The Focal Point

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
September 28, 2008

The Focal Point
John 8:12
Psalm 74:1-11

You heard Linda and Paula a few minutes ago:
so many details,
so many things to think about every week
before the clock strikes 8:30 or 11:00 on Sunday morning.

Who will prepare the bulletin?
Who will photocopy and fold the bulletin?
Who will make sure the bulletins get from the copier room
to the Sanctuary?
Who will hand out bulletins to worshipers?
Who will pick up leftover bulletins after the service?

Do we have the correct liturgical banners and colors
on the table and the pulpit?
Have flowers been given and are they in place?
Is there water in the pitcher by the font?
Who is lighting the candles?
Are there matches in the matchbook
so we can light the candlelighter?
Has someone checked the candles,
and put more oil in them?
Who knew that our candles were not wax?
Who will get the collection plates
from the office and put them on the table?
Who will take the collection?
Who will count the collection after the service
and see to it that the money is deposited in the bank?

Is the sound system on?
Does the pastor’s radio mike work?
Are we ready to make a video recording of the service
for those who are homebound?

Are hymnals and bibles in the racks and within easy reach?
Has the carpet in the Sanctuary been vacuumed and
the chancel been dust mopped?
Who puts the hymn numbers on the hymn boards?

Even after we make sure there are answers
to these questions, we haven’t even got to the actual service itself.
What text shall we use for the prayer of preparation?
Who will write the prayer of preparation?
What words shall we have for a call to worship?
What hymn will work best for an opening hymn?
A prayer of confession needs to be written,
a time with the children needs to be prepared,
texts selected from the Bible,
other music for hymns and anthems chosen,
prayers of the people written.
Are we celebrating a baptism or the Lord’s Supper?

And even with all these things taken care of,
we still have yet to get to what we consider
the center of a worship service: the sermon.
Even if we have selected the texts,
we need to read, study, reflect, pray, interpret,
check commentaries,
perhaps even check the original Greek or Hebrew.
For a typical sermon, there’s a good 15 hours or more
of work to be done.

All this work, all these things to be done,
all the time and energy,
all the hands that help,
all for one hour each Sunday.

We hear the words “worship service”
and it is easy to think,
“Oh, that’s what Pastor Skip and Deborah Panell do.”
We may be the worship leaders,
but we need dozens of pairs of hands to help every week,
with even the simplest service.

And still there are more who are involved:
those who greet and welcome visitors and members alike;
those who help in the Nursery and ETC;
those who prepare a time of fellowship after worship
so we all don’t just head to cars and go home.

It is not an exaggeration to say
that it takes the entire church
to prepare a worship service every Sunday.
Everyone is involved, all of you,
even if you think you are not,
even if you don’t have a specific task assigned to you,
even if you think you are just part of the congregation.
We sometimes think of a worship service
as similar to a theatrical production,
with the actors up here
in front of the congregation, who are much like an audience.
It’s easy to think that way, isn’t it?
The way we are set up suggests that that’s a good metaphor.

But I think Soren Kierkegaard got it right
when he turned that model upside down
and said, no: you are the actors,
the congregation in the chairs and pews;
you are the ones doing the active work of worshiping;
God is the audience of course --
what we do is directed at him,
All of us who help put the service together and lead it,
we are the prompters;
we provide the resources
that help all of us worship and praise God.

And that is what we do in our service:
we worship and praise God,
as we renew ourselves for service as disciples of Jesus Christ.
We grow in knowledge and wisdom;
we grow in faithfulness and spirit.

Now, to do that, we really don’t need most of what you see here.
We can worship just as easily and faithfully outside under the tree,
as we do in the summer;
or in a school cafeteria,
or on a beach, or
in a living room.
For the first few hundred years of the church,
followers of Jesus Christ gathered in homes
and worshiped so simply.

There is one thing we really should have,
one thing in this room we really should have
even if we got rid of everything else.
You may be thinking, the cross of course.
How could we have a worship service
without that reminder
that we follow the living Christ,
the Christ who vanquished the cross
when he vanquished death.
But that’s not what I am thinking about.
No, it is one of the simplest things in the room.
It is the candle over by the piano,
the candle we call the Christ candle.
That’s the one thing we should have
every time and every place we gather for worship.

When we light that candle
we are reminded that Christ is the light of the world,
a light that no darkness can ever overcome.
That candle should be the focal point of our worship service,
the one thing in this room more than anything else
that has our complete attention.

