Ecclesiology

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
January 18, 2009

Ecclesiology
Matthew 16:13-20

Ecclesiology:
It’s one of those “churchy” words.
It sounds rather old fashioned,
a word like “catechumen”, or “anathema”.
It’s a word we are more likely to leave to scholars
to use in ponderous texts with titles like,
“Comparative Ecclesiology:
Post-Modern Perspectives on Global Ecumenism”.

Go to the Greek text of our lesson, however,
and we will find the root of the word:
“ekklesia”.
We translate the Greek word as, “church”.

Jesus provides us with a lesson in ecclesiology
when he tells Peter that he is to be the rock
on which Jesus will build his church.
Jesus will be the cornerstone, of course,
but Peter will be the rock on which the church will be built,
the first among the apostles who will be the foundation
of what we now call the holy catholic church,
the church universal:
all those who follow Jesus Christ.

In the gospels Peter is ever the fisherman:
a man with a strong back and calloused hands,
a man no one would have called religious
or for that matter even spiritual.
But in this lesson, Peter seems to “get it”
seems to understand.
More often than not, Peter doesn’t get,
his eyes opened, but not seeing,
in the process reminding us that
Jesus called ordinary men to follow him,
none of them called for their religious fervor
or their piety,
all of them just like you and me,
and yet all of them called to join with Peter
to be part of the “ekklesia”,
the church.

We hear the word “church” and we think of a building:
these walls all around us:
“Come to my church”, we might say to someone,
and then we’d describe it as that brick building
on the hill on Ashton Avenue, near Costco.

The word as Jesus used it did not refer to a building, though,
or even an institution.
Paul helped us to understand when he described
the “ekklesia” as the “body of Christ”.
The church is the people,
as grammatically awkward as that sentence is.
We are the church,
you and I.

And yet there’s still more to the word:
it means even more than the body,
a group assembled;
it means a group “called out”,
called to action, called to response…
called to service.
This is the cornerstone of ecclesiology -
Jesus’ ecclesiology.
He did not call out the disciples
just so he would have company on the road
as he took the good news of the gospel
out into the villages of Judea.
He called the disciples to work, to serve, to do.
He called each with expectations --
expectations for the role each would play
in building the church.

Jesus calls each of us here and now in the same way
he called Peter and the other disciples.
We are all called to be part of Jesus’ ecclesiology:
We are all called out to work, to serve, to do.

Our officers, those who serve God and this church
as Elders and Deacons, are examples of service;
The Book of Order encourages them to be
models of service.
But our officers are certainly not the only ones
called out to service -- We all are:
That’s part of being the church,
being part of the Body.
Called out, called to serve, called to respond.
Called to build the body of Christ.

God has given us each gifts, gifts we are called to use
to build the Body.
Paul teaches us this lesson in his letter to the church at Corinth
reminding the men and women of that church,
that they had all been called out,
and that each had been called to respond in accordance
with the gifts given them by God through the Holy Spirit.

We use the passage in our service of Ordination
and Installation for Officers:
“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit;
and there are varieties of services but the same Lord;
and there are varieties of activities,
but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.
To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit
for the common good.” (1 Cor. 12:4-7)

We all have gifts, every one of us,
given us by God
and we are called, called out,
called out by Jesus to use them,
to use them to build up this Body of Christ
that we call Manassas Presbyterian Church;
to build up the body we call the Presbyterian Church (USA);
and to build up the body we call
the holy catholic church, the church universal.

No matter how big the church is
no matter how large a staff a church has,
churches run on their volunteers,
on the active participation of every member.
That’s how we work here:
our full time staff numbers just three:
me, Ann, and Russell Jackson, our sexton.
Deborah Panell, Pam Rice, and Lisa Faust
for all the hours they put in,
are all part-time staff.

Our Ministry Teams are the core
of how we do our work.
Last fall we focused on each Ministry Team
as they each shared what they did,
what their ministries are.
There isn’t a Ministry Team,
or any other group in our church,
that couldn’t use help,
that would not welcome one, two, three, or more volunteers.

As we begin a New Year,
it is the perfect time to think about finding a place,
for you to participate,
to respond to Christ’s call to service.
Perhaps you are looking for a new place to be involved,
or maybe you have not been that involved
the last year or so
and are looking for a new opportunity.

