And She Will Be Blessed

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

November 30, 2014

And She Will Be Blessed

Luke 1:46-55

Stories about Mary abound,

stories that try to satisfy our hunger,

our desire to know something, anything

about the mother of Jesus;

the one chosen by God to give birth to

“the Son of the Most High,

the Son of God,

the Holy One,

whose kingdom shall have no end.”

(Luke 1:32-33)

The Bible tells us surprisingly little about Mary:

nothing about her family,

nothing about where she came from,

or where she grew up,

or what her father did,

or how old she was,

or how her betrothal to Joseph was arranged,

or whether she had more children

after Jesus was born.

We’ve tried over the centuries to fill in the pieces;

there is no shortage of stories

that purport to tell us about

the life of this young woman,

this young woman who really is

the beginning of Christmas.

There is, for example,

an apocryphal story called the

“Infancy Gospel of James”

which tells us that Mary’s parents               

were named Joachim  and Anna,

and that Mary’s birth was the result of

immaculate conception,

an essential doctrine in the

Roman Catholic Church.

The story tells us that at age 3,

Mary was so filled with the Spirit of God,

that when her parents took her to the Temple

to leave her to be raised and taught by the priests,

she danced up the stairs in joy.

Another apocryphal story is called

the “Infancy Gospel of Pseudo Matthew”

and it tells us that while Mary lived in the Temple,

“Daily an angel of the Lord [spoke] with [her];

daily she accepted food from the hand of an angel.”

The stories go on to tell us that

at age 12 Temple priests

asked widowers in the community

to contest for Mary’s hand.

Joseph was chosen,

protesting at first that he wasn’t interested,

and then telling his young bride-to-be

that he would be leaving immediately,

to go build houses elsewhere,

and that he’d be gone

for a very convenient 9 months.

The gospels themselves tell us little of Mary

beyond what we find in the birth narratives.

But what they tell us paints a picture

of a woman of remarkable faith,

a woman humbly obedient to the Lord her God.

Imagine: there she is, little more than a teenager,

probably from a rather humble background,

if the best her father could do

was arrange a marriage

to an itinerant carpenter,

and suddenly she is visited by an angel,

the angel Gabriel.

It shouldn’t surprise us at all

that Gabriel’s first words to Mary were,

“Do not be afraid”.

Watch the classic movie, “The Bishop’s Wife”

in which the Bishop, played by David Niven,

can never quite figure out whether the angel,

played by Cary Grant,

has come to help him or do him harm.

“Do not be afraid, for the Lord is with you!”

Gabriel reassures Mary.

Gabriel then tells Mary that she will give birth

to the Son of God,

the Son of the Most High.

Mary doesn’t protest that she should be let alone,

as almost every Old Testament prophet did;

nor does she ask the obvious question,

“why me?”

Instead she asks the more practical question

about how she could conceive

since she was still unmarried.

Why did God select Mary?

She was neither famous, nor powerful,

nor influential, nor wealthy.

She didn’t come from the right family,

the right town,

the right school.

But she had what mattered to God:

faith, deep and abiding faith,

faith that led to obedience.

God’s will was enough for her:

“Here am I the servant of the Lord,”

she said to Gabriel,

let it be with me according to your word.”

(Luke 1:38)

And so she gave birth to Jesus,

gave birth in the most humble of circumstances,

far from home, in a stable,

because there was no room for her and Joseph

anywhere but in a barn behind a crowded inn.

Her baby’s first bed would be a manger,

the feeding trough for cattle, donkey, and oxen.

It is Luke’s gospel that tells us this birth story;

focusing as he does on Mary.

Matthew’s gospel looks at the birth

through Joseph’s eyes, rather than Mary’s.

It is really only Luke who paints

any real picture of Mary.

