Sunday, September 27, 2009

The Feeding of the 6,000

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
September 27, 2009

The Feeding of the 6,000
Mark 8:1-10

6,000 children.
The number is probably higher than that,
but still, 6000 children!

Six thousand children have passed through our doors
over the past 46 years
to spend time in the classrooms of our Early Learning Center.

The first batch of students are now adults themselves,
men and women in their late-40s.
They went on to elementary school, Middle School,
High School,
perhaps college,
then on to vocations as teachers, engineers, scientists,
police officers, nurses, carpenters, plumbers,
lawyers, doctors.

Some probably still live in the community,
others live elsewhere –
in other parts of Virginia,
other parts of the country,
perhaps even in other parts of the world.
Wherever they are now,
they are still our neighbors –
just as Jesus teaches us.
And we hope they think of us as their neighbors.

We have no alumni/ae society as most colleges do,
to keep track of students once they move on to other places.
My guess is that most of our alumni/ae don’t have much of a
memory of their time in our Early Learning Center.
The memories of things we did and learned
when we were 3, 4, or 5,
are not as vivid as our memories of things we did
at ages 15, 25, 35…

Still, while they may not remember all that clearly,
I have no doubt that they learned important lessons
that they carry with them to this day,
that even in the short time they were with us,
even at such tender ages,
we helped them grow,
we helped shape them,
we helped them to have a little stronger foundation
than they would have had without us.

It wasn’t that we taught them to read,
or had them memorizing multiplication tables.
No, our teaching is and always has been so foundational:
we teach love,
we teach goodness,
we teach kindness,
we teach sharing;
we teach each child that he or she
was created in the image of God.
We don’t teach them the Bible,
but our teaching is grounded in the Bible.
We teach them what God spoke through the prophet Isaiah,
words God speaks still to all his children:
“you are precious,
you are honored in my sight,
I am with you,
I love you.” (Isaiah 43)

We do not teach them about Jesus;
we leave their religious education to their families
and whatever faith practices each family has.
But we do teach Jesus
as we model Jesus, every teacher,
every assistant,
the staff, the Board, all of us.

As we teach these precious children, we feed them,
feed and nourish them spiritually and emotionally,
feed their sense of self,
even as we help them to learn their A-B-Cs
and their 1-2-3s.

Everyone here helps feed these children.
You and everyone who has sat in a pew over the past 46 years,
have helped feed the 6,000.
Imagine the pastor standing in this pulpit
some 47 years ago
and saying to the congregation:
“Here’s an idea;
Here’s something we can do, do together:
We can feed 6,000 children!”
I am guessing that the reaction would have been
disbelief,
and yet, that’s what we have done.
And it won’t be that long before we’ll be able to say
“we have fed 10,000 children”.
Every year, another group,
another 180 children fed.
And even as we are feeding the children,
we are also feeding their parents.
It is miraculous how God works!

We all know the story of the miraculous feeding
we find the Bible: the feeding of the 5,000.
All four of the gospels include the story.
But there is a second story of a miraculous feeding
that is easy to overlook,
the story we heard in our lesson,
the feeding of the 4,000.
Only Matthew and Mark include this story;
Luke and John chose not to include it.

The facts of the feeding of the 5,000
are pretty straightforward.
Mark tells us (Mark 6:30ff),
that Jesus took his small band of followers
on what we might view as a retreat:
“come away to a deserted place,
all by yourselves and rest a while.”
But Jesus’ reputation had already grown so
that when he and his group arrived
at what they had thought would be a deserted place,
there was already a large crowd,
eager to hear the good news Jesus was preaching.
When it came time to eat,
Jesus had the crowd sit in small groups,
and then he took five loaves and two fish,
and blessed them and broke them,
and everyone ate “and were filled”,
and there was so much left over,
that they filled twelve baskets.

That’s chapter 6 in Mark’s gospel.
Now, jump to chapter 8 and what do we find?
The same basic facts centered on
“a great crowd without anything to eat”.
This time Jesus found there were 7 loaves of bread
and “a few small fish”.
And once again Jesus blessed the food
and had it distributed among the crowd,
and once again there was enough
so that all “ate and were filled”
and this time there were 7 baskets of leftovers.

Why two stories?
Were Luke and John right to leave the second version out
since it seemed to cover the same ground as the first?

