What Is This Thing Called Love?

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
September 19, 2004

What Is This Thing Called Love?
Luke 20:1-8
1 John 4:7-12

It is early morning.
You know that the day ahead will be especially busy.
It is a few days before Passover
and Jerusalem is teeming with people.
You’re a scribe at the Temple;
You know that today is the day your leaders
have decided to confront that carpenter,
the one who is causing all the trouble.
Jesus, the one people are calling the Prophet,
the Son of David.

He came riding into Jerusalem just two days ago
to the cheers of the throngs along the street.
You had never seen the people so excited,
so filled with passion.
Just who did he think he was, this carpenter from Galilee?

You think about yesterday.
You were at the temple when he arrived with his followers.
At first you gave him the benefit of the doubt:
You assumed that he was going to offer a sacrifice,
just like every other pilgrim.
But instead, he went on a rampage
chasing everyone out of the place,
cursing the money changers and others.
Then he had the audacity to sit in the temple and teach!
You’d never seen such a blatant act of desecration.
What you had heard is true:
Nothing good comes out of Nazareth.

But today, you and your brethren will be rid of him.
You think to yourself:
“This man is a mere carpenter,
He’s no threat to us,
He’s a bother.
a nuisance.
We’ll be rid of him quickly.
We are learned: priests and elders and scribes.
We have studied, we are well read,
We are clever…. We are in the right.
This man will be no match for us;
We will trap him,
catch him off guard and
then be rid of him.
Imagine his arrogance,
to be causing such a disruption right before Passover!
While we should be remembering our ancestors’ flight from Egypt,
this man is turning over tables in the Temple!”

You walk to the Temple and join your colleagues there.
Everything has been arranged.
You and your brothers are confident,
even a bit smug, knowing that you will cleanse the Temple of this rabble.

You see Jesus;
He looks like the rest of the pilgrims: dusty and rumpled,
You look at his face
From a distance it looks ordinary, burnt from the sun, dried by the wind,
like so many others who have traveled great distances
to come to the Holy City for the Passover festival.
You try to move through the crowd for a closer look.
You look at the hair, the beard, the cheeks.
Then you notice his eyes:
lambent,
luminous
piercing.
He has a look that is filled with confidence,
certainty..... authority.
A look that you’ve never seen in the eyes
of any other man or woman.
You look away, and try to remember all the trouble he has caused,
but something has got hold of you.
A feeling, an odd feeling deep inside you.

Then above the din, you hear a loud voice speak out.
It is the voice of the chief priest.
His voice oozes with self-righteousness:
“By what authority are you doing these things?
Who gave you authority to do them?”
You think to yourself, a perfect question!
This carpenter, this Nazarene can have no answer to that;
Everyone knows how the system works;
Everyone knows where authority comes from;
Everyone knows you don’t question authority.
That’s not what a good citizen does.

But then you hear Jesus’ response:
“I will also ask you a question;
and you tell me,
and I will tell you by what authority I do these things.
Did the baptism of John come from heaven,
or was it of human origin?
........Answer me.”

The chief priests struggle to answer him.
You hear them talking among themselves
‘We cannot answer this way.’
Yet, we cannot answer that way”
You have never seen them so flummoxed
so completely confused.

The priests concede that they cannot answer,
and Jesus, standing tall,
and with a firm voice, says,
“Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”
You hear his words and you are surprised
that there is no smugness, no sense of victory,
no sense of self-righteousness like you heard in the chief priest’s voice.

You know this man is trouble,
but yet his response stays with you.
His calmness,
his conviction,
his poise,
his confidence,
his authority.

You think to yourself:
“I have to talk to this man,
I have to ask him a question.
I cannot let this opportunity pass by.”
So you approach him, not to trap him,
for clearly this man is far more than
you or your colleagues ever thought.
You ask him your question:
“Which commandment is the first of all?”
He answers;
and you respond to his answer.
He takes in your response
and then he looks at you with those eyes and says:
“You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”
(Mark 12:34)

You walk away from the Temple by yourself
in the hazy heat of late afternoon, thinking,
“All he told me was the Shema,
the lessons I have known forever:
‘Hear O Israel..
love the Lord with all your heart,
and all your soul,
and all your strength and all your mind;
and love your neighbor as yourself.’
I know that.
I do as Moses taught our ancestors to do:
I recite those words each morning when I rise,
and each evening before I retire. (Deut. 6:7)
I understand the importance of that ritual.

