God Calls Me to Do What?

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

May 31, 2015

God Calls Me to Do What?

Jeremiah 3:15-16

“I will give you shepherds after my own heart,

who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.

And when you have multiplied and increased in the land,

in those days, says the Lord, they shall no longer say,

“The ark of the covenant of the Lord.”

It shall not come to mind, or be remembered, or missed;

nor shall another one be made.”

**************************

The joke is surely older than I am:

“How many Presbyterians does it take

to change a light bulb?

Six – one to change the bulb and

five to lament how much better the old one was.”

There are variations on the joke, of course:

How many Presbyterians does it take

to change a light bulb?

Two: one to change the bulb,

and one to complain that his grandparents

had donated the old bulb to the church.

Do you hear a pattern?

A pattern that Presbyterians perhaps

don’t embrace change very well,

don’t embrace the new?

I don’t think it is a characteristic

unique to Presbyterians –

it is something we find in all churches.

In fact, it may be something about us as humans:

we struggle with change,

we struggle with the new because it is unknown.

The old is something we know,

we feel comfortable with.

Yet change happens;

today is not the same day as yesterday

and tomorrow will be yet a different day.

None of us will be the same tomorrow,

We’ll all, from youngest to oldest,

at the very least be a day older,

the chemistry in our bodies

constantly changing within us,

even as the world around us changes, too,

a world God created to be in

constant motion and movement.

It is not a cliché, it is the simple truth:

things change;

we change;

everything changes.

That is God at work,

the Holy Spirit at work

constantly blowing through life,

a breeze bringing the fresh and the new,

carrying away the old and the stale.

The three short sentences we heard in our text

don’t convey the enormity of the change

God was proposing some 2500 years ago.

God was telling his children that he planned

to wipe away centuries of history,

centuries of tradition.

Speaking through the prophet Jeremiah,

God was telling his children

that the Ark of the Covenant

would no longer be the center of their worshiping life;

The Ark of the Covenant

would no longer be important;

the Ark of the Covenant

would be forgotten,

and disappear into the pages of history.

To the people hearing God’s words

through the prophet

the very idea had to seem inconceivable,

simply not possible,

a change beyond anyone’s ability to imagine.

The Ark had been too central,

too important to the Israelites

for too long for them to imagine life without it.

Do you remember the Ark of the Covenant?

It was the box God instructed Moses to build

to hold the two tablets of the covenant,

the two tablets of the Law we call

the Ten Commandments.

God designed the box;

designed it to be beautiful, majestic,

made of acacia wood

and then covered with gold inside and out.

It was to have an elaborate cover,

and strong rings at each of its four corners,

through which the levitical priests could slide poles

to allow them to carry the Ark,

so the Ark could move with the children of Israel

through the wilderness;

so the Ark could lead the children of Israel.

It was a man named Bezalel

who built the Ark, fabricated it,

following the plans given him by Moses,

the plans Moses received from God.

Once it was completed,

and the tablets of the covenant put inside the box,

the Ark became so holy

that no one was allowed to touch it,

not even Moses’ brother Aaron, the Chief Priest.   

The Ark was then placed in the Tabernacle of God –

it would be another few centuries

before Solomon would build

the Temple in Jerusalem

where the Ark eventually was placed

in the Holy of Holies.

                 

In the Tabernacle,

the Ark was placed behind a heavy curtain

so that it could not be seen.

Only Moses could approach it,

for the Ark was God’s throne and footstool;

and it was from the Ark

that Moses would hear God’s voice

as God instructed him.

As Scripture tells us,

When Moses went into the tent of meeting

to speak with the Lord,

he would hear the voice speaking to him

from above the mercy-seat

that was on the ark of the covenant

from between the two cherubim;

thus it spoke to him.

(Numbers 7:89)

Carried by the priests,

the Ark of the Covenant led the children of Israel

through the wilderness

and eventually to the Jordan River,

and then across the river,

out of the wilderness,

into their new homeland,

the land flowing with milk and honey.

The priests carried the Ark

into the waters of the Jordan,

as deep and as wide as the river was.

But the moment they stepped into the river,

the water stopped flowing,

and a dry passageway appeared

for the children of Israel to cross

into their new land.

Moses’ successor Joshua called to the people,

“When you see the ark of the covenant

of the Lord your God

being carried by the levitical priests,

then you shall set out from your place.

Follow it,

so that you may know the way you should go.”

(Joshua 3:3-4)

And the people followed,

as they had followed for decades,

the Ark reflecting the very presence of God.

