A Bottle of Visine

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
October 19, 2008

A Bottle of Visine
Philemon

There is no book in the Bible that is easier to skip over
than Philemon.
It really isn’t a book, it’s just a short letter.
There’s no chapter 1, no chapter 2 --
just 25 verses, a couple hundred words.
We just heard Philemon in its entirety,
the whole letter, beginning to end.

So what is it all about?
It is about a person, one person,
a man named Onesimus.
Onesimus was a slave;
he’d been the property of Philemon,
the man to whom Paul wrote the letter.

We are not exactly sure,
but we think that Onesimus had at some point
run away from Philemon,
and in the process, he’d stumbled across Paul,
and became a follower of Jesus Christ.
In writing to Philemon, Paul asked him
to release Onesimus from his servitude;
release him so that Onesimus could work with Paul,
work to help spread the good news of the gospel.

Slavery has always been ugly blot on human history,
but in Paul’s day it was not uncommon.
Many men and women lived in a form of indentured servitude
where over time they could buy their freedom.
Paul did not accuse Philemon of anything wrong
in having a slave;
he simply implored him as a brother in Christ,
to help Paul’s ministry by releasing Onesimus
so Paul could add one more worker to the team.
Paul clearly felt that Onesimus
was essential to the work of the Lord.

We find only one other reference in the Bible to Onesimus,
in the letter to the Colossians,
a letter that was written a few years after Philemon.
We learn that Tychicus was on his way to
Colosse with Onesimus,
who is referred to as
“the faithful and beloved brother,
[and] who is one of you”
(Colossians 4:7ff)
Colossians suggests that Paul was successful
in encouraging Philemon to release Onesimus
and that Onesimus then went on to minister
with great distinction in the name of Jesus Christ.

Paul saw in the runaway slave something special,
something that told Paul that Onesimus had a gift,
a gift for ministry, a gift for the work of the Lord,
a gift for working within the ministry that Paul had taken on
of sharing the good news of the gospel
with Gentiles throughout the Mediterranean.

Others may have looked at Onesimus
and seen merely a slave,
a man of the lower class,
or worse yet, a runaway, a vagabond, a criminal.
But Paul looked at Onesimus and saw a child of God,
a brother in Christ,
a man called to serve the Lord,
a man vital to the mission and ministry
Paul was doing in the name of Jesus Christ.

Paul seemed to have a gift
for seeing spiritual strengths in men and women.
Paul built his team by looking for the good,
the strengths, the gifts in people
and looking past the faults, the weaknesses
that are inevitable,
that every person has tucked away somewhere within.
In the process Paul built the foundation of the church
as he went from town to town,
city to city,
country to country.

His letters are filled with references to men and women
about whom we know virtually nothing,
but each of whom was essential to spreading the good news.
Aquila and Prisca,
Phoebe, Timothy, Epaphroditus, Euodia, Syntyche,
Epaphras, Justus, Titus --
these are just a few names
we almost stumble over
as we read through Paul’s letters.

Each was a follower of Jesus Christ,
Each worked to spread the good news;
Each was important,
Each was essential to the work.

A few weeks ago we talked about how many people
it takes to organize a worship service:
more than a dozen every Sunday
for even the simplest service.
If it takes a dozen or more to make a worship service happen,
how many more does it take to make a church happen,
to serve Christ through all the different ministries
we are called to?

The answer to that is easy:
you don’t even need to “do the math”.
The answer is, EVERY ONE!
We need everyone in the church
to carry out the work we’ve been called to do,
the ministries Christ himself directs us to provide:
The ministry of worship,
the ministry of care and concern
the ministry of teaching and growing as disciples,
the ministry of stewardship.

In his letter to the Corinthians,
Paul calls the church, “The Body of Christ”,
all of us making up the body,
and every part of the body equally important,
equally essential.
In Paul’s metaphor,
the eye is weaker for want of a leg,
the arm is weaker for want of an ear;
All come together, all work together
in harmony to make the Body stronger and healthier.
That is us, this body of Christ
that is the Manassas Presbyterian Church.

The past few weeks we’ve been hearing
from different parts of the Body,
different Ministry Teams,
hearing how they go about the work
of the ministry we’ve been called to do.
This week’s team is a little different,
the Personnel Ministry Team.
Their work is to look after another team,
our staff team,
a team that may not be quite as visible
as some other teams,
but is certainly no less important.

