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