It's very good to be back here with you. I have such good memories of my time here at Fairfax. It was a short time  fourteen months -- but it was a full and rich time, and Fairfax Presbyterian Church will always have a special place in my heart.

     The title of my sermon this morning is "What I Learned at Fairfax Presbyterian Church." And it is based on the principle, the idea, that, usually, pastors learn more from churches than the other way around. Now that isn't intended as a criticism of church and congregations; I don't mean to say that church members are dense and unable to learn from their pastors. I don't mean that at all. What I mean is that pastors are more often on the receiving end of things than we might usually think.    

Most people have the idea  and I think pastors tend to think so as well  that the flow of words, of education, of ministry, of care, and so on, goes only from here to there. From pulpit to congregation. From the person who is trained in ministry to the people who aren't trained in ministry. But it isn't necessarily so. Ministers get ministered to by congregations, and they get taught things by congregations. In fact, having served in a number interim pastor positions, I have found that one of the most valuable things I can do is to let the congregation teach me about their particular congregation and their particular ministry.   

   But actually, I'm talking about more than simply being taught about that particular congregation. No, I'm talking about the fact that congregations really educate ministers for ministry, in ways that we rarely suspect.    

  And it doesn't matter where you are in your ministerial career, how old you are, or how many churches you have served. If you have been an ordained minister for fifty years, and you go to a new congregation, the fact is that you will learn new things about how to minister, how to preach, how to teach, how to care for people. None of us is ever finished, ever completed, ever fully developed.    

  So, with that as the background, what did I learn at Fairfax Presbyterian Church?    

  Well, first, I learned the value of quality in doing things, how important it is to do things well. And my experience here was that Fairfax Presbyterian did things -- and does things -- very, very well. I am talking about a broad range of things: from music, to publications, to care, to worship, to building buildings, to mission. It seems to me, and it seemed to me back then, that your standards are very high.  

    Let me give you an example. In every church it happens: people show up at the door, often on Friday afternoon at 4:30, asking for help, a handout, maybe food. As the pastor of an urban congregation in the District of Columbia, I see it a lot. And there is always that little seed of suspicion that you are getting scammed. Nevertheless, you always want to help more than you are able to.   

   Here at Fairfax, there was a system, and I hope there still is, that you could always give somebody a bag of groceries, or a tank of gas, or a night's stay in a motel, or a meal. Those four things. Simple things, but it dealt with the immediate needs of most people who knock on the church's door on a Friday afternoon.   

   The fact is, that was very well done. It was systematic, it was available, and I rarely had to turn someone away empty handed. There was always a concrete way to show the care and concern of the church. That's just one example of doing something, an ordinary church thing, very well. There are others. Music is another standout that I remember. It was done well.

    In Ecclesiastes we read, "Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might..." That is talking about doing things well, comprehensively, with all your resources. And when we do things well, it shows commitment. Quality in doing what we are called to do -- whatever that may be -- is fundamentally a statement of faith, it takes seriously the work of the church.  

    Lord knows, it's something we need in our world. In a disposable world, where things are made to throw away, in a world of superficial fixes to big problems, in a world of such tacky things as the TV shows "Temptation Island" and "The Bachelor", we need to do things well, ably, with quality, and we in the church need to model that for the world.   

   A second thing that I learned here has to do with beauty. I remember saying once here, and I will say it again -- with apologies to the other churches I have served -- that this is the most beautiful sanctuary I have ever preached in. Now I have been in some beautiful sanctuaries -- in Grosse Pointe, Michigan and here in Washington, DC among others -- but this sanctuary is at the top for me. But it's more than just the building. The Glebe in the springtime is beautiful, and that beauty is worked at. Again, the music that is produced in worship, that is beautiful. What I'm talking about is aesthetics in what we do as a church, having an eye for how something looks and sounds. And this is closely related to the last one, because when you produce something of beauty, then you are doing it well.

