Marcia Mount Shoop - Theologian in Residence in the New York Times

I hope and pray you enjoyed our Theologian in Residence, Dr. Marcia Mount Shoop.

In so many ways, we are a richer congregation for her being with us.  Last weekend, Samuel Freedman from the New York Times was with us, following Marcia, speaking with her, and listening to her theology of incarnation and divine embodiment.  

His article about Marcia was published today.  Here is a link if you are interested, and the title suggests the angle he take and the testimony that Marcia gives:

A Rape Survivor Now Ministers Body and Soul

Thanks to Marcia for sharing with us and inspiring us to find the spirit and see the Lord in some new ways.

Thanks to Mr. Freedman for telling a part of her story well - may others finds the redemption and power and renewal that Marcia has found.

From the point of Oberlin and MacDonald,

Christopher

Just thought I would share this link.  Are these encouraging signs or signs of tougher times to come?  What would your ideas be to reverse these statistics and trends?

2011 PC(USA) Statistics

Thin Places

My friend Pete Perry calls Montreat a thin place - where the distance between heaven and earth is small.  Where the distance between the Spirit and the people is small.

Where are your thin places?

Darkness, Light, and the Decision to Shine

I was asked to speak at Broughton High School at the interfaith candlelight service on Sunday night.  It was a daunting task, to say the least. 

The topic was:  "The Decision to Shine."

I got to speak between Rabbi Raachel and Imam Oliver.  I hope I held up my place on the program.

Church member and friend and member of Broughton High's class of 2012 Shelby Snedecor read Isaiah 60 : 1 - 7 for us before I spoke, and that text formed the basis of what I said.

Several friends and church members have asked that I post what I said.  Here it is.  Forgive the typos and the errors.  Any oversights are unintensional.

Broughton Candlelight Service

May 20, 2012

Christopher H. Edmonston

Text Isaiah 60: 1 - 7

Darkness, Light, and the Decision to Shine

Thank you to Shelby Snedecor (for reading that text with all those strange names), also to Megg Rader, to Emily McNair, to Rabbi Raachel Jurovics, to Imam Oliver Muhammed, and to Father Ryan Carnercer, it is an honor to be part of this service with each of  you. 

To the Broughton class of 2012 – thank you for extending me this invitation to speak and share.  You are part of the wonderful and warm welcome that my family and I have received since we arrived in Raleigh last August, and because of your hospitality we are feeling more at home with each passing day.

If the members of White Memorial will allow for repetition, I want to tell a story that I told on Christmas Eve, one that I think instructive – one that I think will help to ‘shed some light’ (hmmm….) -- on our theme and to our purpose here tonight.  It is a story that sets a metaphorical framework for speaking about Darkness, Light, and the Decision to Shine – one that gives us a metaphor for both the challenge and the opportunity of Sharing the Light Within. 

That is after all the question:  will you, will each of you, as you live beyond your days at Broughton, will you share your light? 

That is the question I suspect that I wish that someone had asked me when I was 18 –

will you shine?

The story:  several summers ago we took our family caving. We paid for our tour, and hiked up the path to the top of the hill, where we were met by 21 year old tour guide.  “Hi, my name is Jordan,” she said and with her red plaited hair, horned rimmed glasses, L.L.Bean boots, small black flashlight, and Steve Irwin-like coveralls, Jordan looked the part of the would-be geologist.  Bear in mind as we began the tour, it was only me, my wife, and our six, four, and 1.5 year old children.  With the smallest child on my back in a back-pack like papoose contraption, we opened the door and plunged into the cave with Jordan a few steps ahead of us.

Imagine if you will a would-be geologist and a little family of five deep within the earth.  Just imagine the sound of a shouting 1.5 year old, echoing throughout the cave.  Imagine what you would do if you were this young person leading the family of five.  You might make the all but obvious choice to cut certain parts of the tour; skip a few of the canned jokes; bypass the boring areas of the cave.  Not our Jordan.  Every joke was told.  Every crack was exposed.  Every legend conferred.  She left nothing out!

Inevitably Jordan lost patience with us – she had to keep telling our boys not to run ahead, and not to throw rocks, and not to touch the walls – and the screaming our youngest, a daughter protesting the confining papoose frayed her nerves to their last desperate limits. When I realized we were really in trouble was when Jordan declared not allowed to touch anything, as the entire cave was a trust of the state of Virginia.  No touching of the stones.  No touching of the walls.  No touching of the pools of water.  No touching.

