Sunday, August 30, 2009

Truth or Consequences

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
August 30, 2009

Truth or Consequences
Ephesians 4:14-16

“FINAL NOTICE”
were the words on the outside of the envelope
the mail carrier had just delivered.
Big, bold, heavy letters.
Below those words were “Verification Required.”
On the upper left corner
were more official-looking words,
this time in a box,
words that said, “deliver directly to addressee;
obstruction of US Mail is a federal offense
punishable by fine and imprisonment.”

I was clearly holding in my hand something very important,
something that required my immediate attention.
What was it?
I knew we were up to date with our bills,
so I was not expecting a notice from the gas company
or any other utility company that we were past due.
Our mortgage payments have been timely,
as have our credit card payments.
What was this ominous FINAL NOTICE?

I tore open the envelope,
expecting to find a legal notice of some sort,
mildly threatening, something to stir me to action.
Instead what I found was a certificate;
it said it was worth $300 at Wal-Mart.
I read further:
“Our Promotional Department shows that
you have been awarded two round-trip tickets
to any major international airport
anywhere in the continental USA.”

But wait! There was more:
A free stay at the Marriott;
a free dinner at Red Lobster;
an American Express Gift Card.

This was no Final Notice.
This was something very different.
Something enticing, exciting…

It was also something else:
What I held in my hand was … a lie.
A lie, a fabrication,
a phony come-on
to entice and encourage me
to telephone a 1-800 number,
most likely to hear a sales pitch,
for something I neither wanted
nor needed.

There was no identification anywhere on any of the papers
to tell me who the company was
that was behind the lie.
Nothing, just a string of lies,
to hook me, pull me in.

A lie.
A harsh word, isn’t it?
Perhaps too harsh to use for the kind of come-on
companies use all the time?

Auto dealers have for years
sent out sales pitches enclosed in envelopes
designed to look like they are from
the Internal Revenue Service,
an official letter from the IRS.
The dealers send them out about the time
tax refunds are sent out,
hoping the pitch will encourage folks
with a big refund to spend it on a car.
A lie?
Or just clever marketing?

It is a lie. Absolutely.
A lie is defined very simply:
“something meant to deceive
or give a wrong impression”
(Am. Her. Dictionary, 4th, 1010)

The envelope I opened last week
was designed intentionally,
knowingly, purposely,
to give me the wrong impression
that it was some sort of legal notice.
Inside were more misrepresentations:
that I had won something entirely free
from Wal-Mart, Marriott,
Red Lobster, and American Express.

Tobacco companies are adept at lying.
They lied all those years
they denied any causal link between
smoking cigarettes and cancer.
We know now that they knew then,
that cigarettes caused cancer.

Insurance companies lie when they say
they are on your side,
and then make you fight
to have hospital and doctor bills paid:
“that’s not covered;
that’s excluded;
that was a pre-existing condition;
that provider is out of network;
you failed to get the necessary pre-approval…”

Lies surround us, they wash over us.
False statements in the business world,
on television,
in churches,
from companies,
from individuals,
statements spoken, written, sung,
e-mailed, texted, IM’d,
and now twittered,
statements meant to deceive,
to mislead,
to provide the wrong impression,
to lie.

We’ve been lying since Adam and Eve.
Cain murdered his brother,
and when God inquired as to Abel’s whereabouts,
Cain lied to God, saying “I don’t know.”

The Ninth Commandment is often thought to say,
“Thou Shalt Not Lie”.
But that’s not what it says.
Do you remember?
It says, “you shall not bear false witness
against your neighbor.”
(Ex. 20:16)
In other words, don’t lie about your neighbor in court.
This begs the question, is it okay to lie
to my neighbor,
or about my neighbor,
as long as I don’t lie under oath in court?

Of course not.
The Rabbi who gave us the sixth chapter of Proverbs
helps us to understand that God has no tolerance
for lies of any kind: in court, out of court,
over a backyard fence,
or on a major television network:
“The Lord hates a lying tongue;
[it is an] an abomination to him.”
(Proverbs 6:16-17)

The word “lie” seems so harsh, so heavy.
So what do we do?
We come up with other words, of course!
We call them “mis-statements”.
Or we say the person on the receiving end of the lie
misunderstood.
We find it easy to make truth relative and subjective.
The company that sent me the lying letter,
thinks it is providing me with an opportunity.
Tobacco companies argue all they are doing
is providing customers with a product
in the marketplace.
But this is a slippery slope.
It wasn’t, after all, Jesus who made truth relative,
it was Pontius Pilate
when he so famously asked,
“what is truth?”
(John 18:38)

The biggest lie that has grabbed hold of us
these past few weeks is the lie that
the Health Reform Act being discussed by Congress
contains language that would create “death panels”,
groups of Kafka-esque bureaucrats
who would review cases of those nearing the end of life,
and decide who should get care, and who should not.