The Ark was captured by the Philistines

in the time of the prophet Samuel,

more than a thousand years before

the birth of our Lord.

and with its loss went the hope of the people.

A cloud of gloom descended on the people

that was so dark, so thick,

that when one woman gave birth to a son,

she named the boy Ichabod, which meant,

“the glory has departed from Israel.”

(1 Samuel 4:21)

Eventually the Israelites recovered the Ark.

And in time David became King,

and decided that Jerusalem would be his home,

and that it would also be the home

of God’s tabernacle and the Ark.

David and others were so ecstatic

about having a permanent home for the Ark,

that they danced before the Ark

“with all their might,

with songs and lyres and harps…”

(2 Samuel 6:5)

David danced with such abandon,

and with such effervescence,

that his wife later scolded him for what she thought

was conduct inappropriate for a king. 

Centuries later,

when the Babylonians invaded,

they destroyed the Temple Solomon had built

to house the Ark.

We have no history of what happened to the Ark,

so we can let our imaginations run wild

and even imagine that the Ark once

fell into the hands of German soldiers

during World War II,

only to be recovered by our own soldiers,

and then boxed up and stored

in a nondescript government warehouse

somewhere in Herndon.

What is more likely

is that the Ark was destroyed by the Babylonians,

the box smashed and broken up for its gold,

and the two stone tablets inside

smashed as well,

smashed as completely

as Moses had smashed the first set centuries before.

When the children of Israel were finally freed

from their captivity in Babylon,

and allowed to return to their country,

some 500 years before the birth of our Lord,

Jerusalem was in ruins,

the great Temple utterly destroyed,

and the Ark of the Covenant gone.

The Ark’s history had been braided  

so thoroughly with that of the Israelites       

for so many centuries –

how could they hope to rebuild their lives

without the Ark?

How could they be a people

without the presence of God

reflected in the Ark of the Covenant?  

And yet, as our lesson teaches us,

God said to the people,

it’s time for a change,

time to leave the Ark behind,

time for a new way of thinking,

the old ways have past,

and a new day has begun.

Eugene Peterson captured God’s attitude

so well in his version of our from The Message:

“The time will come…

when no one will say any longer,

‘Oh, for the good old days!

Remember the Ark of the Covenant?’

It won’t even occur to anyone to say it—

‘the good old days.’

The so-called good old days of the Ark

are gone for good.”

Gone for good because God offered new life

for his children to embrace.

And so it is for us, you and me,

here and now:

God offers us the future each day,

saying to us:

“Do not remember the former things

or consider the things of old,

for I am about to do a new thing.”

(Isaiah 43:18)

God creates anew each and every day,

creates a future for us,

a future as God promises, filled with hope.

                                   

Our Lord Jesus Christ leads us into God’s future,

as the Spirit energizes us,

and graces us with the courage and the will

to embrace the future confidently, eagerly.

How many Presbyterians does it take

to change a light bulb?

One:

One to change the bulb.

                          

But then all to be thankful

for the light the old bulb provided

even as it is discarded;

and then all to stand joyfully,

confidently,

gratefully,

and hopefully in the light,

the light that shines from the new.

AMEN

Dynamos

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

May 24, 2015

Pentecost

Dynamos

Selected Texts

“The Spirit sets us free to accept ourselves

and to love God and neighbor….

The Spirit gives us courage

to pray without ceasing;

to witness among all people to Christ as Lord and Savior;

to hear the voices of peoples long silenced;

and to work with others for justice freedom and peace.”

These are words from our Brief Statement of Faith,

words we say when we reaffirm our faith

in the Holy Spirit,

when we say, “We trust in God the Holy Spirit,

everywhere the giver and renewer of life.”

It’s always seemed to me

that the Holy Spirit has baffled us more than a little.

We get God,

and we get Jesus,

at least sort of;

but when we talk about the third person

of the Triune God,

the Holy Spirit,

I’ve always sensed that we Presbyterians

find ourselves confused, muddled, flummoxed,

uncertain as to what we should think or believe.

Michelangelo gave us as stirring an image of God

as we could ever hope to find

in his famous paintings

on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,

an image that endures for most of us.

And it’s easy for us to picture Jesus in our minds

from all the pictures we’ve seen in Bibles,

in Sunday School textbooks,

and in classrooms around churches,

churches everywhere, including our own.

But the Holy Spirit?

How are we to picture the Spirit?

Is the Spirit a “he”?

A “she”?

