10/5/25 Sermon

You know, there was a time where I used one of these things every day, but I’ve never really put any thought into it before.  It’s a simple common #2 Dixon Ticonderoga pencil.   You ever spend much time looking at these things?  What do you see when you look at it?  Well, I mean obviously you see a pencil, but what else do you see?

We can see the wood, we can see that down near the tip, the rest of it has this lacquer over it.   There’s a label stamped into it. And there’s this graphite point down here towards the end and up on the other end here you have this metal band.  I think it’s made of brass on most of these things.  Did you know it actually has a name?  It’s called a ferrule.  I had to look that up for this sermon.  I didn’t just know that.  and then after it is of course, the rubber eraser.  And that’s about all there really is to see when it comes to a pencil.

And until recently, that’s all I thought about when I saw a pencil.  But I really started thinking about it and I feel like there really is so much more that goes in to this pencil.  Start with the wood. Usually they’re made of cedar.  But you can’t just walk up to a cedar tree and chip out the piece that you want for the pencil.  It has to be cut down first.  Think about the effort that a person puts into cutting down a cedar tree.  And then there are the saws and equipment it takes to do that.  Think about how many people went in to building just a saw.  Mining the ore and refining it to make a blade. Forming a handle.  Then Think about how it even gets into the logger’s hands and all that had to be invented to get it there.

And once the tree’s down, it isn’t ready either.  There are trucks that’ll take it to the mill and heavy equipment that load the wood onto the trucks before they do that.  Think about all the things that go into trucks.  Think about the workers in the oil fields and the people in the gas refineries just to make those trucks and that equipment work.  Think about the dinor just outside of that refinery and the cook that makes them eggs and bacon and the waitress that pours them coffee.  Think about the man who works in South America picking those coffee beans that eventually end up in the refinery workers cup poured there by that waitress.  We’ve just gone international and we haven’t really left the forest with the wood yet.  Think about all their families.  What are they like?  Imagine how different their lives must be from one another. From the logger to the waitress to the refinery worker to the coffee bean picker let alone the trucker and the heavy machinery operator that load onto the truck this piece of cedar that eventually becomes this pencil in my hand this morning.

Then you’ve got the lacquer and the labeling.  I’m not going to bore you with how all that’s done.  But do you think the person who grew the castor beans knew that it would be processed into oil and then eventually lacquer that would go on my pencil?  What is his or her life like?  Are they married?  Do they have kids?  Did this pencil help feed their family?  Then you have the Ferrule, this metal band.  Holy cow.  Think of all the equipment that goes into mining and the people that go into that equipment and into that mine…  Think of their families and their employers and all the people that they come into contact with.

Or the graphite that generally comes from Sri Lanka and mixed with clay and then baked in a kiln to become a pencil.   And this vulcanized rubber here at the end that they put there because they know I’ll make mistakes?  You might think that it might be the easiest part of the pencil but it’s not.  And all these people who have some part in making this whether directly or indirectly are somehow now represented in this object that I bought for about 25 cents, find on my desk and pick up and use without a second thought.  All connected just by a pencil almost by accident.

There isn’t some pencil mastermind puppeteering the rubber and lacquer and wood industry.  It just happens on this international scale that all these parts are just available.  And Dixon Ticonderoga brings Everyone together somehow so I can buy this pencil for 25 cents and show it to you this morning.

In fact, no one.  Not one person in this world can truly make a pencil from scratch anymore.  And if you tried to truly make a pencil from scratch, you’d probably fail because you would have to start so many different industries and projects just to get the parts you need.  You aren’t going to fly to Sri Lanka for graphite or cut an entire cedar tree for just one pencil.

But yet here this pencil is. And what’s crazy is no one really invented the modern pencil either.  Someone found the graphite around 1500 and then 60 year later in another part of Europe someone else was tired of getting the graphite all over their hands so they added the wood around it. And then in 1852 someone got tired of losing their eraser and slapped one on the end of their pencil and walla! The Modern Pencil.

I’m a minister because of this.  People ask me all the time why I’m a Christian or rather they ask me why I bother going to to church because all they see is an institution that moves rather slowly, can be inhibiting, and they feel that it’s useless.  All they see is a pencil left on a desk that they sometimes pick up but never really put any thought in to.   

But here’s the thing — what looks ordinary or outdated from a distance can be something far more beautiful up close. When you start to notice all the lives, all the prayers, all the stories that have come together just to make this community what it is, it stops looking like an institution and starts looking like a miracle. Because the church, at its best, is never the work of one person or one moment — it’s the result of countless hearts and hands shaped by God’s Spirit over generations. And that’s exactly what Paul was trying to remind Timothy of.

When I look at this pencil now, I can’t help but think of what he writes to Timothy. He writes, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice, and now lives in you also… Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.”

That’s what this pencil has become for me—a picture of that truth. Because the pencil didn’t come into being on its own. It’s the result of hundreds, maybe thousands, of lives—people whose paths never crossed but whose efforts somehow came together to make something whole. It’s a reminder that everything we hold, everything we use, everything we build upon, comes from the work and faithfulness of others.

Paul is reminding Timothy that the same thing is true for faith. You didn’t make this from scratch, Timothy. You didn’t invent the gospel. You didn’t build the Church by yourself. You received it—a living faith, passed down, refined, and tested by those who came before you. And now it’s in your hands.

When Paul says, “Guard the good treasure entrusted to you,” he doesn’t mean lock it away somewhere safe or keep it hidden from the world. He means tend it, nourish it, carry it forward so that others can one day receive it, too. That’s what we’re all called to do—to take this faith we did not create, shaped by countless hands we’ll never know, and make it our own in this time and place.

And that’s what the Church really is. It’s not a building, and it’s not a bureaucracy. It’s a living story, a body made up of people who may never meet, whose work, prayers, and love are bound together by the Spirit of God working quietly and persistently through the ordinary and the overlooked. It’s a miracle of connection, just like this pencil. Each of us plays a part—some big, some small—but none of us alone can make it. It takes the whole body. It takes the communion of saints.

The thing is, you might never see how your part fits. You might never know that a word you spoke, a kindness you offered, or a prayer you whispered became the cedar or the graphite or the brass that holds someone else’s faith together. But the Spirit knows. The Spirit weaves all those pieces together into something that writes grace into the world.

That’s why I come to church. That’s why I believe in it—even when it moves slowly, even when it frustrates me, even when it feels like just another institution. Because I know it’s more than that. It’s the sacred network of faith that holds us together, stretching across continents and centuries, linking us with people who’ve cut the wood, mined the ore, poured the coffee, and prayed the prayers that built the faith we hold in our hands today.

And now it’s our turn. Our turn to write with it. Our turn to shape the next line of the story. Our turn to guard the good treasure—not by clutching it tightly, but by using it faithfully. Because if you think about it, faith is meant to be used. A pencil that never writes anything might as well not exist. It’s in the using—in the risk of dulling the point, in the smudge marks, in the eraser worn down—that it becomes what it was made to be.

And the same is true for us. We are made to write. To draw grace into the lives of others. To add our mark to God’s ongoing story of redemption.

So may we hold fast to what we’ve received—the faith that was handed down, the grace that was given, the Spirit that still burns within us—and may we write something beautiful with it. Not perfect. Not polished. But faithful.

And when the time comes for someone else to pick up what we’ve left behind, I hope they find, in the marks we’ve made, a story worth continuing.

Amen.