What did Jesus mean when he said
that I am not far from the Kingdom of God?
If I am not far, what must I do to get there?”

And then you realize it.
Jesus was telling you,
“Don’t just recite those words;
LIVE THEM!
Live them in all you do
Don’t just say that you love the Lord and your neighbor.
Act in all that you do in a way that leaves no doubt in anyone’s
mind that you love the Lord.
Act in all that you do in a way that leaves no doubt in anyone’s
mind that you love your neighbor as yourself.
Put love into action;
LIVE love.”
Jesus was telling you that when you live love in all that you do,
you will find yourself that much closer to the Kingdom of God.

You think about this as you retire at the end of the day.
You faithfully recite the Shema,
but the words take on a whole new meaning.
You understand the feeling you have had all day;
The feeling you’ve had ever since you first looked into Jesus’ eyes:
It is love.
You feel love,
and you feel loved.
You feel a sense of peace you’ve never had before.
You know your life changed today.
It will never be the same.

Love seems to be such a simple word; one syllable, easy to spell.
Yet it is so complex.
It is no wonder it has been such a favorite topic for poets
and composers.
Cole Porter’s tune, “What is this thing called Love”,
is one of the best.

We find it so hard to love.
Our world seems to be filled with hatred,
not just violence, not just war in countless nations throughout the world,
but hatred.
Judgmental hatred.
Hatred: contempt, nastiness, rudeness
anger, rage: hatred.
Even in churches, where we are supposed to get along with one another,
we bite, we bicker,
We skip right past the love.

That is not what God wants for us;
it is not what God intended for us.
God wants us to feel love and
and then act on it by sharing it with others.

In last week’s sermon, Sam Noir witnessed so many different acts of love,
acts of love hidden behind so much everyday ordinariness:
a nurse in a hospital,
a person helping a blind man across the street,
children laughing and playing together
in a park built for them by the community.
The soup kitchen at the church was the most obvious,
but it seemed that everywhere Sam went,
he saw acts of kindness, goodness, and mercy: acts of love.
Each a reflection of Christ presence in the world, God’s presence in the world.
You and I can either take God’s love given to us through Christ
out into the world, in every interaction,
or we can keep it all bottled up, on the shelf, and fight.

Jesus knew the Pharisees wouldn’t get it.
They were too focused on themselves,
their own power, authority,
They were too focused on keeping things just the way they wanted.
On making sure the order and structure they had created
remained intact.
They were never going to look beyond the ends of their noses.

Each of us has a tendency to behave like the Pharisees.
We act from assurance, arrogance,
a sense of our self righteousness.
A sense that we have all the answers.

John writes, “God is love, and those who abide in love,
abide in God and God abides in them.” (1J4.16b)
The minute we stop loving,
God no longer abides in us;
not because God flees, but because we evict him and shove him right out.
How many times have you pushed God aside in the last 24, 48, 72 hours?
You know you have, if you answer honestly.

German poet Ranier Maria Rilke wrote of God,
“Only in our doing can we grasp you,
Only with our hands can we illumine you.”
Only in our doing,
only in our showing love,
living love.

The path that will lead us to the kingdom of God
is love:
love for God
and love for all our brothers and sisters.
Love based on action
Love based not on what we say, as much as
it is based on how we live our lives.

This love fills our very being and soul
and then guides us in everything we do.
It guides our actions here in this church on Sunday morning;
but it also guides us in our interactions with spouses,
children, parents, friends, neighbors;
people we like,
and people we don’t like.
It guides us in all we do,
everywhere we go,
with everyone with whom we come into contact.

Love is not just a feeling,
it is a gift we receive:
It is a gift we are called to share.
Love should motivate and drive everything we do.

We are called to think about the love God has given each of us
through Jesus Christ.
We are called to remember that we are all God’s children and
we are all one another’s neighbors.
We are called to go out into the world to live lives
of active love.

This was the lesson the Scribe learned from Jesus in the Temple.
This is the lesson Jesus calls on us to learn,
even now,
2000 years later:
God is love,
and as long as you live your life in love,
God will abide in you.