Mark and Matthew leave out one importance difference
in the second story,
one that is not at all obvious.
In fact, I was not aware of it until a former professor of mine
pointed it out the other day at a Presbytery meeting.

In the first story, Jesus is on home turf,
in the land of the Israelites.
But in the second story,
Jesus has moved to the land of the Gentiles,
to men and women who were not Jewish as he was,
men and women who were not followers of the Lord God.

Jesus treated them no differently;
He walked with them, talked with them,
shared the good news with them,
and when he saw they were hungry,
he had compassion and fed them.

In this second story
we see Jesus practicing radical hospitality.
Jews and Gentiles kept their distance,
living their lives as separately as possible,
especially at mealtime.
But Jesus shows here as he does in so many other places
that he had no use
for the artificial boundaries and barriers
that we humans create:
marking differences based on geography,
or ethnicity, or religion, or culture.
Jesus brought Jew and Gentile together in community.

Jesus walks through barriers
as though they did not exist,
which for him they didn’t.
And in the process he teaches us
that we should do the same thing:
remove barriers, tear them down,
pay no attention to them.
Our neighbor is anybody and everybody:
a hungry person should be fed,
a sick person should receive medical care;
a homeless person should have shelter;
a cold person should be clothed and warmed.

The color of a person’s skin;
the accent in their speech;
the way they dress –
none of that mattered to Jesus.
Why does it matter so to us?
Weren’t they created in the image of God,
just as you and I were?

That’s just what we teach our children in the ELC.
We teach them to care about one another;
to share with one another;
to look after one another;
We teach them to play fair and be nice,
to say “I’m sorry” when they need to,
and to say, “I forgive you”
to the person who says, “I’m sorry.”

The children in our ELC have an advantage over us
in that they are too young to have built boundaries and barriers;
they don’t see differences,
and if they do, they don’t care.

The very business we are in as followers of Jesus Christ
is boundary breaking, barrier smashing.
We are in the “reaching-out” business:
even though we often behave as though
we are in the “hunker down” business,
the “separate ourselves” business,
the “build the walls” business.

We teach our children to reach out,
to be neighbors to and for one another,
and we hope the lessons remain with them.
I have pointed out before the T-shirt,
the bumper sticker,
that says, “No child is born a bigot.”
Children are born with love and grace;
our ministry is to nurture that.
That’s how we feed them.

in the process of feeding the children,
these precious children,
we too are fed,
for those little children teach us,
teach us lessons we might once have learned,
but have forgotten.

Last year I was invited to join one of the classes for snack time
after we all had been in Chapel together.
One little boy was upset that I had not called on him
in Chapel and the tears just flowed
even as the other boys and girls ate their crackers
and drank their juice.
The teacher tried to comfort the boy;
I tried to comfort the boy,
but the tears fell like the rain on Noah’s Ark.
Another little boy finished his snack,
got up from his place,
carried his trash to the wastebasket,
and then on the way back to his seat,
stopped by his crying classmate,
and gave him a hug.
It was a wonderfully “all-boy” hug,
more headlock than embrace,
but the message was clear:
he wanted to comfort his friend,
reach out to him.
That’s what we want all our chidlren to learn!

The poet T. S. Eliot wrote,
“Love is most nearly itself
when here and now cease to matter
here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
into another intensity
for a further union, a deeper communion”

Poetic words, perhaps a little cryptic,
but we are called to move,
move to a deeper union, a deeper communion,
with God, through Christ, with one another,
and we do this by breaking down barriers,
building community,
feeding one another,
feeding all who hunger.

In the process we too are fed,
nurtured and nourished,
those we feed
feeding us in return
and we build on what we have built,
and miraculously we have baskets of leftovers,
and no one is left hungry.
AMEN

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Disciples Discipling Disciples

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
September 20, 2009


Disciples Discipling Disciples
John 7:14-18

We start another year of Sunday School today.
Another year of teaching and learning,
together, all of us, from the youngest to the oldest.

Sunday School: it’s not a very good term, is it?
Especially in the minds of our children and young people.
They spend Monday through Friday in school;
The idea of spending more time in the classroom
on a Sunday morning sounds terribly uninviting,
almost like punishment.

Think back to your years in Sunday School.
What was your experience?
I know most of mine was dull at its best;
sleep-inducing at its worst,
especially when the lights went out
so we could watch film-strips about Jesus and his disciples.
Do you remember films-strips back in the pre-video days?

