One, Two, Three, Go!

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
July 23, 2006
The 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

One, Two, Three, Go!
Mark 6:30-44
Ephesians 2:11-22

The past few months have been a blur.
Did I really have my first meeting with the PNC last December?
Was it really in April that Pat and I where here
when we all met for the first time?
July seemed so far away then;
but now, whoosh, here we are.

Pat has completed her first week commuting into D.C.
where she works as manager of marketing research
for AARP Services.
I have been bringing books, pictures,
my robe, stoles, and other items into the office,
a few items each day as I get my workspace organized.
I am grateful for the fresh paint and for the
computer that was installed and ready to go.

We are relatively settled in our home;
yes, we did buy a house here in Manassas.
Most of the boxes have been emptied,
or at least those that still cry out for attention
are now in rooms where we can close the doors
and try our best to ignore them.

We are learning our way around:
Where to shop for groceries;
Where to find Lowe’s; Bed, Bath & Beyond;
a dry cleaner, a drug store.
With my passion for books, I learned where Barnes & Noble
and Borders were on my first visit here,
so I’ve got that base covered.
I even managed to navigate the Department of Motor Vehicles
the other day and now have my Virginia drivers’ license.
When I applied for my drivers license
I was also able to register to vote
and record my willingness to be an organ donor.
I decided not to press my luck, however,
so it may be another week or so
before you see Virginia license plates on my car.

Medical professionals rank moving,
along with starting a new job,
as among life’s most stressful experiences,
but all-in-all, it has been a smooth transition.
Trying to install Verizon’s DSL internet service
has probably been the most trying part of our move,
and that we can handle.

So here we are.
The beginning of a new chapter:
in the life of this church,
in your lives and in mine.
The starter’s voice calls out:
“One, Two, Three: Go!”
But where to begin?

For me, that’s easy.
One, Two, Three: Listen!
One, Two, Three: Learn!
My principal task over the next few months
will be to listen and learn.
Listen to you as you introduce yourselves.
Learn about you, your families, your children, your parents,
Learn about where you work, where you live,
learn how you came to Manassas,
both this community and this church.
I am eager to learn who you are
which means I will be working on learning hundreds of names.
But beyond names, I want to learn who you are
as individual disciples of Christ.
I want to listen to your faith journey:
How did you get here to this church?
What helps you grow in faith?
What gets in the way of your spiritual growth?

As I get to know you as individuals,
I will learn more about who we are as a community of faith.
I am eager to hear your hopes and dreams for this church.
As we look ahead to our 140th anniversary next year,
this is a particularly appropriate time to dream
even as we seek to discern the path that God wants us to take.
What do you think are the strengths of this church?
What do you think are the weaknesses?
How can we build on the strengths,
and how can we strengthen the weaknesses?

God has called each of us here to grow in faith.
That’s why we come to church.
We come to grow.
Frederick Buechner has written that we wear our faith, each of us,
like a well-worn overcoat.
Every one of us has a hole here, a tear there,
a shiny patch where life has rubbed the fabric thin,
seams that are frayed.
Together we can help one another mend, patch,
strengthen our overcoats as we grow individually and together.

Together we are the Body of Christ,
as Paul teaches us.
Jesus Christ is the head of the body, the head of the church.
It may be a well-worn phrase that is almost cliché,
but our every act, our every word always requires that we ask,
“what would Jesus do?”
I set this chair here in the chancel this morning
as reminder that our Lord is the head of the church
and the one who guides us in all that we do and say.

In the weeks, months, and years ahead
we will worship together, pray together,
sing together, laugh together, cry together,
work together,
eat together,
learn together,
grow together.
In the weeks, months, and years ahead,
we will all minister together in the name of Jesus Christ --
everyone, every member of this body,
for everyone is called to ministry.
No one is more important than anyone else,
and no one is less important.