Amen

Now Playing: The Search for Jesus

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
September 12, 2004

Now Playing: The Search for Jesus
Matthew 28:16-20
Psalm 139:1-18,23-24

Friday evening. 5:30 pm.
My secretary had just left and the office was quiet.
I leaned back in my chair and put my feet up on the desk.
The oaks slats in the chairback creaked and the springs shrieked for oil
as I swiveled around.
The office was dark as twilight descended.
The shadows from the lights outside my office danced across the walls.
The new sign at the Full Gospel Tabernacle across the street
threw an unmistakable image on the ceiling.
It was a large red neon cross-
Each time it flashed on, my office was washed in red.

I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the world.
But just as I was beginning to put the day’s stresses behind me,
I heard the door to the outer office open.
I figured it was my secretary – she was always forgetting her keys.
Then the door to my office opened, and a woman I’d never seen before
poked her head into the red-hued dimness.
She asked, “Are you Sam Noir, the private detective?”
In my line of work, I’ve learned to be careful
so I said, “Who wants to know?”

“I need you to help me find someone”, she said.
She’d come to the right place: I was the best in the business.
I could find anyone, anywhere, anytime.
I could find whoever she wanted me to find……
for $100 per day plus expenses.
I swung my feet off the desk and sat up in my chair,
“So, who do you want me to find?”
She told me the guy’s name was…Jesus.
Kind of an odd name I thought, probably Greek, or Italian.
“Got a last name?”, I asked.
“No”, she said.
This wasn’t going to be as easy as I first thought.
Strange first name, no last name.

“So, who is this guy?” I asked.
All she said was, “He was once a part of my life,
and then I lost him.
I need him back in my life.
And I need you to help me find him.”

She threw a book on my desk,
along with a brown envelope.
I like brown envelopes because they’re usually filled with green.
Before I could reach for the envelope, she said,
“The book will tell you about him
and the envelope should cover my retainer.
I’ll be back the same time tomorrow to check with you.”
And with that, she disappeared into the darkness.

I picked up the envelope and counted out 10 crisp new $20 bills.
Yeah, that’s a good start.
Then I reached for the book.
It was heavy, with thin paper and small print.
I flipped through it.
A New York City telephone directory would have been easier to read.
I got as far as a story about some poor guy
who had to live through more rain than they get in Seattle
when I decided it was time to get out of the office.
This wasn’t going to be easy.

I pocketed the money and left the book on the desk.
figuring I’d start fresh in the morning.
Find some guy named Jesus.
No last name,
No picture.
No social security number.
No drivers license.
No work address, no home address.
no telephone.
No nothing.
I like a challenge, but this was starting to sound impossible.

I walked down the stairs to the ground floor
and out into the cool evening air.
There was a crowd around the door at the Full Gospel Tabernacle.
The aroma of turkey dinner was coming out the door.
I looked at the people waiting to get in.
They all looked like they were down on their luck:
Old men, young women, there were even some kids;
in fact a lot of kids.
A man at the door said to the crowd,
“Don’t push folks, just take your time;
we’ve got plenty of food for everyone.”

I walked around the corner and almost knocked over a guy
who was standing there, right in everyone’s way.
I was just about to tell him to move it,
when I saw the cane – the white cane.
Rush hour traffic was heavy and he wanted to get across the street.
The poor guy didn’t have a chance.
But just then, a woman walked up to him, said something to him,
and then took him by the arm
and got him across to the other side.
Then she turned around and came back to my side
and went on her way, the opposite way of the guy with the cane.
I guess she had time on her hands.

As I walked, I wondered who this Jesus was
and what the woman wanted with him.
I was lost in thought when suddenly I heard a voice.
“Mister! Hey, Mister!
Throw us the ball!”
It was a kid with a baseball mitt on the other side of a fence.
His ball on gone through the chain link.
I picked it up and tossed it over to the kid,
who caught it and ran back to his pals.
There were kids everywhere in the park, shouting, singing,
playing under the floodlights the city put in last year,
floodlights paid for with my tax dollars.
They were making a racket that was louder
than six guys with jackhammers.
I don’t think kids should be seen or heard after 6:00 pm.

As I left the park, I walked by the hospital.
It was the biggest hospital in the city.
I remembered the nurse who looked after my mother when she was dying.
The nurse didn’t know my mother from any other patient,
but she always seemed to be in her room, fixing her pillows,
giving her some water, even reading to her.
Why anyone would want that job was beyond me.
Long hours, and lousy conditions.

