Chronic Presbyopia

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
February 13, 2005

Chronic Presbyopia
Matthew 4:1-11
Deuteronomy 8:11-20

I suffer from Presbyopia;
You have only to look at me to know.
I have had it since I was 10 years old.
It is chronic, but happily there is treatment.
In fact, the treatment is so effective I hardly am aware of it.
I see the doctor regularly and he prescribes the best course of action:
stronger lenses to help me with my near-sightedness.
That’s what Presbyopia means:
it is a medical term that refers to the
“inability to focus sharply on nearby objects”
It means that as much as I love reading,
my eyes can’t focus on the letters on the page of a newspaper
or a book without help from glasses.

The word has the same root as the word Presbyterian:
the Greek word Presbutos, Presbyter, which means elder.
Our eyes lose the ability to focus as we grow older.

Presbyopia may be a medical term,
but I think it is a fitting word for all of us who are disciples of Jesus Christ.
We all suffer from an inability to focus:
focus on our lives as children of God and disciples of Jesus Christ.

Last week, for example, we were more focused on
the Super Bowl that pitted the Patriots against the Eagles.
Jesus, however, would have encouraged us to be more focused
on the Souper Bowl of Caring,
when our young people stood at the entrances
with soup pots to collect money
for the more than 30 million men, women
and children in this country without enough food to eat.

Judging by some of the newspaper articles I read and televisions reports I saw,
we were more focused last weekend on how many pizzas
Dominoes would deliver
or how many six packs of beer would be consumed,
when Jesus would have encouraged us to focus on the fact that
on Sunday night more than 800 million people,
men, women and children, went to bed hungry
throughout the world.

Look at how focused, even obsessed we have become as a culture
with how we can hit instant riches with lotteries,
poker hands and game show winnings.
But our Lord Jesus would have us focus on the fact
that over the past four years, the number of Americans
living in poverty increased by 4 million,
and now stands at more than 35 million –
in this, the richest country in the world!

This past Wednesday night at our Ash Wednesday service,
we read from the prophet Isaiah, through whom God
spoke saying, “Is not this the fast that I choose,
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to share your bread with the hungry,
and to bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked to cover them.”
(Isaiah 58ff)
This is where our focus should be.

Jesus calls on us again and again to show mercy to the afflicted,
for our Lord has said, “just as you did to one of the least of these…
you did to me.” (Matthew 25:40)
We must be suffering from massive Presbyopia
because each day throughout the world
30,000 children die, most from the malnutrition and hunger,
the rest from disease and war.
With our eyes and hearts and minds clearly focused on our Lord
and his teachings, we would realize that
a little piece of our Lord dies with each child.

The children of Israel lost their focus time and time again
as God led them through the desert.
Day after day, God led them across the hot sands,
over rugged mountains,
through a land literally crawling with poisonous snakes and scorpions
land that often seemed devoid of food and water,
land that seemed devoid of life itself.
Moses led them for forty years,
and endured their endless complaining.
And then finally they all stood on the east bank of the Jordan river
looking west to the land promised them by God,
the land of milk and honey.
And as they looked with hope and excitement,
God spoke to them through Moses,
telling them, “you are going to get comfortable, too comfortable.
You will have homes again,
and food in abundance on the table
You will be blessed with children.
and you will want for nothing.
And you will forget all about me,
the one who led you from slavery through the desert
the one who has always looked after you;
the one who will always look after you.”

And of course, had God said that to us,
we would have answered just our ancestors in faith did
when they said, “Oh, no, we would never do that!”
And then what did they do?
They lost their focus, their focus on God
as they became focused on their homes, their possessions
their comfort, their security.

Are we any different?
How quick are we to say to God,
Well, what you have done in the past is all well and good
but what have you done for me lately?”

Jesus of course never lost his focus.
Indeed, he is the only one of God’s children who is able to keep his focus.
And yet, how easy it would have been for him to have focused on his hunger,
the growling and rumbling coming from his empty belly
after spending 40 days in the wilderness.
Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of lentil stew
and he simply missed lunch!
How easy it would have been for Jesus to look down from the top
of the Temple and focused on an earthly kingship,
a kingship based on power, wealth, and control.
There are many corporate executives who fill pews on Sundays
and then sit at their desks in skyscrapers on Monday
who do just that.