We light that candle at the beginning of the service,
during the Voluntary, as we prepare ourselves for worship.
When we bring that little flame into the room
we are bringing the symbol of Christ’s light into the room.

There’s no practical value to the light:
especially in this space where we have
such specialized lighting.
But even when we compare that flame
to the stage lighting that’s above me here in the chancel
there is no brighter light.

And then when our worship service ends,
and it is time for us to go out into the world
to resume our service as disciples of Jesus Christ,
we don’t extinguish that light;
we don’t extinguish it
because we cannot extinguish it.
No, we carry it out,
out into the world.
figuratively, and in the 11:00 am service, quite literally.

More than 500 years before the birth of Jesus
the children of Israel had forgotten why they were called to the Temple,
why God had graced them with the Sabbath,
why they were to worship the God of Israel.
They’d forgotten because they’d lost interest;
they had other things they preferred to do.
When they did go to the Temple, when they did worship God,
it was ritual, a mechanized act,
with no thought behind it,
no feeling, no interest.
Just going through the motion.

The children of Israel had strayed far from God,
and God warned them
that they were straying farther and farther,
and he wanted them so badly to turn back to him.
But they did not, and continued in their faithless ways,
and God realized he had no choice but to punish them,
reluctant, as any loving parent would be, but hopeful.
And so God did punish them,
at the hands of the invading Babylonian army
who laid waste everything in their path
including the Temple in Jerusalem,
the House of God,
the Holy Sanctuary.
The Babylonians utterly destroyed it;

But all the Babylonians did was complete the work
the children of Israel had begun long before,
work they had carried out
decade after decade, century after century,
through their lack of interest, their weak faith,
their focus on themselves and what they wanted.
The children of Israel had snuffed the light in the Temple
long before the Babylonians invaded the land.

It takes everyone to make worship alive,
to keep the light burning brightly.
The Christ candle is merely a reminder to us
of the lives we are called to.
We go out of here, each of us, one of two ways:
either carrying that flame,
the light burning brightly,
taking the light of Christ out into the world;
or we snuff it and go out shrouded in darkness
of our own creation.

God calls us:
“arise your light has come
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.”
(Isaiah 60:1)
This is the promise, this is the hope.
This is why we worship.
To remember the promise,
to be renewed in the promise.

When you go from here today,
go out in the light, carrying the light.
Go out with the light held high,
the light of Christ,
the light which no darkness can ever overcome.
AMEN

Nurture the Nature

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
September 21, 2008

Nurture the Nature
Mark 10:13-16
Isaiah 11:6-9

Is there a better sound than children laughing?
Giggles, squeals, shouts,
pure delight at even the simplest thing,
something silly,
something magical,
something wonder-filled.

Children show us how to live:
we adults walk,
children hop, skip and jump;
we adults jog,
children scamper, run, chase, and tumble.
Children show us how to live in their playing,
oblivious to differences of skin or ethnicity,
or neighborhood or finances.
Borders, fences, and property lines mean nothing to them.
And happily for them, neither do politics.

Put two children together,
strangers to each other,
and within minutes they will be best friends,
out on a swingset, each of them trying to
touch the sun with their feet
as they swing higher and higher.
Give them popsicles in the summer
and they’ll compare the colors their tongues take on,
and laugh because who would have ever thought
you could have an orange tongue?
Come autumn, they’ll compare contents
of backpacks that are as big as they are:
lunches, snacks, maybe a book,
a juicebox, a toy,
and probably something very old
and unrecognizable at the very bottom of their packs.

When winter comes, and there is even an inch of snow,
they will build a snow man, or possibly a snowwoman together
and then later spoon out the sludge of marshmallow and cocoa
from the bottom of a mug of hot chocolate.

In springtime, they will hold onto one another so tightly
so that neither of them is blown away by March winds
and ends up clear around the other side of the world,
or maybe even carried all the way to the moon.
But wow, wouldn’t that be neat?

Yes, children have their moments
of temper and tears,
but most of the time, differences are resolved quickly,
whatever caused the flare-up quickly forgotten,
because there’s too much playing to be done,
too many adventures still to be had.

Children show us how to live,
how to live as Jesus taught us how to live.
Is it any wonder that Jesus told his disciples,
“let the little children come to me;
do not stop them.”
Is it any wonder that when the disciples tried to
hold back parents from bringing their children to Jesus,
Jesus got angry.
“Indignant”, Mark tells us.