     Over and over in the Bible the point comes through -- beauty is a gift from God, it is an attribute of God, and, in some strange way, beautiful things partake of a small piece of the very nature of God.   

   Doing things well, and with an eye for how it looks or how it sounds. That is a proclamation in a world where you can see a great deal of ugliness, of all kinds. There are still highways with lots of billboards and glitzy fast food rows .I think of countless little churches all across the country that simply don't seem to notice how the church basement or the fellowship hall looks. Beautiful things are important in God's creation, they draw people to them, they communicate our love for God and our commitment to the church.

     I learned here at Fairfax Presbyterian Church how a staff can really work together. I believe that the only staff person who is still here from my time is Judy Chambers. Most of my career has been as a solo pastor without a large staff, so it was a revelation when I came to Fairfax and saw a staff, and became a part of a staff, that was distinctly a team. Now that's not to say that we always agreed on everything, or that everything always went smoothly. Quite the contrary, there was conflict and difference. I can remember having heated discussions with Phil Sorensen about some piece of program or other. But in some ways the conflicts that happened only serve to make the point even more strongly: that on the staff here at Fairfax, in 1991 and early 1992, there was a basic, pervasive sense of being involved in an important work, a shared work; we were engaged in a common pursuit. There was the sense that we weren't alone in what we did, but were distinctly a part of a larger whole.     

That is how God calls us to work in the world. And the world needs to hear that call. Unfortunately, it seems like the world and our society is becoming more and more atomized, broken up into small, isolated chunks. We are glued to our computer screens, or our televisions, and when we actually get out among people, the odds are that we have a cell phone held to our ear. It's even being carried into the workplace -- or rather, away from the workplace -- with the phenomenon of telecommuting, working from home by yourself on a computer, on one solitary task.    

  The church can hold up the model for the world of being present to each other, being a part of a common task, being a team. I learned the value of that here at Fairfax.     

But the larger point here is that I also learned the value of the big team, the congregation. The real team is not the staff, even though I felt like we were a team. The real team is the entire community of faith that is Fairfax Presbyterian Church, the members, the victors, the children.  

    We heard in Paul's letter to the Ephesians, a description of the work of Jesus Christ, what Christ has wrought. In Jesus, Paul says, those who were far off have been brought near; and he has made peace between those on the inside and those on the outside, making one new humanity.    

  And Paul ends this portion with what is to me one of the most powerful and moving passages of Scripture: "So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you 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 you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God."  

    It is a picture of the church, of Christians built together in the church, as the bricks and the mortar of the structure, of which the cornerstone is Jesus Christ. That is the church of Jesus Christ, and that is what grabbed me when I felt myself called into the ministry, and that is what grabbed me here at Fairfax. There was a sense here that the congregation was truly involved, engaged in the work of the church, and in the issues of the larger church, and in the mission of the church. My memory of Fairfax Presbyterian Church is of each person living out his or her calling to be a brick in the structure of the church of Jesus Christ.   

   This is an era when church fights seem to be the rule rather than the exception, and when church fights are no longer local -- "parochial", as it were -- but national. The Episcopalians have played out a big fight in full view of the entire country, and the entire world, over the issue of consecrating a gay man as bishop. The Presbyterian Church (USA) may not be far behind. People from all over have weighed in on the issues, offering their opinion. And it strikes me that some of the loudest voices, the shrillest opinions, are from people on the fringes of the church, the margins. But the world sorely needs the testimony of a church like Fairfax, a church of engaged members.

     You have been a church for fifty years. And I congratulate you and admire you. Let me ask you: .how many members altogether do you think Fairfax Presbyterian Church has had in those fifty years? Any ideas?

      And each one of those members -- and each one of you here now -- is a brick in the structure.  

    The Ephesians reading ends, "...you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God." The fact is that through you, through the bricks of this place, and through the structure you have built through fifty years, Fairfax has become a dwelling place for God.   

   So happy anniversary. May God always bless you richly. Thanks be to God.     Amen.  

 

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