Not That Way

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
November 25, 2007

Not That Way
Zechariah 7:8-14
Luke 7:18-23

Why were John and his followers so confused?
What was it that they were looking for?
They thought that Jesus was the one they were seeking,
the Messiah, but why weren’t they sure?
After all, John and Jesus were related,
shouldn’t it have been pretty easy for John to have figured it out?

The lesson from Luke’s gospel is confusing:
“Are you the one who is to come,
or are we to wait for another?”
If they weren’t sure who Jesus was,
then why would they believe him?
What if he had not been the Messiah
but wanted others to think that he was?
‘Yes, look no further:
I am the one you have been seeking….’

Jesus’ response to their question muddies
the already opaque water:
“Go and tell John what you have seen and heard:
the blind receive their sight,
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear, the dead are raised,
the poor have good news brought to them.
And blessed is anyone who takes no offense to me.”

All well and good,
but how did those words prove the case?
How was this evidence of the Messiah,
the anointed one,
the one who would come to claim the throne of David?
Wouldn’t that person be a warrior like David,
strong, strapping, astride a mighty steed,
gleaming sword hanging from his belt?
Surely that person would be obvious,
one look and you’d know that he’d been
born to the purple, royalty,
a man of strength and power,
destined to be a king.

John and his followers had been living Advent lives,
watching and waiting,
waiting for the Messiah,
looking, hoping, praying each day
for the one they knew was to come.
But even if they knew the Messiah was to come,
how would they know him when he did come?

We may remember that Matthew and Mark
both recorded scenes in which John baptized Jesus,
and realized as Jesus came out of the water,
the dove descending upon him,
that Jesus was the one.
But Luke recorded no such scene,
no baptism of Jesus at the hands of John.
Yes, Jesus was baptized, but it isn’t clear by whom,
since Luke recorded John’s arrest
right before Jesus’ baptism.
So all the more reason for John to be filled with uncertainty,
asking the question: “are you the one?”

What were John and his followers looking for?
What were the clues they thought would convince them
that Jesus was the Messiah?
This Jesus looked so ordinary:
he rode no horse, carried no weapon,
and seemed so uninterested in matters
of politics and governance.
He surrounded himself with such ordinary people,
even rather questionable people
from the very fringes of society.
He neither looked like nor acted like a king.

One commentator asks such a simple question:
“what do you do when Jesus turns out to be
someone other than [the person] you thought he was
or hoped he would be?”

What do you do when your focus is one direction,
one way,
and a voice calls to you from the opposite direction
saying “not that way, but this way…”?

Let’s do just what Jesus’ told John’s followers to do:
let’s take a look at what Jesus had done to this point
that should have made clear to John
that Jesus was indeed the Messiah.
Luke began the story of Jesus’ ministry in chapter 4,
following the birth narrative.
Jesus returned to Nazareth, his hometown,
and went, very appropriately,
to the synagogue on the Sabbath.
As a guest, he was handed the Scroll to read,
and he read from the prophet Isaiah,
“…[The Lord] has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives,
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free.”
(Luke 4:18ff)
In those words lay the very foundation
of the ministry of Jesus Christ,
the Messiah, the Savior, the anointed one.

And then, as we read on,
we find Jesus put words into actions:
healing at first: leprosy, fever,
a paralytic, a man with a withered hand.
Then Jesus taught, with his Sermon on the Plain,
Luke’s version of what we call
the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel.
Jesus spoke cryptically, as he often did,
words that didn’t seem to make sense:
“blessed are you who are poor,
blessed are you who are hungry now,
blessed are you who weep,
blessed are you when people hate you and exclude you…”

And then words that were even more challenging:
“love your enemies;
do good to those who hate you;
bless those who curse you…;
If anyone strikes you on the cheek,
offer the other one also.”

