It's the Giving, Not the Getting!

Who doesn’t enjoy seeing piles of presents under the tree on Christmas morning? We all love getting presents! Young and old alike, we eagerly tear away the wrapping paper, a sense of excitement and anticipation filling us – what might be in the box we’re about to open? 

But Christmas calls us to focus on the giving, not on the getting. After all, the first Christmas gifts were given – given to our Lord Jesus Christ by the Magi: On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  

A gift should be something that reflects affection and thoughtfulness; it should be as meaningful to the one who gives as to the one who receives. When I was a youngster, my mother used to take me and my sisters to Hengerer’s, the big department store in downtown Buffalo, to shop for presents. My list was not long and my budget was small, but oh how I used to scour the floors and aisles of the store looking for just the right gift for grandparents, parents, and sisters. To find just the right gift is such a joy. 

And even as you look for the perfect gift for each person on your list, don’t forget the one whose birthday we are celebrating. What will you get for Jesus? What gift will you put in our Lord’s stocking? Love? Kindness? Compassion? Generosity? What our Lord wants from each of us costs no money and need not be wrapped. What our Lord wants, as the lovely carol “Midwinter” reminds us, is our hearts: “What I have, I give him: my heart, my heart.”

The weeks leading up to Christmas can seem like an endless and exhausting shopping expedition, with stores incessantly trumpeting their “specials” and “one-day-only mark-downs”. As long ago as 1897 the playwright George Bernard Shaw complained that “Christmas is forced on a reluctant people by shopkeepers…” It’s up to each of us to “keep Christmas” in our hearts, even as we shop for the perfect gifts. As the Reverend Henry Van Dyke reminds us, it isn’t what we get that matters, but what we give, for we have been given the greatest gift of all.

“See—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:

 to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior,

who is the Messiah, the Lord!”

Glory to God in highest heaven!

Pastor Skip

The Joy of Nativities

It is no secret: I love nativities. I have a growing collection, some of which I keep out all year round both at home and in my office, and the rest I put out each year well before Thanksgiving. 

 Most of us have at least one nativity or crèche that we put on display at Christmas. The words “nativity” and “crèche” mean the same thing: figures that recall the setting of our Lord’s birth. What I find fascinating is how the same basic scene has been imagined in so many different ways. 

Nativities made in Italy, Germany, France, Russia, Peru, Kenya – each reflecting the culture the artisan lives in and how he or she imagined that first Christmas looked. 

The National Cathedral has a wonderful exhibit each year of dozens of the nativities in their large collection. The exhibit runs from November 19 through early January and is not to be missed. Our Wednesday Bible Study group will take a trip to the Cathedral on November 28 to see the exhibit – all are welcome to join us. 

 And of course, we’ll have our own exhibit of nativities next month as part of our Advent Festival. If you don’t have a nativity, you might want to make this the year you add a nativity to your Christmas decorations. I can point you to some of my favorite websites that offer wonderful selections and styles.

A nativity is the perfect decoration to put on display in November, for the tableau should fill us with a sense of gratitude and thanksgiving for the wonderful gift God gave us on that first Christmas in our Lord Jesus Christ.  

“In everything give thanks, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” - the baby born for us.

Grace & peace,

Pastor Skip

Take Care

“A person whose responsibility it is to take care of something”. That’s how the dictionary defines the word “steward”. A person who looks after something. That’s us – we are stewards in countless ways. We are stewards for one another, stewards for God’s creation, and, of course, stewards of our church.

Our church is our responsibility, collectively and individually. All of us together decide whether our facility will look clean, well-maintained, and inviting, or whether it will look worn, dingy and dreary. All of us together decide what kind of music program we will have for young and old alike, whether it will encourage us all to make a joyful noise to the Lord, or whether it will be without inspiration. All of us together decide what kinds of programs we will offer our children and young people, whether they will nurture their faith or turn them away. And all of us together decide what kind of foundational ministry we will offer to the children of our community through our Early Learning Center.

Stewardship is so much more than the few weeks in the Fall we set aside for our Stewardship campaign. Stewardship is quite literally everything we do at church and through church. The fact is this: we are called by God to be stewards. The Fall campaign reminds us of that call and our need to respond with our treasure, as well as time and talent, all so we can steward faithfully the ministries God calls us to do in the name of Jesus Christ.