We are blessed with an exceptional staff team:
Ann Curtis, our office manager,
Deborah Panell, our Minister of Music,
Pam Rice our Christian Education Assistant,
Lisa Faust, our Financial Administrator
and Russell Jackson our Sexton.
And of course, we have the exceptional
staff and teachers of our Early Learning Center.

Lisa and Russell are the easiest to miss,
because we don’t see them on Sunday.
But Lisa assures that we are faithful stewards
of our financial resources.
Yesterday our Session spent the bulk of our meeting
talking about Finances as we heard from the accountants
whom we hired to conduct our annual review.
The accountants had great praise for the work
Lisa has done since she joined us.

Russell Jackson’s work may look custodial
but his work is ministry,
his work is the ministry of hospitality.
He’s the one who sets up tables and chairs
for meetings and classes.
He’s the one who provides us with a clean,
inviting facility,
with carpets freshly vacuumed,
floors mopped,
and bathrooms cleaned.
He’s the one who makes sure we have light
as we follow the light,

We see Deborah for only an hour on Sunday morning.
How many see her in the Sanctuary
for most of every Sunday afternoon,
working with our young people and our liturgical dancers?
How many see her on Wednesday nights working with our
adult singers and our handbell choir?
Who sees her during the week as she plans worship music
with me, and searches for new ways for us
to praise God through song?

We have a superb Christian Education program
because of Pam Rice.
She organizes teachers, purchases supplies,
recruits volunteers for ETC and the Nursery,
Wrangles sheep and cows for our Children’s Christmas pageant,
and, as you will see in two weeks,
she even has managed to convince
Moses to come down from the Mountain
for a visit to Manassas.

And if we had to build a room
to hold all the different hats
we ask Ann Curtis to wear over the course
of a typical week, we could not build a space big enough.
Secretary, receptionist,
building manager,
web updater,
newsletter production chief,
bulletin preparation specialist,
equipment maintenance and repair supervisor,
Scheduler and calendar keeper,
worship candle oiler,
lunch organizer --
and the list goes on.

We do a lot with a small ministry team.
We are a church of more than 400
and yet did you know:
only three of us are full time employees:
just Ann, Russell and I;
Everyone else is part-time.
At least, that’s what their contracts say:
the reality is, is that every member of our staff
puts in more time than they are paid for.
There are times when I feel like
what’s needed at staff meetings
even as much as prayer and lunch
is a bottle of Visine, to soothe tired eyes
from a dedicated and hard-working group.

Thank our staff, thank them regularly,
acknowledge their gifts.
See them as Paul saw Onesimus,
children of God, disciples of Christ,
called to unique vocations doing God’s work.

And of course, don’t stop with staff:
acknowledge one another’s gifts
as we work together in the body of Christ.
Look for strengths and gifts,
and leave criticism, judgment, and fault-finding behind.
No one is perfect;
as Jesus reminds us, we all have specks in our own eyes,
that would require more
than a bottle of Visine to wash away.

We are the Body of Christ,
all of us called like Paul, like Onesimus
like Tychichus and Epaphras
and Phoebe and Lydia
to do the work of the Lord.
Each of us vital to the Body,
none more important, none less important.
We begin our work offering thanks to God,
and we go about our work offering thanks to one another
staff and volunteers alike,
nurturing and feeding one another,
as we build one another
and in the process
build this Body,
this Body of Christ.

AMEN

Stre------tch

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
October 12, 2008

Stre------tch
1 Chronicles 29:1-9
Matthew 6:25-34

Who isn’t worried?
The news about the economy just gets bleaker and bleaker.
Banking and insurance companies collapsing;
stock markets in a sickening dive,
not even a spiral,
but head first, straight down;
750,000 jobs lost since January,
and more sure to go as businesses pull back;
Companies that were household names vanished,
there one day, gone the next.

Economists, bankers, business executives,
government officials all trying to understand
why things turned so bad so quickly,
all trying to come up with solutions.

There is no doubt that this is the most serious economic downturn
we have witnessed in more than 70 years.
And it isn’t limited to this country;
the problems are global.
The subject now dominates the election at every level,
state, local, and national.

