Roll Up Your Sleeves

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

September 11, 2016: Genesis Sunday

Roll Up Your Sleeves

1 Peter 1:13-16

“Therefore prepare your minds for action;

discipline yourselves;

set all your hope on the grace

that Jesus Christ will bring you

when he is revealed.

Like obedient children,

do not be conformed to the desires

that you formerly had in ignorance.

Instead, as he who called you is holy,

be holy yourselves in all your conduct;

for it is written,

‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’”

(NRSV)

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Faithful? — Yes

Religious? — Probably.

Spiritual? — Maybe.

Holy? — That’s a tough one.

Holy.

Mother Teresa – she was holy.

Monks cloistered in monasteries,

they are holy.

But ordinary folks like you and me?

Are we holy?

Can we be holy?

And yet, Peter is telling followers of Christ—

and that includes you and me—

to be holy.

Peter is not setting a new standard;

No, he’s quoting Scripture,

words from the Old Testament,

the Book of Leviticus,

words that came straight from the mouth

of the Lord God:

“You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

(Leviticus 19:2)

What is it to live a holy life?

Is it being more faithful?

More religious?

More spiritual?

Does it require

at least an hour a day in prayer,

two hours a day studying Scripture,

attendance in church every Sunday,

vacations spent in service or on retreat?

God, as always, helps us.

God sees to it that there is no mystery

to what it means to live a holy life.

After all, the first group of people

who were called to live holy lives

were the children of Israel

called to live holy lives

even as they followed Moses

through the wilderness.

God laid out rules for living a holy life

in the Book of Leviticus,

and if we were going to try to

summarize those rules,

generalize them,

to try to help us understand

what was on God’s mind

as God called his children to holiness,

we would say that the holy life is one spent

building community:

All God’s children in communion with one another.

So, some of the rules are quite practical

for building a community:

Don’t steal from one another;

In your business dealings, don’t cheat,

don’t cut corners;

Don’t mock a person because

they are deaf, blind

or have other physical challenges;

Take care of those who have needs,

especially the hungry;

don’t harvest your field to the very edge,

but always leave a portion

for the poor and the alien.

Welcome the alien and the foreigner,

they are part of community, too.

Don’t seek vengeance for a wrong done you,

revenge just leads to a cycle of violence

that never ends.

Don’t bear a grudge.

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

(Leviticus 19:18)

Yes, that teaching is found in the Old Testament,

in a book that dates to time

more than a thousand years

before the birth of our Lord.

They are words we know well from our Lord Jesus,

who spoke them, taught them,

to reinforce what God wants from us:

community,

community.

Paul understood this.

That’s why we heard in last week’s lesson

Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians,

“Do not seek your own advantage,

but that of the other.”

(1 Corinthians 10:24)

and his reinforcement of the point

in his letter to the Philippians:

“Let each of you look not to your own interests,

but to the interests of others.

Let the same mind be in you

that was in Christ Jesus.”

(Philippians 2:5)

Diana Butler Bass,

who we will be privileged to welcome next March

as part of our 150^th anniversary celebrations,

has written in “Grounded”, her most recent book,

that we have substituted “tribalism” for “community”;

that rather than building community

we’re inclined to gather with others who look like us,

think like us,

reflecting our own wants and desires.

But, Bass reminds us,

the goal of religion should be

to stop “tribal tendencies”

because they don’t build community;

they tend instead to divide, separate,

set apart.

        

What we want to think of as community,

she writes,

becomes “isolated behind the walls of buildings

where member’s tastes and preferences”

become paramount.

She reminds us that the word “religion”

means to bind together,

to form community.

But somewhere along the way,

religion “abandoned a prophetic and creative vision

for humanity’s common life.”

Bass concludes “In the Bible,

the vision is of mutuality,

friendship, creativity,

conviviality, and generosity….

It is a vision of a universal feast,

a cosmic table around which

all humankind is gathered

to eat and drink and dance with God.”

We get a glimpse of that life

each time we gather here at this Table,

where we gather, all of us,

a diverse group sharing a common faith;

a diverse group bound together by the Word,

all of us eager to grow in holiness,

a community called to reflect not our tastes,

our preferences, our wants, our desires,

but the grace and love of God

revealed in Jesus Christ.

Bass quotes the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

who wrote,

“We have inherited a large house,

a great ‘world house’ 

in which we have to live together

—black and white,

Easterner and Westerner,

Gentile and Jew,

Catholic and … Lutherans, 

Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists..., 

Moslem and Hindu—

a family unduly separated in ideas,

culture and interest,

who, …must learn somehow

to live with each other in peace.”

This Table helps us to learn how to live in peace;

helps us to learn how to welcome

all those seated with us,

no one privileged,

all together,

barriers we are so quick to erect in life

torn down,

erased by grace and love;

a Table where there is always a place

for the newcomer.

So come to this Table,

this communal table,

where all are invited

by our Lord Jesus Christ.

Come, eat, be renewed, refreshed

after a long hot summer.

And then, when the meal is over,

as our text teaches us:                              

“…roll up your sleeves,

put your mind in gear,

…Don’t slip back into those old grooves …,

doing just what you feel like doing.

…As obedient children,

let yourselves be pulled into a way of life

shaped by God’s life,

a life energetic and blazing with holiness.”

 (The Message)

Let us pray through the familiar words of St. Francis:

“Lord, make us all instruments of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let us sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, Grant that we may not so much seek

To be consoled, as to console.

To be understood, as to understand.

To be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.”

And, we will add,

it is in building community

that we become holy.

AMEN