The Other Book

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

January 25, 2015

The Other Book

Selected Texts

It is a book that is often ignored,

and when it is not ignored,

it is often mocked and disdained.

But it is a book I know well,

a book I’ve worked with quite a bit

over the last few decades.

It is a book filled with history,

a book filled with wisdom,

a book filled with faith.

It is the second book of the two books

that make up the constitution of our church,

the constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA):

It is the Book of Order.

The Book of Confessions,

with its 11 Confessional statements

that inform and shape our faith,

is paired with the Book of Order

as the constitution of our church.

The Book of Order is often dismissed as

“the rule book,”

a book loaded and

even larded with petty rules

about this or that,

a book only the Clerk of Session

ever needs to read.

But the Book of Order isn’t just a rule book.

Within its pages you’ll find history,

theology,

guidance,

faithfulness,

all bound up in collective wisdom

gathered over centuries.

                 

We operate rather independently here in Manassas,

but the reality is that we are

part of a larger church,

our body of Christ

part of a larger body of Christ

that is the Presbyterian Church (USA).

The first Presbyterian church in this country

dates back to the 17^th century,

and the first Presbytery was established 1706.

The formation of our federal system of government

in the late 18^th century

was based on the structure

of the Presbyterian Church

with its presbyteries and General Assembly.

I tend to return to the opening pages

of the Book of Order

each year as we prepare to

ordain and install new officers.

In the first few pages of the book

there is much wisdom

to guide us on the mission we are all called to

as disciples of Christ within the church.

Many churches have mission statements.

Last week I cited a version of a mission statement

that I like,

a statement written many years ago

by the theologian H. Richard Neibuhr

brother of Reinhold Neibuhr,

I like the statement

for its simplicity grounded in Scripture:

The mission of each church, Neibhur wrote,

is to, “increase among men [and women]

the love of God and neighbor.”

Neibhur based his statement

on the two great commandments

our Lord Jesus Christ gave us:

to love God and to love our neighbor.

(Mark 12:28ff)

The Book of Order reminds us, though,

that the question isn’t,

what is our mission as a church;

the question is, what is God’s mission?

What is God’s mission

that we are called to be part of,

that we are called to participate in.

The Book of Order tells us that God’s mission is

nothing less than,

“the transformation of creation and humanity.”

That’s God’s mission.

That’s what we are called to be part of.

The Book goes on to explain,

“In Christ, the church participates in God’s mission

for the transformation of creation and humanity

by proclaiming to all people

the good news of God’s love,

offering to all people

the grace of God at font and table,

and calling all people to discipleship in Christ.

Human beings have no higher goal in life

than to glorify and enjoy God now and forever,

living in covenant fellowship with God

and participating in God’s mission.”

(F-1.01)

We carry out this mission

within the church,

making our church a place of grace and hospitality,

and by going out into the wider world,

“to bear witness

to the good news of reconciliation with God,

with others,

and with all creation.”

(F-1.0205)

“The Church’s life and mission

are joyful participation

in Christ’s ongoing life and work….

The Church is sent to be Christ’s faithful evangelist

sharing with others a deep life of

worship,

prayer,

fellowship,

and service;

and participating in God’s mission

to care for the needs of the sick,

the poor, and the lonely;

to free people from sin,

suffering, and oppression;

and to establish Christ’s just, loving

and peaceable rule in the world.”

(F-1.0302d)

That’s the mission we are called to be part of,

to participate in.

If we do it well and faithfully

then our church will “bear witness in word and work

that in Christ the new creation has begun,

and that God who creates life

also frees those in bondage,

forgives sin,

reconciles brokenness,

makes all things new

and is still at work in the world.”

(F-1.0302d)

God, at work in the world,

through our ordained officers,

and through all of us,

each of us filled with the Spirit,

and called by the Spirit

to use the gifts given us by the Spirit,

to do God’s work,

to give life to the risen Christ

by reflecting his presence

within the church and in the world around us.

We do this, all of us, not just officers,

through lives of service

marked by, “energy, intelligence,

imagination and love.”

(W-4.4003h)

The Book sums up:

“The Church is to be a community of hope,

rejoicing in the sure and certain knowledge

that, in Christ,

God is making a new creation.

This new creation is a new beginning

for human life and for all things.

The Church lives in the present

on the strength of that promised new creation.”