After the birth of our Lord,

we find only a few more glimpses of Mary:

an anxious mother,

when Jesus stayed behind in the Temple at age 12

and Mary could not find him;

a proud mother accompanying her son

to a wedding in Cana;

a grief-stricken mother

collapsed at the base of the cross

watching her son die in agony,

hung as a common criminal,

hearing his last gasps for breath

until there was nothing but terrifying silence.

It is the prayer that Mary offers

when she visits Elizabeth

that tells us the most about Mary,

tells us what we need to know,

tells us that for as young as she was,

as modest a background as she might have had,

she was a woman of deep faith,

obedient faith,

humble faith.

“My soul magnifies the Lord

and my spirit rejoices in God

my Savior.”

Mary sang out,

God her savior.

God the one who would redeem her,

watch over her,

grace her with hope,

bless her.

Mary’s prayer echoed the prayer offered by Hannah,

the mother of the prophet Samuel,

when she gave birth to her son

a thousand years before,

and then sang with joyful exuberance:

“My heart exults in the Lord;
my strength is exalted in my God.
…There is no Holy One like the Lord,
no one besides you;

 there is no Rock like our God.

Talk no more so very proudly,

 let not arrogance come from your mouth;
for the Lord is a God of knowledge,
and by him actions are weighed.

The bows of the mighty are broken,
but the feeble gird on strength.

Those who were full

have hired themselves out for bread,
but those who were hungry are fat with spoil.

…The Lord…raises up the poor from the dust;

he lifts the needy from the ash heap,

to make them sit with princes

and inherit a seat of honor.”

(1 Samuel 2)

The Lord God is Hannah’s savior.

The Lord God is Mary’s savior.

The Lord God is our savior.

We begin our Advent season today;

Advent is a time of preparation,

a time for us, yes,

to prepare ourselves for Christmas,

a time for us to decorate our homes,

to shop for gifts,

to get ready for visiting family and friends,

and all the festivities that come with Christmas.

But Advent is also a time for us

to prepare ourselves

for the coming of our Lord;

and of course, not just the coming

we celebrate at Christmas,

the coming of our Lord as a

baby born in a manger,

but the coming we anticipate,

the coming our Lord has promised us,

the coming our Lord calls us to prepare for:

                                                     

That day when our Lord will

come again in glory

and bring about the Kingdom of God,

the Kingdom God and our Lord Jesus describe

time and time again,

the kingdom that will show

Mary’s and Hannah’s words

to be prophetic and true:

 the lowly lifted up

the rich sent away empty handed;

the proud scattered,

the powerful brought down;

swords beaten into plowshares,

spears into pruning hooks,

a kingdom so completely different

from the world we know

that even the wolf will live with the lamb,

the leopard will lie down with the kid,

and the lion will eat straw like an ox.

The world we work so hard to create

to suit our every need

will be turned upside down

to become the Kingdom God will create,

which will, paradoxically

truly suit our every real need,

filling us all with good things,

satisfying our hunger,

quenching our thirst,

and gracing us with that peace

that surpasses all understanding.

As one scholar wrote, in God’s Kingdom,

“A barren woman can bear a child.

A virgin can conceive.

The Lord can enter into human history as a child.

And from a tomb can come resurrection.”

The Advent of the Kingdom of God is before us.

We stand on the threshold of a room called December

and in that room we see a

baby born to a humble young woman,

born to a faithful young woman,

born to give us hope.

                 

It is the baby who draws our attention.

But Advent encourages us to focus on the mother,

even just for a few moments,

to hear the words of her Magnificat,

to learn from her example of

humble, obedient faith,

And then sing with her:

“My soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

…Let it be with us according to your Word.”

To God be the glory.

AMEN

The Unheeded Voice

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

November 23, 2014

The Unheeded Voice

Selected Texts from Ezekiel

The book of the prophet Ezekiel cranks, rumbles, and

whirrs its way into our imaginations

right from the very first chapter.

It is a long book,

a difficult book,

filled with wild imagery,

and angry, punishing words from God

spoken through the prophet.