The term Christian Education isn’t much better
than “Sunday School”.
That term to me suggests that we have compartments,
boxes, into which we separate our learning,
like students as they go through the day at school:
go to one room to learn Algebra;
another room to learn American History,
yet another to learn French or Spanish;
Then come here on Sunday morning
go to an assigned room at 9:40,
and by 10:40 you are done with your Christian Education,
ready for other things.

What is it that we are teaching our children?
What is it that we are learning together?
What is it that we want our children to learn?
What is it that we are helping our children to learn?

We want them to learn about God, of course,
and about the love God gives us all through
Jesus Christ, God’s Son.
We want them to learn about the Bible,
and we’d also like them to learn about what it means
to live in faith as a Presbyterian.

But it seems to me that what we are really teaching our children,
what we are called by God to teach our children,
is how to live life,
a truly rich life,
an abundant life,
a joy-filled life.

In one hour on Sunday morning
we teach our children how to live
on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday, Friday and Saturday;
At school, at home, at play with friends,
on the field playing sports,
on stage making music,
hanging out at the Mall,
talking, texting, and Twittering.

We are teaching them that our lives as Christians,
our lives as followers of Jesus Christ,
isn’t limited to a couple of hours on Sunday.

We do this by teaching them about Jesus.
But we are called to teach them so much more
than just the historical and biographical
features of Jesus’ life.
We are teaching them Jesus:
the life Jesus calls us all to.
We are teaching them that they are called,
as we are all called,
to learn Jesus,
learn his life so they can model their lives,
we can model our lives, on his life,
as we follow him,
striving to be more Christ-like each day.

Jesus was and is our Master Teacher.
For all his preaching,
all his healing,
he spent most of his time teaching.
It is why he is called “rabbi”
which is Hebrew for “teacher”.

And what was he teaching?
Strict obedience to the law?
Mind the rules, conform?
Listen to the leaders at the temple?
No. Of course not.

He was teaching about God’s grace, God’s love,
God’s goodness, God’s mercy.
All those things Moses was trying to teach the
children of Israel through his final words to them
captured in Deuteronomy,
those words we talked about two weeks ago,
words Moses summed up with,
“The eternal God is your refuge,
and underneath are the everlasting arms.”

Jesus and Moses were teaching much the same thing:
That God was not some irritable deity
who needed regular sacrifices,
a mean-spirited God, as one cartoonist captured him,
with his finger hovering
just above the “smite” button on his computer.
They wanted the Israelites to know what they knew:
that God was and is a loving God,
a merciful God,
an ever-present God,
with them in good times and bad.
And we teach the same thing as Jesus and Moses.

We teach our children that they have a choice,
a choice between having a relationship with God
or turning from God and having a relationship with idols:
things, stuff, money, popularity, clothes, coolness.

All our teachers teach the same basic lesson,
but of course every teacher
goes about teaching in his or her own way.
What is essential is that our teaching is authentic.
It is honest; grounded in humility,
for humility is one of our Lord’s most important teachings.
“Blessed are the meek” is the Beatitude we remember,
but a better translation is,
“Blessed are the humble.”

We should not be hesitant to acknowledge the weaknesses
that are inherent in the church.
We are the body of Christ,
all of us imperfect men and women,
so the church by definition can never be perfect;
no denomination will ever be perfect.
No one possesses the truth,
even as we seek the truth.

In our humility we should not be hesitant
to teach that Christian history
has been marked by much goodness,
but also by much that has been truly horrifying.
The Crusades, the Inquisition,
three-hundred years of violence
between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland
to name just a few examples
of inexcusable violence committed in
the name of the Prince of Peace.

Just within the past century-and-a-half
Presbyterians have waved their Bibles
in angry support of the scandal of slavery;
to maintain the second-class status of women;
and to slam shut the door to men and women
because of their sexual orientation.

We should not be hesitant to acknowledge that we are
too quick to divide ourselves into camps,
to take sides on issues,
one against the other:
denomination against denomination,
church against church,
parishioner against parishioner.
Conservatives arguing
they truly represent the values of Jesus Christ,
Liberals arguing
they truly represent the values of Jesus Christ.
Neither side in the right,
both sides judgmental and arrogant,
both sides forgetting that
our Lord was both conservative,
conservative in the sense that
he was calling the children of Israel
back into the covenant relationship
God had first established with them
more than thousand years before,
and liberal,
liberal in the very definition of the word:
tolerant, accepting,
not rigid in ideology or dogma,
extending the gospel to any and all.