Last Tuesday, a group of extraordinary singers
from the Presbyterian Chorale of Congo
sang for God and us here in this Sanctuary.
Twelve men and women from the African nation of Congo
sang their faith with such feeling that
even though the words were foreign to us,
the message in each song was clear.
Following the concert, they took time
to tell us a little about themselves
and about their country.
Congo has been a ravaged nation for decades,
struggling with violence, poverty, warfare, corruption.
A woman in the audience asked, “what can we do to help?”
The answer was not, “Send money”, or “Send experts.”
The answer was so simple: “work with us”.
Come into my garden, said one man,
and pick up the hoe and tend the soil with me.

That is what we are called to do as disciples of Christ,
and as members of Manassas Presbyterian Church –
tend the soil that God has entrusted to us.
We are called to work with one another,
work together, work cooperatively, collaboratively,
seeing one another as brothers and sisters.
No, we will not always agree on everything,
but if we begin with discipleship,
differences and disagreements will melt away.
If we do that, our church will grow.
More important, if we do that,
each of us will grow in spirit and faith.

The gospel lesson reinforces our calling to be community.
It is easy to read the story of the feeding of the 5,000
as one of Jesus’ great miracles:
where there was barely food for 12,
Jesus provided food for 5,000.
But what if the miracle took a more indirect route?
The route Jesus suggests when he tells his baffled disciples,
“You give them something to eat.” (Mark 6:37)
Do you hear what Jesus was saying to them:
“if you had been paying attention, you would know what to do.”
But of course, the disciples were no different from you and me,
men of profoundly imperfect faith.
They often didn’t pay careful attention to what Jesus
taught them, and so they did not know what to do.

Jesus instructed his disciples to have the men, women and children
sit in groups: fifties and hundreds.
Do you see what Jesus was doing?
He was building communities.
And then the miracle occurred: there was food for everyone.
Not, I suggest, because Jesus began to pull loaves out of thin air,
but because a woman over in that community
realized that she had two pieces of bread,
one of which she was happy to share,
and a man over in that group who had bought 3 pieces of dried,
salted fish earlier that morning knew he had more than he needed.
And so, food appeared, men, women and children
feeding one another,
a community here, a community there,
everyone with enough to eat.
Jew and Gentile,
men and women,
young and old,
merchant and farmer,
rich and poor.
Feeding one another, caring for one another.
No one was overlooked, no one was left hungry.
All were content, all were filled with food and
filled with something even more important:
the love of God that comes through Jesus Christ.
the peace of God that comes through Jesus Christ.
That’s a miracle: five thousand people
caring about one another,
no one acting selfishly,
self-righteously,
greedily.

Don’t you see: that is what we are called to do
as a community of faith
and as disciples of Jesus Christ.

God’s instructions for us are so simple:
The list never went beyond 10,
and even when we had trouble with that
Jesus tried to make easier for us
and just told us to love God and love one another.

A few years back, a little girl asked me
what my favorite story in the Bible was.
She was eager to tell me hers:
she loved the story of Noah with all the animals,
especially the fuzzy ones.
I am not sure I have a favorite story –
every story has something to teach us -
but I do have a favorite passage.
It comes from the gospel according to John,
in those final chapters when Jesus was gathered with his disciples
for their final meal together.
John recorded Jesus’ teaching at length;
it is a very different recounting from what we find in
the other three gospels.
Jesus knew that we humans always make things
more complicated than they need to be,
so Jesus said simply to his disciples
and to each of us,
“I give you a new commandment,
that you love one another.
Just as I have loved you,
you also should love one another.
By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples:
if you have love for one another.” (John 13: 34-35)

Those are our operating instructions
as we begin the next chapter in the life of this church:
it is by our love for one another
that we will be known as Christ’s disciples.
Love for one another.
Love for all humanity, all children of God.

So, One, Two, Three: Go!
As we begin a new chapter in the life of
Manassas Presbyterian Church,
a new chapter in your lives,
a new chapter in my life.
A chapter entitled, “love”.
Amen