It is not at all surprising that most preachers

veer wide of the book.

The Lectionary that splits up the books of the Bible

and spreads them out over three year’s worth of Sundays

treads lightly through the pages of Ezekiel.

Of course, most of us know the story of

the Valley of the Dry Bones,

the story many of us learned

through the old gospel song.

But otherwise the ecumenical team

that created the Lectionary

were probably uncertain as to what to do with

Ezekiel’s harsh words,

and even more, the imagery, often bizarre,

beyond our ability to picture in our minds,

let alone make sense of:

“As I looked, a stormy wind came out of the north:

a great cloud with brightness around it

and fire flashing forth continually;

and in the middle of the fire,

something like gleaming amber.

In the middle of it was something like

four living creatures.”

Much of Ezekiel’s imagery reappears in

the Book of Revelation;

John clearly found inspiration in the pages of Ezekiel,

as well as from other prophets.

In fact, most of the imagery in Revelation

has antecedents in other books of the Bible,

and especially the book of Ezekiel.

At first, Ezekiel would appear to be just one more

in a long line of reluctant prophets,

men called to speak God’s word to God’s children.

It was a job no one wanted:

Not Moses,

not Amos,

not Jeremiah,

and not Ezekiel.

Yet Ezekiel did it,

took on a thankless job,

a job that surely won him no friends.

After all, who would want to listen to

someone preaching, “Thus says the Lord God,

I will let loose my anger upon you,

I will judge you according to your ways,

I will punish you for your abominations.

My eye will not spare you,

I will have no pity.”

It is a hard book to read;

Our Wednesday Bible Study class

has been learning just that

as we work our way through

the pages of the book.

The time was almost 600 years before

the birth of our Lord.

The Babylonian army invaded Israel from the north

and proceeded to lay waste the country,

sacking, looting, destroying, burning.

And then they took the people into exile,

all the people, including Ezekiel,

into exile along the shores of the river Chebar,

a tributary of the Euphrates.

There Ezekiel was called by God to serve him,

serve him by speaking for him,

by being his prophet to his

rebellious, disobedient children.

The call story is rich in imagery,

with Ezekiel told to eat a scroll

with God’s words upon it,

eat the scroll to take in God’s words,

and then having eaten it,

probably metaphorically rather than literally,

he was instructed by God,

“[Now] Go to the house of Israel

and speak my very words to them.”

God knew, even as he sent Ezekiel out,

the challenge Ezekiel faced,

that Ezekiel’s would be an unheeded voice,

saying to him,

“The house of Israel will not listen to you,

for they are not willing to listen to me….

[Still], do not fear them or

be dismayed at their looks,

for they are a rebellious house…

Say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God’;

whether they hear or refuse to hear.”

Ezekiel spoke harsh words to the people,

words the people didn’t want to hear.

But they were God’s words,

God’s words spoken through Ezekiel,

in the same way prophets before and after

have spoken God’s challenging words

to all God’s children;

in the same way God speaks

challenging words to us even now, here,

today,

from this pulpit and every pulpit,

anywhere and everywhere

the word of God is preached.

But for as harsh as God’s words were

to the children of Israel as they lived in exile,

captives of the Babylonians

for the better part of 70 years,

ultimately, God’s words to his children were redemptive;

ultimately, God’s words led the people

to restoration,

to reconciliation,

to grace,

to peace,…  to love.

For God as our Father, our Mother in Heaven,

a parent who can often be angry and upset with us

over our misbehavior and disobedience,

over our strident unwillingness to listen,

God is also our parent whose love for us

is unconditional,

our loving parent who longs to forgive,

longs to be reconciled to and with us,

no matter how far we stray,

no matter how bad we are:

“…As I live, says the Lord God,

I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked,

but that the wicked turn from their ways and live;

turn back, turn back from your evil ways; …

Though I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’

yet if they turn from their sin

and do what is lawful and right—

…—they shall surely live, they shall not die.

