It's Our Story Too

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
March 27, 2005

It’s Our Story Too
Acts 10:34-43
Matthew 28:1-10

The disciples remained hidden in the shadows
in fear for their own lives.
Peter had barely escaped capture,
surely the Roman guards must be looking for all of them.
Their only hope was to blend in with the crowds of pilgrims
who would be leaving town at the end of
the Festival of Unleavened bread
and sneak out of the city.

But the women who were with the men
weren’t thinking at all about escaping.
No, they were focused on what they knew they needed to do.
Their teacher was dead
and his body lay in a tomb without having had any of the
rites and rituals that a body must have.
Their teacher’s body needed to be cleaned,
anointed with myrrh and nard, and wrapped properly.
The law required it, and their love for him demanded it.

No sooner had their beloved teacher’s body been taken down
from that horrible cross on Friday, when the sun set
and the Sabbath began and they could do nothing.
Throughout the Sabbath the women thought of only one thing:
at first light on Sunday morning, they would make their way to the tomb
to anoint and prepare the teacher’s body.


And on so on that morning, the first day of the week,
when everyone else was thinking about returning home,
going back to work, and resuming their routines,
the women prepared their spices and ointments
and headed to the tomb, to the place where
Joseph of Arimathea had so gently laid the body.

Mary Magdalene organized the women and the work.
The other women had grown to admire her
for her faith and her strength.
As she followed Jesus mile after mile, month after month,
rumors about her swirled like eddies in the desert:
that she was a harlot, a prostitute, a woman of loose morals;
that she was Jesus’ special companion;
that she’d even had a child by Jesus.
The women wondered how people could be so petty, so nasty,
so willing to believe whatever they heard,
so quick to spread malicious gossip.
They knew the gossip all came from envy,
envy from those who didn’t have Mary Magdalene’s strength,
Mary Magdalene’s faith,
or Mary Magdalene’s grace.

The women walked briskly in the darkness.
It wasn’t far to the tomb, and just ahead
they could see the outline of the rock just off in the dim light.
Two Roman soldiers stood guard on either side of the tomb.
While the sight of the soldiers might have frightened the others,
Mary Magdalene thought to herself,
“Good, now we will have help to roll away the stone.”

Just then, the ground shook beneath them.
Earthquakes were a fact of life in this part of the world;
most of the time the ground just trembled for a few seconds.
But as the ground shook, the women could see the stone rolling away
from the entrance to the tomb, and as the stone rolled away,
the two guards collapsed, their legs buckling underneath them.
They went down in a deafening clatter of shields, swords,
spears and helmets clanging and banging
in the quiet of the early morning.

The sunlight began to break over the horizon
and the first beams settled on the top of the large stone
that had covered the entrance to the tomb.
And there he sat, peacefully, quietly,
an angel, a messenger from the Lord God.
The women were prepared for soldiers;
they were even prepared for earthquakes,
but they were not prepared for a heavenly messenger.
They stopped in their tracks, frozen with fear.

The angel spoke gently to the women,
“Do not be afraid....
I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.
He is not here...
for he has been raised, as he said.
Come, see the place where he lay.
Then go quickly and tell his disciples,
‘He has been raised from the dead,
and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee.
There you will see him’
This is my message for you.” (Matt. 28:5-7)

They heard the words, but they were too frightened to speak,
“He is not here....”
Then where was he?
“He has been raised”
Raised by whom?
Raised how?
“He is going ahead of you to Galilee?
Galilee!? That’s a three day journey – why there?

Their eyes scoured every inch of the tomb;
there was no trace of their Lord.
Confused more than afraid, they turned back to the angel
but when they looked at the rock where he had been sitting
they found he was gone.

The sun continued to rise in the sky,
its gentle fingers of warmth and light reaching out to touch
all of God’s creation, awakening the earth:
the plants, the animals, the people.
The women looked at each other,
unable to speak, unable to move.
And then Mary Magdalene turned and began to run.
She dropped her spices as she ran down the road
that led back into the city.
As fast as her legs carried her, her mind raced faster:
Could it be true?
Could her teacher be alive?
Could he really have been raised from the dead?
The tomb was empty,
“He is not here...”

She ran blindly, her mind spinning,
so completely caught up in what she had just seen and heard
that she almost ran into him.
He was right in the middle of the road,
The sun was behind him so all she saw at first was the form
but then he saw the face… his face.