It is a lie. Saying so is not a political statement.
It is simply calling the statement what it is:
holding it up to the bright light of truth.
All Christians, regardless of political persuasion,
should find the death panel lie particularly vile,
first, because it is a lie;
second, because of the subject.

The language that is being misrepresented
deals with the difficult choices that confront all of us
at the end of life,
choices and options I discuss with people regularly,
as all clergy do.

Things like:
do you want an advanced directive?
a do-not-resuscitate order?
does someone have your health proxy
to make decisions if you are not able to?
What about hospice and palliative care?
Would you be willing to be an organ donor?

I have discussed these issues with many people over the years.
Does that make me a one-man death panel?

Last week we spoke of the mysteries that envelope us
as we walk by faith,
as we live our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ.
Is there a greater mystery than what happens
as we make that transition from this life to the next?
When we draw our last breath
and enter not eternal rest,
but eternal love and eternal joy
in God’s heavenly kingdom?

We may face that mystery with confidence grounded in faith,
but the process is one that can be frightening
for ourselves and loved ones.
Talking about it, planning,
thinking through choices and options,
can help lift the weight of worry,
take away some of the fear,
even just a little.

Joy Davidman, who was the wife of C. S. Lewis,
wrote that “Lies go hand in hand with language”
(Smoke on the Mountain, 107)
Lies and liars have always been with us,
and always will be.
But what gives a lie life is not the liar;
You and I are the ones who give life to a lie
by believing it.
You and I are the ones who determine
whether a lie will wither and fade,
or blossom and flourish.
It takes two to make a lie:
Liars need people to believe their lies.

That’s the lesson Paul was trying to teach the Ephesians
in our text.
In Paul’s day, there were many men and women
who claimed to know the gospel,
claimed to speak for Jesus Christ.
Paul knew they were liars,
they were, in Paul’s wonderful words,
“hucksters of God’s word” (2 Cor. 2:17)
interested only in the profit they could make
from duping others.
Paul knew there wasn’t much he could do about them.
He knew that God would deal with them
in God’s way and in God’s time.

What Paul could do was urge those who were listening
to listen carefully,
listen critically, ask questions,
check facts.
Don’t just accept what the person was saying
even if the person sounded authoritative.
Paul would say to us today,
“Just because you heard it on television
does not make it true.”

And so to the Ephesians we hear,
“We must no longer be children,
tossed to and fro
and blown about by every wind of doctrine,
by people’s trickery,
by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.”
(Ephesians 4:14)

These are words for us, too.
We are to listen carefully,
probe, do our homework,
use our minds,
test the words,
ask ourselves,
do they really make any sense?

Does the idea of death panel make any sense at all?
Of course not.
The idea is so nonsensical,
that what no one has yet pointed out,
is that it made for a great plot for a hilarious novel
entitled Boomsday, published two years ago
by Christopher Buckley.
Boomsday’s premise was that
in order to keep Social Security solvent
as the enormous cohort of Baby Boomers retired,
the government would offer financial incentives
to any and every Boomer who elected the path of
what the government called,
“voluntary transition”
from this life to the next.
and in the process, of course,
not be around to collect
Social Security.

We talked last week
that even as we are called to embrace
God’s holy mysteries,
even as we acknowledge that there are many things
we will never fully understand,
even as we accept that we walk by faith,
we still need to read, learn, discern,
live our faith with both heart and mind fully engaged.
Only then will we be able to discern
truth from lie,
myth from reality.

Only then will we not be
“blown about by every wind of doctrine,
by people’s trickery,
by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.”

The Grand Inquisitor of Dostoevsky’s famous novel
The Brothers Karamazov complains to Jesus,
“Instead of taking over [our] freedom, you increased it…
Instead of the firm ancient law,
[we have] to decide for [ourselves],
with a free heart, what is good and what is evil,
having only your image before [us] as [our] guide.”