I find myself transfixed by all this.
When I responded to God’s call to ministry
and went to seminary twelve years ago,
I did not turn my back on the business world
that I had been part of for the previous 15 years.
In fact I stayed actively involved throughout Seminary
working as a contributing editor to business journals
at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania,
where I earned my business degree 30 years ago.

The past few weeks I have been staying up
later at night than I should
surfing the Internet
to find out what is happening in Asian economies:
Japan, China, Korea, India.
I check on Europe early every morning.

I can make a small claim to some prescience:
Back in 1995 when I was with the Economist Group
I led a team that produced a major report
on the complex financial instruments
that companies were just starting to use,
and which now seem to be a major cause
of the economic meltdown.
We wrote that while these hybrid financial instruments
had great benefits,
they required companies to exercise diligent oversight,
and they also required effective
and thorough government regulation.
(“Strategic Derivatives”,
The Economist Intelligence Unit, 1995)

I am baffled by the speed of the meltdown;
I am uncertain about the remedies being proposed;
and I am outraged at the appalling greed of business executives
who led these now troubled businesses.
No one is worth $20 million, $30 million or more;
No one is worth $100,000 a day!

But for as baffled as I am,
as uncertain as I am,
and as angry and outraged as I might be,
am I worried?
One look at my pension plan and retirement savings
tells me I should be.

But I am not.

I am not
because my faith is not in the marketplace,
my faith is Jesus Christ.
I am not worried because Jesus teaches me and you
not to worry.

Our Second Lesson appears twice in the gospels:
first in Matthew, and then again in Luke (12:22)
Don’t worry.
“Do not worry about your life,” says Jesus,
“what you eat or what you will drink,
or about your body, what you will wear.
Is not life more than food,
and the body more than clothing?
…Can any of you by worrying
add a single hour
to your span of life?”

Jesus asks the question,
and we all know the answer is, no.
We know it, even if we don’t weave the lesson
into our lives.

Jesus tells us what we are to do:
“strive for the kingdom of God.”
“strive for the kingdom of God,
and God’s righteousness.”
Each of us, that’s what we are supposed to do,
individually and collectively.

Strive for the kingdom,
strive for righteousness in our lives --
We fill our days with that,
and we won’t have time to worry.
We do that,
and other matters will sort themselves out,
sometimes for the good,
sometimes in other ways.
Our call is to trust,
to have faith,
to let go of our worries
and let God watch over us.

Now that’s all well and good for Jesus to say.
He didn’t have a family to feed,
a car payment to make,
or a mortgage on his house.
He wasn’t concerned with shrinking equity in his home;
he wasn’t concerned about an evaporating 401(k);
and he wasn’t concerned about pending job cutbacks.
Yet still Jesus would say calmly to each us,
“trust in the Lord,”
“have faith.”
“strive for the kingdom of God,”
“strive for God’s righteousness and goodness.”

God’s promise to us is so simple;
it is a promise made in two words,
a mere three letters: “I am”.
“I am”.
God’s promise of presence in our lives,
in good times and in bad times,
even in the bleakest times,
when storm clouds hover over us,
when howling winds threaten to knock us off our feet.
God’s presence to give us the strength we need
to face even the most difficult times.
God promises, “I am”
“I will be with you.”
It is promise that Jesus reinforces
with the same two words: I am.
It is the promise the Psalmist recognized
when he said, “even in the Valley of the Shadow of Death,
you are with me.”
God so close the Psalmist whispers “you”:
“you are with me, even here,
even when I can feel death’s hand on my shoulder,
I know you are with me.”

With that promise,
we can leave worry behind,
for the ground that we stand on
is not the shaky ground of a trouble economy,
it is holy ground.
There is good reason the Psalmist
repeatedly called God,
“the rock of our salvation.”

So this is where we are, here and now,
on October 12, 2008, in the midst
of economic turmoil and uncertainty.
Our trust is in the Lord,
our faith is in the Lord.
We lift worry up to God.
We let go and let God.
Our focus is on the Kingdom, on Christ,
on righteousness.

If only these walls around could talk,
the voices of the saints who’ve gone before us
who filled these seats over the past 141 years,
here and the pews in the old church in Old Town.
They’d all say, “Yes, Yes! Strive for the Kingdom!”
“We lived through the Panic of 1873,
and the Panic of 1893,
and the Panic of 1907,
and the Great Depression,
and the recession of 1953,
and every other economic downturn of the past 50 years.
We lived through wars,
we lived through epidemics.
We built this church from the rubble
of the Civil War.
We lived through it all,
as you will,
for we lived our lives in faith,
putting our trust in the Lord.”

