Now As Our Service Begins

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
July 12, 2009

Now As Our Service Begins
James 2:14-17

“Now as our service begins” --
such an ordinary sentence,
such ordinary words,
words that would seem so appropriate
at the start of our worship service,
perhaps right after the Call to Worship
as a prelude to the Opening Hymn:
“Now as our service begins,
let us sing out, making a joyful noise to the Lord…”

I’ve spoken those words in Worship from time to time,
but do you remember when I’ve said them?
I’ve never said them at the beginning of our service;
I’ve said them at the end,
as part of the Benediction,
right before we leave,
in a place in the service where they don’t seem to fit.
Our service is about to end,
not begin,
and yet: “now as our service begins…”

But those words do fit there, don’t they?
They work.
For in saying those words as part of the Benediction,
we are reminding ourselves
that even as our worship service
is coming to an end,
our lives in service as disciples of Jesus Christ,
are about to begin as we go from this place,
go back out into the world.

It was the Reverend Dr. Herb Anderson,
the senior pastor at the Brick Presbyterian Church
where I was active 15 years ago,
who always began his Benediction
with the words,
“now as our service begins…”
The first time I heard him speak those words,
I thought he’d made a mistake.
But then I realized it was intentional;
In speaking them, Dr. Anderson was reminding us
of the words our Risen Lord spoke to the disciples
on the evening of the first Easter Sunday:
“As the Father has sent me,
so I send you.”
(John 20:21)

Those are words Jesus spoke not just to the 11,
they are words Jesus speaks to all us
here and now every time we leave this place,
every time we set out into the world:
“As the Father has sent me,
so I send you.”

We are all called to go out and serve,
and we serve the Lord in countless ways.
A small army of disciples will serve the Lord
this coming week as we welcome more than 100 children
to our Vacation Bible School.
Most of the children and their parents
will be visitors, new to us.
Most will have their own church homes.
That’s just fine.
Our mission, our ministry,
our service this coming week is simple:
it is to share the grace and love
we’ve been given through Jesus Christ.
And that’s what we will do:
through music, through playtime,
through crafts, through learning,..
and through a great deal of fun!

We go out and serve in other ways, too:
The Habitat team that will go off for a week
and help people with such a fundamental need:
a roof over their heads,
walls to keep out the wind and the rain and the cold,
a safe, and comfortable place.
Our Young people will be based at Meadowkirk,
the Presbytery’s beautiful facility out in Middleburg.
Meadowkirk itself is a mission and a ministry of our church
through the National Capital Presbytery.
Our young folks will be based there to worship, learn,
work and serve in different ways each day.

Perhaps within the next few years
we’ll be able to send a group of youth and adults
on a Mission trip to Central America,
South America, or some other part of the world
far from Manassas.
We won’t do that because the needs elsewhere
are greater than the needs we have right here
in our own community.
But experiences like that help us to break down cultural barriers,
help us to understand that God is everywhere, in all places.
and that followers of Jesus Christ
may speak different languages,
but we share a bond of love, grace,
and a commitment to service.

Once a quarter I receive an update from a classmate from seminary,
who three years ago moved with his wife and children
to rural northern China
where he felt God was calling him.
Charles had spent the previous six years
as director of Asian programs for World Relief,
and had traveled frequently to the area
where he now lives;
he knew it well, knew the people
knew their needs.
Charles’ background is similar to mine:
he came to seminary after a successful career in business.
He now lives his faith by teaching business skills
to men and women,
skills that will help them establish businesses and
improve the economy in that area.
His dream is to help establish a wind-power facility
to generate electricity a few miles away,
across the border that separates China and North Korea.
Charles and his family live the gospel
as they bring learning, hope, and love
to a desolate corner of the world.

Of course, we don’t have to pack a suitcase
and head to some distant location to serve the Lord.
We are called to missionary lives
the moment we walk out of this Sanctuary,
We are sent out to serve,
but that service can happen even before we
get to our car in the parking lot.

Mission work is not a program the church offers;
it isn’t something that happens only during a week in the summer
or from time to time
on a Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon.
Doing missional, missionary work is how we are to live our lives
as disciples of Jesus Christ.

The Rev. Leslie Newbigin, a British pastor and theologian
who wrote prolifically on mission, reminds us,
“Mission is not marginal to the life of the church,
but definitive of it, central to its being….
The church is God’s sending, His mission.”
(Signs Amid the Rubble, 95)

In living missional lives, we understand that
we are not “taking God” out into the world;
God’s already there.
What we are doing is responding to Christ’s call
to take God’s grace, God’s love,
God’s justice, God’s mercy into the world,
and we do that through our words and actions.

We do that in the lives we live in our workplaces,
schools, neighborhoods,
even where we go on vacation.
Newbigin tells us that our business is to go outside these walls
where God is already very much at work
and “become aware of what God is doing
and then join Him and work with Him.”
(Newbigin, 96)

This is our faith at work.
which is the point James, the brother of Jesus,
was trying to make in our text.
This is a text that has been badly muddled over the years.
It has been read as a directive for what was termed,
“works righteousness”:
that you have to work your way into the Kingdom,
pile up your positive points
to offset the negative points
that we inevitably accumulate each day.
The Letter has been read as conflicting with Paul’s teaching
that our salvation comes solely by the grace of God.
Martin Luther found this letter so troubling
he didn’t think it should have been included in the Bible.

But James doesn’t disagree with Paul at all.
What he was teaching was simple,
he was building on the words of his brother,
our Lord: don’t just be hearers of the Word,
be doers. (Matthew 7:24-27)
Live your faith. Work your faith.
No matter how deep and frequent your prayers,
no matter how spiritual your every word might be,
for James, “faith by itself,
if it has no works is dead.”

We are called to go out in faith and serve.
That’s what Jesus told the disciples on that first Easter evening.
Go forth, and they all did.
None found the journey easy,
but Jesus never said it would be.

In one of his many wonderful books
Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote that we are called
to “adventurous religion”
as we work in faith and work our faith for the glory of God.
“The life to which Jesus summons us,”
Fosdick wrote,
“requires bravery to undertake
and fortitude to continue.”
it isn’t just a feeling good, feeling holy;
It is about getting out there and doing.
It is about getting out
and moving mountains.

God looks to us to
help feed the hungry
help house the homeless,
help comfort the lonely.
But God calls us to do even more.
God call us to:
work for reconciliation where there is no hope for reconciliation;
bring love where there is no love to be found anywhere;
bring peace where there is no hope for peace;
bring hope where there is no hope,
God calls us to go out into the world
remembering the promise that is on our white bracelets:
“with God, all things are possible”
(Mark 10:27)

Building missional skills takes time and effort
but there is a very easy place where you can start,
an easy place where you can work on your works:
right here in this place
every Sunday as you cultivate your hospitality,
hospitality to one another,
and even more, hospitality to visitors and strangers.

You have heard me say before that
we should be a congregation of Jess Pepples,
every one of us, reaching out
in friendship and in welcome.
Hospitality, welcome, outreach:
it isn’t just the work of the Membership Ministry Team,
it is the work God calls every one of us to.

Talk gets us only so far, no matter how faith-filled,
no matter how spiritual the words sound.
Talk isn’t enough.
Our words are to be accompanied by action;
our acts, action and attitude in harmony,
here, and in the world at large.

So, go.
Go out to live your faith,
Go out and work your faith,
Go out and live “adventurous religion”,
for in just a few minutes
our worship service will end,
and your service,
your service as a disciple of Jesus Christ,
will begin.
AMEN