Find Jesus, huh!
I might have to tell the woman this is too tough a case
I might have to tell her I didn’t have a clue as to how to find this Jesus.
No, she didn’t give me enough to go on.
One lousy book, more than a thousand pages.
Did she really expect me to read it?
And how would reading it help me to find Jesus?
I’ll just tell her I don’t have time to read it;
if there is something in that book she thinks I need to know,
then she’s gonna have to tell me.

It was getting dark and I had been walking a long time.
I had been so lost in thought that I had wandered into a part of town
I knew all too well: the wrong part of town.
Suddenly, four tough guys were around me,
and then one pulled me into an alley.
I felt the first punch, but then after that,
someone turned out the lights.

It was the smell that brought me around: a powerful acrid odor.
I opened my eyes to see a guy, an old guy, kneeling next me.
“Are you okay, mister?”, he asked.
He smelled like he hadn’t bathed in a month,
like he’d been sleeping in garbage,
but his hand was gentle on my swollen face.

I tried to get up, but as I did, I stumbled.
The old guy grabbed me and steadied me.
“Are you sure you’re okay? I saw what those guys did to you.”
I didn’t say anything.
I reached into my pocket to get a dollar to give the guy.
I figured that was all he was interested in.
It was then I realized my wallet was gone
along with the $200 bucks.

The old guy said, “I don’t think anything is broken; you’ll be okay.
There’s a coffee shop just down the street.
Why don’t you go get yourself a cup of coffee.”
And with that, he reached into his torn and tattered trousers
and pulled out a dollar.
He squeezed my hand gently as he slipped me the crumpled bill,
and then he disappeared down the dark alley.

The next morning I went to my office and saw the book lying on the desk.
When I opened the window, the wind flipped the pages,
page after page, and then just as quickly, the wind stopped.
I looked at the page the book was opened to and read these words:
“Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to the heavens, you are there,
and if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me
and your right hand shall hold me fast.”
I sat there wondering what those words meant,
when another gust of wind caught the pages
and turned them to something written by a guy named Matthew
Someone was speaking, I wasn’t sure who.
All I read was,
“and remember, I am with you always
to the end of the age.”

Late in the afternoon the woman came back to the office,
The neon cross from the Full Gospel Tabernacle
was flashing on and off, once again washing my office in red.
She sat down and all she said was “tell me everything”
I told her.
I told her
about the crowds at the Full Gospel Tabernacle
about the woman and the blind guy,
about the noisy kids,
about the nurse at the hospital.
I even told her about my little dust up in the alley,
and about the old guy giving me the buck.

And then I said, “I had a busy night,
but I sure didn’t have any luck tracking down your Jesus.”

She pushed her chair back and a smile filled her face.
“On the contrary, Mr. Noir, I’d say you found Jesus everywhere you went.
And you showed me where to look for him.
You’ve earned your fee, and a bonus besides.

She stood up, and tossed another brown envelope on my desk,
and disappeared out the door.
I tore open the envelope and found 10 more crisp new $20 bills.
I didn’t know what I had done for the her,
I didn’t know how I had helped her find Jesus.
But as I sat there in the darkness, the neon cross flashing on my ceiling,
those words stuck in my mind:
“And remember, I am with you always,
even until the end of the age.”

I walked downstairs in the cool evening air.
I went across the street, up to the man standing at the door
of the Full Gospel Tabernacle,
the one who was shepherding the people inside for dinner.
He said, “We have plenty of food sir. If you’ll just wait in line.”
“I’m not here for the meal”, I said,
and then I handed him the brown envelope:
the brown envelope with the green.
I didn’t say another word;
I just I turned and walked down the street.
But as I rounded the corner I couldn’t help but feel
that the woman was right:
that somehow, some way, I really had found Jesus after all.

AMEN

Sinful Sloth

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
September 5, 2004

Sinful Sloth
Luke 14:25-3
Revelation 3:14-22

I was asked not that long ago why I have never preached
on the Seven Deadly Sins.
Does the term sound familiar to you:
The Seven Deadly Sins?
Can you name one, two, perhaps even three?
If I asked you where you might look in the Bible to find a reference
to the “Seven Deadly Sins” could you do it?
Does it sound like something Jesus might have talked about?
Or perhaps it was some Old Testament Prophet;
most of them were grumpy enough
to have come up with a list of sins.
But then again, it might have been in one of Paul’s letters
as he spoke against the sins of the flesh
and encouraged us to live in the Spirit.