How was this the language of a king,
a great leader?
Is it any wonder that John was confused?
Is it any wonder that he went to Jesus and asked,
“are you the one”

Ah, but they could have figured it out,
if only they had done a little homework,
if only they had gone back to the Scriptures
and done a little reading, a little studying.
They had only to start with Isaiah,
the passage Jesus read in the synagogue in Nazareth:
“[The Lord] has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
…to provide for those who mourn.”
(Isaiah 61)

If they had rolled back the scroll of Isaiah,
even just a little,
they would have found these words:
“is this not the fast that I choose,
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke,
to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your home.”
(Isaiah 58:6ff)

Weren’t those the things Jesus was doing?
Weren’t those the things Jesus was talking about?
Wasn’t Jesus focused on God’s words
we heard through the prophet Zechariah:
“Render true judgments,
show kindness and mercy to one another,
do not oppress the widow, the orphan,
the alien,
the poor,
and do not devise evil in your heart against one another.”

Jesus’ teaching reached all the way back to Moses,
who taught the children of Israel,
“Love your neighbor as yourself”.
(Leviticus 19:18)
He knew his Proverbs
those pithy words attributed to the wisest of the kings,
the great King Solomon,
“If your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat;
and if they are thirsty give them water to drink”
(Proverbs 25:21)

Everything was right there,
they were just not looking;
they had determined in their minds
what the Messiah should look like and act like.
They had created an image and Jesus didn’t fit that image.
They were looking in the wrong direction.
They were looking their way,
not Jesus’ way.

Don’t we still do that?
Don’t we try to shape Jesus,
our image of Jesus, who we think Jesus is
rather than letting Jesus shape us?
Don’t we transform our image of Jesus
to fit ourselves and our lives,
rather than letting Jesus transform us?
Aren’t we possessive of Jesus?
“My Jesus is the real thing, while yours is not.”
Shouldn’t we instead let our hearts be possessed by Jesus?

We look the wrong way,
because, like John and his followers,
we don’t do our homework.
We don’t read, study, listen, and learn
the way we should, the way we need to.
Are we really any different from the children of Israel
of more than 2600 years ago?
Don’t we often stop up our ears and refuse to listen,
especially if we don’t like what we are hearing?
Much better to turn it off,
or as many of the prophets in those days learned,
much better to stone the messenger than heed the message.

Are we quicker to embrace gossip, rumor, innuendo,
than we are to do the hard work of listening,
learning,
discerning?

The current flap over a new movie due to be released in two weeks
suggests that the answer to these questions is yes.
The movie is entitled “The Golden Compass”
Two weeks ago, a member sent me an e-mail she had received,
an e-mail which raised an alarm about the movie,
claiming that the movie was anti-God,
and worse, it was based on a book
from an author who wants nothing less
than to foment hatred of God among children.

Pretty strong stuff,
But there was a phrase in the original e-mail
that piqued my interest.
Whoever wrote the original inflammatory words
-- no one in this community --
began his or her case with the words,
“I have heard that the author.,,”
“I have heard…”
In law this phrase would be referred to as “hearsay”:
inadmissible, not grounded in fact.
We have a simpler term for it:
gossip, or at best, rumor.

I ordered the book and read it last week.
The book was written in 1995 by an English writer;
It is a fantasy aimed primarily at the teenage market;
It preceded the first Harry Potter book by a few years,
but it is of that same genre.
Apparently when it came out it was quite popular,
and the author won a number of awards
from prestigious literary groups.
After reading the book, I can say two things:
It isn’t my kind of book,
but other than that,
I don’t know what the fuss was all about.
I found nothing in the book that I thought
was disrespectful of God.

I checked the author’s website just to see if
he has said things there that weren’t in the book,
but again, I found nothing there that alarmed me.
He seems to me a rather ordinary British writer,
who isn’t sure about the existence of God,
but doesn’t deny God’s existence either,
more agnostic than atheist.
If he is against anything, it isn’t God,
but the institutional church and organized religion,
and there, whether we are willing to admit it or not,
it isn’t hard to make a case.

I also went to the website for the movie,
and it looks like it is fantasy movie,
aimed primarily at young folks.
It stars a number of major Hollywood actors.
Once again, I found nothing that suggested
that the movie was a fiendish plot to
turn God into a villain.