None of the sins that they have committed

shall be remembered against them;

if they have done what is… right,

they shall surely live.”

God longs to forgive all his children,

God longs to be reconciled with all his children;

God longs to draw all his children to him.

For as God reminds us,

God is our shepherd, tending us,

caring for us,

looking after us,

looking out for us:

“For thus says the Lord God:

I myself will search for my sheep,

and will seek them out.

As shepherds seek out their flocks

when they are among their scattered sheep,

so I will seek out my sheep.

I will rescue them from all the places

to which they have been scattered ….

I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep,

and I will make them lie down, …

I will seek the lost,

and I will bring back the strayed,

and I will bind up the injured,

and I will strengthen the weak…”

This is the word of the Lord our God.

This is what God wants for us,

God looking after us through his Son,

whose very birth was first witnessed,

so appropriately, by shepherds,

shepherds abiding in the fields,

“keeping watch over their flock by night.”    

God our shepherd,

the One who forgives us

through his grace and love;

the One who wants only to draw us

ever closer to him,

that we would know more completely his love.

It is challenging book, the book of Ezekiel,

that tells us this,

that adds to our understanding of our heritage

that we are God’s beloved.

As the Psalmist tells us,

it is a goodly heritage.

“The Lord is our shepherd,

we shall not want.

He makes us to lie down in green pastures;

he leads us beside still waters,

he restores our souls.

He leads us in right paths

for his name’s sake.

Even though we walk through

the valley of the shadow of death

we will fear no evil

for God is with us,

God’s rod and staff, they comfort us.

God prepares a table before us,

even in the presence of our enemies.

God anoints our heads with oil;

our cups overflow.

Surely goodness and mercy

shall follow us all the days of our lives

and we together, all God’s children

shall dwell in the house of the Lord

forever and ever.”

AMEN

They’re Right

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

November 16, 2014

They’re Right

Acts 2:36-47

They’re right.

Our young people who led worship last week

who led so faithfully,

enthusiastically, and creatively –

they’re right: we are community.

A community:

a group of people together,

a diverse group sharing a common faith.

All of us bonded by our faith,

our faith in God,

our faith in the one we follow:

our Lord Jesus Christ.

That’s what makes us community.

We’ve been called to community

for more than 2000 years,

but certainly our record as Christians

is mixed to say the least.

We’ve done community well at times

and at other times, we’ve done community poorly,

appalling poorly.

We’ve built community;

and we’ve also built walls to separate,

walls to divide,

walls to keep out.

We’ve reached out to others,

and we’ve retreated into our

own comfortable enclaves,

behind barriers of selfishness,

bigotry, and ignorance.

Over the centuries, we Christians have taken

the teachings of our Lord

and have interpreted them to suit ourselves,

making Jesus our “personal savior,”

forgetting that God revealed himself through Christ

because God “so loved the world”.

Jesus calls us to faith, calls us to community

calls to build the Kingdom of God,

a place where all are welcome… all.

Jesus teaches us to ground ourselves

in the two great commandments:

Love God

and love your neighbor.

Jesus teaches us that only the most expansive,

inclusive definition of neighbor will do;

it is what he intended.

Everyone is our neighbor.

Still we select, we choose,

we separate, we set apart,

we differentiate, we distinguish,

we pick and choose our neighbors.

It isn’t community as God intended,

or as Jesus calls us to create.

Our lesson from the Acts of the Apostles

shows us what “community” means.

Peter spoke to a large crowd

following the first Pentecost,

to people, Acts tells us,

“from every nation under heaven.”

Peter was filled with power of the Holy Spirit

and invited all who heard his voice to listen,

learn,

and become part of the new community.

“Tell us what to do,”

came the response from the people.

“Tell us what we need to do”

to become part of the community.

Simple, said Peter, “repent and be baptized”.

That’s it.

No tests, no documents to sign,

no creeds to memorize,

no background checks,

no committee to approve or disapprove.