The fact is that you could look through the Bible all day
and not find a reference anywhere to “the Seven Deadly Sins”.
Not in the Old Testament,
Not in the Psalms or Proverbs
Not in the New Testament.
The list of Seven Deadly Sins is not biblical.

It was a leader of the early Christian church
who came up with a list of sins that he called the Deadly Sins.
Other church leaders liked the idea and refined the list
until it took on its present shape of Seven Deadly Sins
about 600 years after Jesus’ crucifixion.

The first on the list is Pride:
that is arrogance, conceit,
vanity, hubris.
The person filled with pride thinks far more of himself
than he should.
Probably the best known Bible verse addressed to this topic
is found in the book of Proverbs.
You’ve probably heard it as “pride goeth before a fall.”
but the actual verse is even stronger,
“Pride goes before destruction and
a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Prov. 16.18)
The Bible teaches us again and again the importance of humility,
the importance of being humble.
Prideful people are judgmental people,
self-righteous people.
Prideful people have more in common with the Pharisees
than they do with faithful followers of Jesus Christ.

The next deadly sin on the list is Envy:
Envy comes from not being satisfied with what you have,
Envy comes from wanting what someone else has:
the car, the job,
the bank account,
the house,
the buff figure
the grades.
the clothes.
The list is endless.
We always seem to want what we don’t have;
we always seem to want what someone else has.
When we are filled with envy, we are filled with a sense of
discontentment, restlessness, even resentment.
Envy leads to coveting,
and one of the first lessons we learn in Sunday School
is the Commandment not to covet what someone else has.

The third deadly sin is Gluttony,
We have only to hear the word
and we immediately think of a person stuffing himself
with food and drink.
The image that comes to my mind is Henry the 8th
seated at a groaning board, a leg of mutton in one hand,
and a tankard of ale in the other.
But gluttony isn’t just about overeating or drinking.
We are gluttons when we overdo anything,
when we take more of anything than we need.
As we watch oil prices continue to climb,
we are beginning to realize that we have been
a gluttonous nation when it comes to using oil.
God calls us to be faithful stewards of all we have been given
and to live in faithful moderation in all things.

Lust is the fourth deadly sin.
We hear the word and we immediately think of an obsession with sex,
not something we should talk about in polite company,
much less in church on Sunday morning.
But lust isn’t limited to the carnal.
We lust after money,
We lust after possessions,
We lust after power,
Lust is an unnatural, unhealthy obsession with anything or anyone.
But sexual lust can be particularly damaging
since it can lead to manipulation, violence, and abusive behavior.
Do you remember Jesus’ response when the rich young man
asked him which was the most important commandment?
Jesus told him the first was to love God with all his heart and soul
and strength, and the second was to love his neighbor as himself.
The person filled with lust toward another
ignores the second of Christ’s Great Commandments.

Sin number five is Anger.
We talked about anger a few weeks ago:
Anger is a human emotion, something we all feel.
It can turn deadly though, if we let our anger get the better of us.
Anger can kill another’s spirit, another’s joy and happiness;
It can take a person’s life, without a drop of blood shed.
The greater sin, though, happens when you hold onto your anger;
when you don’t forgive;
when you don’t show mercy;
when you don’t follow our Lord’s command to us
that we are to forgive one another
just as our Father in Heaven forgives each of us.

The 6th sin on the list is Greed.
Greed is tied to gluttony.
We grab all we can and we don’t share.
We forget that everything we have comes from God.
We forget God’s command to us
that we are to return our first fruits to God.
We forget that we are called to look after the poor,
the young, the sick, the elderly,
and all those on the margins of society by sharing what we have.
When we are greedy, we think of what we have as all ours,
forgetting that our treasure is made up of earthly goods,
goods that can be taken from us in an instant,
goods that are nothing more than dust.
You remember our lesson from a few weeks back:
the wealthy man who had so much that he boasted that he was
going to have to build a bigger barn to hold all that he owned.
Jesus said, “You fool! This very night you will forfeit your life.”
When we are greedy, we fail to build up our treasure in heaven,
as our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us to do.

Now there are six of the Seven Deadly Sins,
But we still have one more to go,
and it is the one that intrigues me the most.
Sloth.
The very word is wonderful,
it just rolls off the tongue, without even taking much effort, “sloth”
saying it almost makes me want to sit down;
the mere word draining every bit of energy from me.
We think of the slothful person as the epitome of laziness.