Our oldest son’s hand shot up.  “We are not allowed to touch anything?” he asked.  “Well my feet are touching the floor, am I breaking the law?”  I guffawed.  My wife giggled.  The baby screamed.  Jordan looked flummoxed and pressed on the children mostly ignoring her.  My wife and I began hoping that she wouldn’t press charges because our kids were still hurling rocks into the edges of the cave.

There was one moment, though, when she held the attention of the children and managed to produce silence.  When we were near our farthest point from the mouth of the cave she struck a match and lit a candle, a small candle, and she told us about how people used to tour the cave by candlelight, then like a magician she threw a large switch on the wall, killing the lights.  The flame, this tiny little candle flickered in the dark.  One light, one small shining ember in the pitch dark surrounded by six faces and 12 blinking eyes.  And then almost with no warning, she blew the candle out.

Wwww….

Total darkness. 

Absolute darkness so dark it hurt – complete absence of hope darkness.  Black hole darkness.  500 feet below the ground darkness. 

The children fell silent – the only time all day they weren’t yelling.  The baby squeezed my hand as though even at 1.5 years she could understand the power of the silent, still, darkness all around.

Jordan then whispered something that I have never forgotten.  She said scientists have discovered that after only two days in that darkness our eyes would begin to lose functionality.  After a very short time, that is, we would begin to go blind.  After only two days our eyes would assume the darkness was normal. So used to the darkness that the eyes simply stop holding out hope, they simply stop wasting energy, stop looking and longing for light.  Darkness becomes the norm and we stop seeking anything else. 

We just “get used” to it. 

                                   

Now Isaiah, which was read a few moments ago was not written to people in a cave.  Isaiah was a very real person writing to a very real people who were in a darkness: the darkness of exile.  An exile so dark it hurt:  their lives and histories and memories and language stolen by an empire (Babylon) half a world away.  The people to whom Isaiah is speaking were removed from homeland, family, homestead, and well…everything they knew.  They had no hope of returning home, no hope of proving they had once on the land, no hope of finding their children or their parents or their sibling who they had been forcibly separated from.  No hope of finding them on Facebook or Twitter or in the register of deeds.  In the 6^th century B.C. if you were exiled in an empire far, far away you might as well have been in a galaxy far, far away.     If that is not darkness then I do not know what it is.  The might as well have been in a cave, deep underground, deep in the earth.  Their situation was hopeless and listless – like a boat on the sea with no wind in its sails they were not going anywhere. 

And here’s the rub the part of Isaiah’s story I cannot escape.  Do you remember from my story of being in the cave – where it only takes two days before the darkness starts to affect us?  Well the people of Israel, those to whom Isaiah is writing and speaking, had been exiled, had been far from home, in the veritable cave of barrenness and despair for years and years and years.  They had been in the darkness of despair for decades not days.  It was a hopeless situation that left them wondering where is God?  Where is hope?  Where is light?

And what I love is how the tension of that very real historical reality shows up in Isaiah’s words – listen for the tension – words like darkness and light, words like cover and arise, words like glory.  And then listen to how it ends – it is with light and with dawn itself.

Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
² For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you.
³ Nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

Talk about faith and courage, class of 2012!  Isaiah, in the midst of intense and unimaginable darkness says that light is on the way.  Like a single candle holding back the darkness in a deep, deep cave, Isaiah tells them that light will shine and it will shine in such a way that everyone will take notice – it will beat back the darkness of the exile and the whole world will give witness to it as nations and kings, peoples and leaders, and you and me see what good things God and God’s light will do.

                                                                 

The connection between them and us?  Well the question for Isaiah’s people is this:  are they going to continue to look for the light?  Or will they just “get used” to darkness?  Will they choose, when the opportunity comes, to shine?

Class of 2012 we live right now in an age and a time and place where darkness, hopelessness, and fear of the dark seem to reign.  But  even in the face of uncertainty, when we choose to walk in the light, when we choose to proclaim the light, when we choose to stand for the lights of hope, faith, and trust in our fellow woman and fellow man –

when we stand with the outsiders and the easily forgotten,

when we work to do what is right from no profit motive but from moral imperative,

when we live our lives with integrity,

share our dreams with intention,

and open our tables and homes through the principles of inclusion then we are making a choice to shine.

We are choosing to live in the light. 