We are free to speak the truth
and we are free to lie.
We are free to accept the truth
and we are free to accept lies.
We are free to turn from lies,
expose them,
leave them so they wither and die
the quick death they deserve.

A simple test:
Do the words build community?
Are they constructive?
Do they enhance justice?
Mercy?
Goodness?
Love?
Do they reconcile or do they divide?
Do they show a desire for the greater good?
Compassion for others?
Are they words the speaker would say just as boldly
just as confidently,
just as authoritatively
if he or she was speaking directly to Jesus?
Paul sums it up well:
“do the words give grace
to those who hear them.” (Eph. 4:29)

You and I are are called by Christ
to speak the truth
and embrace the truth.
We are called by Christ to reject lies.

The consequence of embracing lies
is that we continue to live in the flesh,
but the consequence of embracing truth
is that we live more completely in the Spirit,
the Spirit of Christ.
"Let anyone with ears to hear listen”
(Mark 4:9)
AMEN

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Mysteries

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
August 23, 2009

Mysteries
John 7:37-39

The man was arrogant, condescending, patronizing,
way too sure of himself.
He was selfish,
cold,
manipulative.
His every word to everyone
was insulting, hurtful.
All he cared about was himself.

It was only a matter of time,
that was obvious.
And then it happened:
In the garden, just off the terrace.
He was basking in the warmth of the late afternoon sun,
breathing in the fresh country air
scented sweetly with lavender,
when, Bang!
The man crumpled to the ground,
the victim in yet another
Agatha Christie murder mystery.

This was a wonderful performance of Christie’s play
“The Hollow” which we saw two weeks ago
at the Playhouse in Dorset Vermont.
The actor playing the arrogant, callous victim
was wonderfully contemptuous
of everyone around him.

Of course, that made every other character in the play
a possible suspect in his murder.
No one liked him; everyone hated him;
everyone had a motive for pulling the trigger.
This is the formula in many Agatha Christie mysteries
and what makes her stories and plays so riveting
as you try to figure out “who dunnit”.
Was it the long-suffering wife?
the cast-off girlfiend?
the beaten-down rival?
the wealthy but eccentric hostess?
And of course, we have to ask: did the butler do it?

We love mysteries, don’t we?
We love to be faced with riddles
and then try to figure them out.
But of course we insist on an ending,
a logical, sensible ending,
a conclusion neatly tied up.
We don’t like to be left hanging,
without an answer.
In the play we got our answer,
but only after the playwright had led us down
more blind alleys than we could count.
Agatha Christie is skilled at diverting attention
from the real culprit,
the character who finally admits his or her guilt
in the very last scene,
the last person anyone would have expected to be led off
in handcuffs by the plodding police inspector
as the final curtain falls.

The Bible is no Agatha Christie novel,
but it is a book filled with mysteries,
a book filled with conundrums,
a book filled with enigmas,
a book that seems to raise two questions
for every one answer it provides.

When we read through a passage, a story,
even a simple sentence,
that sounds confusing, even a little mysterious,
we find ourselves eager to figure it out,
eager to make sense of it.
We want certainty.
We want light, a clear path ahead.
We want a nice, neat conclusion
so we know what to do.
And yet, how often does the Bible leave us wondering?

We talked a few weeks back about
what to make of Jesus telling his disciples,
“unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”
(John 6:53)
Do you remember how the disciples responded to Jesus’ words?
“this teaching is difficult”, they said,
as understated a response
as we could possibly imagine.

We talked about how different churches
approach the Lord’s Supper:
Some see it as simply a way to remember Jesus’ life and teachings.
Others believe they are indeed eating Jesus’ body
and drinking his blood.

Even as John Calvin developed the theology of the Lord’s Supper
that we follow in the Presbyterian Church,
that the bread and the juice are transformed
by the power of the Holy Spirit into food
to nourish and feed us spiritually,
he himself called it a “high mystery”
(Institutes, 4.17.1),
that was ultimately, “inexplicable”.

After writing in such detail developing his theological approach,
Calvin concluded,
“nothing remains but to break forth in wonder at this mystery,
which plainly neither the mind is able to conceive
nor the tongue to express”
(Institutes, 4.17.6)
And that’s just a simple meal of bread and wine,
taken in community.