Repent and be baptized;

that’s all it takes to be part of

the community of Christ.

And, as we heard in our lesson,

the people responded,

responded by the thousands,

joyfully becoming community in the process,

a new community,

a different kind of community,

one that reflected the Kingdom of God.

The three thousand surely reflected

a cross-section of society;

they would have been a diverse group:

young and old,

people from cities,

people from the countryside,

shepherds, carpenters,

merchants,

those with many children,

those with no children.

People from “east and west,

north and south.”

For all their differences,

they became community,

a community focused on community,

on building the community, building up,

seeking the common good:

“all who believed were together

and had all things in common.

…They would sell their possessions and goods

and distribute the proceeds to all,

as any had need.”

Do you find yourself cringing a bit

to hear that last sentence:

that the people would sell their

possessions and goods

and distribute the proceeds to all,

as any had need,

distribute to complete strangers?

It sounds like socialism, communism:

“From each according to his abilities,

to each according to his needs”

in the words of Karl Marx.

But there it is in Holy Scripture,

the life we are called to in community,

the life we are called to

through repentance and baptism.

New life,

a new way of life.

Life transformed in Christ,

life transformed by the power of God’s Holy Spirit.

We hear the word “repent”

and we tend to think that it means

we are supposed to feel guilty about

the lives we lead.

“Repent miserable sinners,”

as preachers of a different era

might have fumed from the pulpit.

But that’s not what Peter had in mind

as he called the people to join him

and the other disciples

in the new community of Christ.

Repent means to change – change your thinking,

to turn from old ways of thinking,

old ways of doing.

To repent is nothing less than

“a radical change of mind,

of acts;

it is transformation.”

It is to turn from the life we’ve been living,

and live for Christ,

live by Christ,

live through Christ.

We begin this life in baptism.

when, even as an infant,

we go under the water and die to old ways,

and then come up out of the water

reborn, filled with Spirit,

a disciple of Christ,

born to live in Christ.

To repent and live fully in baptism

is to understand what it means to live in community

what it means to love one’s neighbor,

what it means to live for the common good.

The Reverend Jim Wallis in his most recent book,

calls us to “reclaim this idea of the common good,”

an idea, a way of life he argues,

that has been overrun by rampant “me-ism”:

“my needs, my wants, my rights,

what I want, what matters to me…”

the greater good of the community lost.

The great fourth century preacher

John Chrysostom preached,

“This is the rule of the most perfect Christianity,

its most exact definition,

its highest point,

namely seeking the common good,

for nothing can so make a person an imitator of Christ

as caring for his neighbors.”

When we receive a new member into

the universal body of Christ through baptism

we welcome them as neighbors into community

and we respond communally.

When we receive new members

into our church family,

we welcome them as neighbors into community

and we respond communally.

We make promises in community to one another

to guide and nurture each other,

to welcome and encourage each other,

to build up and not judge

by word,

by deed,

with love,

with prayer.

We do this here in community

to help us learn how to live the same way

in the larger community

with all who are our neighbors.

“Do not be conformed to this world,

but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”

Paul tells us.

(Romans 12:2)

Paul also teaches us,      

“So if anyone is in Christ,

there is a new creation:

everything old has passed away;

see, everything has become new!

All this is from God,

who reconciled us to himself through Christ,

and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;

…we are ambassadors for Christ.”

And as ambassadors for Christ,

called to a ministry of reconciliation

we are called to build community

here in the church,

and out in the world God loves so deeply.

In her book Traveling Mercies,

Anne Lamott wrote why she went to church,

and more important,

why she took her young son with her:

“I want to give him what I found in the world,

which is to say a path and a little light to see by.

Most of the people I know who have what I want –

… purpose, heart,

balance, gratitude, joy –

are people….in community,

who pray and practice their faith.”

Anne Lamott went to church and took her son

because there she found community:

a place of welcome,

a place of family,

a place of grace.