Choosing to shine from within. 

I think this is what Jesus was trying to teach his followers in Matthew’s gospel (chapter 5: 14-16) – “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” 

Which is an ancient way of saying (and remember that Jesus lived in an ancient time) that you can choose to shine and light the house!  Or you can choose to hide, and shrink into the shadows!  Whether or not people are from a tradition that follows Jesus, I think that this teaching of his is one that bears a truth we can all adhere to:  we are called to let our lights shine.  So 2012, I ask again, will you choose to shine? 

Honestly, what do you get as you become an adult, as you leave high school behind?  I mean besides a lot of bills?  More than anything else what you get from the world and as a gift from God is an ever growing power to choose:  mature people have the power to make choices and the successful ones among us are those who have chosen well.  What will you choose?  Will you choose to shine? 

I saw an article recently in the Wall Street Journal from Dr. Charles Wheelan, from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.  He said to a class of graduates:  “You are smart and motivated and creative. Everyone will tell you that you can change the world. They are right, but remember that ‘changing the world’ also can include things like skirting financial regulations and selling unhealthy foods to increasingly obese children. I am not asking you to cure cancer. I am just asking you not to spread it.”

So will you choose to shine?  Or will you get lost in the darkness.  Will you spread hope?  Or apathetically spread hopelessness?  Will you stand out?  Or get lost in the shuffling?

 

There is no coincidence that we begin to see light in the womb as infants – we will need light to survive and prosper.  We are not creatures who are created nocturnally.  We must have light.  In the world in which we live, light has become a precious commodity.  Not because of its absence but because of the presence of darkness.  The darkness of war.  The darkness of famine.  The darkness of disease.  The darkness of terrorism.  The darkness of poverty.  The darkness of racial struggle. 

Don’t give into the temptation to see adversaries in every corner and obstacles down every hall.  Let me warn you of this:  as you grow into greater adulthood there will be those you meet who only see darkness and will try to convince you that there is no way for the light to achieve, that enemies are everywhere, and that the world has lost its bearing and is mostly hopeless.  The prophets of doom are real and they specialize in naming those not like them as the cause of their hopelessness.  They will tell you that there is no light.  But the light is there and it is precious – it may be scarce at some times and in some places – but it is always present.  That is what Isaiah is telling his people – arise and shine and give glory to the God that keeps you safe on the darkest night and gives you the power to shine!

When we choose to shine it is a glorious thing – and it is the kind of thing that becomes contagious, the kind of thing that everyone can note because you will become an inspiration to others.  Not even the animals – the rams, and camels according to Isaiah – will miss the wonder of radiance that happens when we choose to shine (that is, why I think the prophet includes all those animals from all those faraway places in Isaiah 60: 5 – 7).  Shouldn’t we want to use our gifts to even “inspire” the animals?  By virtue of the fact that you have graduated from Broughton, you are among the elite of the world.  What you choose to do will go a long way in determining the course of the world – will you sit on the sidelines, or get involved?  Will you give time to others, or hoard it for yourselves?

Will you stick to the shadows, or will you shine?

Back there in that cave in Virginia, Jordan said it only took two days before we adapted to a different state of being – before we “got used” to the darkness.  It may take even less time for our souls.  And the only defense against the dark is light.  Sweet, treasured, blessed light.

I asked some members of my church what to say to y’all tonight:  what do they need to know in order to shine with and through their lives?  One who graduated 50 years ago from High School wrote this:  “Remind them that God has a plan for you but he will not text or tweet it nor will he force you to follow it.   To know it you need to pay attention and listen carefully.”

Broughton 2012:  want to find where God is?  Want to know where God might be leading you as you leave Broughton?  Pay attention.  Listen. And look for God’s light.  That is where inspiration is.

Think about it:  if just one candle can hold back the darkness in a cave, then what can a lot of candles do?  Could it be that one willing light, one candle, can in turn light others if they are willing to be lit?  Can one life, choosing to shine, heeding the light, can one life make a difference in the midst of challenged times?

I say yes.  I suspect one light can do a lot.  One light can do a great deal, even.  But to do anything, to become anything, to be anybody you must make the choice to shine.   

Sharing the light within begins with your decision to shine.

Will you?  Will you shine?  Amen.

