It is with a great sense of happiness and humility that I stand here this morning!
(in this chapel dedicated to the memory of my father)
(in this pulpit where my father preached for so many years)
This year of 2003 marks the 60 anniversary of Roger Squire's appointment to this church.
It was 1943 and the United States was in the midst of the Second World War. The minister appointed to the Red Bank
Methodist Church left to become a chaplain in the armed forces. Some of the members of the trustees had heard about
a promising young minister in the southern Florida conference who was interested in moving back north with his
wife and small daughters. They wrote, he answered and so began the 17 years of his service here.
I would like to thank, in memory, those women during the 1940's who sat in the pews in front of me for the very
interesting hats they wore and the even more fascinating fur pieces: small animals with claws and tails and beady
eyes. What were they?
And the old men who thought they were being kind by forcing cen cens on us children. They would use them to cover
their tobacco breath and hand them around just before we entered the sanctuary. We never knew how to politely refuse
them or where to spit them out. To them I owe my life-long dislike for everything tasting of licorice or anise.
I would like to have given a sermon here in January of 1958. Student Sunday. But my father thought it would be
awkward for one of his daughters to get the coveted job. My friend Judy Jones preached. I have no idea now what
she said, but I remember that it was very good.
My main claim to chancel fame took place at the annual Candlelight Service. I was one of a large number of "middle-aged"
children singing in the Junior Choir. We processed right in front of the Senior Choir and took our places in the
chancel opposite them. All of us carrying lighted candles.
Shortly after we were seated I smelled that nasty odor of burning hair. The girl next to me had inadvertently set
the side of her hair on fire. It was burning quite nicely. I quickly hit her in the head, to put out the flames,
but she, not knowing her hair, her head even, was in danger , said in a very loud voice, "Pat, stop hitting
me!"
Be perfect, even as your father in Heaven is perfect.
Be perfect, even as God is perfect.
How is it possible for us to be perfect?
2003 is also the 300th anniversary of the birthday of the founder of Methodism, John Wesley.
This text from Matthew chapter 5, was one of his favorites.
It occurs at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. A collection of remembered sayings of Jesus gathered together
by the gospel writers.
Jesus has already talked about the impossible. He has urged his listeners to turn the other cheek, not to remarry
after divorce, to love their enemies, and now he says that they are to be perfect, as God is perfect!
One of the traditional questions asked of candidates for ordination in the United Methodist Church is "Are
you going on to perfection?"
When my father was ordained it was right up there with no alcohol!
My father often joked about it, saying that he had answered yes, he was going on to perfection and he had said
it in a firm voice, but he had crossed his fingers behind his back, just in case.
But having been his child and having heard over the years all the wonderful stories of his life among us, I feel
sure that even though he never lived long enough to grow old, he was, in fact, well on his way to perfection.
For more than 30 years I taught 8 and 9 year old children. One of their favorite book characters was Peter Perfect.
The story began with Peter Perfect washing not only his hands, but his face and neck and continued with even more
amazing things, such not talking with food in his mouth, doing his homework without being reminded…the children,
no matter how many times they had heard the story would listen with increasing disbelief.
Finally the last page. I would hold up the picture and there was Peter Perfect, back view, with a huge wind-up
key protruding from his spine.
Peter wasn't a real boy after all! Much to their relief and mine.
Perfection is a scary word in our contemporary American culture.
Kathleen Norris correctly defines perfection as a serious psychological affliction that makes people too timid
to take necessary risks and causes them to suffer, when although they have done the best they can, their efforts
fall short of some imaginary,and usually, unattainable standard.
Internally , it functions as a form of myopia, a preoccupation with self-image that can stunt emotional growth.
Remember the ancient Greek character, Narcissus. So taken with his own perfect beauty, he spent all day gazing
into a still pool of water at his reflection.
Unable to tear himself away, it soon became impossible for him to remember that there were others who inhabited
the world.
I am distressed when I see a child wearing a shirt that reads, "It's All About Me"! At first it may seem
humorous but too often it turns out to be exactly what that child has been taught to think.
But modern American perfectionism is not what Jesus is talking about.
Huston Smith writes that "Through the pages of the gospels, Jesus emerges as a man of strength and integrity
who bore, as someone has said, no strangeness at all save the strangeness of perfection." I like that!
Jesus liked people and they liked him in turn.
They loved him; they loved him intensely and they loved him in numbers.
Drawn to him not only for his charismatic powers but for the compassion they sensed in him as well, they surrounded
him, followed him."
Jesus ignored the social and religious barriers of his time and ours.
He responded to rich and poor, young and old, saints and sinners.
He loved children, accepted women as equals to men, slaves as good or better than their masters, Greek as well
as Jew.
He hated injustice and above all else, he hated hypocrisy.
In the end it seemed to those who knew him best that here was a man in whom the human ego had disappeared, leaving
his life so completely under the will of God that it was transparent to that will.
It seems to me that perfection means being mature enough to give ourselves to others.
Whatever we have, whomever we are, we are to share with others.
The Greek word for Perfect is teleios.
A victim fit for a sacrifice to the gods, is one that has a body which is without blemish, one that is teleios.
An adult who has reached his full stature is teleios.
A student who has reached mature knowledge of her subject is teleios.
Biblical scholar, William Barclay says that the Greek idea of perfection is functional. A thing is perfect if it
fully realizes the purpose for which it was planned, and designed, and made.
A person is perfect when she or he realizes the purpose for which they were created..
Roger Squire was one of those people.