An “it”?

In the earliest years of the church,

there was an effort to define the Spirit as a she,

as Mother, through whom we are reborn,

with God our Father,

and Christ our brother.

The effort eventually fizzled

because there was nothing in the Bible

to support the idea.

Those of us old enough

to have had our thinking shaped by the words of

the King James Bible may be even more confused.

A bad translation from Hebrew and Greek,

through Latin to English,

gave us the inaccurate,

and really quite terrible term, “Holy Ghost”.

                                                              

It is a term that has endured over the centuries,

as bad as it has been,

perhaps because we grasp the concept of “ghost”

better than we do the concept of “spirit”.

It is on Pentecost that we shine our brightest light

on the Holy Spirit.

We get out the red stoles and paraments

and listen to the wonderful story Luke gave us

in the Acts of the Apostles,

the story of all of the Apostles gathered together

shortly after our Risen Lord had ascended into heaven

right before their very eyes.

The Apostles had elected Matthias to replace Judas

as the twelfth disciple,

and then they waited,

waited to learn what was expected of them,

waited to learn

what they were going to be called to do,

Jesus final words to them burning in their brains:

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit

comes upon you.”

(Acts 1:8)

Power – for what purpose?

“And suddenly from heaven

there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind,

and it filled the entire house

where they were sitting.

Divided tongues, as of fire,

appeared among them,

and a tongue rested on each of them.

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit…”

(Acts 2:2)

It is wonderful imagery:

tongues of fire resting

on the head of each apostle!

It had to be true –

who could make up something like that?

We speak of this story

as if it is the Holy Spirit’s

first appearance in the Bible,

other than the Spirit’s brief appearance

in the form of a dove at Jesus’ baptism.

But the Spirit of God blows through

all the pages of the Bible.

The breath of God is found in the Old Testament

as well as the New Testament,

the Spirit of God always there,

gracing God’s children

with the presence of God,

awakening God’s children to their calling;

and, as we say in our Brief Statement,

gracing all God’s children with courage,

gracing all God’s children with power.

It was the Spirit of God

that graced Sampson with the power

to break free of his bonds

after he’d been captured by the Philistines:

“the spirit of the Lord rushed on Sampson,

[and] the ropes that were on his arms

became like flax that had caught fire,

and his bonds melted off his hands.”

(Judges 15:14)

It was the Spirit of God

that graced Gideon with power;

not the physical power of Sampson,

but the power of leadership;

to lead God’s people as their judge,

“the spirit of the Lord

took possession of Gideon”

(Judges 6:34)

The Spirit of God graces with power,

graces with courage,

and even graces with life,

as we know from a favorite story,

the story found in the Book of the prophet Ezekiel

the story of the Valley of the Dry Bones.

You remember the story, don’t you:

how centuries before the birth of our Lord,

the prophet Ezekiel was brought out by the Spirit

and set down in a valley of

bleached, dried bones,

human bones,

and then the Lord God said to Ezekiel,

“Prophesy to the breath;  

prophesy, mortal,

and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God:

Come from the four winds, O breath,

and breathe upon these slain,

that they may live.”

And the bones rattled;

those dusty, brittle, lifeless bones,

began to rattle with life,

life that came from the Spirit of God,

life that came from the breath of God.

Reading this story we are so taken by the imagery

that it’s easy to miss the promise

God made to his children,

all God’s children,

a promise made centuries before the dove

descended upon our Lord as he came up

out of the waters of the Jordan:

“I will put my spirit within you”

(Ezekiel 37:14)

“I will put my spirit within you.”

This is God’s promise to us,

a promise that goes back to

the beginning of time,

that we will have God’s Spirit,

know God’s Spirit,

find strength, energy,

courage, determination

and life through the Spirit,

God’s Holy Spirit,

the very breath of God within us.

God’s Spirit will help us,

as Jesus promised us,

guide us,

sometimes nudge us the way we should go

when we’ve lost our way.

Speaking through the prophet Joel

God reinforced his promise, saying,

“I will pour out my spirit on all flesh;

your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

your old men shall dream dreams,

and your young men shall see visions.

Even on the male and female slaves…

I will pour out my spirit.”

(Joel 2:28)

The Spirit graces us with power that is more

than the physical power Sampson had

that allowed him to break his bonds;

it is a power that moves us,

It is a dynamic power

that helps us to know life in its fullest,

its richest.