A few minutes ago we ordained and installed new officers
and our prayer for them and those who are continuing
as Elders and Deacons is that they keep their focus:
their focus on discipleship and service.

We have high expectations of our officers,
those we have elected to lead us
those we have elected to serve us.
We have high expectations of them,
because we have high expectations of ourselves.

We expect our officers to
pray regularly as Solomon did: for wisdom.
We expect them to pray for discernment.
We expect them to pray for patience and understanding.
We expect that because we expect that of ourselves.

And we will support them with our prayers,
our prayers for their courage and faith and wisdom.
We will support them by supporting their decisions,
not quarreling about them, seconding guessing, and quibbling.

We expect our Elders and Deacons to focus on the
words of the constitutional questions they have each
pledged to guide them:
That they will work in harmony
“each a friend among their colleagues..
working with one another,
subject always to God’s Word and Spirit”.
We expect them to work to further the peace and unity of the church,
here in our own congregation and in the larger church.
The universal church of Jesus Christ is often riven by argument
and conflict because we focus on one another’s Presbyopia
rather then keeping our focus on ourselves
and our own Presbyopia.

We expect each of our officers to be focused on serving the people of this church
with energy, intelligence, imagination and love,
because each of us will be doing the same thing:
serving one another with energy, intelligence, imagination and love.

We expect each Elder and Deacon to be focused on
following our Lord Jesus Christ,
loving their neighbors as themselves,
and working for the reconciliation of the world.
We expect this because each of us will be doing the same thing.

We expect each Elder and Deacon to be reliable
faithful to one another,
to attend meetings, to do what he or she promises to do,
to stay focused on serving as our Lord has taught us.
We expect our Elders and Deacons to stay focused on building
a grace-filled, gracious church,
We expect this because every one of us will be focused on the same thing.

We are just beginning our Lenten season
Lent is a time for reflection, for renewal,
for spiritual refreshment.
It is the ideal time for us to check our focus
and to correct our focus.

Our Lord Jesus Christ will be your ophthalmologist.
You will find prescriptions in chapters 5, 6, and 7 and 25
of the gospel of Matthew that can sharpen your focus.
You are allowed endless refills.
It won’t cost you a penny;
there is a co-pay, but it comes from your heart
and not your wallet.
How focused are you?
Where is your focus – where it should be?
How bad is your Presbyopia?
Lent is the ideal time for a checkup,
and a new prescription so that you can see clearly.
The doctor is always in, and the doctor will always see you now.

AMEN

Your Dinner Partners

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
February 6, 2005

Your Dinner Partners
Isaiah 58: 9b-14
Matthew 5:13-20

You marvel at the table that stretches out before you.
There seems to be no end to it, nor any beginning.
You look to the left and it goes over the horizon;
You turn to your right and the chairs undulate
along the table’s edge until they disappear off in the distance.

The table is filled with foods of all kinds,
some familiar, and other foods that look completely foreign to you.
The people who are seated are all talking with one another,
neither loudly nor wildly, but with purpose and warmth.

As you stand there, wondering which of the empty chairs you should take,
a woman comes along side you and gently takes your arm.
Her smile, her eyes, her very face seems to radiate peace and warmth.
She says, “Let me show you to your seat, your place at the table.”
You walk with her only a few steps to a place
where there are three empty chairs.
The woman pulls out the chair in the middle,and beckons you to sit.

As you look around you, you don’t recognize the individuals
who are seated across from you, but they greet you warmly.
A jovial man directly across from you says,
“Welcome. Good to have you here.”
Before you can respond, he resumes his conversation
with the individual seated to his left.

You proceed to fill your plate with food.
The smell is… heavenly, there simply is no other word to describe the aroma.
But you feel odd that you have no one to talk to.
Just then you hear voices behind you
and you turn to see the woman who had led you
to your seat escorting a young man to the chair on your left.
He sits down, and you greet him, even as you feel wistful
that one so young is there with you.
He returns your greeting with an enormous smile
as he digs into the food.
You ask him about his life and he tells you
that his country was the scene of a war;
Gunfire and explosions were the sounds that
filled his neighborhood and his home.
His family was not involved in the battle;
they just simply wanted to live their lives.
But one night a missile fired from a jet
went off its course and careened into his house
as he, his parents, and his brothers and sisters all slept.
The military officer responsible for the misfired missile
lamented the deaths as “unfortunate collateral damage”.