The great biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann

put it this way:

“The world for which [we] have been

so carefully prepared

is being taken away from [us]

by the grace of God.”

(as quoted by Barbara Brown Taylor)

Taken away from us as God creates a new world,

a new reality,

based not on earthly things

that we think are important,

but on what matters to God,

what matters to Christ,

things like love, reconciliation,

peace, hope, and justice.

“The Church is to be a community of love,”

the Book tells us,

“where sin is forgiven,

reconciliation is accomplished,

and the dividing walls of hostility are torn down.”

And, “The Church is to be a

community of witness,

pointing beyond itself through word and work

to the good news of God’s transforming grace

in Christ Jesus its Lord.”

The letter to the church at Ephesus tells us,

 [We] are no longer strangers and aliens,

but [we] are citizens with the saints

and also members of the household of God,

built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,

with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.

In him the whole structure is joined together

and grows into a holy temple in the Lord;

in whom [we] also are built together spiritually

into a dwelling-place for God.

(Ephesians 2:19)

The dwelling place for God is our hearts and minds.

Hearts and minds working together,

but with the heart leading

for as our Lord has taught us,

“By this everyone will know

that you are my disciples,

if you have love for one another.”

(John 13:34-35)

We begin our participation

in God’s mission with small steps;

we start, as the letter to the Colossians teaches us

by “clothing ourselves with love”

(3:14)

and “letting the peace of Christ rule in our hearts”,

 (3:15)

And letting “the word of Christ dwell in us”,

(3:16)

all so that we learn to

“seek the things that are above.”

(3:1)

All so that we can participate in God’s mission

beginning with the Word of God we find in Scripture;

and then expanding our learning

with the wisdom of the saints

who’ve gone before us

all so we can follow ever more faithfully

the Living Word,

the Word that is the first and the last,

our Lord Jesus Christ.

AMEN

Six Acres on a Hilltop

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

January 18, 2015

Six Acres on a Hilltop

1 Corinthians 12:4-11

“On an average day in the United States,

nine churches close their doors for good.”

                 

That was the opening sentence

in an article I read recently.     

The news was hardly new;

For years we’ve been reading and hearing about

the decline in attendance in churches:

young people turning away from religion;

churches shrinking and closing;

even the vaunted mega-churches

that once grew so rapidly

are finding themselves struggling.

What’s a pastor to do?

What are the leaders of a church to do?

What’s a congregation to do

in the face of such consistently dreary news?

Well, the first response should be obvious:

We should heed our Lord’s instructions

not to worry;

and instead trust in God,

have faith in God,

have hope in God.

And if we put our hope in God,

our trust in God,

our faith in God,

then our second response

should be equally obvious:

We should get on with the work

we are called to do

by our Lord Jesus Christ.

We should focus our time,

our talents,

and our treasure

on the ministries we are called to do:

the work of worshiping, praying,

praising, singing,

welcoming, nurturing,

learning, teaching,

healing, helping,

feeding, comforting,

serving, encouraging.

Thirty years from now,

it is possible that people could drive by this address

and say, “Do you remember that building

before they converted it into offices –

do you remember when it was a church?”

The future of our church depends on God;

but it also, of course, depends on us,

on you and me,

for as Paul reminds us,

we are the church;

the body of Christ.

The church is not a building;

it is the people inside the building:

we, the disciples of Christ

who are called by God’s Holy Spirit

to reflect Christ

as we serve in the name of Christ,

each of us using the skills and gifts

we’ve been given by God through the Holy Spirit,

just as Paul teaches us through today’s lesson.

Together we will either

make this church a joyful reflection

of God’s grace and love given us in Jesus Christ,

or we’ll see to it that our church becomes

another sad statistic.

We have a long and proud history:

we are beginning our 148^th year.

But that’s just the foundation on which

you and I are called to build.

Whether we build,

and what we build is up to us.

A few years ago at an officers’s retreat

we spent time talking about what kind of church

we wanted to be,

what kind of church

we as officers of the church,

as leaders of the church,

felt God was calling us to build.

Our retreat leader challenged us to build

what she called a “Sailboat Church.”

She explained that it was the “Rowboat Churches”

that were more likely to stagnate and die,

while Sailboat Churches caught the wind

of God’s Holy Spirit and pushed forward

into God’s future.

She elaborated that the Rowboat churches

tended to be budget driven,

resource driven,

program driven.