The Greek word that we translate as “power”                

is the word “dynamo,”

and it is such a perfect word,

for the power we receive through the Spirit

is dynamic power,

vibrant power

that leads us to fullness in life –

if we let the Spirit lead us.

The Apostle Paul teaches us

that we are to live by the Spirit

and be guided by the Spirit,

our lives reflecting the fruits of the Spirit,

as we talked about last week:

“Love and joy,

peace and patience,

kindness and generosity,

faithfulness,

gentleness”

(Galatians 5:22)

Conversely, when our lives are filled with

“anger,

strife,

quarrels,

dissension,

factions”

Paul wants us to understand

that we are not living by the Spirit,

that we’ve closed ourselves off

to the grace-filled,

grace-giving,

community- building power of the Spirit.

(Galatians 5:20)

It is an extraordinary gift we’ve been given,

this power,

for it is power to be our best:

It is power to be forgiving

power to be accepting,

power to be compassionate

power to be generous,

power to be big hearted, open hearted,

power to be open minded,

power to be patient,

power to love,

love family, neighbor

and even enemy, as our Lord teaches us.

The German theologian Jurgen Moltmann has written,

“The Spirit calls us into life:”

the life God wants for us,

the life our Lord calls us to.

Moltmann captures it perfectly with his words:

“In the experience of the Spirit,

the spring of life begins to flow in us again.

We begin to flower and become fruitful.

A … love for life awakens in us…

We go to meet life expecting the rebirth

of everything that lives,

and with this expectation

we experience our own rebirth,

and the rebirth we share with everything else.”

This is life in the Spirit,

life from the Spirit,

life from the breath of God.

In the words of the hymn,

Spirit of the living God,

fall afresh upon us:

fill us,

renew us,

shape us,

empower us,

embolden us for service.

Spirit of the Living God,

awaken us to life,

true life.

AMEN

Help My Belief

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

May 17, 2015

Confirmation Sunday

Help My Belief

Mark 9:14-24

When they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them,

and some scribes arguing with them.

When the whole crowd saw [Jesus],

they were immediately overcome with awe,

and they ran forward to greet him.

He asked them,

“What are you arguing about with them?”

Someone from the crowd answered him,

“Teacher, I brought you my son;

he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak;

and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down;

and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid;

and I asked your disciples to cast it out,

but they could not do so.”

[Jesus] answered them,

“You faithless generation,

how much longer must I be among you?

How much longer must I put up with you?

Bring him to me.”

And they brought the boy to him.

When the spirit saw him,

immediately it convulsed the boy,

and he fell on the ground and rolled about,

foaming at the mouth.

Jesus asked the father,

“How long has this been happening to him?”

And [the father] said,

“From childhood.

It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him;

but if you are able to do anything,

have pity on us and help us.”

Jesus said to him,

“If you are able!—

All things can be done for the one who believes.”

Immediately the father of the child cried out,

“I believe;

help my unbelief.”

A seed,

so tiny,

planted deep, out of sight,

waiting,

patiently,

waiting to sprout.

What could it be?

What could it become?

A  beautiful, fragrant flower?

A bright red tomato?

A towering maple tree?

A simple blade of grass?

Whatever it might be,

it needs help,

help to sprout,

help to become what it was created to be.

It needs good soil;

it needs water;

it needs nourishment;

it needs light;

and it needs time.

It is remarkable, when you think about it:

dig a hole in the ground,

bury a seed in it,

cover it up,

and deep in darkness,

it will awaken;

it will send its shoots out,

its tendrils up,

as if it knows just where the light is,

pushing up, up, through the soil

up to the light,

up to where new life awaits.

We have a seed planted within us, you and I,

the seed of faith,

the seed God plants in each of us,

waiting to take root,

waiting to sprout,

waiting to be watered and fed,

waiting to grow.

God plants, but then we help;

we help one another water the seeds within us,

nurture, nourish and feed the seeds,

encourage them.

Usually the older tend the younger,

but certainly that’s not always the case;

the young can tend the old as well,

as we learned last week when our youngest singers

taught us so joyfully.

But we older disciples do have a responsibility

to our younger disciples

to help their seeds of faith sprout,

nurturing them by teaching,

encouraging,

guiding,

helping,

listening,

reassuring,

accepting,

praising.

We let them know it is okay for them

to acknowledge their “unbelief,”

as the father did in our lesson.

We all have our struggles with unbelief –

not just when we are young.

To come to church,

to participate actively in church,

is to acknowledge that we each need nurturing,

tending,

help,

from those older

and from those younger.

