Longings

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
November 29, 2009
First Sunday in Advent

Longings
Jeremiah 33:14-16

In the timeless movie “A Christmas Carol”,
the 1951 version starring Alistair Sim,
Tiny Tim is left by his mother for just a few moments
while she goes into a small shop
to buy a few more things for the family’s Christmas dinner.
He stands outside a store,
a simple toy shop in Victorian London.
He looks through the window into the store.
He marvels at all the wonderful toys:
Boats and trains
puppets and mechanical toys.

He knows all too well he will never have any toy from the shop;
his family doesn’t have the money for such a luxury.
But, he can look,
he can imagine,
and he can dream.
There’s a smile on his face as he looks at everything,
but the smile melts when he sees one toy,
a beautiful model boat,
a steamship,
taken out of the display by a clerk.
Someone is about to buy the boat,
probably for a little boy about the same age as Tiny Tim,
but a boy clearly from a more affluent family,
a boy who would find such a wonderful surprise
on Christmas morning.

As Tiny Tim watches the boat
sail away from his dreams,
you can see the longing in his eyes
and feel the ache in his heart.

Travel back in time,
back to a time more than 500 years before the first Christmas,
travel to a place known as Babylon,
and walk through the land.
The children of Israel had been living there for decades,
ever since the Babylonians invaded their country
in the year 587 BC and forced them off their land,
forced them to move a thousand miles to the east,
back to Babylon.
They were not slaves like their ancestors in Egypt
almost a thousand years before,
but neither were they free
under the repressive rule of the Babylonian King.

They were filled with a sense of longing,
longing to return to their homes,
longing to return to the land given them by God,
the land their ancestors settled on so long ago
when Joshua led them across the Jordan River
after all those years in the wilderness.
“Will the Lord spurn us forever,”
they cried out,
“has his steadfast love ceased forever?”
(Psalm 77)
“Restore us, O God,
let your face shine [on us]”
(Psalm 80)

They’d been living under Babylonian rule for so long
that those who could remember the land,
remember what life had been like in the promised land,
were dying off, one by one.
The young people knew no other place,
no other life.
But they’d heard the stories,
heard the songs sung,
the laments lifted up,
and they too longed to return,
longed for their land.

A sense of longing is such a powerful emotion,
it can overwhelm us,
it can drain us of energy, strength, will;
it can drain us of hope.

But the promise is true:
God hears us when we are filled with longing.
God hears us when we cry out desperately,
“give me hope!”
Our anguish never falls on deaf ears.

The prophet Jeremiah made that clear
when God spoke through him with words of hope
for the children in exile:
“The days are surely coming…” says the Lord.
A day when a righteous branch would spring up for David.”
A day when the children of Israel would return home,
would reclaim their land,
their days of longing at an end.

The prophet Isaiah spoke similar words when he said,
“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”
(Isaiah 11:1)

This was God’s loving message to his children,
a response to their cries of longing.
“For surely I know the plans I have for you,”
said the Lord through Jeremiah,
“plans for your welfare, and not for harm,
to give you a future with hope.”
(Jeremiah 29:11)

We have an advantage over the Israelites
who lived in exile,
for we know that God has given us all a future,
a future filled with hope;
a future in Jesus Christ.

It is so wonderfully fitting
that we mark the First Sunday in Advent
with the Sacrament of Baptism
to remind us of that message,
that we have a future filled with hope,
for every child is a message of hope,
every child points us to the future.

You hear me say with each baptism,
“See what love the Father has given us,
that we should be called children of God,
for that is what we all are.”
(1 John 3:1)
I say those words from scripture because they are true:
We are all God’s children,
regardless of our age on the calendar.
Every one of us is a message of hope.
We all point to the future,
the future that God has yet to create,
when Christ will come again in glory,
the very message of Advent.

But even as we wait, even as we long,
the good news is that we don’t have to wait,
we don’t have to long:
God is already at work creating the future.
Jesus does not sit passively
on the right hand of God the Father;
Jesus is already working at his coming,
working toward the future,
calling us here and now to prepare ourselves,
to be ready,
pushing us to be Kingdom builders now,
not to wait.
“The Kingdom of God is at hand,”
he said to his followers.
And he says those words to us here and now.
(Matthew 4:17)

We stand here on the threshold of the future,
the threshold of the Kingdom
even as we stand on the threshold of Advent,
the threshold of the room we call December.

