by Parrish W. Jones, Ph.D.
©2010. All rights reserved.

 

Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Romans 8:28-39

I chose these two texts of scripture for our texts this morning because they are two of my favorites for reasons you will learn over the next months, and because I think them worthy of our contemplation at a new beginning because new beginnings are possible because of history. As Christians, we can face the future with courage because our hope is built on our experience of God. When I say “our”, I do not mean those of us in this room, but the experience of the whole church and God’s people throughout the ages. Each of us is a part of that history, and none of us alone validates or invalidates that history.

I want to share with you some things about myself, things that formed and shaped me so you will know me a little better. I cannot share everything, but I hope my introduction will help us begin this journey with greater understanding. What I want to share are the parts of my life that have helped me to understand faith, the church, the Bible and theology as I do.

I was born in St. Augustine, Florida and grew up within a few hundred yards of the bay and less than a mile from the ocean. My parents took me to Memorial Presbyterian Church from the time I was able to go anywhere. Within the context of that church I was loved and nurtured by minister and members. My parents were new Presbyterians at that time. They had come from a fundamentalist tradition, a tradition my mother still echoes a bit but that my father forsook with thanksgiving. When I asked him why he liked the Presbyterian church, he replied, “Because when I ask a Presbyterian minister a question about the Bible, doctrine or theology, I feel like I get a thoughtful, un-canned answer.”

Dad was a conservative Republican, but my Dad read and thought, inquired and learned. He made us think which we often did around the dinner table. On many an occasion we had not just roast beef and mashed potatoes for dinner, but Compton’s and Collier’s encyclopedias, the dictionary, the Bible, the concordance, and a commentary or two because we were encouraged to disagree and to question. I took to that like a flea to a dog.

My dad taught me many things, but probably as much as anyone started me doing serious ethical thinking. I did not learn how to do that very well until I was in college and seminary, but I can remember asking Dad more than once, “Why don’t you do this or that?” His reply was often that it either was or was not the ethical thing to do. So I learned from him that being Christian, because I knew he was even if he said little about it directly, included not just going to church, but doing the right thing. He often showed us what that meant.

Mom talked more about what she believed in doctrinal sorts of ways. She was the one who told us a thousand times, “If you cannot find something good to say about someone, then say nothing at all.” I cannot list all her sayings, but there were many and from that I learned some rudiments of what right and wrong actions are. And that saying has affected me very deeply to the point that no matter how much I dislike someone, I am always trying to find something good about them, to discover their gift.

As most children, I went through a rebellious period. My rebellion was expressed in two ways, one was to become a Baptist which I did at 15 partly because my girlfriend went to the Baptist church and partly because they had a youth program. I do not regret that rebellion, because I received an excellent education at Carson Newman College in East Tennessee and Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville. In those days, Baptists were fundamentalists in many respects, but a more moderate stream led the institutions where I was educated. So when we compared notes, seminarians across the road at the Louisville Presbyterian Seminary and we Baptists were learning the same stuff.

My father’s example of thinking through things and studying issues led me in the same direction but with different results. We came to disagree strongly on a range of issues beginning with Civil Rights and Viet Nam. But he had taught me not be indoctrinated because he was a libertarian. Thus I was permitted without censure to disagree.

While I repented of being a Baptist, I have not repented of being a thinker and open minded.   I prefer to be “a take no prisoners Christian and theologian” instead of liberal or conservative. When we divide ourselves into left and right, conservative and liberal, we simply increase error instead of seeing the vast space we all inhabit. I hope you will hear my sermons not as endorsements of any side of politics or theology, but as a challenge to all. The issue is not about being liberal or conservative. Instead, we are called to faith-full-ly follow Jesus, something I have been committed to doing but have all too often failed at.

While in college, I married the Baptist girl and while in seminary and my first pastorate we had two daughters, now grown with children of their own. My marriage to their mother was not made in heaven. She did not like being a minister’s wife and did not particularly like being my wife. We agree that the other was a pretty good parent, for which we are both thankful, but not good for one another, which we regret.

After several years in ministry, I became unhappy being a minister. Because of our marital concerns, and my vocational uncertainty, I decided to go back to school to get a Ph.D. in philosophy, a dream I had had since college. While at Florida State, I got my Ph.D. and a divorce. From both experiences I learned a great deal about myself, most of which I can not go into now.

During that time, it became clear to me that I was not so much disenchanted with ministry as I was a fish out of water in the Baptist church. That began to dawn on me on visits home when I went to church with my parents and felt like I was in the right place, a feeling I did not have in the Baptist Church. With the support of the minister of the Baptist Church, First Presbyterian Church’s Session and minister, I became a Presbyterian again—a decision I have never regretted.

As I was working through that process, I met Doloris, my soon to be second wife. She was a member of a fundamentalist tradition, so our relationship had much to overcome if it were to develop. However, as she was introduced to the Presbyterian Church and we dated, talked and prayed over the months, she began to feel more like a butterfly liberated from its tightly wound cocoon than a sinner leaving the true way. She became a Presbyterian.

We got married and within a few months I had accepted a call to Norton Presbyterian Church in Southwest Virginia. We wondered where in that small isolated community we would find friends and soul-mates for our journey. God provided beyond our dreams. The manse was next door to the Catholic Rectory in which lived a Glen Mary Mission Priest named John Rausch. We became friends and met friends of his, Don Prange, a Missouri Synod Lutheran minister, and his wife Tena Wilemsa, who was a staff person for Commission on Religion in Appalachia. We became fast friends, all was well, and our church grew quickly until a year later when Doloris developed breast cancer and began a tragic 8 month journey of treatment, great physical and spiritual agony, and, finally, death.