Community is a place we are called to by Christ.

But community is also a place

we are called to create,

shape,

and make as we follow Christ.

It is, as we learned last week

a forever community –

or at least, it should be.

But that means we each need to work at it,

each of us,

work at building community

instilling our community with

eternal, forever values

of love, welcome,

acceptance, compassion,

grace, peace.

They’re right, our young people.

We are community.

        

AMEN

We’ve Always Done It This Way

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

November 2, 2014

We’ve Always Done It This Way

Nehemiah 8 (selected verses)

We know the commandment, don’t we:

Remember the sabbath day,

and keep it holy.

It’s one of the first commandments we learn:

For six days you shall labor

and do all your work.

But the seventh day is a sabbath

to the Lord your God;

…the Lord blessed the sabbath day

and consecrated it.

(Exodus 20:8-11)

That’s the commandment as we hear it

from the book of Exodus.

In Deuteronomy we find a slightly different version:

it begins with God calling us

not just to remember the Sabbath,

but observe it:

“Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy”

(Deuteronomy 5:12)

The commandment calls us to observe the Sabbath

by refraining from work,

by resting,

and by remembering.

                                   

But the commandment doesn’t call us

to observe the Sabbath by worshiping,

by going to church,

or back in Moses’ day, by going to the Temple

and offering a sacrifice.

In the Bible

worship was not seen as something

to be done once a week,

at a special time and place;

worship was seen to be a part of daily life.

It was understood to be part of how we were called

to live our lives:

we worship God,

we praise God,

we adore God,

we give honor and glory to God

in our work, in our lives,

in all we do,

each day, not just on the Sabbath.

        

In fact the Hebrew word for worship

can also be translated as work, vocation,

to remind us that our daily work is worship.

The Sabbath our ancestors in faith observed

was on a Saturday, the last day of the week.

That practice continues today

for our Jewish brothers and sisters:

their Sabbath begins at sundown on Friday

and continues through sundown on Saturday.

For us, our sabbath is of course on Sunday,

a practice that dates from when

the earliest followers of Christ

began to gather in the predawn hours

on Sunday morning

to remember the resurrection,

to remember when God raised Jesus from the tomb,

on that first Easter, that first Sunday.

Ever since, there’s been a bit of Easter

in every Sunday service.

We decorate our Sanctuary with an empty cross,

rather than a crucifix,

to remind us

that the Cross could not kill

and the tomb could not hold our Lord.

So even in November,

we can shout out, “Christ is risen indeed!”

We’ve come a long way from going to the Temple

to offer a sacrifice,

as even the faithful did in Jesus’ day.

And we’ve come a long way from

gathering in private homes

early on Sunday mornings to remember Easter.

Over the centuries we’ve not only built churches,

we’ve built worship.

But did you ever stop to wonder

where we ever developed the basic model

we use for the hour or so

that we are gathered here on Sunday morning?

The commandment doesn’t tell us

anything worshiping;

about what to do,

and certainly Jesus never gave us instructions for

what to do on Sunday morning for worship.

So why do we worship as we do?

We Presbyterians, part of the Reformed tradition,

look for answers in the Bible.

And the answer to our question is there.

But it does require a little digging;

the answer is found of one of the lesser known,

more obscure books of the Old Testament.

Yes, our model for worship comes from an Old Testament book,

If we find the book of Nehemiah,

we’ll read about the restoration of the Israelites

back to their land after their exile in Babylon,

more than 500 years before our Lord was born.

They’d lived under Babylonian rule for 70 years,

before the Persian army routed the Babylonians,

and then freed the children of Israel

and sent them back to their homes.

The Persian King, Cyrus, encouraged the Israelites

to rebuild Jerusalem and their Temple,

which was little more than an ash heap

after the Babylonian army

had looted and burned it.

The people of Israel rebuilt

and then they celebrated,

celebrated by gathering in community in Jerusalem,

gathering to hear Scripture,

to hear the priest Ezra read from the law of Moses,

as the first books of the Bible were called.