It isn’t the future or the Kingdom we see, though;
The bright lights of Christmas distract us.
We are enticed by the sights
and the sounds and the smells:
the lights, the packages,
the carols, the laughter,
the fragrance of evergreen, gingerbread,
and turkey in the oven.

We’re distracted by all the emotions
that come with Christmas time as well,
from great joy to deep sadness and everything in between.
Young children reflect emotion with abandon,
with their giddy excitement that grows with each day.
As we age, excitement gives way to so many different emotions
from contentment to despair.

Longing is an emotion that too many of God’s children
find their companion in the days and weeks ahead:
the child who longs for a toy,
but who knows that this year,
with one parent out of work,
and the other putting in longer hours,
the toy isn’t likely to be under the tree
on Christmas morning.

The teenager who longs for spring semester
to be better, so much better than the fall;
classes, sports, and especially friends;
why do such wonderful years
that carry a child into adulthood
have to be so difficult?

The young man or woman who longs for the safe return of a spouse
who has been deployed
to serve in parts of the world that seem
to grow more dangerous by the day.

The mother who longs to be reconciled with her daughter,
to patch up an argument that was really so petty
and yet escalated until things got out of hand
and broke apart so bitterly.

The man, fully grown, with a family of his own,
who longs to be reconciled
with his own parents,
especially his aging father,
knowing time is growing short,
wondering why the gap still exists
after all these years.
If only his father would say just once,
“Son, I’m proud of you.”

The unemployed man or woman who longs to find a job
that will not only restore finances,
but just as important,
restore self esteem,
a sense of self,
that someone will hire them,
and in the process say that they are worth something.

We each have our longings,
our individual longings
that are as unique as each of us is.
But we all have longings in common,
or at least we should,
as God’s children and as disciples of Christ.

We should long for a world of justice and righteousness,
a world in which no child dies of hunger,
or thirst,
or from lack of medicine
or access to medical care.

We should long for a world in which equity is restored,
a world no longer marked by the richest 1%
owning more than the bottom 90%;
a world in which we no longer celebrate wealth
or celebrity,
but call on those who have more
to share with those who have less.

We should long for the world that Mary sang about
when she learned that she was to give birth
to the Son of God:
a world where the proud would be scattered,
the powerful brought down,
the lowly lifted up,
the hungry filled,
and the rich sent away empty.
(Luke 1:51ff)

This is the world we should long for:
a world of righteousness,
a world of justice,
a world which the humble shall inherit,
not the Forbes 400,
This is the world we should long for
and it is the world we should work for
as we help God create the future.

Building a world of righteousness
is, as one writer put it,
as simple as “…doing the God thing,
a humble ethic of living toward others
in just and loving relationships.”
Where selflessness reigns
and selfishness is condemned.

Doing the God thing is remembering
that the very essence of Christianity
is community,
looking after one another,
sharing what we have,
feeding, sheltering, clothing one another,
something we struggle with
in a society that prizes “rugged individualism”.
But go back and re-read New or Old Testament
and see what fate awaits the individualists,
even those whose bank accounts bulge.

Advent calls us to be Kingdom builders
even as it calls us home,
calls us to the home we long for,
for in building the Kingdom,
we build a world filled with
righteousness, grace, hope,
justice, and peace,
a world we can truly call home.

The Kingdom is at hand, said our Lord,
“Through Jesus it is so close
that we don’t have to wait for it;
We can already seek it and its righteousness.”
(Moltmann, 92)

We stand on the threshold of the Kingdom and peer in,
and we find ourselves beckoned in,
beckoned and welcomed by Christ himself.
Our longing is over,
for in that room we find righteousness and peace,
all because a child has been born for us,
a son given us,
a child whose name is hope,
a child who gives us a future,
a child whose name is love.

AMEN

Stories

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
November 22, 2009

Stories
Colossians 3:12-17

Churches are filled with stories.
Churches are filled with stories,
because churches are filled with people
and every one of us has a story.
Every one of us is a story,
a story we add to each day,
sentence by sentence,
page by page.

