First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Mark 8 and Philippians 1

“Two Steps Forward, One Step Back”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

August 27, 2006

On Thursday night we took Rev. Nkhoma to dinner on Wellesley Island. The dinner was intended for effect. My hope was for him to see the beauty of the 1000 Islands and be sent home with a special evening much of the same way we have ended our visits to Malawi with safari and celebration. It was meant to say, “America is a beautiful place and Northern New York is an important part of that beauty.”

Given the number of times he said, “oh my” I believe the mission was accomplished. We set off a few hours before sunset and as we drove it was clear how the rain the night before left everything lush and revitalized. The best part, though, for him was the bridge. I saw him take a deep breath as we headed from the tool booth and then point at each sight that caught his eye. Driving down the opposite side he seemed lost in the wonder of it.

After dinner, driving home, we were approaching the bridge yet again when he asked, “what is that makes this country so great? Why is America so great?” “That’s a lovely question,” I responded. Driving over the 1000 Islands Bridge I began my answer. Having seen bridge construction in Malawi I knew the impression this bridge was making. I have seen local people hauling logs from the forest and mixing the cement by hand to hold them in place. I know the value of metal in Malawi and to see the tons of steel that were welded together to span St. Lawrence is a miracle in his eyes. America’s greatness I began is a kind of drive, a sense of motion and purpose to make it better, to be better, to make it stronger, faster, bigger. It is something of an impulse and opportunity that came together. It has plenty of flaws and mistakes, but it is a kind of unleashing of what is good in humankind.

After taking him to the airport the next day, I was surprised the way the question had lingered. It wasn’t a lingering disappointment in my answer or a nagging spirit to say more; it was like a tune I could hear and not name. I kept hearing the question over and over. Part of this was that I knew instinctively the answer wasn’t really my own. In the words I spoke I could hear the voice of another. My first hunch was correct. It was Emerson, Ralph Waldo that is.

I have always found Emerson a guide or inspiration where America is involved. His time was when it became clear that our nation wasn’t a fluke or a flash in the pan; his time was when the force of technology was emerging into our land; his time was when America was trying to emerge from the ravages of the Civil War filled with humility. All of this can be seen and heard and in the words he wrote lamenting the death of Abraham Lincoln and it was from these and other words my own answers have come.

The President, Emerson wrote, stood before us as a man of the people. He was thoroughly American . . . quite native, aboriginal man, as an acorn from the oak; no aping of foreigners, no frivolous accomplishments, Kentuckian born, working on a farm, a flatboatman, a captain in the Black Hawk War, a country lawyer, a representative in the rural legislature of Illinois- on such modest foundations the broad structure of his fame was laid. And my favorite line, his occupying the chair of state was a triumph of the good sense of mankind . . . this middle-class country had got a middle-class president, at last.

Again, I believe my answer to Rev. Nkhoma was good enough for the moment. Yet given the chance to answer again I would have pointed to the words of Emerson and his image of Lincoln. For therein lies a better answer. America is a great nation and a great place as it continues to embody the way what is good in creation and the heart of humankind finds freedom and hope; where our striving is impeded only by our sin; where the love of what is good is an expectation we hope for in each other.

I am starting to believe, though, that Rev. Nkhoma’s question began to percolate earlier than the drive to Wellesley Island. On Wednesday morning Rev. Nkhoma and I drove across town to Chapin Watermaticks. Touring the plant and straining to hear Mr. Chapin’s 90 year old trembling voice we were both stunned by what we saw and understood. Here I thought this was some sort of tube plant and he put together, some sort of home gardening kit for farmers. Neither one of us were ready for what we saw. Walking amidst the machines and cooling runs it began to sink in what Mr. Chapin has done: he has engineered a highly sophisticated yet simple way for subsistence farmers to have food in the dry seasons. All of sudden we could see people who would otherwise starve and die, survive.