The Kingdom of God does not belong to a denomination;
it doesn’t belong to any particular church,
or pastor, or televangelist, or flock,
try as we Christians do, to possess Jesus,
to make him into our image,
rather than the other way around.

The Kingdom of God belongs to “such as these”
Jesus teaches us:
children in their innocence
and with their acceptance,
their tolerance, their openness.
Only as they grow do they learn to be close-minded,
Only as they grow do they learn not to be so accepting,
do they learn how to put people in boxes and categories:
based on ethnicity, or gender, or ideology.
the clothes they wear, the car their parents’ drive.

A bumper stick from the Civil Rights era
back in the in the 1960s, caught it just right with the words,
“no child is born a bigot.”
No child is born hating,
born intolerant, born with a closed mind.
We teach those bad habits to them.
We close minds when we should be opening them;
we close hearts when we should be opening them.

The path Jesus calls us to, of course
is to teach children goodness, and kindness
nurturing their nature of love and acceptance,
the nature they are born with.
That is what we try to do in Sunday School
with children of all ages.
And it is what we try to do
with our Early Learning Center program.

Every year for more than 40 years,
fifty, one hundred, now two hundred children
have come through our doors
Monday through Friday, September through May,
children ages 2 to 5,
children from throughout the community,
all coming here to be nurtured
as they play, learn, sing, and laugh.

More than 6,000 children have been part of this ministry –
and that is what our Early Learning Center is:
a ministry of this church, outreach to as many children
as we can fit in the space we have.

Our ministry is set in a Christian environment,
but we intentionally do not call it a Christian pre-school.
Our doors are open to all and we welcome all.
We want our school to reflect the diversity that Jesus found
as he traveled up and down the roads of Judea,
talking and sharing time, meals, and fellowship
with Samaritans, Romans,
Greeks, Nubians, and others
in addition to his fellow Jews.

We leave each child’s faith journey to their families;
our goal is to create a Christian environment grounded in
nurture, acceptance, responsibility, respect, forgiveness and love:
all those things that Jesus teaches us.

We do have a monthly Chapel Time, which I lead,
but I tend to focus more on God and God’s love,
to remind us that we worship the God of Abraham,
something we have in common with Jews and Muslims.

It is unfortunate that most of you don’t get the chance
to see our Early Learning Center in action.
Walk down the hall on a weekday morning,
and it’s a busy place, with classrooms bustling with activity.
The children come roaring in at 9:10 am
and the building is alive until noon.
By 12:15 they are gone as if swept up in a whirlwind with Elijah,
even if their chariot is a minivan
and they are destined for lunch at McDonalds.

Watch them come in, and watch them go out,
some from our own church family,
but most from the broader community.
Look at their faces,
each a child of God.
Will that she grow up to be an engineer?
Will he be a scientist?
Will she be a firefighter?
Will he be a carpenter?
Is there one, boy or girl,
just one, whom God might call to be a preacher?

In the classrooms we teach them what Jesus wants us to learn:
lessons we tend to forget as we get older,
especially the lesson that Jesus was trying to teach
his followers as he picked up one child after another.
The lesson of selflessness,
of service to others.
We don’t teach about Christ,
but we do teach Christ as we nurture the nature of each child.
And as we do that,
we fill the children with the lesson of hope,
the lesson of what God hopes for us, and all his children,
that one day we all will learn to live together
in peace and reconciliation and harmony.
That there will come a day when:
”The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.”

What a magnificent image God gave us through the prophet:
God’s hope for all his children.
Bickering, strife, war: all stopped;
This is a world we can create;
it is a world we are called to create for the sake of our children.
When we fail to do this, we fail God.

We know we each have a responsibility to every child in this church.
But we also have a responsibility
to every child in our Early Learning Center.
We have a responsibility to every child
who comes here for Vacation Bible School.
We have a responsibility to every child.
It was Marian Wright Edelman,
head of the Children’s Defense Fund
who first gave us the phrase
that no child should be left behind.
She was disturbed when the Department of Education
co-opted her phrase because,
while building an education system on that idea is fine,
it is much too limiting.
We are to leave no child behind anywhere.

Jesus says, “let the little children come to me”
And by that, he means all the children,
not just the children who are well-behaved, or
who come from the right homes,
or who have money or the right background.
Jesus means “All” children,
and “all” means “all”.