Many of you may be planning a bit of a slothful day tomorrow
to mark Labor Day,
so it’s more than little unfair of me to zero in on sloth this morning.
After all, the whole point of Labor day is to give everyone who works
day in and day out a day off.

But sloth is not laziness.
It isn’t indolence.
The slothful person is not one who just lies around.
No, as Frederick Buechner helps us understand,
the slothful person is one who just go through the motions;
he or she flies on automatic pilot.
Slothful people let things run their course.
They focus on just getting through their lives.”
(F. Buechner, BW 371)

Sloth is not laziness as much as it is indifference.
Slothful people have no commitment, no focus.

We Christians are often slothful.
We go through the motions,
We fly on automatic pilot
We let things run their course.
The best example is the response to some new idea,
some new way of doing something in the church:
“But we’ve never done it that way before.”
That’s a slothful response.

It is slothfulness that Christ condemns in the people of the church at Laodicea
The people were not lazy, they were industriousness and, as a result,
were wealthy and comfortable.
But when it came to their faith, they were just going through the motions.
You heard Jesus’ harsh words:
“You are neither hot nor cold,
and so because you are lukewarm,
I spit you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3.16)

For Jesus the opposite of sloth is not industriousness,
it is passion;
it is commitment,
it is having fire in the belly.
What Jesus was looking for before his crucifixion
is exactly the same thing he looked for following his ascension:
complete commitment:
God first,
God always first.

It is precisely the point of the difficult words we heard in our gospel lesson:
“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters,
yes, and even life itself
cannot be my disciple.”
Could Jesus be any clearer?

How would you respond to Jesus if he walked up the aisle to your pew
and looked you in the eye and asked you,
“Are you willing to give your very life to follow me?”
Most of us would waffle,
most of us would hem and haw,
Most of us would ask Jesus if we could have time to answer,
or say to him, “Sure, but you don’t really mean it, do you?”

Jesus was a man who loved life and was filled with joy
and he wants us to feel that joy,
but he also wants us to know that there is a price
for the gift of grace God has given us.
And that price is that Jesus wants us all to become losers
yes, losers.
He wants us all to put on t-shirts that say “Loser”
because he wants everyone of us to be willing
to lose our life that we might gain our lives.

The gift that God gives us through his mercy is life eternal
That’s where our focus should be,
not on creating our own little castles here on earth.
Jesus wants us turn from sloth,
where our lives our focused on things of this earth,
and turn to things of the Spirit, the heavenly life,
the Godly life.

But something holds all of us back,
all of us, even ministers.
Something holds us back from complete commitment.
Something causes us to be more slothful than faithful.
And that something is Fear.
Fear that perhaps all that Christ promises won’t come to fruition.
Fear that God doesn’t really hear our prayers, much less answer them.
Fear that comes from being asked to walk by faith and not by sight.

Perhaps the early leaders of the church would have done us a favor
had they given us a list of “Eight Deadly Sins,
and added “fear” to the list.
Not the normal, healthy fear we feel when our lives are in danger
but fear of committing ourselves to Christ.
Fear that keeps us lukewarm;
fear that leads us to sloth.

What’s your fear? What is it that holds you back?
What keeps you from responding resolutely and confidently to Christ
when he asks whether you are willing to give even your life to follow him?
You have only to lift your fear to God through Christ.
and ask for strength
ask for renewed faith, stronger faith
faith that fills you and you’ll find your fear evaporating,
disappearing, gone.
In the book of Deuteronomy we find the words,
“and underneath are the everlasting arms”
Underneath us are God’s arms, always around us to protect us.
With God’s loving, protective arms around us,
why would we have any fears
and why wouldn’t we be able to answer Jesus with a firm, “YES”?


As you stretch out later today or tomorrow
for a well-earned nap,
why not first offer up a prayer to God
that your life of sloth might end here and now
as you take up Christ’s cross
with renewed conviction and determination.
Why not first offer up a prayer to God
that your life of lukewarm faith might end here and now,
as you take your step behind Christ
to follow him in confidence and faith.

And then as you drift off, let your fears, your worries,
all your anxieties drift up to God, away from you
as you feel God’s everlasting arms are wrapped firmly,
lovingly around you.
Drift off with a smile as loser,
no longer slothful,
Drift off a fervent, faithful follower of Jesus Christ.

AMEN