No Clapping Allowed?

“To clap or not to clap, that is the question.” Is applause appropriate in a worship service? When our choir sings a moving anthem, when our high-schoolers belt out a rousing spiritual, or when our youngest singers enchant and charm us, should we applaud their efforts?

When our choirs sing they are not performing for us, they are offering a gift to God. Everything we do in worship is directed to God – every word spoken, every word sung. Those of us listening to glorious music, or any other offering, share in the gift, but we need not clap as we might if the singers were performing to entertain us. So, on that basis, we might well conclude that applause is not appropriate in worship.

But every element of worship should move us to respond: music, the word read, the word preached, prayer, every part of worship should prompt a response in each us. That response may be a silent word of praise or thanksgiving, but there are times when a lively, moving, or deeply compelling offering calls us to a more demonstrative response.

A glorious piece of music offered as a gift to God may move us to want to stand and shout out “Praise!” or “Amen!” or even “Hallelujah!”. We Presbyterians are not likely to be that demonstrative, though, so applause provides a more comfortable way for us to respond. We should never take any pride in being thought of as “God’s Frozen Chosen”, but instead open ourselves to the call and response of the Spirit.  So yes, applause can be a very appropriate part of worship.

Worship should be joy-filled and lively reflecting the presence of the Spirit, who moves us all to respond. Worship involves everyone gathered in community, not just those who are up in the chancel. As the Psalmist has taught us, “Clap your hands all you people; shout to God with loud songs of joy.” (Psalm 47:1)  ALL you people!

The prophet Isaiah tells us that all creation is engaged in worshiping the Lord our God: “the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. (Isaiah 55:12) If the trees of the field can clap their hands in praise to God, so can you - yes, even in worship.

Hallelujah! 

Pastor Skip 

True Followers

“Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned…” These are the words King David wrote in a prayer of confession, a prayer we know as Psalm 51. They are powerful words, deeply felt, welling up from David’s heart. David knew his sin and made no attempt to rationalize it, excuse it, explain it, minimize it, or deny it: “for I know my sin is ever before me”.

We live in a culture where we are far more inclined to try to minimize our waywardness, rather than acknowledge it, where we are quicker to make excuses than we are to offer an honest confession, where we are quick to blame someone else, and slow to accept responsibility ourselves. Yet, as David knew so well, God “desires truth in the inward being”. Anything short of an honest and truly penitent confession may fool others and provide temporary comfort for ourselves, but it will not fool God.

Lent provides us with the opportunity to acknowledge and confess our sins, our transgressions, and our waywardness – all those ways we have turned from God. God wants us to confess and repent. And God expects us to be as honest and forthright as David was almost 3,000 years ago. 

“Wash me and create in me a clean heart, O God,” David pleads. This should be our prayer too, a prayer we can lift up with confidence, knowing that if we are indeed honest and contrite, God will wash us clean and “put a new and right spirit within us”. 

We cannot hope to grow – truly grow – in discipleship if we refuse to acknowledge when and where we’ve gone wrong. Soren Kierkegaard wrote that without regular introspection and confession, we will never be more than admirers of Jesus Christ, when we are called to be followers. We’ll praise Jesus, applaud his teachings, even immerse ourselves busily in the life of the church, all as we sing out praise for our Lord. But we’ll never be true disciples. To follow Christ – that requires new life, a life modeled on Christ, living as he lived, grounded in compassion, grace, kindness, and love, looking to God to guide us and teach us, and call us back when we stray.

Our Ash Wednesday service, which marks the beginning of Lent, reminds of us our mortality: “remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return” are the words we hear as ashes are imposed upon our foreheads. That powerful reminder of our mortality should also be a powerful reminder of how easy we find it to turn away, how easy we find it to rationalize, excuse, and even deny our sin, and how difficult we find it to repent in humility and contrition.

But in the love and mercy God has given us in the Risen Christ, we can always find hope for new life. We can always know the joy of forgiveness, the joy of being washed clean, and the joy that we’ll never know as admirers, no matter how enthusiastic, but only as true followers, true disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Alleluia!

Pastor Skip

Making Time for Prayer

If Advent is a time of preparation, Lent is a time for contemplation, a time for us to reflect on our lives and see where we have turned from God in sin. Lent calls us to contemplation so we can acknowledge our waywardness and repent.

The liturgical color we use during is Lent is purple, the color of repentance. The color is a visible reminder of what Scripture teaches us: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Acknowledging our sins leads us to repentance, and from there to the joy of forgiveness: “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 

For all the busyness that fills our days in December, Lent should be a quieter time, a time for us to read, to reflect, and most important, to pray. We should pray not just for forgiveness, which is always readily granted us by the grace of God in Jesus Christ, but for understanding and wisdom so we can learn from our mistakes and avoid making the same ones time and time again.

We struggle with prayer, though, struggle with the idea, that we are not sure just how to pray. After all, even the Disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. But prayer really is quite simple; you need not be concerned with the eloquence of your words, and yes, absolutely, you can dispense with Elizabethan English words like, “thou”, “thine”, and “thee”. Prayer is conversation, in your own words, with God who is always ready to listen.

But prayer is not as much about talking as it is about being quiet, contemplative and listening for God to speak to you. As the Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick observed in his classic book, The Meaning of Prayer, “one of our strongest misconceptions concerning prayer is that it consists chiefly of talking to God, when the best part of prayer is our listening to God.” 

Prayer should refresh and renew us as we unburden ourselves and feel God’s loving grace wash over us. The Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote that “prayer is not only the lifting up of the mind and heart to God, but it is also the response to God within us, the discovery of God within us; it leads ultimately to the discovery and fulfillment of our own true being in God.” 

 Prayer awakens us, enlightens us, tunes us in more completely to and with God. As you journey through Lent make time in your busy schedule for yourself and for prayer. Listen for God’s response to your prayer, grounded in the simple, yet powerful words of Jesus, “yet, not my will but yours be done.” 

Amen 
Pastor Skip

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