Churches are filled with funny stories,
the anecdotes we all love to share.
My favorite is the time an overly zealous elder
tore up an entire loaf of bread for communion,
and showed me with great pride
the plate he was about to put on the Lord’s Table.
I responded that the plate looked perfect,
but I then asked where the whole piece was
that we put on top of the smaller pieces,
the large piece that I would break
as I said the words of Institution,
reminding us that Christ’s body was broken for us.

He looked at me, looked down at the plate,
and then said, “Uh oh”.

Just as quickly he said,
“I’ll take care of it”,
and raced back to the kitchen.
I went back to my office,
quite sure that he would indeed take care of it.
A few minutes later I went out to the Sanctuary
to put my Bible and sermon on the pulpit.
I looked at the Lord’s Table
and saw that the Elder had indeed taken care of the problem,
but I wasn’t quite so sure of his solution:
He’d gone downstairs to our food pantry,
found a box of frozen waffles
and placed a firmly frozen Eggo
on the top of the communion bread!

Walk down the hall over in the other wing
and look at all the pictures
that tell the story of this church,
stories that go back decade after decade.
Many pictures are sure to evoke memories and anecdotes:
“Do you remember the time…”
It might have been at Sherando, or
Vacation Bible School, or
a Christmas pageant,
or a wedding or even a funeral.

But the stories that matter are not the funny ones;
the stories that matter are the personal stories,
the stories that each of us has
about our lives in church,
how we found our way to church in the first place,
how our faith has grown in our lives at church,
or perhaps not grown:
we Christians can often be amazingly
self-righteous, self centered,
and just plain mean.

My own story is reflected in this certificate:
my baptism in December 1954 at
Westminster Presbyterian Church in Buffalo,
the church, as you have heard me talk about before,
where my grandmother occupied the same pew
for more than 60 years,
where my parents met,
where my grandfather served as an elder,
my father as a deacon.

I went to church regularly
but my pattern was to walk in abut two minutes before the service,
and walk out two minutes after the service.
I can remember
when the Nominating Committee called in 1986
and again in 1987
to ask if I would consider serving as a Deacon.
Both times I responded with words
that many of us have said,
“It’s just not a good time…”

It was the pastor who finally pulled me in,
in 1988 when he asked me to help with Stewardship.
I said yes to him, and yes to the request:
raising money – that I could handle:
I had been doing it for my college, graduate school,
other charitable organizations in town.
From there I agreed to serve as a Trustee,
responsible for the buildings and grounds,
and the church’s investment account.
I also served on the budget committee,
and on the capital campaign committee.

But then in 1990 I said yes to the “Space Planning Committee.”
It sounded simple, but it wasn’t.
Our job required us to focus on the various ministries in the church
and assess whether and how our space
helped or hindered our ministries.
Our task wasn’t to examine the ministries,
only whether they needed more space, less space,
or different space.

For the first time I really looked at the ministries of the church,
what we were doing in the name of Jesus Christ.
My eyes were opened.
I began to see what church was all about,
how we served, nurtured, and cared for one another,
people within the church,
and people in the larger community.

It was this group that helped me see
that even though I had been coming to church,
I had not been growing spiritually,
had not been growing as a disciple of Jesus Christ.
For the first time I understood the teaching
in the letter from James:
“Draw near to God,
and he will draw near to you.”
(James 4:8)
I had kept my distance from God,
coming to church,
but never fully embracing my identity
as a disciple of Jesus Christ,
never fully embracing my call to ministry,
even as a lay member of the congregation.

At the same time I was re-examining my faith
my life was in turmoil,
all at “sixes and sevens”, in that wonderful British phrase.
The woman to whom I was married at the time
was sinking deeper and deeper
into the depths of alcoholism.
Alcohol would soon claim our marriage,
and eventually claim her life.

The consulting company I was working for was struggling,
a number of international ventures
our partners had launched were not paying off,
and draining money from the firm.
It was foundering and would soon sink.