 

Things to think about...from Rebecca Kirkpatrick, Sam Adams, and Mindy Douglas

I am not sure if I have ever met Rebecca Kirkpatrick, but after reading this post on her blog I need to make time and opportunity to meet this Presbyterian Pastor from Indiana.  Read her post from her blog, and then tell what you think.

Bread Not Stones - 10 Things I want to tell parents -- Pastor Rebecca Kirkpatrick

Is she correct?

What would you want to tell parents?

Parents is she fair?  Did she miss something?

I think that these kinds of conversations are how we might best learn from one another and build a church that is both challenging, vibrant, faithful, and engaging.

I will tip my hat and claim my bias:  I think her list a good one.  I might have written it myself.  If faith formation and spiritual development is only to take place at church in 1 - 3 hours per week it is little wonder that youth and young adults find themselves equally or more devoted to other competing claims and causes in the world.

What do you think?

My apologies to Sam Adams.  Sam is an old friend and I have done him no justice with this fuzzy picture.  He is much less fuzzy in person!  He wrote a blog on Huffington Post this week which takes an intellectually deep and biblically informed look at social media.  How will church use this tool?  What do the prophets have to say about it?  Sam brings his great mind and keen insight as an Old Testament scholar to this post.  It was picked up by our Young Adult feed -- WMPC Young Adults Word Press blog.  So I know some of them have looked at the piece.  I'd commend it to a wider audience.

Here's the post:  Facebook, Netiquette, and the Bible

So, what do you think about the church and social media? 

Have you seen the new WMPC website? 

Are we using tools well?  Have you found WMPC on Facebook yet?  Have you "liked" out Youth Group, our PYC pages yet?

I think there is a broad based understanding in the church that we'll have to use these tools, but to what degree?

Sam gives a good theoretical, biblical, and scholar account as to how we might approach these questions.

Lastly, if you have a little time in the next few days, my dear, dear friend and fellow Presbyterian Outlook compadra Mindy Douglas the Pastor at Chapel in the Pines in Chatam County delivered a lecture worth hearing and consideration. 

Mindy gave the concluding Sprunt Lecture at Union Presbyterian Seminary last week.  It was about the future of the seminary and what pastors need to know.  It is insightful and well worth the investment of time.  I really like the way she ended her lecture:  a call to initiative.  In my sermons in the coming weeks and into the fall I'll be referencing the four lectures I heard - I literally took 30 pages of notes.  So grateful to be surrounded and supported by a great cloud of witnesses - a cloud that counts brilliant colleagues like Mindy among their number.  Thank you Mindy for the call and the passion.

To watch her remarks, click here:  http://unionlive.org/?p=356.

To view the other lectures, simply go to http://unionlive.org which is a growing and inspiring resource.

As always, I offer these things to advance our conversation and give us all inspiration for prayer and review.

May grace abound in all of our lives.

Advice to Graduates?

I saw this article online, found it from Twitter.  It really intrigues me.  I have to speak at Broughton High School later this month. 
Here is the piece from the Wall Street Journal @WSJ: 
10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You by Charles Wheelan
(Which is adapted from an address that he gave at Dartmouth last year.)

Here is a link to find out more about Dr. Charles Wheelan.

And, here is an interview from wsj.com
Interview with Dr. Charles Wheelan

What advice would you give to college and / or high school graduates? 
Post below or let me know via twitter @PastorOnPoint or email cedmonston@whitememorial.org or find me on Facebook.

Lessons from Dr. Jim

One of my most treasured mentors joined the church triumphant last week, taking his place with the communion of all saints.  He was a treasure to me, and to many, many others.  One of the great honors of my ministry was speaking at his witness to the resurrection service yesterday.  Most of what I said came from his journals and his writings.  So I share it with you. 

Lessons from Dr. Jim

Remarks at the Memorial, the Witness to the Resurrection of Dr. Jim McChesney
First Presbyterian Church Goldsboro, NC
April 11, 2012
Isaiah 40: 28 – 31; John 14: 1 – 6 and 25 – 57; 1^st Corinthians 15: 51 -58

Did you hear the one about….the farmer…the golfer…the preacher…the teacher… the Scottish bus driver…the door to door salesman…the doctor…the old man who rewrote his will three times?

