Standing on Shoulders

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

October 16, 2011

Standing on Shoulders

Isaiah 45:1-7

You can’t tell, can you?

Here, let me step out from behind the pulpit.

You still can’t tell, can you?

You cannot tell that I am standing on shoulders.

I am standing on the shoulders of all those pastors

who came before me

and served God and this church:

all those pastors who preached from this pulpit

over the past 144 years:                    

Called pastors, interim pastors,

temporary supply pastors,

guest pastors,

senior pastors, associate pastors.

I am standing on other shoulders as well.

I am standing on the shoulders of those

who have taught me over the years,

my many professors from Princeton Theological Seminary:

those who taught me to preach;

those who opened up the world of the Bible to me;

those who walked me through the often confusing maze

that is theology;

those who help me to understand

the rich history of our faith and other faiths.

I stand the shoulders of other teachers as well

– those from the other schools I attended over the years,

and those from whom I have learned in less formal settings.

We all stand on the shoulders of those

who have gone before us;

those who have shaped us,

helped us to grow,

opened up new vistas for us,

helped us to see and hear in new ways,

different ways.

        

All of us stand on shoulders

of the great cloud of witnesses who came before us.

And in time it will be on our shoulders

that those who follow us will stand.

That’s community,

that’s the history of our church as the Body of Christ.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about history

the past few months,

ever since I accepted an invitation to serve on the

Bicentennial Committee of Princeton Theological Seminary.
Next year, the school will mark its 200^th birthday,

two hundred years as the oldest

and largest of the ten seminaries

affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Princeton has wonderfully exciting and ambitious plans

as it prepares to enter its third century,

In particular the school is in the midst of

building a new library

that will be so much more than a building

that houses books and journals,

even one that is the second largest collection

of theological materials outside of the Vatican library.

It will be a library that will be digital,

that will make its collection available to anyone,

anywhere, anytime,

the scholar, the pastor, the layperson

in Princeton, in Manassas,

in Nairobi,

in Shanghai.

It is an extraordinary project,

one that I am particularly delighted to be part of,

because it builds on the rich history of the school

even as it looks boldly forward.

It’s been nice to get back up to Princeton

without having to spend my time in classrooms!

I spent a total of 8 years there

working on two different degrees:

first my Master of Divinity degree,

and then my doctorate.

Over those years, I learned from so many men and women:

not just the professors in the classroom,

but also from classmates and colleagues,

from those who preached in chapel,

those who came to the campus as guest lecturers.

I stand on all their shoulders.

You stand on their shoulders, too.

Not just because I am an alumnus of the school.

You’d stand on their shoulders just as much

even if I had attended a different school.

You stand on their shoulders

because the Bible we read from each Sunday,       

the New Revised Standard Version,

was assembled by a committee

chaired by a professor from Princeton,

and which included other faculty from the school.

The Bible commentaries that I use,

books that are standard resources for most pastors,

include many written by Princeton professors.

It is almost impossible not to be touched by Princeton

not to stand on the shoulders of the tens of thousands

of men and women who have been part of the school

over the past 200 years.

    

We all stand on shoulders, every one of us,

of those who have taught us in and out of classrooms,

those who encouraged us, nurtured us,

coached us, inspired us,

pushed us, honed us,

praised us, loved us.

We stand on the shoulders of all those

who have been part of this church over the past 144 years.

Those who helped establish the church

in the roiling years following the end of the Civil War;

those who provided the vision, the money,

the time and the labor to build the beautiful building

that still stands in Old Towne.

We stand on the shoulders of those who realized

some 40 years ago that the church had outgrown its building

and that it was time to build a new building, to find more space,

those who said, let’s move to a patch of farmland

a few miles outside of the city,

where there isn’t much development,

where we will have a lot more room to grow.

This was back in a time when the word “develop”

made a person think of Kodak film

rather than real estate.

                                   

We cannot possibly count all the shoulders we stand on.