You find yourself absorbed with his life story,
and you encourage him to tell you more.
You learn that when he was a toddler, the area where he lived
suffered through a terrible drought.
Tens of thousands of people died of thirst and starvation.
The boy and his family lived in a refugee camp for months,
subsisting on few handfuls of grain and a cup of water each day.
brought in by an international relief agency.

As you listen to his story, you realize that you know just what he is talking about.
You remember reading in the newspaper about the terrible drought
and starvation in a country you knew nothing about.
It was 12, maybe even 15 years ago.
At first you did nothing,
but then one day as you were standing in a checkout line at the
supermarket, you saw that picture, the one that won a Pulitzer prize,
the picture of a small child squatting in the dust and mud
on the road, belly distended from starvation, too weak to go on,
and there in the background,you remember it vividly now,
sat a vulture, as though it was waiting for its next meal.

It was that powerful photo that grabbed you, spurred you to action.
You began to raise money at your church, at the office, in your neighborhood,
anywhere you could, to send to the relief agency
to provide food to that child and the thousands of others just like him.
No child should die of hunger, not when you live in a country
where one of the biggest health problems was and is
obesity in adults and children.
And you worked for months and months, that child’s image burned in your brain,
a child you didn’t know, in a part of the world you’d never paid attention to.
And now you realize, this was that child,
that child who captured your heart so completely.

But before you can say another word to him,
you hear voices and you turn and see the woman again,
this time seating someone in the chair on your right.
You recognize the person immediately,
and you turn your head away quickly, back to the boy,
but his seat is empty; he’s gone.
And you slowly, reluctantly, turn back to the right
and your eyes meet those of your new dinner partner
and neither of you says a word.
You are both incredulous.
Of all the people you’ve got to sit next to, why this person?

The two of you never agreed on anything; politics, religion, money – nothing.
You often quarreled;
sniped, gossiped about each other.
You each thought the other was weak, lazy, misguided,
at times amoral if not immoral,
irreligious, unfaithful, judgmental.
and just plain mean.

Each of you gropes and stumbles;
you both realize that given where you were sitting
you really should be civil to the other, but how?
And then simultaneously the horrifying thought hits each of you.
Perhaps you are not where you first thought you were.
Perhaps you are in another place……


Every one of us hopes that some day we will be able to take our seat
at the heavenly banquet in God’s eternal kingdom.
The banquet in that place where every tear is wipe away,
the place where gold is simply used for paving stones.
But in a book I was reading last week,
the author raised the provocative question of
who might be seated next to you at the table.
That’s something I had never thought about.
I probably assumed that I would be seated with family and loved ones.
But the author ventured that the seat on one side would be reserved
for those to whom you showed the most grace in your lifetime,
and the seat on the other side of you would be reserved
for those to whom you showed the least grace.
Only one seat would be filled at a time,
and the individuals occupying each seat would change.

I found his imagery powerful, provocative and very troubling.
While we may have some wonderful surprises in the occupants
on the left, most of us will have a much longer line of people
waiting for their turn in the chair on our right,

Through Jesus Christ, God reconciled all his children to him,
but that was only step one.
God wants all his children to be reconciled to one another,
and the author’s suggestion is that if we don’t do that in our mortal lives,
God, whose very love knows no limits,
and who has infinite patience,
will tell us in effect,
“I am putting you two next to each other
because in your mortal lives you squabbled about everything.
You two didn’t work things out in your time on earth.
so work out your differences now.
Take as much time as you need; you’ve got all eternity;
but reconcile yourselves to one another.
My Son taught you that it is by your love for one another
that you will be known has his disciples, so get to work.”

Our Lord tells us that we are the light of the world
but every time we say an unkind word about anyone,
every time we say and think graceless, ungracious words
and do graceless and ungracious deeds, we dim our light.
As God tells us through the prophet Isaiah:
“remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil.
…offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
Do these things and then your light shall rise in the darkness.”

Who will sit in the chair on your right?
How many are already lined up?
How much longer is the line on the right than the line on the left?
But come to this table and be renewed and refreshed in Spirit
and then go out and work on moving even just one person
from the chair on the right to the chair on the left.
Work on making even just one change in your dinner partner
when it is time for you to take your seat at the heavenly banquet table.
AMEN