The next time you have an argument with someone,
get in the car and drive to the nearest convenience store.
Go inside and buy a package of popsicles
and then sit down with your adversary and eat your popsicles.
After about ten minutes, compare your tongues
and see whose is more raspberry red,
or orangy orange.
Giggle and laugh.

Do that and watch your differences melt away
as quickly as a popsicle in August.
Do that, and then you’ll be ready to take on the more serious work
of building the Kingdom for every child of God
that Kingdom in which the
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
[and] the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
that kingdom in which “a little child shall lead us,”
that kingdom which is God’s hope for all his children,
and that includes you and me.
AMEN

Misunderstandings and Misinterpretations

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
September 14, 2008

Misunderstandings and Misinterpretations
2 Corinthians 11:1-6
Luke 6:6-11

The man’s hand was withered, useless,
hanging limp by his side.
It would have been bad enough
if it had been his left hand
but it was his right hand,
the hand he would have used to feed himself,
dress himself,
guide a chisel over stone,
hammer a nail into wood,
pull the rein to guide a team of oxen.

Could he have used his left hand to do these things?
It wasn’t all that long ago,
still within the memories of some of us here,
that if we saw a baby tending to use his or her left hand
we would have quickly tried to change that behavior
and “correct” it.
The word “sinister”, with its connotations of all things evil,
comes from the Latin,
which was the language of the Romans,
that meant, “left” or “left-handed”.

This man was probably unable to work,
destined to a life of begging for food and clothing.
The Pharisees and the Scribes, those learned men
who led the religious community in Jerusalem
probably did not even see the man
as they walked to and from the Temple each day.
The man with the withered hand
was probably one of dozens, hundreds,
who walked the dusty streets of Jerusalem
who had become invisible.

But Jesus’ eyes were always open;
no one was invisible to him,
especially those who were sick, who were poor,
who were friendless,
who were on the fringes of society:
those were always the people Jesus was quickest to see.
So it is no surprise that Jesus healed the man
with the withered hand.
In the process, Jesus made him visible;
He gave him new life.

Now as we hear this story
it’s clear that it wasn’t the fact of the healing
that bothered the Pharisees;
they might have even seen it as a good thing:
one less beggar
and one more person to pay a Temple tax.

No, what concerned them was that Jesus healed the man
on the Sabbath.
That outraged them.
Surely Jesus knew his Scripture,
surely he knew his laws:
“Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God;
you shall not do any work.” Exodus 20:9

What could be clearer?
Had Jesus no respect for Scripture?
Was he willing to toss Scripture aside whenever it suited him?
This was not the first time Jesus had done something on the Sabbath
that had clearly violated Scripture,
clearly had flouted the law.

For more than a thousand years,
since the days of Moses,
the leaders of the Jewish community
taught the Scriptures and added to the laws.
And every time they did so,
they built an institution that became more and more rigid,
more and more focused on rules, laws, procedures,
less and less focused on God’s mercy and justice.

And that’s what Jesus was challenging;
rules had become authority.
The leaders misunderstood the word of God.
The leaders misinterpreted the word of God.
If they misunderstood or misinterpreted
out of ignorance, that was bad enough,
but if they intentionally distorted the law
for their own purposes,
that was something that needed to be stopped.

Time and time again through the Scriptures,
God had spoken of his concern for the needy,
the outcast, the poor, the orphan, the widow.
God had spoken of his contempt for the wealthy
when they grew content with their comfortable lives,
and ignored the needs of the less affluent,
when they paid no attention to
a growing gap between rich and poor.
God had spoken of his hope for his children,
that some day they would live in peace,
that war would cease,
and all his children in every nation
would live in harmony.

None of those things mattered to the Pharisees and scribes.
Had you followed ritual?
Had you lived in compliance with the rules?
Had you done what they told you to do?
That’s what they cared about.
And the people went along,
compliant in their own ignorance.

It took the Living Word, our Lord Jesus Christ,
to correct the mistakes and the misinterpretation.
Yes, the Sabbath is a day of rest,
a day when work should not be done,
but God had graced us with the Sabbath
for the benefit of all God’s children,
to renew and restore us,
not as a ritual to be slavishly followed.
If there was a hungry child,
a sick man,
even an animal fallen into a ditch,
God’s compassion, love, and grace
would make the response obvious.
Don’t just sit there resting,
do something!