But just as we stand on the shoulders of those who

came before us, they too in turn stood on shoulders,

back in time,

linear history back,

back,

even as far back in history as the time of our lesson,

some 2500 years ago.

Yes, you and I stand on the shoulders

of a man named Cyrus.

Who was this man in our lesson,

this man called Cyrus?

Our lesson tells us he was the Lord’s anointed,

the Lord’s anointed just as David had been

five hundred years before.

Our lesson is set around the year 520:

520 years before the birth of our Lord.

If you remember your Sunday School history,

you’ll remember about 70 years before,

the Babylonian army had come roaring into Israel and Judah

killing, destroying, pillaging

and then forcing the remnant of Israel

into exile back in Babylon.

For three generations,

the children of Israel lived in captivity,

lived in exile,

wondering whether they would ever return to the land

Yahweh, the Lord God had given to them.

History teaches us that powers come and powers go,

empires come and empires go,

and just as Babylon had crushed the mighty Assyrians,

so in time came the fierce Persians

to crush the Babylonians,

At the beginning of the sixth century before Christ,

it was Babylon which was the dominant power,

but before the century ended,

Persia’s mighty empire stretched as far west

as modern Turkey, as far east as India.

This was Cyrus’ empire.

Now you may find this confusing.

Was the King of Persia,            

a follower of the Lord God?

Did he even know of the Lord God?

Our lesson gives us the answer:

we hear God say

“I call you by your name,

I surname you, though you do not know me;…

I arm you, though you do not know me.”

God chose to act through Cyrus,

calling him his “anointed”,

even though Cyrus did not know the Lord God,

did not know the Lord God was working through him.

Cyrus knew nothing of Yahweh,

the God of the Israelites.

His god was Marduk, a pagan god.  

                          

But still, God choose him to free the children of Israel

from captivity and restore them to their land.

Cyrus sent them back to their land              

back to resume the life their grandparents had known

in the land given them by God.

And then Cyrus took one more surprising step:

he told the children of Israel to rebuild their Temple,

the great Temple that had been for the Israelites

the symbol of God’s very presence,

that great gilded Temple

which had been reduced to ashes and charred stone

by the Babylonian army.

Build a new Temple, came the order from Cyrus,

with money coming from Cyrus’ own royal treasury.

(2 Chronicles 36:22ff)

Cyrus helped our ancestors in faith

to live their faith once again

We stand on Cyrus’ shoulders.

                 

We are about to begin our Stewardship campaign,

that time when we look to the year ahead

and plan with hope and anticipation for all the work

God will call us to do next year in the name of Jesus Christ.

Stewardship is our way of maintaining faith with

those on whose shoulders we stand,

those who so faithfully built and cared for this church

and then entrusted it to us.

And it is our way of maintaining faith with those

who will stand on our shoulders,

who will lead this church into the future.

Our plan is similar to last year’s:

Everyone will get a pledge card in early November,

which we will ask you to complete

and bring to church with you

on Heritage Sunday, November 20.

It is as simple as that.

Our Elders are leading our Stewardship effort this year.

Our Book of Order tells us that among the responsibilities

our Elders have is

“to challenge the people of God

with the privilege of responsible Christian stewardship

of money and time and talent,

developing effective ways

for encouraging …the offerings of the people.”

(G-10.0102(h))

Over the next five weeks, each of our 15 Elders

will take a few minutes before we take the Offering

to share with you what our Church means to them

and their own joy in responding to the privilege of stewardship,

as they lead us from yesterday to tomorrow.  

When we gather on Heritage Sunday,

we will honor our long time members,

and we will consecrate our pledges

as we look ahead to our 145^th year.

We will celebrate our past

as we stand on the shoulders of those

faithful stewards who came before us.

And we will look confidently to the future

knowing that those who will fill this space

twenty, thirty, fifty years from now

will themselves be standing on shoulders

faithful and strong:

your shoulders and mine.

AMEN