But even in the midst of the turmoil
my faith was growing,
largely due to the small group of people
on the Space Planning Committee,
men and women who understood Paul’s instructions
to the Colossians, who lived them,
and just by their very lives,
their own faith, helped me to deeper faith.
This small group of men and women,
just six of us,
people I had not known at all before,
they helped me learn to
“let the word of Christ dwell richly in me”,
they helped me to "let go and let God",
to trust and fall back
into the everlasting, everloving arms of God.

That’s my story.
What’s your story?

As you chat with one another at lunch today,
I know you will share anecdotes and funny stories.
But I encourage you to share personal stories,
your personal stories,
your faith journey:
what this church means to you,
how it has helped nurture and nourish your faith.

And don’t just share stories today,
share them in other settings:
Men’s breakfast group,
Women’s Circles,
Knitters…

Was there a turning point for you in your faith journey?
Perhaps not a “road to Damascus” experience,
but it could have been
that you felt called to take,
in Robert Frost’s words,
the road less traveled by,
the road of faith,
the road that led you here,
the road that “made all the difference.”

Does the word of Christ dwell richly in you?
Are you filled with the peace of Christ?
How well do you share Christ’s grace and love with others?
How has this church helped your faith grow?
How has this church hindered your faith?

The story of this church is nothing more
than the sum of our individual stories;
our stories all wrapped together
as we worship together, pray together,
work together,
follow Christ together.

We are the body of Christ,
a wonderful book, filled with life,
every one of us a page in the book.
What’s your story?
AMEN

Provocations Line-by-Line

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
November 15, 2009

Provocations Line-by-Line
Mark 13:1-8

Tomorrow evening the Session will hold its
third regular meeting of the fall.
We will gather for a delicious dinner,
and share joys and concerns as we have our dessert;
We will then turn our attention to our agenda.

Our business,
the work we are called to do
as Elders gathered as the Session,
is the spiritual leadership of this church.
The spiritual leadership of this congregation
isn’t just my responsibility;
it is very much a shared responsibility,
mine, with each Elder,
all of us collectively on the Session.

We go about this work in lots of different ways.
We’ve focused on specific ministries in previous meetings:
In October we took a close look at our
Christian Education ministry,
as well as our Worship & Music Ministry.
Tomorrow night we will take a broader look,
a look at all our ministries.
The lens through which we will look at our ministries
will be our budget
the budget we are preparing for next year, 2010.

We are not a business organization, of course.
We don’t prepare a budget to maximize revenues
and minimize costs so we can end the year with a profit.
Yes, we always hope to increase revenues
through our Stewardship campaigns,
and of course, we are always mindful of costs.
But ending the year with a surplus is not our goal;
doing the ministry God calls us to do,
doing it well, doing it faithfully:
that’s what we do,
that’s our concern,
that’s our goal.

And doing ministry requires resources,
time, people and, yes, money.
We have equipment and supplies to buy,
staff salaries to pay,
a school to run,
a building to light, heat,
clean, and maintain.

We prepare a budget to guide us in our work,
the work God calls us to do.
A budget helps us to be good stewards
of our financial resources
throughout the year.
But even more important,
a budget helps us to look to the future,
plan for the future,
think and pray about where God may be calling us to grow,
change, and adapt.
God’s Holy Spirit is always at work
bringing in the new and fresh,
blowing away the worn and the stale.

Our budget, for all its numbers,
for all its spreadsheet detail,
is really a statement of our faith,
a reflection of our faith.
It is a statement to all
of how we live out our faith
here at Manassas Presbyterian Church.
Our budget is our witness,
our testimony as a congregation.

How much money are we devoting to the education of our children?
How much money are we devoting
to the education of adults?
How much are we devoting to our Youth Groups,
to help our young people grow in faith?
How are we spending our money on Worship,
the center, the heart of what we do?
All the little things that are so easy to overlook:
music for the choir,
candles for Christmas Eve,
tuning the piano,
cups for communion.

Do we pay our staff fair salaries?
Beyond their salaries,
have we set aside money for each of them
to pursue continuing education and development,
to assure that they grow professionally,
and, just as important, spiritually?

