Meditation on the life and witness of Rev. Charles MacDonald / February 5, 2021 / Myers Park Presbyterian Church / Text: Isaiah 43, selected verses
It only makes sense that Charlie would have us hear the words of the prophet Isaiah today.
I’m not sure what it would have been like to meet the old prophet, but I bet it had to be intimidating. I do know what it was like to sit down opposite Charlie MacDonald at his big, wooden desk in what was then his office at Caldwell Presbyterian Church. Years ago, our mutual friend Sarah Belk Gambrell had suggested I reach out to him because, like me at that point, Charlie had been a second career pastor, coming out of business.
“That little church is probably going to close,” Sarah said in that whisper of a voice she had. “But Charlie is a wise man. You should talk to him about life in ministry.”
So there I sat as Charlie sized me up. Charlie was a man of few words because he could communicate without them. As I squirmed a little in the opening silence of that meeting, this over-confident banker in a dark suit without any real idea about life in ministry, well, to say Charlie was circumspect is an understatement.
Whatever he was thinking back in the fall of 2006, all he said was “I will call you if I can use you.”
Charlie knew all about calling, about a life of calling, where it will take you, what God will do with you.
Through all of his days, he listened closely for God’s call
…as he attended this church as a young man, raised by Christian Scientists but listening to what God might have to say to him about a different kind of faith.
… as he met his life partner, Jeanne, here.
… and as he applied his MIT training in engineering as an up and coming young man in business.
Then one day Charlie heard the words God’ gave Isaiah.
“I have called you by name.”
To seminary Charlie and Jeanne went, and afterward wherever God sent them.
To a tiny, tri-racial congregation on the edge of the wilderness in the Shenandoah Valley. Then, later in the 1960s, to an all-white church facing the question of desegregation.
“If blacks show up to worship here, we will turn them away,” said the leaders of that church.
Charlie responded, “If blacks are turned away from this sanctuary, I will take the worship service outside to the parking lot.”
For that moral stand, Charlie and Jeanne received the ire and threats of the Klan and soon were looking for another call. The southern arm of the Presbyterian Church would not have a call to offer him.
And Charlie again heard the voice of the prophet Isaiah, who spoke these words of protection.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt as your ransom,
Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you.
Because you are precious in my sight,
and honored, and I love you ….
The northern church took in the MacDonalds and Charlie served faithfully and well – as a pastor in Delaware, then in the cathedral of the Kirk in the Hills in Detroit … then as stated clerk and business manager of the Presbytery of Detroit.
Years later, in a so-called retirement phase of his ministry, he and Jeanne returned to Charlotte – where Charlie served as an interim pastor at three more local churches, including this one, leaving each a little better from his character, wisdom and experience.
Finally, in his 70s, he took one last pulpit. The Caldwell church had been dying for decades. The Presbytery gave him clear instructions.
“Go there and see if anything can be done to revive it. If not, close it.”
And so Charlie dusted off his construction estimating skills and took full account of decades of neglected maintenance at Caldwell. The costs ran well into the six figures. One day a week, Mrs. Gambrell sent over her handyman, but the two of them could barely keep pace with the cracking paint, the falling plaster, the leaking roof and the repeated funerals of a dwindling flock.
Charlie and a three-member session ran every play in the church revitalization playbook. Toward the end, he was preaching to 10 or 12 faithful octogenarians, as Charlie closed in on age 80 himself.
The church bank account drew down to almost zero. The remnant flock raided the Organ Repair Fund to pay the light bill and Charlie’s meager salary. Finally, Charlie wrote the Presbytery to report the session had voted to close the church.
And again, this time way out of the blue, Charlie heard from the prophet Isaiah.
Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
And that, as they say, is the beginning of another story entirely.
Charlie left the new, resurrected Caldwell with a strong foundation and soaring hope, the hope of resurrection. I half joked with the family that I thought we might read the story of Lazarus as scripture today. Instead, Charlie lived it.
And Charlie loved a good joke, too. In fact, he left two things behind for me in that big desk – a book of Jokes for Preachers … and a can of sardines. I still have both.
I cannot put into words the blessing and honor to have been mentored by this man; to witness the skills of one of God’s surgeons suturing a new church out of an old, but fiercely loyal remnant and the rag-tag bunch of seekers, believers and dreamers who came to join them in God’s new thing.
The relationships he forged, the respect he earned, the love he garnered surrounded him. As I was introduced as the new pastor, a member of color who came from an entirely different life circumstance than Charlie’s, a woman he had pastored in his own quiet and authentic way, turned to the person in the pew beside her and asked, “Yes, but can we keep Charlie, too?”
Over and over again, Charlie perceived the new thing wherever God sent him. And he taught those around him to look for it, too. As a clarinet player, he knew how to keep putting notes on the page, stanza after stanza, verse after verse until he concluded his career with his master symphony.
And Isaiah still speaks:
You are my witnesses, says the Lord,
and my servant whom I have chosen …
Bring forth the people who are blind, yet have eyes,
who are deaf, yet have ears!
9 Let all the nations gather together,
and let the peoples assemble.
Who among them declared this,
and foretold to us the former things?
Let them bring their witnesses to justify them,
and let them hear and say, “It is true.”
Amen and Amen.