And even if the book was, and the movie is,
I think God can handle it.
I think we can handle it.

We can handle such things as long as
we approach our faith with some sense of reasoning,
exploring, as we look, as we study,
as we learn,
reading Scripture and then always,
looking to God to illumine our hearts and minds,
to open our eyes and our minds,
to help us understand.
Jesus, our Lord, our Savior,
is not our possession;
we are his,
and we should come to him
with our minds open to his transforming power.

The Advent season that is before is
is a wonderful time to read,
to study, and to learn,
all in an effort, to use Marcus Borg’s phrase,
to meet Jesus again for the very first time.

The Advent season is the perfect time to remember
that we come before Jesus on bended knee
humble, attentive to his words,
slow to speak, quick to listen,
ready to look in a new direction,
walk a new way,
following the one who is our King,
the one who is the head of our church,
the one who calls us to new life
in him and through him.

“Lo, our king comes to [us]…
humble and riding on a donkey..”
(Zechariah 9:9)
…He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge for the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.”
(Isaiah 11:3)
…and his authority shall grow continually,
and there shall be endless peace,
for the throne of David and his kingdom.”
(Isaiah 9:7)
For this is the word of the Lord.
AMEN

Sixty Minutes to a New You!

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
November 18, 2007

Sixty Minutes to a New You!
Joshua 3:1-6
Luke 6:46-49

We’ve got only 60 minutes.
Sixty minutes.
That’s not much time.
Sixty minutes to praise God,
confess to God,
listen to God,
learn from God.
Sixty minutes to be fed,
to be nurtured,
to be guided.
Sixty minutes to be washed clean,
renewed for service.
Sixty minutes to be lifted up into God’s presence.

That’s so little time,
but it’s all we set aside to worship God.
One half of one percent of our week.
One half of one percent.
Just to compare, over the coming week
most of us will spend more than
20 hours watching television.
Twenty hours devoted to television,
just one to worship.

One hundred years ago,
sixty minutes would have been the first part of my sermon,
the lead-in, the warm up.
The service would have been more than two hours,
perhaps as long as three.
And that would have just been the morning service;
we all would have come back in the evening
for a second service.

Sixty minutes
to work on our foundations,
to build them stronger,
to make sure they are not built on sand.
Yes, we work on our foundations in other ways
throughout the week:
in prayer,
reading the Bible or a daily devotional
perhaps as part of a circle or small group.
But worship is the foundation
of our foundation-building.

We come into worship bringing with us a wide range of emotions.
We may come filled with feelings of gratitude and thanksgiving
for God’s blessings in our lives.
But we may also come preoccupied by something -
a conversation at work, or with a family member,
finacial worries, concerns about a loved one.
We may be anxious about the week ahead:
an important meeting at work,
an exam at school,
an especially important doctor’s appointment.
This coming week brings with it its own special
suitcase of anxieties and tensions
that come with travel and family gatherings.

But we have the opportunity to leave all worries behind
when we come here to worship.
We have the opportunity to be filled with
the peace of Christ,
the peace which, as Paul reminds us,
surpasses all understanding.
We have the opportunity to be renewed and refreshed,
new life filling us,
a fresh breeze blowing over us,
carrying away our worries, our concerns,
our preoccupations,
the exhaustion that can come with everyday life.

We should have high expectations when we come to worship.
We should expect to be renewed, refreshed, and reinvigorated.
But we should expect even more.
We should expect to be changed,
we should expect to be transformed.
Each of us should expect to leave this place
a different person.
Every worship service provides us
with an extraordinary opportunity:
sixty minutes to a whole new you!

It takes a bit of work, though,
work on your part.
You have to turn your heart and mind
intentionally and purposefully to God.
You have to approach worship ready to have God’s Spirit
fill you, work through you, and transform you.

Change and transformation is foundational
to our lives as followers of Jesus Christ.
Change and transformation
are essential to building our strong foundations,
as we work to be more Christ-like.
And isn’t that, after all,
what our Lord calls us to?