In Rowboat Churches she said,

there isn’t a lot of talk about

God’s Spirit, God’s will.

In the Sailboat church,

as our leader explained it to us,

church leaders begin with the conviction

that “God can do more than

we can ask or imagine.”

“Leaders of a Sailboat Church

begin their work with the question,

‘What is God leading us to be:

What is God leading us to do now?’

Leaders in a Sailboat Church

operate firm in their faith

that the God who calls

is also the God who provides.”

The leaders in a Sailboat Church see themselves

as part of a continuing adventure with God.

(all from Joan Gray, Spiritual Leadership)

I certainly doubt that

the men and women who gathered

to establish this church 148 years ago

said to one another,

“let’s make this a Sailboat church.”

But I also have no doubt

that it was that kind of thinking

that helped them build a church in 1867

that rose from the ashes of the Civil War.

I believe that it was that kind of thinking that

inspired and encouraged

members of this church 40 years ago

to say to one another,

“we’ve outgrown our building in Old Town.

Let’s go out,

out of town;

let’s go and look at 6 acres of farmland up on a hill,

where we can build a new church.

It will be expensive;

it will be a big project.

But that’s what God is calling us to do.”

It is always with great joy

that we ordain and install new officers each year,

men and women called by God to lead,

to be spiritual leaders of this congregation.

It is also with great hope

that we ordain and install them,

putting our trust and faith in them

that they will work faithfully and diligently

to discern God’s will for this Body of Christ,

and then call us all to work;

for just as on a sailboat,

we need all hands on deck

to move through the waters,

each of us offering and using

the gifts given us by the Spirit.

Every sailor knows that that there is

smooth water and sunny days,

and there is also rough water and dark days.

But if we put our trust in God to guide us,

to see us through on our journey;

we’ll never have anything to fear

or anything to worry about;

our sails will be filled with the breath of God,

we’ll know that our Lord is at the helm.

We see a world around us

filled with fear, with racism,

with intolerance, with violence,

with inequality, with injustice.

We see a world that needs us;

We see a world that needs

the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We see a world that needs churches like ours

where our goal, our mission,

is really quite simple:

it is to  “increase among men [and women]

the love of God and neighbor,”

(H. Richard Neibuhr)

as we live by the two great commandments

our Lord has given us.

So we sail into the new year,

confidently, hopefully, and joyfully.

The year ahead promises to be exciting.

We will, I hope, launch our Capital Campaign

to help strengthen us for the future;

to help assure that 30 years from now,

people will drive by 8201 Ashton Avenue

and still see a vibrant church,

a place of learning, growing,

welcoming, comforting.

Brian McLaren, the author of the book,

“We Make the Road By Walking”,

the book we’ve been using this year

in our Adult Education class,

writes, “Faithfulness means participating with God

in God’s unfolding story.”

That’s what we are all called to do,

all of us together,

as hands on this Sailboat Church:

participating with God

in God’s unfolding story,

using our gifts, offering our gifts,

trusting the Spirit to guide us,

trusting our Lord Jesus Christ to lead us.

As I shared with our new officers yesterday,

our Book of Order reminds us that,

“The Church is to be a community of hope,

rejoicing in the sure and certain knowledge that,

in Christ God is making a new creation.

This new creation is a new beginning

for human life and for all things.

The Church lives in the present

on the strength of that promised new creation.”

“The church is to be a community of love,

where sin is forgiven,

reconciliation is accomplished,

and the dividing walls of hostility are torn down.”

“The Church is to be a community of witness,

pointing beyond itself

through word and work

to the good news of God’s transforming grace

in Christ Jesus its Lord.”

(F-1.0301)

The Spirit calls men and women to lead us

as Elders and Deacons.

The Spirit fills us with gifts, each of us.

And now, the Spirit calls us to work.

The journey of our 148^th year has begun.

All hands on deck.

AMEN

Who Are They?

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

January 4, 2015

Who Are They?

Matthew 2:1-12

What is it about the Wise Men that so fascinates us?

They capture our imaginations,

as they ride into the Christmas story

swaying on the backs of camels,

a star guiding them on their journey

from the mysterious East.

We love the traditional Christmas story Luke gives us,

with the angel Gabriel;

Joseph and Mary traveling to Bethlehem;

Jesus born in a stable,

wrapped in swaddling clothes

and laid in a manger;

welcomed so joyously by shepherds

urged on by the heavenly host.