Sometimes our Budget may not reflect fully all we do.
We budget, of course a portion of offerings
to be used for Mission support.
But we also take a number of special offerings
throughout the year,
money that is over and above our Mission giving,
funds for One Great Hour of Sharing; Christmas Joy,
Peace-making,
and most recently blankets for Church World Services.
And we don’t even count Care packages for college students,
or the UnTrim-a-Tree
which we plan to set up next week.

As we look to next year,
every ministry team has been asked
to consider cutting their budgets,
looking for anything, no matter how small,
that might not be necessary,
so that we can add that amount
to a new line we have created in the budget:
a line for an Associate Pastor.

We are getting closer and closer to having that position funded.
That one item, perhaps more than any other,
is a statement about how we see the future,
how we are looking at the future:
with confidence,
boldness,
with excitement.

Look at our budget and it will tell a story,
it will reflect who we are --
who we really are --
as a community of faith.
It will tell how we are responding
to Jesus’ teaching,
“…where your treasure is,
there your heart will be also.”
(Matthew 6:21)

Now, how in the world does our text
figure in all this?
That dark, foreboding text we heard from Mark’s gospel,
the text often referred to as the “little apocalypse”.

Breathe easy:
I did not pick the text as a prelude to bad news;
it is the Lectionary text for this particular Sunday.
As I read it, I will admit my first reaction was
“this is not a text we want to hear
on the last day of our Stewardship Campaign.”
But as I thought about the text,
prayed it,
listened for the Spirit’s guidance,
I realized this text speaks powerfully
about how we are called to look to the future.

We hear apocalyptic texts – this passage,
or the Revelation, which we have been reading
in the Wednesday morning Bible Study class --
and it is easy to be a little frightened of the future,
of what lies ahead.
The visions, the images,
the smoke, the fire, the trumpet blasts,
all signs and portents of the end of the age.

Apocalyptic literature was very popular in Jesus’ time.
In fact, for a period starting about
150 or so years before Jesus’ birth
and running about 100 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection,
there were lots of apocalyptic texts;
only a few are included in the Bible.
They all pointed to a new age,
the fulfillment of time,
they pointed to the day when the Messiah would come again,
come again in glory and bring the Kingdom of God.
That day when “when the wolf would live with lamb,
when every tear would be wiped away,
mourning, crying and pain would be no more,
when even death would be no more.”

We take on faith that that glorious day will come.
We take on faith that we live in the in-between times,
between the time when Jesus was raised from the dead,
and the time when he will come again to make all things new.
That’s the message of Advent:
that wonderful time of preparation that begins
in just two short weeks.
Advent isn’t about getting ready for the birthday,
pointing us to the Christ who was born in Bethlehem;
It is about getting ready for the Christ
who will come again in glory.

When will that day come?
We don’t know.
Even Jesus said he didn’t know.
Will there be signs that will usher in the end times?
We’ve certainly never lacked for people who have said
there would definitely be signs
and that they, and only they, could read them.
Point to any calamitous event in human history,
and there were voices shouting out
that the end times had begun:
The Black Plague in the 14th century;
The French Revolution;
The Civil War;
The flu pandemic after World War One;
The rise of the Soviet Union and the Cold War;
9/11;
Hurricane Katrina;
Swine Flu.

But Jesus doesn’t want us to waste our time looking for signs.
He wants us to look forward with confidence,
not fear,
He wants us to be ready,
ready for that day when he will come
“like a thief in the night”.
and the surest way to be ready for his coming
is if we are already at work building the Kingdom,
doing our part to create a bit of the Kingdom here and now.

To work to create peace;
to work for justice and equality;
to right wrongs,
remove barriers that benefit some
at the expense of others.

To work to assure that anyone who is sick
doesn’t lack for medical care,
isn’t denied coverage because something was pre-existing,
or because they’ve lost a job.
To take a stand and say that
even if you believe in the capitalist system,
as a disciple of Jesus Christ,
there is something wrong
about a person earning a multi-million dollar bonus
that could easily fund jobs for dozens, even hundreds,
in a time when so many are literally hungry for work.

The earthly things we hold onto so tightly
will all crumble to dust
and be no more --
even the Temple in Jerusalem could not avoid that end.
So Jesus warns us:
don’t get too attached to earthly things;
work for the new world that is to come.