Two thousand years later,
we still struggle with how we should interpret
the word of God as it comes to us through the Bible.
That struggle is at the very heart of everything we do
in Christian Education.
From the first time we hear a Bible story,
we begin a life long journey of faith seeking understanding.
We start with simple stories:
Jesus born in the stable,
Noah building the Ark,
David confronting Goliath.

We travel farther and dig deeper.
We learn of Solomon’s wisdom
and Jonah’s fishing trip.
But we also begin to notice that some of the things
we read sound confusing, even troubling.
We love the story of Jesus born in the stable,
but why are there only two birth stories
and why are they so different?
We love the story of Noah and the Ark,
but the reason behind it,
God’s fury with his children,
is so unsettling.
Turning Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt
seemed awfully harsh.
Solomon for all his wisdom
loses his way to women and wealth.
And then there’s all that blood,
all those wars,
instructions from God to kill.

Yet still we persevere going deeper,
and we begin to notice
that passages we read in one part of the book
seem to conflict with passages we read from other parts of the book.
Still other passages offend us:
“women be silent; slaves obey your master”.

And we end up throwing our hands up in frustration,
leaving it to the clergy,
even when Paul warns us of the dangers of that.

That’s why we have Christian Education,
for every one at every age.
The more we each know,
the easier it is to discern and understand.
And the beginning of understanding as we read through
the written word that is the Bible
is to remember that the lens we should look through
as we read is the Living Word -
our Lord, Jesus Christ.

And that means we are to interpret the word
through a lens that is grace itself,
our interpretation always gracious, grace-filled,
and grace –full.
As we learn, we understand that we are called to act
called to take grace out into the world.
Classes are not cloistered settings;
Every class is both a time for learning and reflection,
and a time for preparation for service.
as we put lessons into actions.

A recent survey done among young people in this country,
shows that churches of all denominations
are not doing a very good job
of teaching a grace-full interpretation of the word of the Lord.
The survey, done by the Barna Group,
was taken among young people ages 16 to 30
and what it shows is that what
churches are preaching and teaching
has been pushing more people away from
Christianity than calling them in.

A large majority of the respondents see churches as strident,
rigid, angry, war-mongering,
judgmental, hypocritical.
more concerned with politics
and building empire
both within and outside of the church
(David Kinnamon, “Unchristian”)

While I would certainly like to think
that a person asked to reflect on Manassas Presbyterian Church
would not use these words,
the results shows how easy it is to miscommunicate
misinterpret and misunderstand the word of the Lord.

Our job in Christian education
is to help every disciple
at every age understand that
faith can feed a starving world,
that faith can cure us of our warring madness,
that faith can bring hope,
that faith can move mountains.

Our job in Christian education
is to help every disciple
at every age understand that
this faith is grace-filled faith,
gracious faith,
a fearless faith, a bold faith,
a faith that is grounded in the word of the Lord
that we find in the Bible,
a faith that is understood through the lens,
that is the Living Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.
If we do that,
then there should be no misunderstanding
and no misinterpretation.

AMEN

First Step: Discipleship

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
September 7, 2008

First Step: Discipleship
2 Peter 1:1-11
Matthew 12:46-50

We hear the words each time we celebrate a baptism,
hear them, of course, if we are able to take our focus
off the baby for a few seconds.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations
…teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”
(Matthew 28:19)

“Go and make disciples” --
A call to action, a call from our Lord
to go out into the world
among those we know, and those we don’t know;
among people who look and think like us,
and among people who don’t look or think like us;
among people who are our friends,
and among people who are our enemies,
always remembering Jesus’ teaching
that everyone is our neighbor.

“Go and make disciples.”
The only passage we hear from the Bible
with greater frequency
are the words we will hear in just a few minutes,
“Do this in remembrance of me”.

“Go and make disciples.”
But what are we to do with Jesus’ instructions?

Are we to go door to door,
standing on porches and front steps
unmoving and unyielding until we’ve converted
whoever answers the door:
“I will not leave until you become a disciple!”

Is that what Jesus taught the first twelve
he called to follow him?
Is it what he taught the 70,
as the group following him grew in numbers?
No, he taught them to take the word out,
but to move along and leave to God
the task of converting,
leave to God those who did not respond.

Our call is to take the word out into the world to all,
and bring into an ever-widening circle of disciples
those who do respond,
those whom God converts and convicts
by the power of God’s Holy Spirit.

But even before we take that step out into the world,
out in response to Christ’s clear call to every one of us,
we should probably take a step back, each of us,
and have a look inward,
a look in the mirror.
Before we go out to make disciples,
we have to be confident that we are disciples
each of us.