Jesus provides us the yardstick for how we are to teach
so that we don’t fall into camps.
In our gospel lesson he said,
“My teaching is not mine
but his who sent me.”
Even our Lord, our Master Teacher,
knew who his teacher was!

We are called to teach in the same way,
teach what God calls us to teach,
to teach God’s word to our children.
In the process we reinforce the word for ourselves
remembering that even as we teach,
we learn.
Everyone of us is a learner.
That’s the definition of the word “disciple”:
“one who learns”.
We are disciples teaching disciples,
disciples learning with disciples
disciples discipling disciples.

If we remember that we are learning even as we teach,
our teaching will be authentic,
for it will be grounded in humility,
not certainty, doctrine, dogma;
it will be grounded in acceptance and openness,
love and grace.

Jesus reminds us that
“Anyone who resolves to do the will of God
will know whether the teaching is from God…”
Even the youngest child is remarkably perceptive.
They may not remember names, dates, and places,
but they will know what is the authentic word of the Lord,
and what is not.

Studies done among the youngest generation show they think
a great deal of the teaching
coming out of Christian churches today
is not authentic,
that it is far removed from the will of God,
that it is grounded more in the will of the teachers,
the will of lay leaders,
the will of clergy.

This kind of teaching is actively turning them off,
causing them to turn away from the church,
any church.
They hear teaching that is rigid,
grounded in anger,
teaching that is judgmental,
and deeply hypocritical.

Our challenge to engage our children and young people,
engage them,
to help them know the love of God that is theirs
through Jesus Christ.
We do this in classrooms,
but we all do it, every one of us,
even if we are not teaching in the classroom,
for we each set our young people an example:
every one of us:
we are the ones who exemplify the Christian life.
It is so easy to talk the talk;
but it is much harder to walk the walk,
and our young people know it and pick up on it
lightning fast: who’s walking the walk,
and who is all talk.

Jesus says “I am the life”
and he calls us to new life.
We model that new life –
or at least that is what we are called to do.
We can do it well,
or we can do it poorly.
Our children and young people will be watching us,
and taking their cues from us.

We want our children to know this life,
this life to which they have been called,
just as each of us has been called;
this life that is rich,
rich not in material possessions,
but in grace and love and peace.

We want them to know this life
because it will fill them with confidence,
confidence to handle anything that life throws at them.
We want them to know this life
because it will give them hope,
hope even in the most difficult times.
We want them to know this life
because it will ground them in faith,
faith that they can move mountains
and change the world.

We do this, teach them, help them to know this life,
each of us, by walking the talk,
modeling the life that Jesus calls us to,
by living our own lives authentically and faithfully,
not just on Sunday, but every day.

The starting point for all of us
is to remember that we are all disciples,
learning, all of us together,
learning each of us,
at the feet of our Teacher,
our Lord, Jesus the Christ.
AMEN

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Who Are We? Who We Are. Whose We Are.

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
September 13, 2009: Genesis Sunday

Who Are We? Who We Are. Whose We Are.
Luke 6:20-26

Look around.
Who do you see?
Women and men,
boys and girls,
people who come small, medium and large;
Left-handed, right-handed,
basketball loving, baseball crazed, football obsessed,
knitters, readers,
collectors, gardeners,
joggers, golfers,
dog lovers, cat lovers,
and even chinchilla lovers.

We are Virginians,
but our roots are in New York, New Jersey,
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan,
Ghana, Kenya, the Philippines.

We are Presbyterians,
but we are former Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans,
Episcopalians, and Roman Catholics.

We are engineers, teachers, accountants,
lawyers, nurses, dentists, researchers,
technicians,
homemakers, caregivers,
parents, children,
grandparents and grandchildren.

We are such a wonderful array of God’s children,
such a magnificent rainbow,
sparkling in all our diversity,
a rich mix that delights God.

And yet, however we define ourselves,
however we see ourselves,
however we look at ourselves,
who we are,
who we really are
is simple:
we are disciples of Jesus Christ.