Transformation begins the moment you walk into this Sanctuary.
That’s when worship begins,
the minute you walk through those doors,
even if you are wrangling children,
greeting friends,
or wondering why someone else
appears to be sitting in your seat.

I try to help you with this
by providing a Prayer for Preparation
in the bulletin each week.
It is a text and a prayer for you to use
to help you center yourself
and focus your attention on God,
on your faith, on your journey as a disciple.
It isn’t a corporate prayer;
it is prayer for you to use just for yourself,
to help you put aside worries, concerns,
anger, uncertainty,
exhaustion, dread --
all of the emotions that we all carry around with us,
put them aside so you can truly feel yourself
in the presence of God,
so you are open, ready,
even willing to be transformed.
It is a prayer to help you get ready
to become fully involved in worship.
And you should be as fully involved as I am,
or Deborah, or the choir,
or any of the worship leaders.

The very nature of the worship arrangement
suggests that we up here on this platform
are the ones who do the work,
leading in liturgy, hymns,
reading, and interpretation.

But it was the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard
who challenged that assumption,
and said, if we think of the worship leaders
as the ones working,
like actors on a stage in front of an audience,
we need to re-think our assumptions.
What Kierkegaard pointed out is that
if we are going to use theatrical terms,
then the actors are all of you in the congregation:
you are the ones worshiping, praying, singing,
listening, learning, taking in God’s word
as it comes through readings, sermons, song, and prayer.
Those of us who are worship leaders
are the prompters.

So who is the audience?
God!
God is the audience,
for everything we do is directed at him.

Kierkegaard was right in re-assigning the roles,
but his model falls short.
If we think of God as the audience,
then it makes God seem passive,
as though he’s sitting on his throne,
approving, or perhaps disapproving,
of what we are saying, singing and doing.

But God isn’t passive at all, is he?
God is at work through his Holy Spirit,
leading us, guiding us, transforming us,
active throughout this service and every service.
God works through me as I preach,
and as I pray,
but God is also working through everyone else too:
Deborah and the choir, of course,
but through each of you, too,
working with you on your foundation,
working with you on your transformation
as you become more Christ-like.

When you come into this Sanctuary on Sunday morning,
you should come in filled with a sense of anticipation,
a sense of expectation,
those phrases you hear me use regularly.
You should be filled with the sense
that you will leave this place transformed,
different,
that in this hour
you will have worked to take yet another step
in your faith journey,
done a little more to build your faith,
grow in faith.

You should leave here feeling
a little more loved,
a little more loving;
a little more cared-for,
a little more caring;
a little more forgiven,
a little more forgiving;
a little less judgmental
a little more Christ like,
the foundation a little stronger,
loose mortar patched, weak areas strengthened,
even another level added.
All because you actively worked on it through the service,
by focusing, by listening,
by learning,
by opening your heart and your mind
to where God leads,
following, with just as much confidence and faith
as the children of Israel followed Moses, and then Joshua,
and then the Ark of the Covenant across the Jordan.

Starting in two weeks we are going to make a change in our service
to help us prepare ourselves a little bit more for worship.
A worship service should begin with a Call to Worship,
something that calls us all together
calls us to remind us that
we are in the presence of God.
We do that each Sunday, of course,
but have you noticed that the Call to Worship
typically comes about five, 8,
sometimes even as much as 10 minutes into the hour?

So we’re going to change that
and have our Call to Worship right at 8:30, or 11:00,
depending upon the service.
We’ll still have the Voluntary before the Call to Worship,
but that will happen about five minutes before the hour.
The word “voluntary” when we use it as a musical term
means introduction, something that leads us
to the main work, the larger piece.
and that’s just what the Voluntary does:
it leads us to God’s doorstep.
The Voluntary is a gift to God,
but it is also a gift to each of us,
to help us prepare ourselves for the serious work
we’re about to undertake
as we go forward to a place
“we have not passed before”
even if the surroundings seem so comfortable and familiar.

Yes, we will still have announcements,
but they will come later
in the body of the worship service.
Announcements should be part of our worship service,
Why?
Because they remind us that we are community,
that we are called to many different ministries,
including the ministry of welcome and hospitality.