So that’s just what we will do:
lift our fears and our worries to God,
give them over to Jesus
and look confidently ahead,
as we strive for the Kingdom and
work for righteousness.

And the first bold act we can do in faith,
is to plan for our ministries and missions for 2009,
plan confidently.
And the starting point for that is for each of us
to make a pledge of support
to the Stewardship Campaign we begin today.

Our Stewardship Ministry Team has put in many, many
hours to develop a campaign to help us understand our needs,
all the different missions and ministries we support.
And just as important, the Stewardship team
has created a campaign designed to build community,
and even encourage us to have some fun in the process.

We are excited about this year’s campaign
because we are excited about the ministry of this church,
excited about what Jesus calls us to do,
and excited about what Jesus may call us to do in the future.

Stewardship is not just about money,
not just about filling out our pledge cards,
as important as that is.
It is about everything we do,
how we live our lives as Christians.
It is about striving for the Kingdom,
God’s Kingdom, as Jesus would have us,
here and now in our every act,
our every word and deed.
Stewardship is living our faith,
trusting God,
even when dark clouds fill the sky over us,

The officers of our church have taken the lead
in this year’s campaign.
You heard Mishelle:
every Elder and Deacon,
every one of them,
has already returned a pledge card.
This is a wonderful way to start:
100% participation from our officers.
My card is in;
I returned it in August.

Now it’s your turn.
Now it is your turn.
Even if next year looks uncertain for you,
return a pledge card;
If you are uncomfortable with the word “pledge”,
then use the term “estimate of offering”:
your best estimate of what you hope
to return to God next year
from what God gives you.

You’ve heard the reasons:
pledging is important because it helps us plan,
helps us develop a budget;
pledging is important because it builds community,
with all of us working together;
But most important,
pledging is your opportunity to put your trust in God,
to act in faith,
to respond to God,
to offer your gratitude to God,
to make that commitment, that act of faith
in your pledge to return to God
a portion of what God has given you.

Your pledge is your opportunity to say to God
“Thank you for what you have given me.
I recognize your blessings
and so with joy and thanksgiving,
with faith and trust,
I willingly, eagerly, return a portion
of what has come from you, O God.”

Filling out a pledge card
is a statement of faith;
In this economy it may require a leap of faith,
a stretch.
But isn’t that was Jesus call us to do:
to stretch as we follow him,
stretch in our lives as disciples?

And that will be easy to do
won’t it, because of God’s promises to us,
the promise of “I am”.

So let’s get this Pony Express on the trail,
off to a galloping start,
and then let’s look forward to a successful conclusion,
to November 16 when we end the campaign,
when we gather as the children of Israel did before David,
“the people rejoicing
because they had given willingly
with a single mind
offering freely to the Lord.”
Each of us,
all of us together,
striving for the Kingdom,
all of us putting our faith and trust
utterly and completely in God.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow!
AMEN

Variations on One

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
October 5, 2008

Variations on One
Leviticus 16:29-31
Matthew 7:12

It may have been in elementary school,
possibly middle school,
or maybe it didn’t happen until high school,
but we’ve probably all done it:
sat with a globe in front of us,
a model of the earth.
We’ve spun the ball on its axis,
and wondered why the axis runs at an angle
tipped toward the diagonal,
rather than straight up and down.

We’ve run our finger over the equator,
to see how the line that divides the northern hemisphere
from the southern cuts across countries, continents and oceans.
We’ve wondered whether we could really dig a tunnel
through the earth and come out in China or Australia,
and if we were to do that,
would they be upside down, or would we?

A globe helps us to see just how much water covers the earth;
most of the surface is water: oceans, seas, lakes, rivers.
Our baptismal liturgy, which we heard last week,
reminds us that water gives us life.

We can point to the spot on the globe
that is Manassas Virginia, where we live.
The spot, tiny as it is,
that’s home for us.
Then turn the globe slowly to the right,
and run your finger on the latitude
that runs through Manassas,
not quite 39 degrees north.
Follow it on its westerly course across the country to San Francisco,
and then out across the Pacific.
We are well north of the Hawaiian islands,
so we won’t hit land until we get to Japan.
From there we move to Korea --
North Korea, to be precise,
and then into China,
across the Gobi Desert,
and to the steppes of Central Asia.