            At least in later years, I am convinced that this was Jim McChesney’s favorite joke – at least since 2005:  “There was a mild mannered Quaker who had enough of his milk cow, Bossie, who often kicked over the bucket of milk, and then hit him in the face with her tail.  The Quaker said, “Now Bossie, thou knowest that I am a Quaker:  that I cannot smite thee, curse thee, nor break thy tail.  But Bossie, what thou dost not know is that I can sell thee to a Presbyterian who can evermore beat the hell out of thee.”
           In a journal he wrote a few years ago he wrote in the margins after he told this joke – “telling this joke may risk losing the audience and never getting them back.” I figure that conservatively, Jim McChesney wrote or told 5 jokes a day from age 10 to age 98.  That might mean that Jim told nearly 161,000 jokes or funny yarns in his lifetime.  And that might be a conservative number. 
          What I will remember most about Jim McChesney was this profound gift of the Spirit that he had to blend wit and wisdom seamlessly with one another.  He used to tell me that he often found that wit contained the highest forms of wisdom -- he often told me that he thought the human heart learned best through laughter.  He was right.
           As he would start to tell me a joke that he became sure I had recognized, he’d say “stop me” if you have heard this one before.  Or he would apologize for repeating the joke.  I’d always tell him to tell it anyway.  We did this so often that I think over the last five years his saying “stop me” was just a way for me to affirm that I liked the joke that he was about to tell.
          Back in 2005 he wrote, “My profession is notorious for repetitions and reruns, and I promise not to disappoint you!  In my defense, some charitable person has said, ‘if it isn’t worth telling twice, it probably wasn’t worth telling once.’ So if you have heard it, do like I did and pretend you haven’t.”  “Stop me...” meant “tell me more.”  “Stop me…” really meant, “let me tell you again.”
          One of the greatest gifts of my life was that from 2004 until a few weeks ago when we spoke on the phone, I enjoyed the gift of Dr. Jim McChesney.  Some of you enjoyed this gift of pastoral wit and wisdom from God much longer than I did. 
          In some ways I have drawn the long straw today – getting to share words of celebration and thanksgiving as we remembering a dear, dear friend as we proclaim God’s victory over death through the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord.  And in other ways, I have drawn the short straw, too: how do you do this?  How do you remember a life of 98 years?  How do you do this thoroughly and yet succinctly?
          Jim once wrote that, “I have been taught that any presentation should have good introduction and a very good conclusion…very close together.”  So how does one do this – succinctly speak and preach about a life begun in 1913 and ended last week?
          Dr. Jim pastored all over the southeast, he served the church at every level, and at 98 years old he was the “dean” of our Seminary and Presbytery.   He lived in Tarboro most recently but before that he called Oxford, and Rocky Mount, and Pensacola, and Raleigh, and Goldsboro home.  In the years that I knew him, he never refused my requests for counsel, my petitions for help, or my desperation for him to help quell my tremors of inadequacy.  Dr. Jim was the mentor who warned me to guard against premature certainties, and who taught me that neither our best nor worst days are beyond the reach or need of God’s grace.  Sitting by his side was like being a sponge – only instead of water, it was wisdom and charity and humor and grace-filled faith are what we all go to soak in.
            I have many sweet memories of my years as a Pastor in Tarboro, but among the sweetest will always be one of my final visits with Dr. Jim before I moved to Raleigh.  Dr. Jim took me by his side and he prayed over me – he took my hands in those huge hands that he had and he shared his faith and words and he prayed over me.  It was lovely.  I am so grateful that Dr. Jim took the time to touch my life. 
            So “stop me” if you have heard this one before.  “Stop me” if you can testify to that statement:  “Dr. Jim took the time to touch my life.”  Is there anyone here who cannot share a story of Jim McChesney, of how deeply he loved and cared for his wife Carolyn?  About how he never ran out of coaching tips for Dean Smith or Roy Williams?  About how he never ran out of good books to read, or quotations to recommend?  Is there anyone here who can’t tell about this tall, bold voiced man, who struggled to know God even as he was fully known?  Like I said, “stop me,” if you have heard this before but I’d say that few of us, if any of us, will live to see a time when our lives have touched so many lives as did the life of Jim McChesney.
            Back in 2006 or so, I talked him into preaching at Howard Memorial, in Tarboro, one final time.  In that sermon he quoted Sir Isaac Newton who said, "To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me."  As recently as January, Jim and I had long discussions about theology.  He was always diving into the next question, the next theological query, the next book he wanted to read and yearn to understand.  In Jim’s mind and heart he believed that even after 98 years, God was still going to surprise him, mold him, teach him, and challenge him.  Yes, even back in January he was still asking me questions with an intellectual curiosity and a genuine and faithful optimism. 