Every line in our budget should call us into that work,
call us into the future,
provoke us to ministry, outreach,
compassion, care, concern, discipleship.
Every line in our budget should call us
to kingdom building.
Every line in the budget should provoke us to action,
more,
stronger,
bolder,
more confidently and faithfully.

Look through the budget and it seems so ordinary,
like budgets for other organizations.
But look through Jesus eyes
and you’ll see ministry opportunities,
kingdom-building opportunities everywhere.
Something as simple as the amounts we set aside for property
for building maintenance and upkeep.
In those lines we have a call to ministry:
a building that safe, inviting;
a place for 200 children to come to during the week
to laugh, learn, and be loved;
a place for more than 50 adults new to this country
to come to learn English;
a place for men and women to come
in their anguish and pain
for loved ones addicted to alcohol or drugs,
a safe place where they can find support, help, hope.

Eugene Peterson has observed that
“the way we conceive the future sculpts the present.”
How will we conceive the future that for us is next year?
How will we sculpt each day to create the future?
Will it be the year we take a leap of faith
and say we will add a full-time staff member
to work with our young folks,
to help them as they each embrace their vocation
as Kingdom builders?
To help them learn our Lord’s words,
“The Kingdom of God is not coming with things
that can be observed;
For in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”
(Luke 17:20ff)

Frederick Buechner wrote,
“The power that is in Jesus,
and before which all other powers on earth
and in heaven give way…
is above all else a loving power.”
(Secrets in the Dark,161)

Our budget should reflect that loving power.
Our budget should reflect compassion
our budget should reflect selflessness,
It should reflect hope,
confidence,
courage, even boldness.

And it will,
if it reflects our joyful response
to our call to be Kingdom builders,
if every line provokes us to new ways of service
and discipleship,
if every line provokes us to sing the ageless carol,
a carol we should sing all year round:
“come Lord Jesus, come.”
AMEN

How We Worship

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
November 1, 2009

How We Worship
Galatians 1:3-10

The mighty sound of a pipe organ
shaking the very foundations of the building
with the celestial music of Bach.
Light washing through stained glass windows
that tell all the great stories of the Bible:
Noah, King David,
Mary and Joseph,
Jesus and his disciples.
Candles flickering in the stillness,
the faint scent of beeswax in the smoke,
rising with prayers and praise
as a fragrant offering to God.
Communionware on the Table glistening silvery,
offering plates gleaming in their brassyness.
The minister robed to reflect the seriousness of the moment,
the stole around the preacher’s shoulders
a colorful voice speaking joy in response to God’s call.
The worship service runs its course,
with just enough drama to inspire,
but not so much as to overwhelm.

This is what a worship service should be like.
Majestic and serious,
reflecting the traditions that have grown over the centuries,
especially the traditions grounded in the Reformation.

Heads nod in agreement not only here in this Sanctuary,
but in other churches, other denominations:
Yes, that’s it,
that’s what worship should be like every Sunday,
52 Sundays a year.

But more than a few heads shake.
“No!” they say:
That’s the way it used to be done.
That’s how our grandparents worshipped,
but that’s not how we want to worship.
That kind of service doesn’t connect with us;
it isn’t engaging;
it isn’t inspiring;
it’s often dull.

We want today’s music,
the kind of music we listen to on our iPods:
drums, guitars, keyboards,
loud and lively.
The colors that wash over us in worship
shouldn’t come from stained glass,
as lovely as it might be,
but from lighting that helps set the tone, the mood,
reflecting the spirit:
bright for joy,
hued red or blue, even purple
for more serious or somber times.

Tell the minister to put away that 500-year-old relic of a robe;
Did Jesus wear one?
No, he preached and taught in what he wore each day;
why can’t the minister do the same thing?

And don’t lock us into one book for the hymns we sing
to praise and honor God.
These days any hymnal is out of date
as soon as it rolls off the presses.
Bring hymns from all the world to us,
hymns from every source,
other denominations,
other cultures.
Put the words up on screens to save paper;
After all, we have learned through screens all our lives:
television, Gameboys, computers,
cellphones, texting and twittering:
“Screens-R-Us” describes our generation.
They work for us.