Keep moving, turning the globe slowly,
and watch your finger move across
Iran, Turkey, Greece,
the toe of Italy,
across the Mediterranean,
through Spain and Portugal,
one last bump into land at the Azores
and then we are back home.

In that quick tour,
how many different countries would we have visited?
How many different people?
How many different languages?
How many different cultures?
How many different beliefs?

We would have traversed nations that we once considered
to be our enemies,
but with whom we now live in peace;
And we would have traversed nations
we now think of as our enemies,
but who were once our friends.

There are more some 200 different countries in this world,
and more than 6 billion people.
Such a vast world, almost beyond our ability to comprehend,
yet, it was the anthropologist Margaret Mead
who reminded us that there is only one human race.
For all our variations, we are but one,
one humanity,
one human species.
We may speak different languages;
our skins may have different hues;
we may eat different kinds of food;
we may even have different theological beliefs;
but still we are one humanity, one people,
in so many variations.

On this World Communion Sunday
we join with millions and millions of followers
of Jesus Christ scattered through the world
and come to the Lord’s Table, all of us together,
responding to the invitation that comes
from Christ himself.
We reflect the world’s diversity,
the variations of humankind.

Could there be a better time,
and a better place for us to remember
that Christ teaches us to work for reconciliation and peace,
and not just with our brothers and sisters in Christ,
even though we often find that hard enough,
but lives of reconciliation with all the world,
all humanity.

Could Jesus’ teaching on the Golden Rule
have captured that in any simpler way?
It is all encompassing.
He did not put any limits, any conditions on the “others”.
He meant everyone.
Do you remember how we talked a couple of weeks ago
of Jesus’ lesson when he said,
“let the little children come to me”?
He was including all children in his invitation.
Would Jesus have turned away a Samaritan child?
A Roman child?
A Greek child?
An Ethiopian Child?

We should learn of other peoples, other cultures,
and other faiths and beliefs.
Learn to appreciate differences in culture and beliefs;
Learn to find joy in the variations God has created,
even as we are one.
There is so much we can learn from others,
if we only would lose our fear of the different.

This week, for example,
we have a wonderful opportunity to learn
from our Jewish brothers and sisters,
as they mark their High Holy Days,
a ten-day period that began last Tuesday with Rosh Hashanah,
and ends on Thursday with Yom Kippur,
the Day of Atonement.

Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of a new year for Jews,
but it is not a time for hats and horns and “auld lange syne”.
It marks a time for introspection,
a time for reflection,
a time for repentance.

We heard in our First Lesson the foundation for Yom Kippur,
the Day of Atonement.
It is a day to seek forgiveness and to offer forgiveness.
Not just from God, but with everyone.
Get mad at someone and carry a grudge with you,
and the longest you can do that is 364 days:
Come the Day of Atonement,
God expects you to offer forgiveness;
completely and absolutely.
The wrong, the injury, doesn’t matter.
It is time to let it go, lifting it up to God.

Yom Kippur is all about community,
renewing it,
ridding the community of the toxin and poison
that comes with anger and grudges,
resentment and bitterness.
Yom Kippur makes the way clear for reconciliation,
renewal and restoration.
Perhaps we would have an easier time following Jesus’
call to work for peace and reconciliation if we learned
from our Jewish brothers and sisters this powerful lesson.

We come to this Lord’s Table
always filled with a sense of awe and wonder,
for we come to be lifted up into the presence of Christ himself,
to sit at table with all the saints
throughout all time.

But then we go from this Table,
renewed, refreshed, filled with new life
by the power of the Holy Spirit,
and we go out into the world
a world filled with Christians
and so many others.
We go from the table on World Communion Sunday
charged by Christ
to make tomorrow World Community Monday,
and the day after that World Community Tuesday,
and onward with each new day.

God can often be inscrutable and mysterious,
but he makes so very clear that this is what he wants for us.
Speaking through the prophet, God says,
“On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food…
and he will destroy the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations.” (Isaiah 25:6)

All peoples,
and all nations,
in all the wonderful variations God has created,
all people,
who are still but one.
This is the word of the Lord!
AMEN