Every one of us a follower of the Son of God.
Every one of us, men and women, boys and girls
every one of us walks with Christ.
We answer the question of “who we are”
by remembering “whose we are”.

And once we remember that,
all the rest of life falls into place;
Once we remember whose we are,
then we have a foundation on which we can build,
truly build, a life, an abundant, rich life.

The trouble is, of course,
it is too easy to define ourselves in any of a hundred different ways
throwing our discipleship into the mix here and there,
usually in second place behind another definition:

On Monday we find it easier to define ourselves
by the vocation we pursue, or the school we attend;
on Tuesday, by the social group we’re part of;
on Wednesday by the neighborhood where we live;
on Thursday by our political leanings;
on Friday by the sports teams we root for.

But that’s not what Jesus wants from us;
it is not what he expects from us.
He wants us to stand and declare that
we are his followers first,
his followers last,
beginning to end.
We build our lives, our careers,
our interests, everything else,
on that very foundation.

Jesus does not call us to a life of comfort and ease,
not a life of the rich and famous.
On the contrary, he tells us very clearly
that we are to take up our crosses,
and be prepared to lose our lives for our faith.
It is a life that may often be at odds
with the status quo,
with the mainstream,
with the accepted way of thinking.

Jesus calls us:
to heal the sick when no one else will;
to look after the orphan
when everyone else has turned away;
to comfort the lonely and the afflicted
when we’d really rather be doing something else.

Jesus calls us to work for peace,
peace and reconciliation
and never be content just with prayers.
Jesus tells us that we are not simply to bemoan
the existence of injustice,
we are to root out every cause,
and create a more just, more equitable,
more fair world,
for in doing so, do you see what we are doing?
we are building our small part of the Kingdom,
God’s Kingdom.

UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund,
has captured Jesus’ call with its slogan
“believe in zero”:
that we can, working together,
reduce to zero from more than 20,000
the number of children
who die each day from hunger and
preventable disease.

Jesus calls us to a radical new life;
he turns the world we know upside down.
Listen again to the text from Luke:
Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
But woe to you who are live in abundance,
for you have received your consolation.
Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
Woe to you who are full now,
for you will be hungry.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
Woe to you who are laughing now,
for you will mourn and weep.
Blessed are you when people hate you,
and when they exclude you, revile you,
and defame you* on account of the Son of Man.
Woe to you when all speak well of you,
for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.


Jesus isn’t lifting up poverty,
or hunger,
or mourning.
What he is teaching us is that our focus as disciples
should be on those who are hungry,
those who are poor, those who mourn,
because that’s where Jesus’ focus is;
that’s where God’s focus is, and always has been.

Jesus reminds of the words God spoke
again and again through the prophets,
words we have always found so easy to walk away from:
“Let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."
(Amos 5:24)
“bind up the brokenhearted;
comfort those who mourn
bring good news to the oppressed;"
(Isaiah 61)
“no infant [should] die of illness,
nor an older person fail to live a long and healthy life”
(Isaiah 65:20)

Jesus calls us to do our part to create this world,
but we won’t if we don’t remember who we are
and whose we are;
If our focus is on being part of:
the party pack at the football game,
the must-have-it group at the Mall,
the “let them pay their own way and pull themselves up
by their own bootstraps” group of protestors.

In a few moments when we take our collection,
the ushers will also pass baskets along the rows.
In the baskets you will find small cross pins,
which you are invited to take.
(none for children, please; they have sharp pins!)
They are my gift to each of you
as we begin this new season together.

The pin is for you to wear on your lapel,
your scarf, your hat,
not to advertise your faith,
for Jesus tells us of course,
to beware those who practice their piety in public.
The pin is simply a reminder to you
of who you are and whose you are,
a reminder of the life to which you and I have been called.

I find the pin a helpful reminder
against getting caught up in the everyday stuff,
what C. S. Lewis has called the
“fussy attentiveness to your own state of mind.”
(Surprised by Joy, 233)
The pin is a reminder to me
that I am called to have a
“Jesus” state of mind.

Take your pin,
and put it on your lapel.
And then come to this Table,
come to this Table
and be fed, nourished, renewed and refreshed
by our Lord Jesus Christ,
for this is his Table;
his meal.