            Indeed, the only time I ever saw him down were times when we would talk and pray about Carolyn.  He did love her so and then miss her so in equal measure.  It would be hard for me to overstate the toll her absence took on him these past two years.  And it comforts my heart to think of their spirits, their souls, rejoined – through the power of God in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Somehow it helps me see the world as a little more complete again, at least in some small way.  Comforted I am in the thought that the faith they proclaimed and practiced together is the faith that holds them now in the church triumphant, the communion of all of God’s saints!
           Now, I do have a confession to make.  I am not exactly following Dr. Jim’s instructions.  I am ad-libbing a little.  It may come as little surprise to those of you who knew him best – he could be a wee bit particular you know – that he left detailed instructions for his memorial service.  And I hope he’ll forgive me for breaking rank, a little.  But, as Dr. Jim nearly always said as he quoted G.K. Chesterton, “Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.” 
          Dr. Jim wrote that, “I request that the memorial service be a joyful, triumphant worship experience that will give all glory and honor to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Instead of a personal eulogy I request a sharing of some of the thoughts, ideas, which have special meaning for me.”  And to a large extent this is what I have done, placing those ideas and thoughts among my remarks.
          But I do want to give Dr. Jim most of the last words of this homily.  Writing in 2004 he wrote once more something I suspect he preached all over God’s earth.  He said, “Not for one minute do I believe that God has stacked life’s cards against us.  Rather, I am convinced that he has arranged them in ways that make it impossible, in the long run, for us to get along without him.  And in so doing, he is not being arbitrary or asserting his rightful authority, but rather graciously ordering life in the only way that can ultimately be fulfilling for us.”
          That is as lovely a definition of providence and election, divine providence and election, as any I have read.  So if we are counted Jim’s friends, or Jim’s family, if we share in Jim’s church – then we are part of the divine and gracious ordering of which Jim was speaking.  And to that I say thanks be to God!
          And then from what he called his ‘Ethical Will’ which he wrote to his family (and by proxy to us all) I’d like to share these words.  If you’ll listen closely to this quotation, you’ll hear Jim McChesney preach the gospel and sum for us Isaiah 40, John 14, and 1 Corinthians 15; if you’ll listen closely you’ll hear how to soar on eagles wings, how to understand that death has no sting for the saints of light, where the way that Jesus proclaimed in John 14 is to be found.  Jim wrote, “When I think about legacy, I am convinced that values are far more lasting than valuables, and I wish to share some of mine….I’m becoming more and more to understand that grace in the New Testament is a shorthand word for all that God has done for us and is eager to do for us in Jesus Christ – his life, death and resurrection, to save us and enable us to grow in fulfilling relationships to him and to each other.  This, I believe, is the essence of the Christian Gospel- the marvelous, infinite, matchless grace of the Lord Jesus Christ graciously doing for us what we can never do for ourselves.”  The resurrected Lord Jesus Christ doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves?  That is the gospel.  In Jim’s own words that is the gospel.
            I had a vision of a sort last night while I was thinking about this homily – it was a small vision.  But I closed my eyes and imagined Dr. Jim, Dr. McChesney, saying thank you to Jesus, “Thank you” he says to the Lord, “for finally answering all those questions that I have had.  I have been asking them for a long time.”
            And then, in my vision of a sort, Dr. Jim just can’t help himself, “Jesus, stop me if you have heard the one about the old milk cow that belonged to the Quaker farmer…”
            And Jesus says, “Jim, my good and faithful and patient servant, I have heard it before.  Jim, I have heard them all before.”
            And then Jim, for one of the few times ever is really quiet.
            But then Jesus says something like, “Jim, tell it to me anyway, because I like it best when you tell it.”
            And Dr. Jim smiles, and shares with the Lord of Life the wit and wisdom that he shared with us all for so long.
            Brothers and sisters, the resurrected Lord and His gracious love, the Lord Jim so often proclaimed has now claimed him in the very trust that Jim proclaimed and that we uphold.  Well done, Jim.  Well done indeed.

           Let us pray:  Lord God – we thank you that on our worst days we are never beyond the reach of your grace, and on our best days we are never beyond the need of it.  We thank you for the man who preached this, and taught this, and did his best to live this.  For Jim McChesney we say thank you, thank you, thank you.  Amen.