When this crisis fell on us, my first thought was that we needed a pastor. We talked and we prayed together. With the question on our minds and the pain in our hearts, I went to a meeting of the local ministers. At the meeting was a new person who had just come to be director of pastoral care at the Roman Catholic Hospital. Following the meeting, I asked Sister Anne Therese if we could talk and shared with her what was going on and asked her to visit Doloris in the hospital where she was recuperating from surgery. She did and she shared her amazing gift of spiritual healing with us through that arduous experience. Her ministry kept me whole and able to continue my ministry and at times worked miracles in Doloris’ pain stricken body.

Despite her suffering, Doloris was blessed with the capacity of honesty and integrity that I have witnessed in few people. Those gifts enabled her to help her family and me face what was happening to us. She helped us navigate some difficult decisions and differences she knew existed. In her way she gave us the gift of healing for our wounds.

The ministry of Sister Anne Therese to me did not end there, nor did the friendship of John, Don and Tena. All continued to nurture and love me as did my congregation. Within a few months of Doloris’s death, Sister Anne Therese began to tell me about a nurse she knew to whom she wanted to introduce me. My first reaction was that I was not ready. Fortunately, for me, she persisted and I acquiesced and Mary Ellen and I went on a date. Well, she was gorgeous, young and vivacious, and very quiet which meant I could talk all I wanted. The first date led to many more and finally to marriage. Mary Ellen brought with her two children—Christy and Jason. The day we were married they were three and five. My daughters, Celese and Kimberly, were 14 and 12. So we worked to blend these two families. It wasn’t always easy.

From Norton, I was called to pastor First Presbyterian Church in Windber, Pennsylvania, near Johnstown. My13 years there saw the creation of a Child Care Center that serves primarily low middle class and low income persons. The church, already a part of community ministries, began to look out to a larger mission and became involved in the Presbytery partnership with Presbyteian Border Ministry in Agua Prieta, Mexico and Douglas, Arizona, a partnership which I proposed and led for eight years. The Windber church has sent about 20 people over the years, and gained numerous young adult leaders from the work. From that experience I have gained new visions of our neighbors to the south, of immigration, and migration so that in the past two years I have served as a Presbyterian Representative on the Border Working Group in DC seeking a more just policy of immigration and the Border. Most recently, I spent a month volunteering at FDC and am now working on a book project with them.

I also taught part time at the Johnstown campus of the University of Pittsburgh, was member of and president of the Campus Ministry Foundation, and active in peace and justice work of the community and the Presbytery. In 2000 I was invited to teach at the Presbyterian Seminary in Colombia where I taught theology of the environment, building on many years of study in that area. That experience led to continuing concern about the situation in Colombia and participation in the Presbyterian Church’s Colombia Network. I visited Colomiba on peace delegations three times. Now I serve on the National Committee of the Peace Fellowship and presently am working on their new website. I also serve as spinner for the Colombia Network’s list serve.

From Windber we moved to Roanoke, where both Mary Ellen and I dove into empty nest career moves only to become disheartened and discouraged with both. I decided to end my relationship with my church and, at that time, she saw an ad for the position of nurse administrator at Columbia Rd. Health Services. Deciding that such a program was a way of engaging in mission with the poor and of becoming involved with a nurturing Christian community, we decided to move with the faith that I would find a job. It is a move we were thankful for and in which we saw the hand of God.

         My job became the remodeling of a house, being an on call child sitter for my grandsons, and doing volunteer work on border issues, Colombia, Childrens’ concerns, and the homeless ministry at New York Ave. Presbyterian Church.  I served two tax seasons as Site Supervisor for two Volunteer Income Tax Assistance programs for those who earn less than $35,000 per year. While I have made it a matter of spiritual discipline to seek ways to have deep contact with poor people in the past, these last two years have been transformative times. Through this work, I have received more ministry than I have given.

I served a church in Northern, VA for a year and a half as an interim and then felt called to do the unthinkable. After much prayer and planning Mary Ellen and I decided on my accepting a call to be a volunteer in mission and visiting professor of theology at the Presbyterian University in Barranquilla, Colombia. I spent the year of 2007 as a professor and working with a community of about 100 displaced persons planning toward their being able to build a new community. During that time I was richly fed and taught by the Presbyterian Church of Colombia and their rich relationships with others working for human rights in that nation.

When I returned home in December, Mary Ellen had accepted a position with Community Hospice of Northeast Florida and I opened an ill-fated Fair Trade store in St. Augustine. I will have opportunity to share more about Fair Trade with you in the future.

Now you will become a part of the rest of my story. We will write it together.

If you can see any thread here, I hope it is the one that runs through our two scripture lessons and that is that in amazing ways God provides for us in life. That provision does not mean that God always makes everything all right. God doesn’t always fix stuff, so we can be happy. As Christians we are not called to optimism and happiness, we are called to service and hope. I am here to serve as your pastor with you in ministry. I cannot guarantee it will always be happy times  , but service is never easy. Yet, we can be confident with the People of Israel and with Paul that God will be struggling with us. So let us be faithful to one another in the task.