Pastor Denise’s Last Sermon before Retiring

ANOTHER LEG OF THE JOURNEY

June 11, 2023
2^nd Sunday after Pentecost
Gen.12:1-9: Ps. 33:1-12; Rom. 4:13-25; Matt.9:9-13, 18-26
Rev. Denise Clark-Jones

A few weeks ago, I officially reached Senior Citizen status. Unlike the dreaded birthdays of the third decade on, 65 was not as intimidating as I used to think it would be. I think it must be the opportunities open to this new stage in life. This isn’t true for everyone. Tom was sure his career was over when he retired and moved with me to Peoria, but it has been a wonderful musical experience for him, playing this great instrument and conducting a talented choir. That was also true when he began leading the music at Westminster with many fine volunteers. Now as he heads to the Cleveland area, he already has five Sundays lined up as a substitute organist this summer and turned down a wedding that is scheduled for a date soon after we arrive.

I don’t know what I will be doing, but I know I will be active if my health remains good. I even look forward to church shopping. It will be nice to participate on the other side of the pulpit for a change. No worries that I will misspeak or forget something in the service. I recently heard a pastor colleague refer to his Attention Deficit Disorder with the euphemistic term “neural divergence.” I can relate to that. Thank you for being patient with me.

If you search the Internet you will find many people who accomplished great things as “Senior Citizens,” but finding people who did something spectacular they had never done before is a much smaller list. For example, George G.W. Bush began skydiving at age 80. Laura Ingalls Wilder, the children’s book author, began writing at age 65 and produced the “Little House on the Prairie” series. Although Anna Mary Robertson Moses, or Grandma Moses, had dabbled a bit in painting, she only began to seriously devote herself to painting at age 78. The call of Abram, later to be named Abraham, is inspiring, not just because he accepted God’s call to leave his family and moved to an unknown land, but especially because he did it late in life. The ages given in the Old Testament are obviously not calculated the same as today, but the age of 75 which made God’s promise of an heir seem impossible and even laughable.

According to Genesis, Abraham was the son of Terah, a descendent of Noah’s son, Shem. Abraham had lived all his life in Ur in the land of the Chaldeans (which would be in Iraq today) along with the rest of his extended family. For a reason we are not told, the family was on their way to Canaan when his father stopped in Haran, in northern Israel, and decided to stay. God interrupted Abraham’s plan to stay with his father and extended family and called him to travel to a new land in Canaan. The area the bible refers to as Canaan is today the areas of Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan and the southern parts of Syria and Lebanon. Compared to my experiences, Abraham was not an experienced mover. He only had to pack up twice and each time he had servants who came with him to help with the packing and unpacking. I expect it was hard for him to leave his family in Haran, except for his wife, Sarai, and his nephew, Lot. As some of you may have experienced, moving to a place where you don’t know anyone is intimidating, to say the least. Sarah was leaving behind all her in-laws except Lot, so she might not have seen moving as such a sacrifice.

We are told Abraham progressed on his journey in stages. We might see his journey as a metaphor for our own faith journey, particularly because Abraham not only moved physically, he also progressed spiritually. Like us, God, whom the ancient Hebrews called Yahweh, was not continually speaking to Abraham and he had to move into new territory without continual assurances. At times he had to improvise and didn’t always make the best choices. Abraham’s journey led him into unexpected places and new challenges.

The drought and famine in Negreb forced him to find water for his human and animal entourage in Egypt. In the early stages of his journey from Haran to Canaan, Abram was not exactly the model of faith Paul touted in his letter to the Roman congregation. Fearful of the Egyptians, Abraham pretended to be Sarai’s brother and let the Pharoah take her for his wife to protect himself. God intervened with a plague on the Pharoah and his household, which led Pharoah to order Abraham and Sarah to leave, thus freeing Sarah from a terrible fate.

Later, Abraham and Sarah started to doubt Yahweh’s promise of an heir, so they arranged to have Sarah’s maid, Hagar, become pregnant with Abraham, which produced a son, Ishmael. But Yahweh repeated the promise to give Abraham and Sarah the Promised Land and for descendants to inhabit the land. It wasn’t until the promised son, Isaac, was born that their faith reached the level, the Apostle Paul praised.

