?  Was Paul crucified for you?  Were you baptized into the name of Paul?”  Past, present, and future, each pastor and every minister represents the Christ, not him or her self.  We deal with a revealed truth, not revered personalities. 

Sometimes that is hard to believe.  Each of us, clergy and laity alike, has a long or a short list of pastors and other church leaders we have loved and some we have not loved.  Yet each one of them may have given us a very unique and, perhaps, wonderful glimpse into Christ and His Gospel.  I cannot help but think of four pastors who have had varying effects on my life and ministry, and, in some manner, still do.  What follows is the briefest description of them, “Four who walked with Christ.”  I should add all four are deceased.  They cannot rebut my remarks. 

The Reverend G. was outwardly a jolly man yet inwardly a clown with tears in his eyes.  His marital experience had been a disaster when a colleague ran off with his wife and kids.  His pastoral career was troubled.  He was overweight, and it eventually killed him.  At times, he was terribly insecure and indecisive.  He was very human.  He had a love of the Lord and the people he tried to serve.  Christ was a very real presence to him.  Serving the congregation, he was serving his Lord. 

Without public knowledge, he was forever doing little things for the people around him.  You always knew that he was thinking of you.  He would tell you, “I’ve been thinking of you lately.”  I doubt that I will every have the heart that man had.  In more ways than one, his heart was broken.  After a particularly tumultuous time, he left the ministry.  He ended up selling religious books and shoes to make a living.  One day his heart stopped. 

The Reverend W. was an intellectual fellow.  He was skinny, short and carried himself like a college professor.  He had a balding head and wore, round, wire-framed glasses.  He took all things including God very seriously.  He had a mind that was perceptive and insightful.  He was well-read.  Deep down, he was a rather shy man.  He was a widower who had raised a daughter who had been stricken in childhood with polio.  He was a thinker and on occasion he went too far, too fast with his thoughts, and assumed the congregation always understood.  They didn’t!  He said and suggested some things he probably should not have.  He was the most generous man I have ever met.  For a time he was my mentor.  More than once, I forgot how seriously he took God and ministry.  There was a time in my early ministry when I wanted out.  It was something like a guerrilla war, little skirmishes in the parish, but no pitched battles.  I hoped he would comfort me and be generous with my few faults.  I wrote to him my feelings about “those people.”  There was some venom and not much contrition in my words.  A few days went by and he wrote me back, and said, “Remember, at the moment, you are the only pastor that ‘those people’ have.”  He also sent my letter back and told me, “Burn it!”  I did. 

The Reverend B. was a tall, defiant and almost arrogant fellow.  He was a little ahead of me in Seminary.  He came from a long line of Maine fishermen and his language was a wee bit more than graphic. He believed, or said he did, that he was on a first name basis with the Almighty.  Yet, no one ever taught me more of how to discern God’s will in direct, practical terms and applicable ways.  Nor has anyone else ever forced me to deal with my own humanity or, at times, lack of it, in such a frank yet loving manner.  He let me know, in no uncertain terms, that I should never believe that, because I was the pastor, I was above human feelings and mistakes.  He liked to correct me and mine. 

The Reverend S. was no Liberal.  He belonged to another denomination that would never have let me in the pulpit.  He was a marvelous pastor.  Never was anyone in trouble without his being right there.  He was a man you could count on, for first he did and afterwards he taught.  He was not a great or even a good preacher or worship leader, but he was a man who knew how to pray. 

If we are blessed and we are, our lives have been and will be touched by many persons and by one or more pastors.  Some we will like and some we will probably dislike and some we will never understand.  Each will have human failings.  Each will have strengths.  Each will do some things right, and every one of them will make mistakes.  Yet, if we receive and learn just a little of the mystery of Christ or be given a glimpse of the glory of God’s Kingdom by them, how fortunate we will have been in having known all of them. 

I am always reminded of some lines of poetry from Edwin Arlington Robinson.  He was born at Head Tide, near Alna, Maine and grew up, left for the big city, returned and died in Gardiner.  In 1925, he published some of his later work, including “A Man in Our Town.”  “Our Town” was presumably Gardiner, Maine. 

      We pitied him as one too much at ease

      With Nemesis and impending indigence;

      Also, as if by way of recompense,

      We sought him always in extremities;

      And while ways more like ours had more to please

      Our common code than his improvidence,

      There lurked alive in our experience

      His homely genius for emergencies. 

      He was not one for men to marvel at,

      And yet there was another neighborhood

      When he was gone, and many a thrifty tear.

      There was an increase in a man like that;

      And though he be forgotten, it was good

      For more than one of you that he was here. 

God sends us pastors and lay leaders distinguished only by their calling and the gifts given them by God.  In spite of their humanity and sometimes because of it, these latter day disciples of the Gospel strive to give us a glimpse of God.  For them, each and every one of them, we are and will remain grateful. 

Still, I cannot help wonder, “Did Peter, Andrew, James and John and the others really know what they were getting into, when they dropped everything and followed Jesus?”   
 

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