Make the service lively!
Aren’t we here to praise an awesome God?
Yes, we agree: let’s do it seriously,
but can’t we rock even a little
with the “Rock of Ages”?

Traditional versus contemporary,
what kind of worship style is right, is best?
In some churches the debate has fractured congregations,
even families.
A popular book that came out not that long ago
was entitled “The Worship Wars”,
written to help clergy and congregation navigate through
different needs, desires, histories,
that were often seen to be competing
in how we worship.

I am a product of tradition.
When I was in Buffalo two weeks ago to visit my sister,
we worshiped at the only church I knew
for the better part of 40 years,
the church of my grandparents and parents,
a grand, historic, traditional church,
established in 1847,
a foundation stone in Buffalo’s history,
a church with a Sanctuary
that can hold more than a thousand worshipers,
imposing with darkened brass and heavy oak,
gorgeous stained glass windows,
telling Old Testament stories on the North,
New Testament stories on the South.

It is a church steeped in tradition.
It is also a church that has been losing members for decades.
At its peak 50 years ago the church had more than 2500 members;
the current membership is about one-quarter that,
and the church has struggled financially the past couple of years.

It is the churches that rock with the Rock of Ages
that have grown so rapidly the past twenty years.
We see them all around us here in Northern Virginia:
In those churches you won’t find an organ, pipe or electronic;
you won’t find a chancel,
you won’t find the pastor wearing a pulpit robe.

What are we to do?
Drop traditional for contemporary?
No, of course not.
What we do is find a balance,
a balance between the traditional and the contemporary;
We are not unyielding in our hold on tradition,
but we also don’t race to embrace the latest fad
to appear contemporary.

As Deborah and I plan each Sunday’s service,
we try to blend traditional and contemporary;
the best of each.
We try to balance because we know that
what is comfortable and engaging for one person
isn’t for another.
The hymn you love may be a hymn that the person sitting next to you
finds almost an impediment in helping them worship God.
Our calling, our responsibility
is to reach across age and backgrounds,
to reach out to our most adventurous worshipers
as well as our most traditional.

Our job and the job of every worship leader
is not to please people;
it is to please God.
In Paul’s day there were many preachers
who claimed to preach and present the gospel,
but were doing nothing more than
giving people what they wanted to hear;
they saw that as long as they made crowds happy,
the crowds were willing to respond
by filling up the offering plates.

We seek authenticity,
faithfulness,
sometimes in the form of tradition,
other times in newer, more contemporary forms.
We balance, we blend,
knowing that what works for you,
may not work for another,
and what works for them,
may not work for you.
We try new things,
even as we build on history and tradition.

Could there be anything more traditional
in our worship service than when we join our voices together
and say the Lord’s Prayer?
But the Lord’s Prayer as we say it comes to us
from the days of the Westminster Confession of Faith,
written more than 350 years ago.
It reflects Elizabethan English,
the language of William Shakespeare:
“Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed by thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven…”

We don’t speak that way any longer, of course.
And Jesus never spoke Elizabethan English:
he did not say “thee”, “thine”, or “thou”.
He spoke Aramaic, the common language of the people.
He would not have said,
“Thou art created in thy Father’s image.”
He would have said,
“You are created in your Father’s image.”

When he taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer,
he taught them to say,
“Our Father who is in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
(Matthew 5:9)

Perhaps it is time for us to make a change,
a change from the Elizabethan,
from the traditional to the contemporary.
Here’s the irony:
If we did this we’d actually be more traditional, not less,
since we’d be going back to the prayer
as Jesus first taught it to his disciples.
See how contemporary can be traditional,
and the traditional contemporary?

As you come to this table this morning,
remember that we are all worshipers together
in our wonderful diversity
even as we share our common faith.

Our Lord invites us, in all our diversity
to come to his table
and share in this meal that he has prepared:
a meal that reflects an extraordinary history
going back more than 3,000 years,
a meal that renews and refreshes us for today,
and a meal that gives us a glimpse
of our glorious future.

Come to this table where you will find the perfect blending of
the tradition of yesterday,
the contemporary of today,
and the hope and promise of tomorrow.
That’s how God calls us to worship.
AMEN