Can you remember the past stages of your faith journey? Were there diversions or obstacles that challenged you? It has been so with me.

As Tom wrote on the back of the church bulletin, the choice of music by Bach for this service was not just related to the Peoria Bach Festival which ended on Friday. When I was 14 my father took a new job, which necessitated a move from the city in which I was born, Raleigh, NC, to Lynchburg, VA. It was hard enough to move schools at that age, but to join a new church and Sunday School class was an added burden. Since the pastor at my Raleigh church had accepted a call to a Presbyterian church in Lynchburg six months earlier, there was no time off or church shopping to ease into the transition. We immediately started attending our previous pastor’s church. For the next year, I wasn’t really keen on going to church, but I was still spiritually fed by the worship service. I discovered great organ music. The pastor’s sermons were adequate, and I enjoyed discussing them with my parents afterward, but what really drew me in was the wonderful pipe organ and the talented organist. When that old Englishman played Bach, I felt, like the psalmist —  God’s handiwork was on display. I will insert here that my Raleigh church was a new church start and did not have a sanctuary, a memorable organ, or an organist. This was a new worship experience for me. I knew Bach’s compositions were divinely inspired! I would probably have made a good Lutheran, but the Presbyterians indoctrinated me at a formative age.

The Apostle Paul invented the prototype of a new church start. His mission was challenging. It wasn’t easy to be a Christian in the pagan Roman Empire. Furthermore, the stress of diverse people joining a single congregation sometimes caused divisions within the local churches. Yes, some things never change! The internal conflicts arose not because the church is an inherently flawed concept, but because it has always been made up of flawed human beings. The Christian fellowship Paul envisioned, based on his understanding of God and Christ, was a model of the kingdom of God.

The book of Genesis tells us God’s Plan A for the world was Adam and Eve in the Garden  — we know how that turned out! When that didn’t work, Plan B was Noah. But from the next Genesis story about the Tower of Babel, we are told that didn’t work out either. Abraham was a descendant of Noah’s son, Shem, and was Plan C. Jesus, God’s Word Incarnate, was the final Plan D.

Abraham’s name appears close to 50 times in the New Testament, most extensively in the book of Hebrews where he is presented as a model of faith as does Paul in our reading from Romans. Paul refutes any suggestion that faith can be achieved. Faith, he contends, is a gift from God for which the proper response is the kind of trust and obedience Abraham grew to exemplify. The relationship Abraham found with God led him to righteousness. Paul informs his readers that righteousness is not simply a matter of moral or ethical living. As I previously mentioned, Abraham and Sarah found themselves in a few tough situations in which their actions would not pass the test on that standard. Paul contends righteousness is walking with God in such a way that moral and ethical behavior increasingly become our way of being in the world. It is a trusting relationship with God that frees us to accept God’s grace and blessings leading to righteousness and salvation.

Today Westminster begins a new stage, as it has done many times in the past. Whenever a pastor leaves, there is apprehension about the future. In these times when churches are losing members and many are closing, it is easy to become discouraged. I stress the word, “easy.” As the bible attests, being faithful to God and Christ’s commission has never been easy, nor was it ever meant to be. Being a witness, in the biblical sense, does not mean being a spectator. Just as I will learn to do ministry in a different way, you will need to be ministers of the church in ways you may not have been before.

I leave you in very capable hands, God’s and yours. God has proven to be steadfast and faithful to us. Jesus Christ has shown us how to be faithful to God in pursuing God’s kingdom on earth and has promised to be with us until the end of the age. The gift of the Holy Spirit empowers us, when we feel weak or discouraged, to do with God, what we cannot do alone. Have faith. Have courage, you are not alone.

Amen. May it be so!

© Rev. Denise Clark-Jones, 2023, All Rights Reserved
Westminster Presbyterian Church | 1420 W. Moss Ave. | Peoria, Illinois 61606
WestminsterPeoria.org | 309.673.8501

“I believe in Westminster’s missions of service to others and I like how biblical scholarship is integrated with scripture, providing more insight into understanding what Christ says is important.  These have only helped me to strengthen my faith.”