And then go out from here
go out to all the places you will go tomorrow
and Tuesday, and the days after,
but go out with a renewed awareness,
renewed confidence,
a renewed sense of calling
of who you are
and most important:
whose you are.
AMEN

Sunday, September 06, 2009

A Song of Hope, A Song of Trust

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
September 6, 2009

A Song of Hope, A Song of Trust
Deuteronomy 33:26-27

I cannot read the text,
our lesson from Deuteronomy.
I cannot read the text because I will confuse many of you.
Those of you who like to read along in the pew Bibles
will read these words:
“There is none like God, O Israel,
who rides through the heavens to your help,
majestic through the skies.
He subdues the ancient gods,
shatters the forces of old
;”

That’s not what you would hear me read.
Here’s what I would read:
“There is no one like the God of Israel,
who rides on the heavens to help you
and on the clouds in his majesty.
The eternal God is your refuge,
and underneath are the everlasting arms
.”

We have two different versions of this passage,
two different translations,
especially in the way we translate the second verse,
verse 27.

In the New Revised Standard Version
we have in the pews
and from which I usually read here in the pulpit
we hear:
“He subdues the ancient gods,
shatters the forces of old;”

But in the original Hebrew we read,
“The eternal God is your refuge,
and underneath are the everlasting arms.”

This is one of many examples that makes so clear
how difficult it is to translate words
from one language to another,
especially when we try to translate from
three-thousand year old Hebrew
into contemporary English.
Scholars with equally broad and deep knowledge
of ancient Hebrew don’t always agree on how a word,
much less a whole sentence,
should be translated.

It is just one more reminder why we Presbyterians
do not read the Bible as the literal word of the Lord;
two different translators could give us
two very different “words of the Lord”
and both could be right.

I prefer the translation we don’t find in the pew Bible:
“The eternal God is your refuge,
and underneath are the everlasting arms.”
These are words I think Moses would have spoken
to the Israelites
as he prepared to say good-bye to them,
as he prepared for his death
after leading the children of Israel
through the wilderness for forty years.

The entire book of Deuteronomy is a speech from Moses,
his valedictory address to the children of Israel,
as they stood on the east side of the Jordan River
and looked west across to the land
that God had promised them,
the land they had journeyed so far and so long to find,
the land that was to be theirs
as the children of God.

Read through the entire book and we find
Moses speaks to the Israelites in different tones
reminding, lecturing,
exhorting, warning, threatening;
his tone is often strident,
as though he is wagging his finger at the people
who stood before him,
men and women, boys and girls
all of whom he loved,
but who had worn him out,
exhausted him with their griping, their bickering,
their petty concerns, their complaining,
their weak faith.

Here in the final chapters, though,
he doesn’t chastise or rebuke.
Moses exudes warmth
as he blesses the tribes,
each by name.
And then he reminds them of the Lord God’s greatness,
and more important, the Lord God’s goodness.
He knew that the people were frightened of the Lord,
that they looked upon Yahweh as quick to anger,
and slow in his mercy.
Moses wanted the children of Israel to know
the Lord he knew,
the Lord God who was merciful,
patient,
grace-filled, and loving:
“Children of Israel,
as you go through your lives remember:
The eternal God is your refuge,
and underneath are the everlasting arms.

…There is none like God,
who rides through the heavens to your help…”

What an extraordinary final word
to share with the Israelites;
what an extraordinary and loving benediction.

This is our God, too,
God our Father, God our Mother,
the God who calls us here each Sabbath to worship,
the God who reveals himself in the pages of the Bible,
the written word;
The God who reveals himself in Jesus Christ,
the Living Word.

This God leads us here and now
just as surely as he led the children of Israel
through the wilderness.
The pillar of fire that led the Israelites
is for us the Holy Spirit,
the breath of God
that blows through this church
and fills each of us.

Every year I always find myself filled with a sense of wonder
and anticipation as we turn the page on the calendar
from August to September
and resume all our activities after the summer.
Where will God call us?
Where will the Spirit lead us?
Where will the Spirit push us?
Will the breath of God blow gently through this body,
or will it roar through to clear and cleanse?

God is always making all things new.
God doesn’t allow us to dwell for long in the “good old days,”
because God is always calling us to the “exciting new days”
that lie ahead, just around the corner.
The breath of God moves us there,
sometimes willingly,
but as often, against our will.

Last Sunday our Session talked about one possible new place
the Spirit may call us to in the next year.
We gathered informally to talk about how
we minister to our young people,
especially those in Middle School, High School
and the large group of twenty-somethings we have.