My father was born in the little Hudson River town of Cold Spring, N.Y.. It was the home and burial place of generations
of Squires and Baxters. All of them Methodists, as far as we know. Roger lived with his family in New York City.
His father died when Roger was 12 years old. And a few years later, he himself was very ill for many months with
what was then diagnosed as pleuresy, but was in fact rheumatic fever, the ultimate cause of his death in middle
age. During those many months of lying in bed he decided that if he got well he would do something really worthwhile
with his life.
Even though times were tough for Roger and his best friend, Tony Caputo, they grew up with a strong sense of the
great joy of living. Tony's father was an Italian immigrant who wheeled a vegetable wagon through the crowded city
streets. After PS 186, they graduated from George Washington High School and then New York University where my
father was the president of his class. Tony was off to law school and my father to Yale Divinity School.
Both of them were going to do something very worthwhile with their lives.
This poem by poet Susan Windle says a lot about what perfection is:
Become ripe,
As the bearer of all fruit
Ripens. Be full
And shapely.
Come into your colors
In your own time,
As the source
Of all hues
Shimmers through you.
Celebrate
The company of others
From different vines.
Enjoy the textures of diverse skins.
Be food with them.
The meal you make together
Far surpasses
What you'd be alone.
Fear not the knife
And the mingling
Of your oils.
www.susanwindle.com
God wants us to be ripe, full, ready for what befalls us, for whatever is to come.
We all know the _expression: some people see the glass as half-empty and some see it as half-full.
How do you see the world and your place in it?
In his new book, "The Heart of Christianity", Marcus Borg says that there are actually three ways of
seeing the world.
If we see the world has a hostile place than life is threatening.
We respond by spending our time and energy , not on mercy and justice, but on self protection; individually and
nationally.
Make no mistake about it, we are surrounded by darkness. The fact is that children do starve, crimes are visited
upon the innocent, many of the aged spend their days isolated in lonely rooms. Whether we like it or not, families
here and in Iraq still wake to find that their loved ones have been killed in combat or car crashes. The pathology
report says malignant. Hard earned pensions are eaten up by greedy corporate giants and mutual fund frauds. And
the list go on and on.
It is easy to pull up the draw bridges. To spend our national budget on arms and forget the needs of the public
schools and health care for the needy.
But, Saint Francis says, "Give light into the darkness", and he went forth into the world to give such
light as he could. For he knew, writes, Kent Nerburn, that every bit of light, every small gesture, is needed.
The second way to view the world is as indifferent. We may be less anxious if we buy into this common secular view.
We will be able to enjoy the temporal beauties and pleasures of this life. We can secure for ourselves and our
immediate family, as much of the world's riches as possible.
We will not have to be concerned with the suffering our opulent life styles inflict on the citizens of under-developed
nations. We will be able to use up the natural resources without worrying about future generations as long as we
and ours have everything we want now.
But Borg says what if we chose the third way, the way Jesus taught?
That God has brought us and everything into existence. That it is God's world. That God's spirit sustains our lives.
And that our lives are filled with wonder and beauty. We are now free to be perfect.
In this view of the world we are able to love and be present in the moment. We are able to care for and serve others.
We will use every happening, even the painful ones, to further the kingdom.
I love this quote from Anne Lamont's book "Traveling Mercies".
"It's funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox, full of shiny
tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But when I grew up I found that
life handed you these rusty bent old tools… friendship, prayer, conscience, honesty… and said, do the best you
can with these, they will have to do."
I see three ways that we can day by day, year by year, go onto to perfection.
You can make your own list.
First, use your intellect. Love the Lord your God with all your mind. Do what John Dominic Crosson said here last
spring, "Be born again, or not, as the case may be, but then Grow Up!
Read and study, attend the wonderful Bible classes.
Sign up for the seminars, and be glad you have the opportunity to hear such good and thoughtful sermons preached
every week by Rev. Wood.
Do you know how blessed you are?
Second, place yourself in community. John Wesley knew that the church as he experienced it would be unable to take
people like us and make them perfect, to make them complete, to make them mature.
So, instead of watering down the text, "Be ye perfect", he set about changing the church. Transforming
it into a place where ordinary people might be transformed.
It was Wesley's idea to form small groups, people with whom one could not only share sorrows and worries, illnesses
and anxieties, but a group where one would be held accountable. A place where one would be encouraged in the ways
that lead to perfection.
The third way is to be open to the moving of the spirit. The world is a strange and very wonderful place. Our human
actions set off other actions that reverberate far beyond our vision, beyond even our capacity to predict or imagine.
Every morning when I wake up I wonder how the spirit will move in my life that day.
Whether you think they are change encounters, coincidences, or plans of the Almighty, take advantage for your soul's
sake, of the experiences that come to you and value the people that you meet.
I think of the tired and harried teacher who stops at the end of a hectic school day to speak kindly and softly
to a worried child.
The kiss of a friend, a door held open for you at the post office by a stranger, the thoughtful driver who lets
you merge onto a busy road.
It may be that our acts of kindness will bring us closer to perfection.
Even , or maybe most especially those we did not choose.
It may be the care of an aged parent, an ill spouse, a small grandchild.
It may be our role as a caring doctor, compassionate social worker, helpful neighbor or sympathetic listener.
We don't become perfect by believing in God. We go on to perfection by loving God. And how do we show God our love?
By walking humbly, showing mercy and doing justice.
A prayer that ends the liturgical church's day goes like this:
May the Lord grant us a peaceful night, and a perfect death. Amen
Are you going on to perfection?
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. Amen
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