To Be Continued…

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

November 14, 2010

To Be Continued…

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Once upon a time,

the wind swept over the formless void and darkness

that was the earth;

and then suddenly there was light,

and God saw that the light was good

and God called the light “day”

and the darkness God called “night”.

Once upon a time there was a fugitive,

a man who had run away to a land far from his home

after he had beaten a man to death.

He found work as a shepherd

in the hill country of the new land,

and one day as he tended his flocks

he saw the most amazing sight:

a flame erupted from a bush,

but the bush didn’t burn.

And then the man heard a voice speaking from the bush,

“Remove the sandals from your feet,

for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

Once upon a time, a teenager almost collapsed

under the weight of armor strapped to his skinny body.

He took off the bronze helmet and the breastplate

that more battle-hardened soldiers had put on him;

He laid down the gleaming sword he’d been given,

and then he stunned the men around him

when he picked up his trusty sling

and a gathered five smooth stones

from the dried riverbed just a few feet away.

With stones and sling in hand,

he walked out onto the battlefield

to face the most fiercesome enemy

the Israelites had ever encountered.

Once upon a time a young man and a young woman

talked of marriage, talked of life together.

The young man was a simple carpenter,

good at his craft and a hard worker.

The young woman was hardly more than a girl,

but radiant in peace and wisdom beyond her years.

It was her eyes that grabbed him;

he was lost in love the very first time he looked into

their dark, soft glow.

Still, for as much as he loved her,

he was troubled beyond words when,

right before their wedding date,

she told him something so shocking,

so completely unexpected from her…her.

Stories from the Bible.

Stories we know so well:

Noah and the Flood;

Jonah and the Whale;

Elijah riding up into heaven in a chariot of fire;

John the Baptist wild-eyed as he ranted at men and women

standing on the banks of the Jordan.

                                   

The Bible isn’t a book;

it is a library of books,

sixty-six, to be exact,

books filled with story after story:

action, adventure,

romance, comedy,

war, peace,

and of course, tragedy,

almost too much tragedy.

The season is almost upon us

when we’ll eagerly turn our hearts and minds again

to the story of Mary and Joseph

and the baby born in the stable;

the story of the shepherds quietly tending their flocks at night

when an angel of the Lord bursts upon them

saying, “Behold, I bring you good news of great joy”;

the story of wise men following the star to the baby,

so they could kneel before him

and offer him their gifts – and their homage.

Our two Bible study groups have spent the past two months

watching the superb DVD series,

“Christanity: The First Three Thousand Years”,

in which Oxford University Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch

tells the story of our faith,

tells the story of how it grew from that small ragged group

we call the first disciples

to more than 2 billion followers

living the Christian faith in virtually every country

on this planet.

It is an incredible story –

beginning in that stable in Bethlehem

and winding through a hill just outside the gates of Jerusalem,

a hill we know as Golgotha,

followed by a brief stop at a tomb,

and then outward, outward,

up into what is now modern Turkey

and from there west into what is now Greece

and on to Italy, France, even as far as England.

                          

The story didn’t travel a single road, a single direction, though.

Even as it was moving north and west,

it was also moving east across what is now Iran and Iraq,

across the central steppes of Asia,

into China, down into Southeast Asia,

up to Korea,

across to Japan.

        

And it completed its move around the compass

moving south into Egypt,

down into Ethiopia,

and across the countries of the African continent

that hug the Mediterranean.

                                   

And of course the story traveled across the Atlantic to this country.

But, the story came in so many different forms and settings:

the same basic story, of course,

but shaped within the culture of the Puritans of Massachusetts,

the Dutch Reformed in the Hudson River Valley,

Presbyterians in New Jersey,

Quakers in Pennsylvania,

Roman Catholics in Maryland,

Anglicans in Virginia.

It is a story that continues to this day,

a story that we tell,

and a story that we are part of.

                          

Who doesn’t remember the story of that day

when shortly after Jesus’ ascension into Heaven,

the exhausted, befuddled band of disciples

suddenly found themselves filled with the Holy Spirit,

and found as the first Pentecostals

that they had both the courage and the ability

to go out into the world

to tell the story of Jesus Christ,

to share the gospel, the good news.

And off they went, each his own way,

telling the story,

adding to the story,

each of them a part of the continuing story.

And you and I are part of the apostolic succession

that began on that first Pentecost,

that makes us all Pentecostal

even if we don’t embrace that term,

for we are all filled with Holy Spirit

and called by the Holy Spirit to keep telling the story,

writing the story as we live it.

When Paul rebuked those in Thessalonica for not working,

he wasn’t just teaching an economics lesson with his threat,

“anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”

He understood that those who had stopped working,

did so not because they were lazy,

but because they had listened to Paul’s teachings

and believed, as Paul did,

in the imminent return of Christ.

Surely they just wanted to be ready.

But Paul knew how important it was,

how important it is,

that every follower of Christ keep adding to the story,

each follower in Thessalonica,

and each follower here in Manassas,

adding a word, a sentence,

a paragraph, a page, a chapter.

The word that we hear as “idleness” in the text

comes from a Greek root that doesn’t suggest laziness

as much as it it suggests

that you are simply not doing your part

to build the community.

You’re not lazy;

you’ve abandoned your responsibilities

to the rest of the group.

There are 400 of us here within this community

called to be part of the story,

to keep writing the story.

Four hundred and now 14 more as we welcome

our newest brothers and sisters.

Every one of us has a part to play,

a word, a sentence, a page to add

to keep the story vibrant, vital, alive.

Paul’s lesson is that everyone should be involved,

active, participating;

no one has an excuse for not being part of the story.

The Presbyterian minister and novelist Frederick Buechner,

a masterful story teller, has written,

“The truth that Christianity claims to be true

is ultimately to be found,

…not in the Bible, or in the church, or theology…

but in our own stories.”

Our stories, yours and mine,

each of us Pentecostals,

each of us filled with the Spirit,

the very same breath of God that first blew across

the void and the darkness;

each of us called by the Spirit to share the story

as we live it.

Each of us living out our faith,

you living yours,

me living mine,

you and me living our faith here in community

nurturing one another

helping one another to add to our individual stories

and from there to the communal story.

They are stories of love, of joy,

of laughter;

they are also stories of sadness, of loss,

even tragedy.

Stories written in prose, poetry,

song, and yes, even rap.

They are stories that have no end;

Each of us is adding to the story even now;

a word, a sentence, a paragraph,

building on all that has gone before,

reaching out to what lies ahead.

Knowing that when we turn out the light each night

every day ends with the words,

“to be continued…”.

AMEN