The text we heard in our lesson
is another of many enigmatic, mysterious passages
we find in the gospel of John.
What does Jesus mean when he says,
“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me,
let the one who believes in me drink.
As the scripture has said,
‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow
rivers of living water”?

If a person is thirsty on a hot summer’s day
his or her first thought would probably be
of cold glass of water,
and not of Jesus Christ.

And what Jesus says is scriptural, isn’t,
at least as far as we can find in the Old Testament
the way Jesus said it.
And to make matters even more confusing,
the translators have changed the meaning
when they say,
out of the heart of the one who believes;
the original Greek doesn’t say “out of the heart”;
it says “out of the belly”.

Scholars have debated the meaning of these verses
for centuries.
They have not even agreed on the proper way
to translate the verses;
or where to put the punctuation,
where to end one clause or sentence
and start another.

We know that there are times when Jesus speaks to us metaphorically;
when he uses images and illusions.
In other places he speaks with a fierce certainty,
where there seems to be no room for
differences in interpretation.
But, after 2,000 years
we have only to look at how we differ across denominations,
and even within denominations
to know that we find the Word of the Lord
subject to different interpretations,
different understandings,
often simply mysterious.

We try to interpret passages conclusively,
definitively.
We don’t like uncertainty.
We pursue a theological variant on “who dunnit”.
And yet, as often as not,
God is calling us through his Word
to enter the mystery,
to embrace the mystery,
rather than trying to resolve it.
For it is in embracing the mystery
that we learn how to live on faith,
that we learn how to live in faith,
that we learn how to live by faith.

It is in living in the mystery
that we learn to trust God more completely,
that we open ourselves more fully
to being led by the Spirit.

In her new book, “The Case for God”
Karen Armstrong calls us to be willing to,
“enter into the cloud of unknowing.”
(Armstrong, 267)
By entering the cloud of unknowing,
we turn from literalism, proof, certainty,
and learn what Paul meant when he wrote
to the Corinthians that “we walk by faith.”
(2 Cor. 5:7)

We learn that there are many things in life that we can prove,
but that much of God cannot be proved in the same way
that we can prove the fingerprints on the gun
were the butler’s.
How can we prove beauty?
How can we prove the fragrance of lavender?
How can we prove grace?
How can we prove love?

Embracing the mystery is to embrace the holy,
it is to embrace the spiritual;
Embracing the mystery is to turn from
what Paul calls the life of the flesh
to the life of the Spirit.
Embracing the mystery helps us to turn from the
world as it is
to the world as it ought to be,
the kingdom of God:
the kingdom built on the love given us in Jesus Christ.

We ought, after all, to love our neighbors as ourselves,
but we still live in a world of violence, bigotry and hatred;
we ought to beat swords in plowshares
but we still think war can bring peace;
we ought to feed our enemies,
and quench their thirst,
but we live in fear of them,
preferring to live behind fences and locked gates.
We ought to assure that no one is hungry,
no one is without a roof over their heads,
the sick are taken care of,
the elderly not alone;
but we say we are doing as much as we can;
we can do no more.

Embrace the mystery,
live in the holy that is the “ought”
and we begin to understand
what Jesus is talking about when he says,
‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow
rivers of living water”.

If I could sum up all I have learned in all my schooling,
all my reading,
all my theological knowledge,
it would be this:
I will never have all the answers,
I will never know all the answers,
I will never find all the answers,
and that’s okay.
I agree with Armstrong when she writes
that religion’s task isn’t to provide us with answers;
it is to help us live confidently, even joyfully
in the mysteries of life.
(The Case for God, 305)

The Year of the Bible group has just begun reading
from the Book of Job.
For thirty-seven chapters Job pleads to God,
even demands from God that he wants an answer
to why he has been forced to suffer.
Chapter after chapter Job endures silence.
But then in chapter 38, God’s voice thunders from the heavens
and he hurls question after question at Job,
his voice rolling over the countryside.

But read carefully and what do we find:
God does not provide Job with an answer.
God leaves Job in the mystery.
And by the final chapter of the book,
Job understands that there are things
he will never understand,
that he will have to accept:
“I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me,
which I did not know.” (Job 42:2)

Job had always been a man who had walked with God,
but for the first time in his life,
Job learned how to live in faith,
to live by faith,
abiding faith,
trusting faith,
fall-back-into-God’s-arms faith,
because he learned to live in the mystery.