In serving we respond to Christ’s call to ecclesiology.
In serving we acknowledge that we have not simply been called
to join a social club called Manassas Presbyterian Church,
but that we have been called out for service
in the name of Christ.

Perhaps you have an interest in teaching,
learning and lessons;
then Christian Education might be the place for you.
CE helps organize not only our Sunday School offerings,
but helps coordinate Youth Group activities,
organizes Adult Education, including
the Year of the Bible offerings,
and even oversees Vacation Bible School.

Feeling called to our Mission Ministry Team?
This group receives more requests than we can possibly respond to;
they go through them and help us respond faithfully
to our call to look after those in need in our
local community, our country,
and the world at large.
Last weekend our Elders and Deacons spent a great deal of time
discussing how difficult it can be
to find the right balance with our giving,
to assure that we are looking after needs far beyond our church,
even as we make sure we take of our brothers and sisters
here within our family.

Stewardship, Property, Finance,
Choir, Women’s Circles,
Jesus is calling you somewhere and is waiting for your “yes”.
Jesus is always waiting for our yes, for all of us.
It’s so much easier to say “No”.
I did my share of saying “no” over the years.
More than 20 years ago,
when I was a member of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Buffalo
I was always quick to say,
“I am sorry but I am too busy with other things;
maybe next year.”
And then when next year came,
I said the same thing.

But God is wonderfully patient and persistent,
and finally found a path that led to my “yes”
when the pastor asked me to help out
with the Stewardship Campaign.
I said yes reluctantly,
but I found the experience a revelation;
it opened my eyes, my mind, my heart
to ecclesiology,
to my responsibility to say yes to Jesus.
And in the process,
I found that where I always feared
service would be a burden
it was instead a joy.
I never hesitated to say “yes” again.

If you are waiting to be asked,
your wait is over: Jesus is asking you here and now,
asking you to be part of his ecclesiology
as he calls you and me to service in his name.

When we respond, we participate more fully
in the new life that is ours in Christ,
through Christ and with Christ,
a life that is never ordinary,
but always extraordinary,
for it is a life that not only builds the Body of Christ,
but also gives us a glimpse of the Kingdom of God –
that place we all hunger for.

You, me, every one of us -
we are being tapped on the shoulder here and now:
“Come and serve”, says Jesus,
“Come and build my church.”
“Come and reveal the Kingdom.”
As we begin a New Year,
could any of us have a better invitation?
AMEN

Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
January 4, 2009

Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?
Matthew 2:1-12

Read through the book of Job,
as those of who you who have begun the Year of the Bible
will do later in the year,
and you will read a lot of talk.
Job and his friends talk back and forth,
almost endlessly it seems.
A colleague from Mississippi who has a knack for colorful phrases
would probably describe the scene
as a whole lot of “chin-waggin’”.
Thirty-six chapters of it
before God steps in and silences all
with a voice that says,
“Stop talking for change,
and just listen”.

But there in the midst of the “chin-waggin”,
after 27 chapters of it,
comes chapter 28,
a chapter where the talking stops,
a chapter that seems dropped in;
it seems almost out of place.

Chapter twenty-eight is a Hamlet-like soliloquy
in which Job stops and reflects on the topic of wisdom.
He asks the question, “where shall wisdom be found?”
“Where,” he asks, “is the place of understanding?”

The vacuous talk-radio jabbering
that filled the previous 27 chapters
and resumes in chapter 29, stops abruptly.
It is stopped by the question so rarely asked in Job’s time,
so rarely asked in our time:
“Where shall wisdom be found?
Where is the place of understanding?”

What makes a person wise?
We all know bright people
men and women of great intelligence,
but intelligence is not the same as wisdom.

Matthew calls the the astrologers who followed the star,
“wise men”.
But on the surface, these men don’t seem terribly wise:
What wise person, man or woman,
after seeing a star in the night sky,
no matter how extraordinarily bright,
would decide to follow the star --
follow it to who knows what end,
follow it on a journey of…how long:
a week, a month, a year?

Perhaps we are wrong to call them wise men,
wrong because they don’t seem terribly wise.
Or perhaps we are wrong to call them wise men
because the word “wise” is not a very good translation
of the word Matthew used to describe these men.