Now this will mean a little change for all of us:
It will mean five minutes.
It will mean that we should
be in the Sanctuary by 8:25 or 10:55
so you have those few precious minutes,
those few necessary minutes,
to prepare yourself,
prepare yourself for the work you’re about to do.

We will start these changes in two weeks,
on the first Sunday in Advent.
That’s a particularly appropriate Sunday
to begin a change in our worship service,
because Advent starts a new liturgical year for us,
as we await the coming of our Lord.

The great preacher Phillips Brooks said,
“You shall expect of your faith new and greater things.
…look on it with continual and confident expectation
to see it open into something greater and truer.”
(New Experiences, 29)

Yes, we should have a sense of expectation,
a sense of anticipation.
especially in these sixty minutes,
these sixty minutes we devote together
as we worship the Lord our God.

Can you feel it?
Can you sense it?
God is here, working through each of us,
working in and through you,
if your mind is open,
your heart is open,
if you’re willing to let him in.

You have an extraordinary opportunity,
if you chose to accept it:
you will not leave here the same today,
for you will be a new creation in Christ.
a new creation through Christ.
Sixty minutes to a whole new you!
Yes, indeed: All glory and honor
to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
AMEN

The Meeting Closed With Prayer At 11:00 pm

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
November 4, 2007

The Meeting Closed With Prayer At 11:00 pm
Haggai 1:1-15
Luke 6:37-38

We all know what the Property Ministry Team does, don’t we?
And if we don’t know for sure, we can probably figure it out.
Same thing for our other Ministry Teams:
Christian Education, Finance,
Personnel, Mission,
Communications, Fellowship,
Worship & Music, Stewardship,
and the Early Learning Center –
their names tell us what the focus of each Team is,
so even if we don’t know exactly what they do,
an educated guess would probably be right.
The one Ministry Team that might give us pause
is the one charged with reaching out to visitors and new members,
our Evangelism and Assimilation Team;
We Presbyterians are never quite sure what to do
with the “e” word.

Our Ministry Teams oversee dozens and dozens of tasks.
They make sure we’ve got curriculum for Sunday School,
salt for icy sidewalks in January,
candles for Christmas Eve services,
a budget that’s balanced and bills that are paid,
a website and a newsletter,
Coffee Hour on Sunday.

But standing behind those teams
is another organization, another group,
one that has that odd name,
the group whose very name seems to encourage
eyes to glaze over:
The Session.

The Session, the governing body of our church,
the group of men and women elected from our congregation
to work with me to lead our church.

The Session:
the very name is confusing.
Why don’t we call it “the governing council”
or something that helps us understand what this group does?
Is the word “Session” a biblical term,
from some Hebrew or Greek word?
No, the answer is more prosaic:
the word “session” simply refers to a legislative group -
a group that comes together to discuss,
deliberate, debate and decide.
The word itself comes from a Latin root that means, “to sit”.

We confuse matters further with the term we use
for those women and men we elect each year
to serve a term on the Session.
We call them, “elders”.
Now, in this era of nip/tuck plastic surgery,
anything to look a few years younger,
who really wants to be referred to as an “elder”?
Why would we use such a term?

Here the answer is biblical.
The term is one that goes back more than 3,000 years,
to the days when Moses
led the children of Israel through the wilderness,
and God called 70 men to help him govern
the often- unhappy group.
(Numbers 11:16ff)
The Hebrew word did refer to age:
one who was older in years
was assumed to have something more than just
knowledge and intelligence,
the person was also assumed to have wisdom.

The term “elder” was used in the early years of the church
to refer to those called to positions of leadership.
Peter referred to himself as “elder” (1 Peter 5:1)
It was a position not of prominence,
but of responsibility,
of service in the name of Jesus Christ.

The Greek term for “Elder” is “presbuteros”;
The word “Presbyterian” is Greek for “council of elders”.
The word for our denomination does not speak to our theology,
but simply how we govern ourselves.