The company makes its money with products for large farms and greenhouses, yet I don’t believe money was ever at the heart of what drove Richard Chapin. What he has done in addition to a successful business and factory is develop an irrigation system for the world’s poor. At a cost of $8 dollars a unit he has developed a moment of grace that saves lives for families in over 200 nations. Walking through the factory I couldn’t help but wince when I remembered our place in the headlines this week. Watertown made the news and it was not a moment of pride. I couldn’t help but think this is what we should be known for. When people think of Watertown they shouldn’t see some foolish church squabble, they should think of a small town in northern New York that has given birth to hope and an end to hunger for millions.

Immersed in our own lives and the opulence of the day, it is hard to imagine what the 1000 Islands Bridge looks like or what the Watermatick factory is to people who have not. Yet to Rev. Nkhoma the bridge and the factory look like hope. For he doesn’t see these things as a blessing for America only, he sees them as what Malawi could be someday. His thoughts are not how to get more irrigation kits to his country, but how to get a factory. He will not only take back the beauty of the North Country and the glory of seeing the 1000 Islands, but the dream of seeing steel bridges replace the timber and sand and luck that holds together the bridges of his country.

In our nation today we have learned to pause in the midst of unbridled hope of progress. New roads and bridges, factories and politics, they all come with a cost. There is a pervasive sense that if you build it the lawsuits will come; if you want to manufacture the liability insurance will cripple your intent; paving a road like State Street and public square are no simple endeavor. Today, more and more we focus on the irony of history and grovel in the mistakes we made along the way. Any plan, any attempt is greeted with skepticism and cynicism.

So pervasive is this in our culture it is hard to read Paul’s hope for the Philippians as anything beyond an individual dream and even that is rather dubious. Listen to his hopefulness: I am confident that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. Reading this confidence it is easy to talk of what God is working in each heart or each person. Yet, for the Philippians it was not so much a single heart, but the church, the mission, the larger body of Christ or kingdom of God. For someone like Rev. Nkhoma whose church is a not yet 150 years old, this is a hope, a confidence, not for an individual, but for the larger church, for a nation even.

Walking through Chapin Watermaticks or driving over the 1000 Islands Bridge each carries an image of what it will mean to move toward this completion. We need to remember that what God began in the 1880s in Nyasaland, what became of the work of the Presbyterian missionaries is not seen as a some sort of curiosity to 11 million people in Malawi; these are their Pauls, their Lincolns, the hand of God reaching out to the world.

This is what Jesus was trying to impress upon the disciples on the boat who couldn’t see beyond themselves, who thought of Jesus just in relation to their own needs or aspirations. The power of God is transforming the world: do you not yet understand? I am not sure we do.

Our church can become these walls; our faith can become what fits our beliefs or our wishes; our God can be a set of practices, what Jesus called the yeast of the Pharisees. What if being a church was being the body of Christ to the world? What if being the body of Christ was more about what the world needs than what is convenient for us? What if being a faithful disciple was following God’s call wherever it may lead and not just what we have time for when we get a chance if it fits our schedule and works out? What if what God is doing is not the voice of our conscience, but the voice of hope reaching the world, most of whom are dying of hunger, AIDS, malaria, TB, and dysentery?

I asked Richard Chapin how is that he conceived of this idea, what was it that gave him the notion of the drip irrigation for subsistence farmers. His answer was given with humility and yet a confidence in his eyes, “the Lord,” he said. In his voice I could hear the acorn from the oak that was Lincoln and is America. It is hard today, given how narrowly we look at our lives and our beliefs to conceive of what America can do, what a denomination can do, what a church can do. It is easier to think of one person like Richard Chapin, what he can do and talk of what we could do as individuals. But that is not what he said. He didn’t leaven his life with yeast and make it more. The difference he said was “the Lord.”

There are so many people who love this church, love its history and its beauty, its music and its worship. Yet, God is calling us to grow so that our “love overflows more and more with knowledge and full insight.” This is not what God is calling individuals to become; this is what the disciples didn’t understand on the boat. This is what God is hoping to make of a church of disciples: a light to the nations, a hope for creation.

Let’s be a church, not a collection of individuals. Let’s seek to find what that means not in ourselves, but from the Holy Spirit. Let’s remember that God is not perfecting us, but bringing salvation to the world through broken vessels. Amen.