The word Matthew used was “magi”,
a Greek word
which referred to someone from the eastern lands
of Media and Persia,
someone who could interpret dreams,
someone who looked to the stars for guidance
and wisdom.
Would we think of someone who sets his life’s course
by the stars as a wise person?

Still, these astrologers saw the star
and set out on their journey,
a journey that probably took them
at least a month,
probably more.
Certainly more than the twelve days
tradition has set aside for Epiphany.

Off they went to Bethlehem,
to see a child,
a child born a king.
A child they knew nothing about,
a child born in a far distant land,
a foreign land.
It all sounds rather fantastic.

And when they finally arrived,
Matthew tells us they went into the house –
no stable or manger in Matthew’s story -
and they knelt down
and they paid the child homage,
and then they gave the child gifts:
gold, frankincense and myrrh,
precious gifts.

And with that they left,
left to return to their own land.
All that time, all that distance,
all for what appears to be just a few minutes
all to leave behind a few gifts,
expensive gifts,
gifts left to a child they did not now
and would likely never see again.
Where is the wisdom in that?

Frederick Buechner suggests that one of the characteristics of wisdom
is curiosity, a hunger to learn,
a hunger to know,
a hunger to understand.
Clearly, these astrologers had this hunger.
They may well have said the same words to one another
the shepherds said,
“Let us go and see this thing that has taken place.”

And Buechner suggests that there is another characteristic
of a wise person, man or woman,
and that is the desire to give, to share,
and these men did just that:
they gave gifts, precious gifts, treasures:
gold, frankincense and myrrh.
But even more than these gifts,
they gave themselves:
they gave themselves in their journey,
an arduous, difficult, dangerous journey.
And they gave of themselves when they entered the house
and dropped down on bended knee,
to pay homage
to a child they knew was king.

And in giving themselves,
these wise men were given a gift in return,
a gift from God, the father of the child,
the gift of joy, inexpressible joy
that comes only from God.

These wise men understood what Job had concluded
as he sought an answer to his question,
“where shall wisdom be found?”
It is to be found in God, found in faith,
found, as Job put it,
in the fear of the Lord.
But this is not the fear we feel
when we say we are afraid.
No, the Hebrew word we translate as fear
can also be translated as “awe” --
that the beginning of wisdom
is standing in awe of the Lord God,
or better yet,
kneeling in awe before the Lord God.

The beginning of wisdom is humbleness,
humility;
it is obedience,
it is a hunger to learn, a hunger to understand,
a realization that we need to do a lot more listening
and a lot less “chin waggin’”.

Ebenezer Scrooge woke up on Christmas morning a wise man,
In his ghostly travels throughout the night
he learned that his business was not business
as he had thought all those years;
his business was mankind, humanity,
the welfare of any and all,
family, friend, and stranger.
He woke up a wise man
for he learned for the first time in his life
the importance of giving
giving his money, yes,
as he bought the prize turkey
for Bob Cratchit and his family,
but just as important,
giving himself.

Where shall wisdom be found?
Wisdom is found in faith,
in maturity,
in growing,
in listening,
in learning,
… in God.

Wisdom is not something that we find
like the proverbial pot of gold
at the end of the rainbow;
it is something we accumulate throughout our lives
throughout our journey,
but only if we work at it.

And there is no better way to begin the journey
or resume the journey as we start a New year
than by coming to this Table.
This Lord’s Table,
to share in this meal our Lord has prepared for us,
this meal to which he invites all who put trust in him.

At this Table, our Lord feeds us,
nourishes us,
renews us and refreshes us for the journey.
At this Table, our Lord gives to us
so we can continue to grow in faith,
grow in wisdom.

So come to this Table and receive the gift
our Lord gives to us in this meal,
and then go out into the world,
a little wiser, a little richer;
Go out and give of yourself
to those who hunger, those who thirst,
those who are filled with loneliness or hopelessness,
those whose lives are filled with fear,
the fear that eats and gnaws at even the strongest.

Where shall wisdom be found,
and where is the place of understanding?
Three men from Media, three astrologers,
they knew:
they knew that wisdom could be found
by kneeling before a baby born in Bethlehem,
kneeling before our Lord Jesus Christ.
Wise men?
Yes, wise men, indeed.
AMEN