I’ve been tempted over the years to follow the example of public television and stop worship right in the middle of the service each Sunday during our annual stewardship campaign and say, “Isn’t this worship service wonderful? Don’t you want more like this? Well call now with your pledge! Operators are standing by!” Public television has been using this method, even though they acknowledge how annoying it is, because it effectively reminds viewers that none of the wonderful programming would exist without their financial support. We won’t try that, of course. Still, everything we do requires financial resources – our financial resources, yours and mine. 

I’ve already made my pledge of financial support to the ministries we’ll do next year because I am excited about and very proud of all we do here at Manassas Presbyterian Church in the name of Christ. I find great joy in doing my part of be a faithful steward.

Your turn will come starting on October 14 when we launch our Fall Stewardship Campaign. Fill out and return your pledge card as a sign of your eager acceptance of your call by God to be a faithful steward of all the many ministries we do here as we serve the Lord. It’s a piece of cake!

Grace & peace, 
Pastor Skip

                       

                  

Drink Deep from the Well of Learning

Back to school time – that’s September. And it is true for us here at the church, as we resume Sunday School and all our many Christian Education offerings. I always look forward to teaching my Bible Study classes, as well as Confirmation Class. And this year I’ve changed my schedule so I can teach Adult Education classes on Sunday mornings.

I’ll begin with a four-week program looking at the Future of Faith. We’ll look at changes in faith practices and religion that are having a pervasive effect on how Christians of all denominations worship and follow Jesus Christ.

We’ll use the two books our Elders read this year as part of Session’s planning and study work with the Rev. Ed White from the Alban Institute: Diana Butler Bass’s book, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening, and David Kinnaman’s study of how young people are looking at faith, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church and Rethinking Faith.

I’ll continue to teach Wednesday morning Bible Study, while Melissa Kirkpatrick will take on leadership of the Thursday night Bible Study group so that I have time for the Sunday morning classes. If you’ve never come to a Bible Study class before, come join us – you might be surprised by what you learn!

I’ll teach our Confirmation Class again this year, partnered with Mary Langley. We’ve changed the meeting time to Sunday afternoons after worship. The small size of our 9^th grade class, with just 2 students, led us to add the two 8^th graders to the class, and, as a result, we decided to change the format and schedule. 

The word disciple comes from a root that means “to learn”. All disciples are learners – life-long learners. I am a learner, and so is every disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ. “A little learning is a dangerous thing,” wrote the poet Alexander Pope. His solution? “Drink deep” in learning that you might grow in knowledge and wisdom. Come find your place as a disciple in our learning community this fall!

Grace & peace,

Pastor Skip

Living in Skyboxes?

“U.S. inequality is at its highest point for nearly a century. Those at the top – no matter how you slice it – are enjoying a larger share of the national pie; the number below the poverty level is growing. The gap between those with the median income and those at the top is growing, too. …We are paying a high price for inequality: it contributes to social, economic and political instability, and to lower growth.”

These are the words of Nobel laureate and economist Joseph Stiglitz writing in the prestigious Financial Times. As a diverse congregation, we may have different political reactions to his statement, but as Christians we should all be equally troubled by the growing inequality in our society.

Have we forgotten what God teaches us about our responsibilities to the poor, the hungry, and the homeless? Has our obsession with the marketplace, celebrity, and wealth caused us to forget that it will be the humble who will inherit the earth, not the rich and famous?

The second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles tells us how the earliest followers of Christ lived: “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.” (Acts 2:45) We may not be called to this same communal life, but we are called to assure that those who need food, shelter, clothing, or health care never go without, especially when there are those who have more than enough. John the Baptizer put it very simply, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” (Luke 3:11)

Michael Sandel, a professor at Harvard University, asks in his most recent book, “What Money Can’t Buy” whether we are creating a “skybox” society, where we each live in our exclusive, protected skyboxes, where we need not be concerned with or for others. As long as we have what we need for a comfortable life in our skybox, we can live detached from even thinking about those out of sight. He expresses his concern that we have let the marketplace triumph and push out communal concerns in favor of letting our dollars decide how our community lives and who are the haves and have-nots.

Paul echoes James’s warning to the rich with his words, “Those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.” (1 Timothy 6:9). We cannot forget that even as we are a community of faith, we live our faith in community and that means we have responsibilities for one another, friend and stranger alike.