Our calling is to respond to the plea

we all have throughout our lives,

every one of us,

which is not so much, “help my unbelief”

as much as it is, “help my belief!”

“Help my belief”

Or, to put another way:

“Help me to grow in faith;

Help me to learn about God;

help me to learn about Christ,

to learn more about Christ,

to learn the real Christ,

rather than the storybook Christ,

the Hollywood Christ;

Help me to learn about

the Christ of the Gospels.”

“Help me to learn about love and grace;

Help me to learn about the Spirit within me.

Help me so I can grow fully into

the person God created me to be,

the person God hopes for me to be.

Help me to learn,

Help my belief.”

We Christians have a mixed record

tending the field of faith.

We are to feed with the word,

the written word we call Scripture,

and even more so, the living Word,

our Lord Jesus Christ.

But our history shows how easy we’ve found it

to take the written and living words

and grind them into a bitter sausage,

something with little nourishment,

something far different from what God intended.

Dogma, creeds, affirmations,

adamant statements of faith we’re told we must accept,

interpretations of Scripture grounded neither in

grace nor love,

all larded with self-righteousness,

arrogance,

and a little too much certainty.

The result has too often been,

as the Anglican bishop Charles Raven once put it,

a church that’s “a poor advertisement for its Lord,”

a church with disciples who wield the word

more as a weapon of judgment

superiority,

divisiveness,

separateness.

If the seeds of faith are tended

with the love of God given us in Christ,

the grace of God given us in Christ,

then we’ll yield good fruit.

We’ll yield what the apostle Paul called

the fruits of the Spirit:

“love and joy,

peace and patience,

kindness and generosity,

faithfulness and gentleness,

and self-control.”

(Galatians 5:23)

The great American preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick

whose beliefs were tended as a young man

growing up in my hometown of Buffalo,

lamented that  “Among the most tragic factors in history

is the propensity of religion to make things matter

that intrinsically do not matter in the least…

Religion can make triviality terrific…,

religion can sanctify meanness,

make little things holy…”

resulting in “prejudices, partisanships,

and parochialisms…

[which can] ruin us.”

The seeds that should have grown strong and healthy

become stunted, warped.

Starved of proper nourishment,

they yield a bitter fruit.

Fosdick, whose words seem prophetic,

written as they were almost a century ago,

tells us that the music playing in the background

as we tend the seeds,

tend the plants,

nurture one another,

“should [be] a symphony played on the theme

of the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians”

Most of us know those words well,

words about love.

But not love limited to a couple

about to be married,

which is often the context

in which we hear that passage.

When Paul wrote those words,

he was not thinking about marriage;

he was thinking about love in its broadest, widest,

most comprehensive sense,

the love of God given in Jesus Christ.

The music that should play then has as its lyrics,

“ Love is patient;

love is kind;

love is not envious or boastful

or arrogant

or rude.

[Love] does not insist on its own way;

it is not irritable or resentful;

it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, …

[Love] bears all things,

believes all things,

hopes all things,

endures all things

[for] Love never ends.”

(1 Corinthians 13)

This is what we are called to teach,

for these words,

and our actions reflecting them,

our lives demonstrating them, living them,

will nurture belief,

nurture faith,

not just in our young people,

like our confirmands,

but in all of us,

ourselves included.

Even the tallest, oldest, biggest tree in the forest

is still growing,

the work that got started in the tiny seed it once was

is never done.

Our roots always need strengthening,

our arms can always reach higher into the sky,

higher toward the light.

“Help my belief,”

is what our young people say to us.

“Help my belief,”

is what we say to one another.

“Help my belief,”

so that we can understand what Jesus means

when he says,

“All things can be done for the one who believes.”

“Help my belief”

so we can give our lives more fully,
more completely to our Lord.

I believe.

Help my belief.

AMEN

The House We Build

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

May 3, 2015

The House We Build

Psalm 27:4

One thing I asked of the Lord,
    that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the Lord
    all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord,
    and to inquire in his temple.

Psalm 27:4

********************************

I was not at all happy with the news:

I needed a new heat pump.

The technician from the heating contractor

had come to do his fall check-up       

and after reporting that the main furnace was fine,

he said, “The compressor in your heat pump

is about to go.

You could replace it,

but you’ll have to replace other parts as well.

I recommend you get a new heat pump –

replace the whole unit.

Give me a few minutes

and I’ll work up some numbers for you.”