Saint Denis, the Bishop of Paris
in the third century, believed,
“the most goodly knowing of God,
is that which is known by unknowing”
(as quoted in, The Cloud of Unknowing, ch. 70)
that which comes from embracing the mysteries of God,
embracing the Spirit of God.

Now this does not mean we stop learning,
stop reading, stop studying.
It is through our reading and learning
that we find understanding
and learn what questions to ask.

It is through our reading and studying
that we learn about the “ought”,
the path we are called to follow.
We learn what it means to be a disciple of Christ,
how to live as Christ taught us.
We learn to separate truth from untruth,
myth from reality.
Paul’s letters reflect a constant concern
that the new followers of Christ
were too willing to listen to the wrong voices
because they had not learned enough to allow them
to separate truth from lie.
Knowledge and learning helps us to discern
truth,
lie,
myth and mystery.

Armstrong defines a mystery as “something in which
we find ourselves caught up,
and whose essence is not before us in its entirety.”
(The Case for God, 274)

That’s also not a bad definition of faith,
not a bad definition of our life
as disciples of Jesus Christ.
We are caught up,
even if we do not fully understand.
As the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote,
“God keeps his holy mysteries
just on the outside of man’s dream.”
just beyond our reach…
(“Human Life’s Mystery”)

Embrace the mystery,
embrace the wonder,
for in doing so you will embrace the holy,
the spiritual,
the godly.
In embracing the mystery,
you more fully embrace the life
to which you’ve been called,
called most certainly by our Lord Jesus Christ.
AMEN

Sunday, August 02, 2009

Calvin Without Hobbes

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
August 2, 2009

Calvin Without Hobbes
1 Corinthians 11:23-26

I can’t even imagine how big the cake would have to be.
Six feet across, maybe ten feet?
Where could we find an oven big enough?

Imagine a birthday cake big enough to hold
not just a hundred candles;
not two hundred;
No, I am talking about a cake big enough
to hold 500 candles!

This year marks the 500th anniversary
of the birth of John Calvin,
the great Reformation theologian.

Now when we hear the name Calvin,
we are probably more likely to think of the
precocious six-year old of the comic strip,
the one with his friend, the stuffed tiger Hobbes.

Bill Watterson, the comic strip’s creator,
named his character for the theologian.
Why he would name a mischievous six-year old
comic strip character
for a 16th century French lawyer and theologian
is a question I cannot answer.
If you remember the strip
Calvin was a boy who could turn
an ordinary cardboard box into a time traveling machine,
or a machine to transmogrify him into various animals,
or even duplicate himself so he could read comic books
while his double would do his homework
and take out the garbage.
He did not have much in common with a theologian
who five hundred years later
is thought of as dour and intense.

Had John Calvin not been born,
Watterson would probably still have had his comic strip.
Had Calvin not been born
we would still be gathered here to worship God
on Sunday mornings.
I would still be standing before you
about to preside at the Lord’s Supper.

But I would probably be standing before an altar
rather than the Lord's Table.
This would probably not be a Presbyterian Church.
We probably would not consider ourselves Protestants.
There might have been no Reformation.

It was John Calvin and his older ally Martin Luther,
who were the driving forces behind
what we now call the Reformation.
Luther led the charge
when he posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the door
of the church in Wittenburg Germany in 1517,
his 95 charges of corruption
against the Roman Catholic church,
especially its practice of indulgences,
the lucrative but faithless “pay-to-pray” scheme.

Calvin, with his lawyer’s mind and training,
brought order to efforts to root out corruption
and reform the church.
For Luther, Calvin, and a handful of others
the church had strayed far from God,
far from what Christ had intended,
far from what Paul had encouraged the first generation
of Christians to build up in Corinth, Thessalonica,
Philippi, Rome and other places.

Calvin thought it was past time
to go back to what had become a little-used book
and see what the dusty pages of the Bible had to say
about the church.
“Sola scriptura,” said Calvin:
Look to Scripture and Scripture alone
to guide church leaders,
and always remember that Christ is the head of the church,
not a man sitting on a throne in Rome.