We are called by Jesus to be to be Kingdom builders, not empire builders. Those who have had material success are called to a higher level of responsibility within the community: they are “to do good, to be rich in good works, generous and ready to share.” (1 Timothy 6:18) For as our Lord Jesus has taught us, “from everyone to whom much as been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.” (Luke 12:48)

Grace & peace,

Pastor Skip

The Pendulum Swings Back

The pendulum is swinging back, as pendulums inevitably do. For the past thirty years we have seen a swing in faith practices to the megachurches, mostly evangelical congregations independent of denominations. But the past few years have seen a turn away from this trend. Those leaving are disillusioned with how Christianity is practiced, seeing it as too political, too consumed with money, too hypocritical, not focused on helping the gathered grow in faith and the Spirit.

Many have turned away from church entirely, while others continue to seek and search. As Diana Butler Bass observes in her book Christianity After Religion, “All sorts of people – even mature, faithful Christians – are finding conventional religion increasingly less satisfying, are attending church less regularly, and are longing for new expressions of spiritual community.”

This growing group of new seekers are calling themselves, “Spiritual But Not Religious.” They see religion as hidebound, stuck in the past, more concerned with rules and institutions than people or even Jesus. SBNRs don’t want to turn away from faith, they want to find new ways to “do church.” They want to worship and serve in a community that nurtures and nourishes their faith. As Butler Bass puts it, “to say that one is ‘spiritual but not religious’ is often a way of saying, ‘I am dissatisfied with the way things are, and I want to find a new way of connecting with God, my neighbor, and my own life.’” The critical questions have become: How do I grow in faith? How do I follow Christ faithfully? and How do I live my faith?

These are the trends at work around us and they will impact us as a church. It is why our Session has been working with the Rev. Dr. Ed White this year so we can plan for the future amidst a rapidly changing world all around us. Butler Bass teaches us that Church is no longer membership in an institution, but a journey toward the possibility of a relationship with people, a community, a tradition, and of course God in Jesus Christ. We need to be sure we are focused on relationships: building them, nurturing them, and nourishing them.

I have been part of the conversations taking place within the Session, of course. My Wednesday Bible Study group has also been part of this conversation as we have looked at the future of faith, church, and religion. I am hoping to open the conversation further in the Fall by leading a series of Adult Education classes on Sunday morning. Come be part of the conversation as we discern where God is calling us and where the Spirit is leading us – into a future which will assuredly be marked by change!

Grace & peace,

Pastor Skip

Artistic Devotion

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is enormous. It is easily the size of two Wal-Marts, stretching four blocks on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, backing onto Central Park. The collection housed in its endless galleries is extraordinary – paintings, sculpture, jewelry, tapestries, media of all kinds, works of art spanning thousands of years from the ancient to the contemporary.

I immersed myself in this extraordinary collection for three days during my recent Study Leave. I had planned my trip to focus on art with, not surprisingly, a religious theme: devotional artwork, art created to tell stories from the Bible, decorate churches, or simply to glorify God.

It is hard for us to imagine a world in which most people did not know how to read, only the clergy had access to the Bible, and books were exceedingly rare and precious, composed and created entirely by hand. It was this world that spawned many magnificent works of art.

Paintings of Jesus abound, telling of his birth, his ministry, his betrayal, his crucifixion, and his resurrection. Artists painted on boards and canvas, created works on tapestries, and sculpture in marble, wood, and other stone. Artisans worked with precious metals to create altarpieces, reliquaries, and other pieces used in worship.

The galleries in the Metropolitan Museum of Art can overwhelm with their size and their scope, but my focus on this trip was limited to a specific time period and specific art. Still, I did walk through galleries with paintings by familiar names: Renoir, Matisse, Van Gogh, Monet, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and others. They too, though, often found inspiration in stories from the Bible. 

I also visited the Morgan Museum, which has one of the world’s finest collections of Reformation-era Bibles, as well as Bibles created even before the invention of the printing press in 1450. Did you know, by the way, that we have a Gutenberg Bible right in our own backyard, at the Library of Congress, on display in the main hall?

I stumbled upon an interesting exhibit at the Onassis Cultural Center in midtown Manhattan, which featured artwork from the earliest years of Christianity. It was fascinating to see the evolution of the image of the cross from a fiercesome executioner’s tool to a devotional totem carved into tombstones or worn as jewelry.

Even as we look to the end of another school year and celebrate with our newest group of excited graduates, my time in New York was a wonderful reminder that our learning never ends. And my exploration through the many different galleries also reminded me that there is no limit on the ways in which we can express our devotion and our faith in the One who created beauty – and called it good, very good!

Grace & peace,

Pastor Skip