The word “disciple” comes from a Latin word
that means “pupil”.
The Greek word we find in the Bible is even stronger, though:
it means someone who “loves learning”,
who understands the need to learn.
Disciples are pupils, always learning, always growing.
Disciples are disciplined:
the two words come from the same root.

We talked last week about our need to work at our faith,
to grow,
to grow in spiritual maturity,
which presumes that we are learning,
that we are life-long pupils.
When we stop learning,
stop working at growing in faith,
by the very definition of the word,
we’re no longer disciples.

The first step in discipleship
is to live grace-filled, graceful lives.
We have been given God’s grace in Jesus Christ;
and as disciples we should live that grace
by extending and sharing that grace.

Our every act, every deed should be grace-filled, and graceful.
Our every word should be be grace-filled, graceful.
The words we speak should not be critical,
self-righteous, or judgmental;
Grace-filled words are words that,
as Paul teaches us, build up.

We live in a world in which grace-filled, graceful speech
is more the exception than the rule.
Snide remarks, sarcasm,
condescending words, mean-spirited words;
even simple gossipy comments shared
with a friend over a cup of coffee
can so easily lead us from grace,
and lead us away from faithful discipleship.

Last week we talked about different faith practices,
that Paul exhorts us to follow.
Do you remember some of them:
love one another with mutual affection,
honor one another,
contribute to the needs of the saints,
extend hospitality,
live in peace even with your enemy.

Peter provides us with similar teaching:
“Make every effort to support your faith with goodness,
and goodness with knowledge,
and knowledge with self-control,
and self-control with endurance
and endurance with godliness,
and godliness with mutual affection
and mutual affection with love.”

Last week I challenged us all to adopt one faith practice
in particular, to make it a discipline,
a specific act of discipleship:
that we create a culture of welcome and hospitality.
We do that pretty well,
but I had a specific challenge for all of us:
to reach out every Sunday to someone you do not know
and go up and introduce yourself to that person,
to leave shyness behind,
as well as your concern that someone you think is
a stranger may turn out to be a 30-year member.
As I said last week, if you do not know the person,
and he or she doesn’t know you,
then you are strangers to one another.

How many of you did that last week,
started that discipline,
by introducing yourself to someone you did not know?
That’s what Jesus calls us to do!
That’s doing the will of God,
growing in discipleship
as a brother or sister of Christ.
If you didn’t do that last Sunday,
you’ve got the perfect opportunity to do it today
during the picnic.
And do it again next Sunday, and the Sunday after that,
and every Sunday.

There is no difference between any of us
and the twelve men Jesus first called to follow him
that we call the disciples, generally
disciples with a capital “D”.
Frederick Buechner reminds us that,
“There is no evidence that Jesus chose them
because they were brighter or nicer than other people.
In fact the New Testament record suggests
that they were continually missing the point,
jockeying for position,
and, when the chips were down,
interested in nothing so much as saving their own skins.
Their sole qualification seems to have been
their initial willingness to rise to their feet
when Jesus said, ‘Follow me.’”
(Beyond Words, 140)

You and I are disciples in just the same way Peter was,
Andrew, Matthew,
Mary Magdalene, Paul,
Lydia, Phoebe, Titus
and the thousands upon thousands
millions upon millions each of whom
have said “yes” to Christ over two thousand years.

Peter was right when he said,
“[The Lord’s] divine power
has given us everything we need
for life and godliness.”
(2 Peter 1:3)
Everything we need for life and discipleship.
But that’s always just the starting point,
the beginning of our lives as disciples.
We are called to build on the grace we’ve been given,
to grow in discipleship
so that we can go out and make disciples.

So come to this table as a disciple.
Come to this table to share in this meal
our Lord has prepared for all of us,
brothers and sisters in Christ,
brothers and sisters of Christ.

Come to this table to be fed,
to be strengthened, and to be nourished
by the power of God’s Holy Spirit.

Come to this Table to renew your commitment to discipline
and renew your commitment to discipleship.

And then go from this Table,
but don’t go far.
Go only as far as the nearest stranger
and extend your hand in greeting,
one brother or sister to another,
one disciple to another.

Do that, and somewhere in the room,
Jesus will be smiling as he looks at you
and thinking to himself,
“Yes, there is a faithful disciple
who is doing the will of my Father in Heaven.
There is my sister, there is brother.”

AMEN