Our Book of Order tells us,
“As there were in Old Testament times
elders for the government of the people,
so the New Testament Church provided persons
with particular gifts to share in governing and ministry.
Elders are chosen by the people.
Together with ministers of Word and Sacrament,
they exercise leadership, government, and discipline
and have responsibilities for the life of a particular church,
as well as the church at large….” (G-6.0300ff)

So we elect Elders to sit on the session and govern.
It is all very democratic,
as you will see shortly when we elect new Deacons and Elders,
but it is more than that.
It is all very faithful, very biblical,
and very spiritual as we elect women and men
whom God has called to serve.

The candidates whose names will be offered
by the nominating committee don’t run for office
the way politicians do in each election cycle.
No: we charge our Nominating Committee
with the very serious task of discernment,
discernment through prayer,
and the guidance of the Holy Spirit,
to help us reach out to those whom God has called.

Our Nominating Committee has worked hard these past few months,
praying, talking,and listening to one another,
and in the process listening to God.
They have reached out to quite a few folks within our congregation.
and they will present a full slate for election to Deacons,
but they will not present a full slate for Session.
We had a surprising number of folks say no
to God’s call to serve.

We talked a little about this at our last Session meeting.
This isn’t the first time we’ve struggled to find Elders,
and in talking with my colleagues,
we are not at all alone
in our struggle to find Elders to serve.

Part of the problem may simply be numerical.
Our Session has 21 members, each serving a 3-year term,
which means we need at least 7 candidates each year.
More and more churches have found that they can govern
just as effectively with Sessions of 18, 15,
or even the very appropriate 12.

Our Session voted last week to reduce the size of our Session
to 15 over the next 3 years by changing the class size from 7 to 5
beginning with the current class.
That will make the Session and the Board of Deacons
15 members each,
giving us 30 ordained officers to lead us.

I think another part of the reason we struggle
is that there is a misunderstanding
of what the Session does, what Elders do.
Session meetings are often thought of
as interminable, contentious,
argumentative, even combative.
That’s true at some churches;
Read through the minutes of some Session meetings,
and the first line says
“the meeting opened with prayer at 7:00 pm”,
and the last line reads,
“the meeting closed with prayer at 11:00 pm”.
Who would want to be part of a monthly meeting
that goes on for four hours?

Our session has just 8 regularly schedule meetings a year.
Our meetings begin with a delicious dinner
prepared by Audrey Little,
and then we try to get to work at 7:00 or so.
We usually take a break for dessert
about mid-way through our work
so we typically don’t finish up till 9:30,
which seems like a long time,
but our usual meeting time is around two hours,
about the same as our Board of Deacons.
We are an active church, with a lot going on.
Spending 16 to 20 hours a year, even 24,
on governance doesn’t seem excessive.
Yes, we have other meetings and gatherings:
a few short meetings to receive new members and Confirmands,
a joint dinner and meeting with our Deacons,
and the weekend Retreat in January.
Next weekend we’ll have lunch following worship
with our guest preacher, Ed White.

This is all time well spent,
time for us to grow individually and collectively
as we lead the church.
No, the job isn’t easy.
We have to make difficult decisions.
Our first lesson reminds us how even something
as seemingly simple as building upkeep and care
requires us to be attentive to God’s word and will.

The Book of Order teaches us that
Elders are not simply “to reflect the will of the people,
but rather to seek together to find and represent
the will of Christ.” (4.0301d)
The will of Christ because Jesus is the Head of the Church
and we are the body.

Our Session is charged,
“to lead the congregation
continually to discover
what God is doing in the world
and to plan for change , renewal and reformation
under the word of God.” (10.0102j)

This is exciting work,
demanding work,
inspiring work,
spiritual work.
It takes time, commitment, and faithfulness.

As you come to the Lord’s Table in a few minutes,
I encourage you to lift up a prayer for our Elders:
their names are in your bulletin.
Lift up a prayer for all those about to be called to serve.
Pray for our Elders and our Deacons,
for that it what they are doing for all us
in everything they do:
their service is prayer,
lifted up to the glory of God,
as they lead us,
all of us together following
the head of our church,
our Lord Jesus Christ.

AMEN