We acknowledged that we are not ministering
to these young folks as well as we should,
as faithfully as we should.
We have wonderful volunteers who work with them,
but we have known for the past five years,
that what we need,
or more to the point,
what they need,
is an Associate Pastor:
someone who can be there for them:
to teach, to lead them,
to talk with them, guide them,
listen to them,
help them discern God’s will for them,
and pray with and for them.

We had an Associate Pastor until 2004,
when the position was eliminated for financial reasons.
We tried a stop-gap measure a couple of years ago
with a part-time Youth Director,
but after Sarah left, we realized that was
not the right path.

My read of our time together last week was
that the Spirit is calling us to make 2010
the year we restore the position of Associate Pastor.

The only thing holding us back is money,
but we have been working on that this past year.
We have well over half the funding we need
already in the budget.
We are as close as that to having the position fully-funded.
It will be up to all of us to provide the rest.

I did the math and if we had to fund the position
in its entirety, we could do it
if every member of this church
added $4.13 to the plate each week.
$4.13 each week, each of us.
That’s all!
But the actual number is closer to $2 per person per week.
It’s amazing what we can do as the Body of Christ,
community working together!

Our Elders will continue to pray about this
and discuss the matter as we seek to discern God’s will
for our church, God’s will in this and other areas.
What is God’s will for the ministry we provide
through our Early Learning Center?
What is God’s will for our Mission work?

What is God’s will for our Worship and Music ministry?
I was thinking about that over my vacation
as I read a book about how to expand media ministries.
The model for how we worship dates back to
before the birth of Jesus,
back to the time of Ezra and Nehemiah:
we read from Scripture and then we interpret the reading.
We usually interpret through a sermon;
but we also interpret through music,
through dance,
through the children acting out a pageant.

More and more churches are using video to help enhance
how we interpret.
Perhaps you’ve been in a church where this is done.
Some churches do video well,
many do not.
And we Presbyterians seem to have a visceral reaction
against even the word video!

I am used to hearing a spoken sermon;
many of you are also used that.
It is what we are comfortable with.
But the reality is that the generation coming up
has grown up learning through screens and visual media.
If we want to reach out to our younger people,
we need to be thinking about this path for worship.
Not necessarily in the next year, or even in the next two years.
But the Spirit will call us there sooner rather than later.

Our Elders will seek to discern God’s will on all these matters
in the months ahead;
they will be looking for that pillar of fire
that says, “follow – this is the direction I want you go.”
Our Book of Order reminds us that the Session is called
“to lead the congregation continually to discover
what God is doing in the world
and to plan for change,
renewal
and reformation under the Word of God.”
G-10.0102 (j).

Discovering what God is doing in the world,
planning for change,
renewal and reformation:
That is what our Elders are called to do
and we will be much more focused on that calling
in the year ahead.
We will work to grow as spiritual leaders of the church,
remembering that being spiritual means simply,
“alert attention we give to a living God,
and the faithful response we make to him in community.”
(Peterson, Subversive, 40)

We will work on discernment,
work on embracing the mysteries of God,
confidently stepping into
“the cloud of unknowing.”
(Armstrong)
trusting that God will reveal his will.

As we look to a new program year,
I am excited,
and I am filled with a sense of anticipation,
because God’s arms are underneath each of us,
all of us, lifting us, supporting us,
and pushing us forward, into each new day,
each new day where the Spirit calls us.

I am excited because over the next year,
I know we will become a more spiritual community,
a more prayerful community,
a more nurturing community,
a more welcoming community.
We, all of us,
we will be transformed each day
by the renewal of our minds,
through the power of God’s Spirit,
as we embrace our Lord’s call to ministry and service
with confidence and hope and faith.

Moses knew this and understood it,
even if the children of Israel did not.
That’s why he could sing a song of hope and trust
to the children of Israel
even as he knew his life had come to its end.

My September song is the same as Moses’:
it is a song of hope,
a song of trust.
For I know that underneath me,
underneath you,
underneath all of us
are the everlasting,
everloving arms of God.

As the Psalmist has written,
Praise the Lord!
We will give thanks to the Lord with all our hearts…
Full of honor and majesty is God’s work
and his righteousness and mercy endures forever and ever.
Let all God’s children praise the Lord!
AMEN