Matthew tells us nothing of stables or shepherds,

giving us instead the Wise Men;

men mysterious and exotic,

men who came bearing gifts:

gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Over the centuries,

we have taken Matthew’s spare narrative

and embellished it considerably,

in the process turning the Wise Men

into almost mythological characters.

Our first step down this path

came when someone decided

that there must have been three Wise Men.

Matthew gives us no number;

we concluded that since there were three gifts,

there must have been three gift-givers.

But different traditions report as few as two,

and some traditions have as many as 12!

They were made into kings very early on,

even though the text is clear

that they were astrologers;

learned men, to be sure,

but there is nothing in Matthew’s gospel

to suggest that they were of royal lineage.

We’ve inferred their royalty

from Matthew’s use of Old Testament scripture.

The psalmist had written long before:

“May the kings of Tarshish and of the isles

render him tribute,

may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts.

May all kings fall down before him,

all nations give him service.”

(Psalm 72:10-11)

From those words, astrologers became kings.

By the 5^th century, they’d been given names:

Melchior, Gaspar, and Balthazar.

A beautiful Byzantine mosaic

that dates to the late 6^th century,

found in a church in Ravenna Italy,

not only shows the three men bearing gifts,

but records their names in gilt stone.

Having given them names,

then they had to have stories,

or in today’s terminology,

each had to have a back story.

So Melchior was thought to hail from Persia,

while Gaspar’s home was somewhere in India.

Balthazar’s story started out on the Arabian peninsula,

but over time it morphed,

and by the 12^th century he was thought to be African,

coming perhaps from Ethiopia.

The suggestion that they came from different countries

does seem to conflict with the final verse

we heard in our text:

that they “left for their own country by another road.”

Matthew seems to suggest

that the three came from the same place.

Stories abound about what happened to them

after they returned home,

wherever their homes happened to be.

The Bible tells us nothing,

but for me, the most charming story

tells of the men living to the year 54,

a full half century after their journey to Bethlehem,

and 20 years after our Lord’s

crucifixion and resurrection,

all three dying in that year,

all within a few days of one another.

If you were to travel to Cologne Germany

and visit the magnificent cathedral there,

you’d find the “Shrine of the Three Kings,”

which claims to hold the bones

and other relics of the men.

Their bones and relics

were venerated for centuries,

a distinct contrast with the

long-forgotten shepherds of Luke’s gospel.

All of these are marvelous fables,

wonderful myths that embellish Matthew’s story.

But for all the mythology

what is it that we should learn from these men?

Surely we are called to learn more from them

than that we should celebrate Christmas with gifts.

These men were moved by the Spirit,

God’s Holy Spirit,

even if they weren’t aware of it.

They were moved to act in faith,

to take a long, arduous, dangerous journey on faith.

In putting their trust in the star to guide them,

they put their trust in God,

even if they didn’t think that,

even if they weren’t aware of it.

They knew something compelled them,

compelled them to go, to seek, to find.

And something compelled them to offer gifts,

gifts they gave with such generous hearts,

gifts offered to a child in a small house in Bethlehem,

gifts that would buy them no favor,

no prestige, no power.

They offered their gifts with no expectation

of anything in return.

Were they changed men for their journey?

Were they forever transformed

for having gone to Bethlehem,

for having followed the star to the young child?

In his story “The Other Wise Man”,

written more than one hundred years ago,

the Presbyterian minister Henry Van Dyke

wrote of a fourth wise man,

who had hoped to make the journey

with the other three,

but missed connecting with them

and was left behind.

The story tells of the fourth wise man’s

more direct encounter with Jesus,

something we are not aware

the other three ever had.

Did the three who made the journey conclude,

as Van Dyke tells us the Other Wise man did,

that the baby was born to rule

a kingdom of “unconquerable love”?

You and I have just encountered the baby Jesus,

and we’ve done him honor with our services

and our celebrations.

But are we changed for the experience?

Have we been transformed?

                                   

Are we more open to the call of the Spirit,

God’s Holy Spirit?

Will we be more open to being led to new places,

erhaps even unfamiliar places in the new year?

                                   

Will we journey through the year

faithfully,

prayerfully,

humbly?

                          

Will we live with generous hearts and minds?

        

Perhaps most important:

will we each do our part

to build a kingdom of unconquerable love

as we follow the one born for us,

the one the star leads us to:

our Lord Jesus Christ.

AMEN