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