He went out to his truck,

and ten minutes later came back into the house

with his proposals:

three options: good, better, and best,

or as I saw them:

expensive,

very expensive,

and the one I called, “won’t-be-retiring-soon”.

Owning a home is expensive –

there’s always something that needs doing:

appliances need to be maintained or replaced;

walls need painting,

windows need repairing,

carpeting need replacing.

There’s plumbing, electrical,

yardwork, landscaping, and on and on.

It is expensive to maintain a church, too.

We have the same needs here

as we do in our homes:

appliances, heating, air conditioning,

plumbing, paint, flooring,

landscaping.

This is a 40-year-old building,

and for as diligent as we try to be in looking after it,

there is always something that needs doing,

something that needs fixing.

We can always defer maintenance;

many churches do that to save money,

especially churches with dwindling membership

and shrinking budgets.

We can defer maintenance at our homes, too.

But we have a responsibility here at church –

this building was built by the saints

who came before us,

men and women who built and maintained our church

in a line going all the way back to 1867,

and they entrusted us to look after our facility

not only for ourselves,

but also for the saints who will come after us,

long after us.

And that responsibility is for more

than just paint-up, fix-up,

repair and replacement needs.

We also have a responsibility to look ahead,

to discern needs we believe we’ll have down the road,

5 years, 10 years, 15 years.

We have a responsibility to anticipate and plan.

When we first put flat-screen TVs

in some of the classrooms about five years ago,

some of our members asked why we were doing that.

The answer was simple:

we live in a video age,

a video world;

everything is on screens,

especially for those under the age of 30.

It is how they are learning and communicating.

                                   

And, even for those of us over the age of 30,

we too learn better when we see, visualize

while we are hearing.

The installations have proven popular and useful

for Sunday School,

Bible Study,

even Session meetings.

More than 3,000 years ago,

Solomon built the great Temple

that was to be the dwelling place for the Lord God.

It was Solomon’s father, King David, though,

who did all the preparatory work,

arranging for the resources

that Solomon would need to construct

a Temple worthy of the Lord God.

It is in the often-overlooked book of Chronicles

that we find this stirring account of David planning,

preparing for the work,

even though he knew he would not live to see

the completed Temple:

King David said to the whole assembly,

“… the work is great;

for the temple will not be for mortals

but for the Lord God.

So I have provided for the house of my God,

… treasure of my own of gold and silver

... I give it to the house of my God.

…Who then will offer willingly,

consecrating themselves today to the Lord?”

Then the leaders of ancestral houses

made their freewill offerings,

as did also the leaders of the tribes,

the commanders of the thousands and of the hundreds,

and the officers over the king’s work.

They gave for the service of the house of God…

Then the people rejoiced

because these had given willingly,

for with single mind

they had offered freely to the Lord;

               

King David also rejoiced greatly….

[and prayed, saying]…

“But who am I, and what is my people,

that we should be able to make

this freewill offering?

For all things come from you,

and of your own have we given you.

“…I know, my God, that you search the heart,

and take pleasure in uprightness;

in the uprightness of my heart

I have freely offered all these things,

and now I have seen your people,

who are present here,

offering freely and joyously to you.

O Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel,

our ancestors,

keep forever such purposes and thoughts

in the hearts of your people,

and direct their hearts toward you.”

(I Chronicles 29)

This too is God’s house.

This house built by those who came before us,

charging us in their work to look after it,

maintain it,

repair it,

upgrade it,

renew it, refresh it,

even change it as needs change,

change it as the Spirit leads us

to new ways of worshiping,

new ways of learning,

new ways of doing ministry in the name of Jesus.

We are to do this willingly,

and yes, joyfully

our every effort

assuring that this will be always be a place of welcome,

of worship,

of learning,

of growing,

of comfort,

of renewal,

of joy.

We are called, all of us, to assure

that this will be a place where God’s Spirit

is palpable and present,

a place where the moment a visitor walks in

for the very first time,

he or she knows this is a community that glorifies God,

a community that lives in gratitude for God’s blessings,

a community that understands

the words of the psalmist:

One thing I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord,

and to inquire in his temple.

In the weeks ahead we’ll be talking further

and in more detail about the things we must do,

should do,

and would like to do,

to care for this House of God

and enhance our worship and ministry

I am ready to follow David’s lead

and make my pledge

to the capital campaign we’ll soon launch.

I see the needs

and I want to fulfill my responsibility

to those who will worship

sing, learn, and serve here

long after I’ve retired,

which of course, won’t be for a while yet—

I still have to pay for that new heat pump.

AMEN