 “…all the people gathered together

 into the square before the Water Gate.

They told the scribe Ezra

to bring the book of the law of Moses,

which the Lord had given to Israel.

Accordingly, the priest Ezra brought

the law before the assembly,

both men and women and

all who could hear with understanding.

He read from it facing the square

before the Water Gate

from early morning until midday,

in the presence of the men and the women

and those who could understand;

 and the ears of all the people

were attentive to the book of the law.

The scribe Ezra stood on a wooden platform

that had been made for the purpose…

And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people,

for he was standing above all the people;

and when he opened it, all the people stood up.

Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God,

and all the people answered, ‘Amen, Amen’,

lifting up their hands.

Then they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord

with their faces to the ground.

…So they read from the book,

from the law of God,

with interpretation.

They gave the sense,

so that the people understood the reading.”

  

There it is, in the Word of the Lord:

the model for worship,

the model our church and most churches use,

a model that dates back almost 2500 years,

yet is still the same basic structure we have today,

down to the wooden platform that today we call a pulpit,

and the people responding with their “amens”.

When we worship,

we gather first and foremost

to hear the word of the Lord,

words read from Scripture,

words then interpreted, for understanding.

Of course, interpretation can be done in different ways:

a preacher can read and then preach,

as I do most Sundays.

But we can also interpret through music –

our choir has done that before for us.

We can interpret through drama, story-telling.

When our youngest children

present a pageant of the Christmas story,

they are interpreting scripture

just as surely as preacher

preaching from a pulpit.

                          

We’ve had the same basic model

for worship for 2500 years,

which makes it easy to fall into the trap

of resisting change,

of sticking with the response,

“we’ve always done it this way”

any time someone suggests that we might want to try

something new or different.

We honor tradition,

we honor our history;

but we also know that the head of our church,

our Lord Jesus Christ,

leads us constantly into the future,

God’s future,

an ever-changing future.

and we must follow,

trusting that the Holy Spirit

will grace us with the wisdom and the courage

to change and adapt for whatever

the future has in store for us.

We do this with music regularly –

trying new hymns, new arrangements,

different instruments to accompany our singing.

We do it as well with interpretation –

something as simple as when I bring my iPod

and play a piece of music to accompany the sermon.

As part of our capital campaign planning,

we’re looking at our audio visual needs

here in the Sanctuary.

Video screens are something

that we’ll probably have before long –

not because they are the latest fashion,

the latest trend in worship,

but because they can help

with the very core of worship:

visual presentations can help with interpretation,

can help our understanding.

We use video in our teaching venues all the time now –

it is a rare Bible Study class

when I don’t have something visual

to enhance our understanding

and I’d love to have the same capability

from time to time for sermons.

Worship services in our church

are lively and joyful;

They are the result of a great deal of time,

energy, and effort,

not just from me and Deborah Panell,

but from the dozens who help make

each Sunday worship service

faithful, inviting,

nourishing, and inspiring:

the choir, the ushers, the greeters,

those who prepare bulletins,

those who clean the Sanctuary,

those who see to it that the lights are on,

and the heat is working,

those who assure the sound system is ready to go.

the parking lot clear and safe,

that there is coffee and tea and other refreshments

for after the service,

those who check the candles,

put water in the pitcher,

assure that there are fresh worship bags

for our children

and nursery care for our youngest.

Every Sunday service is the result of many, many hands,

all of us working together in community,

all working to help us all focus on the heart of worship:

hearing and understanding.

We’ll continue to honor tradition

even as we adapt to change.

Even we preachers are glad that we no longer preach

as Ezra did, from “early morning until midday.”

Together we’ll continue to worship God

in spirit and in truth, as our Lord teaches us,

keeping the commandment faithfully

as we observe the Sabbath

praising the Lord our God.

To God be the glory!

AMEN