Sermon

A GOOD MAN

A Sermon by Rev. James D. Brown

Market Square Presbyterian Church

Father’s Day—June 17, 2007

Scripture: Psalm 84 and 1 Timothy 6:11-16

On my first or second day on the job as pastor of Market Square Presbyterian Church my office phone rang, and I picked it up with a certain sense of delight that someone knew I was here. I answered, “Hello, this is Jim Brown.” There was a pause—and then the caller replied a little tersely, “Oh, I wasn’t trying to reach you. I need to talk to the other Jim—Jim Queeley.”

It is in such moments that a newcomer to Market Square—pastor or otherwise—discovers where the real leadership lies—the persons folks have figured out they can trust and depend on. Jim Queeley has been such a person for twenty years and more.

One of the things I heard again and again during my early days here—as more people seemed to looking for Jim Queeley than for me—was that our sexton, our custodian was a good man and that the Church was blessed to have him here. Ten years later, on this special Father’s Day, I can shout my own Amen! Jim Queeley is a good man to be around, and I’d to think with you for a few moments about why this is so.

I recently acquired a book by a friend who is one of the best theologians in the Presbyterian Church, Bill Placher, who has spent his thirty years teaching at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. His latest book is entitled Callings, and consists of readings on twenty centuries of Christian wisdom on vocation.

In his preface, Bill highlights the manner in which Reformers like Martin Luther saw every job, every kind of work Christians were doing, as a vocation. The Greek word for calling in the New Testament is klēsis, and Luther translated this as the German Beruf, which is the everyday expression for one’s occupation. Luther made a great case for your Christian calling being your job—with marriage and fatherhood and motherhood also carrying the heading of Beruf.[1]

Bill Placher suggests that in today’s world, many people are very nervous about identifying their jobs as their Christian vocation. The shoemaker in Luther’s day made shoes for friends and neighbors. Today’s assembly-line worker anonymously stitches the tongue of a shoe, alienated from the person who will wear it, often half way around the world. And Placher points out that even highly skilled lawyers and businesspersons who spend little quality time face to face with clients feel just as alienated as those on a factory assembly line.[2] Work is a mixed bag for a lot of us.

This has led Placher and others to observe that this whole idea of a Christian calling “pushes upstream against the dominant values around us.” He notes that the values in today’s culture have to do more with aping the lifestyles of the rich and famous than picking up a cross and following Jesus into the everyday world of work and family and friends.

Bill is finding that the students in his college classes are hungering for something more than worldly recognition and material goods—that they are finding that their jobs and their relationships seem pointless unless they are part of some larger story, unless they have the quality of being something God is calling them to do.[3]

Bill quotes the Presbyterian minister and novelist Frederick Buechner on the subject of calling. Buechner’s oft-quoted definition has staying power as he suggests that “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”[4] Our liberation comes, often in itsy-bitsy moments, when we find a surprising match between what the world needs now and the gifts God has given us—and we find our hearts bubbling with meaning and purpose.

It may be in our workplace, it may be reading a bedtime story to a daughter or son, it may be in sailing a boat or refinishing an old chair, it may be serving breakfast to those who come to Market Square on Sunday mornings. Whatever the occasion, these are the moments we’d best take hold of.

Paul, in his letter to young Timothy, is chasing after this very reality. I want to highlight just one verse from today’s lesson:

Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life,

to which you were called and for which you made the good

confession in the presence of many witnesses. (6:12)

One phrase makes my point for the morning. “Take hold of the eternal life….”

What I like about this expression is that includes both God’s free gift of eternal life and the need for us to do something, to take hold. For Paul the life of faith is similar to that of the good athlete. You must grasp goodness every time you have the chance. You have to be on the lookout for it. You have to seize the opportunities that come to you. You have to work at matching the world’s hunger with your own deep gladness. It doesn’t just happen by itself.

This brings me back to Jim Queeley. One of the things I like best about him is that he knows how to tease those he loves. Early on he realized that in me he was faced with a competitor in snagging the biggest piece of chocolate cake at church functions. He’s got my number, and every time I am first in line and reaching for a goodie in Fellowship Hall, there he is, smiling at me across the room. A good tease, as opposed to a mean one, helps you avoid the trap of taking yourself too seriously. Jim is a very good tease.

The smile with which he greets us is evidence of his own sense of good fortune for having been guided to Market Square at a time in his life when I suspect—I can only suspect, for I wasn’t here then—when I suspect he was trying to find his true calling.

And find it he did.

Let me tell a story about what happened on Friday of this week. The background has to do with a mysterious humming sound here in our sanctuary. Some of you have heard a humming sound that would abruptly begin, and then stop a bit later, and then sometimes resume again. This has been the topic of Worship Committee meetings for a number of months. Newman Stare, our terrific sound technician, determined that it had nothing to do with our sound system, leaving us at a loss to as to what was causing it.

Friday Jim Queeley and Lois Gayman figured it out. Lo and behold, the sound comes from the ceiling fan in the rest room in the new nursery below the sanctuary. The fan and light are automatically activated when a child enters the bathroom, and then the fan remains on for an allotted time. The noise of the fan is transmitted into the sanctuary, with the space beneath the floor functioning like a sounding board. Knowing cellist Daniel Gaisford would not want to compete with the fan today, Jim and I disconnected it.

The point of the story is that Jim Queeley was downright gleeful, in his quiet sort of way, about the manner in which he and Lois had figured out what was going on. His love affair with his work at Market Square is punctuated by moments when our needs as a congregation are in tune with his deep gladness. What a joy to share ministry with him.

The other thing I will mention is the sadness that comes packaged with his joy. When word came the Friday before Holy Week that Pierce Getz had died—and Pierce was Jim’s favorite teasing companion—Jim was spotted sitting in the narthex all by himself, wrapped in sorrow. I’ve heard Jim say that the only really hard part of his work comes when members of the church face tough times or die. Jim greets each of us with his gentle smile, and when one of us is gone he feels the sadness that comes with knowing he will no longer be able to welcome us in his beloved role as a doorkeeper in the house of our God.

It is indeed a joy this Father’s Day to honor a man who time and again has taken hold of the good news that has come into his life—and held on tight. His twenty years and more among us have not always been pure joy—he’ll tell you that. But they have been punctuated by moments when he has known himself to have been called to just this congregation—not any other—in which he, with us, could pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.

Jim, it is a blessing for us to see you sitting in the front pew, wearing the white robe that is your custom when you carry the cross of Christ down the aisle before special services like Easter. So to you and Harriett and all your family I will close with the words Paul said to Timothy at the close of his letter: Grace be with you. Grace be with you, one and all. “Thank you, Jim” for your witness among us lo these many years. May we be graced with many more. Amen

[2] Placher, p. 8

[3] Placher, pp. 10-11