Calvin wrote prolifically;
he wrote commentaries on every book of the Bible;
every book but one, actually.
He thought that the Revelation
should not have been included in the canon,
so he never wrote a commentary on that book.
Given how wildly that book has been misinterpreted
and misused, maybe he was right to skip over it.

His greatest work, a work that endures to this day,
was a dense four-part set
he called simply “The Institutes of Religion”.
It was first published in the 1530s;
Calvin was not even 30 when the first edition was printed.

It was and is an exhaustive examination and analysis
of the theological foundation
for how we live our faith.
The Institutes provided the framework
for Reformed Theology,
which is how we as Presbyterians practice our faith.

Calvin’s thinking is woven deeply in our church.
We find his influence in the Confessions
that are part of our Church’s constitution.
We find his influence in the words of the ordination vows
that Elders, Deacons, and Ministers all take:
“Do you sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets
of the Reformed faith
as expressed in the confessions of our church?”
(W-4.4003c)
For those of you have been ordained as Elders or Deacons,
do you remember taking that vow?

There is much in Calvin’s work that is dated,
much that reflects the time in which he lived and wrote,
but there is much in his work that is timeless,
that instructs us and guides us still.

He helps us to understand
why we celebrate two sacraments rather than seven.
He provided a theological framework for baptism,
and a theological framework for the Lord’s supper.

It was the Lord’s Supper where he found himself
having to walk through a maze of differing opinions
and approaches to what seemed on the surface so simple:
A loaf of bread, a cup of wine, shared in community.
Paul thought the Lord’s Supper so straightforward,
that the few verses we find in his letter to the Corinthians
sum up his thinking.

Five hundred years ago, the teaching of the church
was that the bread and the wine
were transformed into the body and blood of Christ,
that in the Lord’s Supper,
we eat the body and blood of Christ.
This theological thinking has a strong biblical foundation.
Jesus says very clearly of the bread:
"this is my body". (Matthew 26:26; Luke 22:19)
And of the cup he says, "this is my blood".
(Matthew 26:28; Luke 22:20)
In John’s gospel we hear Jesus say,
“my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink”.
(John 6:55)
To our ears, this sounds confusing and
disconcerting.
Even his own disciples struggled with Jesus’ words,
“This teaching is difficult” (John 6:60)

By Calvin’s day some were arguing that
Jesus was speaking metaphorically,
that the Lord’s Supper was really an ordinary meal:
the ordinary bread and wine
remained ordinary bread and wine.
What mattered were the words,
“do this in remembrance of me”.
The meal was an opportunity to remember,
remember Jesus’ teachings,
remember Jesus’ death on the Cross.

Calvin took a different approach:
He said the meal was more than a time to gather and remember,
but that we were not consuming the actual body and blood of Christ.
What happens for us, he wrote, is that the Holy Spirit
transforms the bread and wine
from ordinary food meant to nourish and refresh the body,
to spiritual food meant to nourish and refresh our spirits.

Here’s how Calvin explains it:
“…From the physical things set forth in the Sacrament
we are led by a sort of analogy to spiritual things.
Thus, when bread is given as a symbol of Christ’s body,
we must at once grasp this comparison:
as bread nourishes, sustains, and keeps the life of our body,
so Christ’s body is the only food to invigorate and enliven our soul.
When we see wine set forth as a symbol of blood,
we must reflect on the benefits which wine imparts to the body,
and so realize that the same are spiritually imparted to us
by Christ’s blood.
These benefits are to nourish, refresh,
strengthen and gladden.” (Institutes, 4.17.3)

Now as you come to this table in a few minutes,
don’t worry about whether you have a full understanding
of Calvin’s theology,
or an understanding of the difference between
transubstantiation and consubstantiation.

Come because Jesus invites you,
invites you to this table,
invites you to share in this meal that he has prepared for us.

Come to this table
and take a piece of bread
-- tear off a big piece --
and dip it in the cup
and know that what you are about to take
has been transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit:
transformed from the ordinary to the spiritual,
transformed to help you transform
from the ordinary to the spiritual.

Come in response to the invitation,
extended by the grace of God that is Jesus Christ,
Come, as Calvin teaches us,
to be nourished, refreshed,
strengthened and gladdened in Spirit.

You will find no theological disputations at this table.
Here at this table you will community.
Here at this table you fill find renewal.
And, as Calvin would remind us,
here at this table, you will find Christ.
AMEN