“Greetings”
That was all he said,
just, “greetings”.
But it was enough.
Her legs gave way and she collapsed at his feet.
“Do not be afraid;
go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee
and there they will see me.”
And he was gone.

They did as Jesus told them; they told Peter and the others.
And then the 11 went to Galilee as they had been directed,
accompanied by the women: Mary Magdalene, Joanna
Mary the mother of James and Joses,
and others who had walked with Jesus
before that awful day.
And there Jesus appeared to them.
The one who was dead was now alive;
Not a ghost, but alive,
He had vanquished death.
The words of the prophet had come true:
“Arise, shine, for your light has come
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples
but the Lord will arise upon you and his glory will appear over you.
…Then you shall see and be radiant, your heart shall thrill and rejoice.”
(Isaiah 60:1-5)


We eagerly await this story each year,
the story of the empty tomb,
the story of Jesus’ resurrection.
We can’t wait to celebrate Easter with shouts of “He is Risen!”
and hymns of resurrection and rebirth.
We fill our churches with lilies and breathe deeply
as they fill our Sanctuary with the scent of spring and new life.
Our children hunt for eggs,
which for millennia have been a sign of rebirth and new life.
I am so glad Alishba asked me that question last week
about how the date for Easter is picked:
the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox,
because it gave me the opportunity to reflect on
how appropriate it is that Easter falls
shortly after the beginning of Spring,
the season of rebirth.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is alive!
The one who was dead is alive!
Death could not hold him.
The tomb could not hold him.
Nothing could hold him.
He is risen, risen to new life.

The story of his resurrection is not just Mary Magdalene’s story,
not just Peter’s story,
not just Cleopas’s story, not just Thomas’s story;
It is our story, for God raised Jesus for you and me.
Raised him to give us new life;
Raised him so we would know God’s grace and love through him.
In his resurrection we are reborn.
It is springtime: the old ways have passed,
and a new life has begun.

God raised Jesus from the dead for all his children,
everywhere, of every color and language and nation,
As we heard Peter say, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality,
but in every nation anyone who fears him
and does what is right is acceptable to him.
You know the message he sent to the people of Israel,
preaching peace by Jesus Christ…”
Preaching peace by Jesus Christ.
preaching peace in Jesus Christ.
Not preaching adherence to orthodoxy,
Not preaching adherence to rituals or practices;
but preaching peace in Jesus Christ.

Eugene Peterson has written that faithful Christians are not
“fussy moralists who cluck our tongues about the world going to hell;
we simply praise God that he is with us [in Jesus Christ];
we are not pious pretenders, self-righteously condemning
those who don’t live according to our standards;
we are simply robust witnesses to the God who is our help,
[to the God who raised Jesus from the dead]”
In Christ’s resurrection we have been given life anew.
We have been reconciled to God,
all our sins forgiven;
the bond between God and all his children,
is forged in the love that is Jesus Christ,
and it cannot be broken.
We have no fear, only hope and joy
....we...have been ‘born anew in living hope’
not through [Christ’s] death, but through his resurrection.
(1 Peter 1:3)

What a gift God has given us!
Grace upon grace upon grace!

But how easy it is to overlook the grace and focus
on the chocolate bunnies;
How easy it is to overlook Christ’s presence
and focus on the fragrant leg of lamb roasting in the oven;
How easy it is to forget the forgiveness
and enjoy a day off from work.
It is so easy to put Jesus back in the tomb
and roll the stone back at the end of the day,
as we set our alarm clocks and turn off our lights.

We are the ones who give Christ life
we give him life when we follow him,
when we obey him,
when we live our lives according to his teachings.
And Jesus’ message is simple, his teachings are so basic:
Do you remember what he told his disciples
as they were gathered in that Upper Room on the night of his betrayal:
“it is by your love for one another
that you will be known as my disciples.”
Love for one another,
love for all God’s children,
Love that goes beyond political boundaries,
beyond skin color,
beyond language,
love that shows no partiality.
If it shows any partiality at all it is for the poor, the elderly,
the sick, those who are imprisoned by fear or poverty.
And we show that love not just in what we do at church,
but in every part of our lives: in our homes, our workplaces,
our schools,
even in how we set our government policies.

Jesus set the standard high,
so high that he told us that loving only those
with whom we feel comfortable,
only those with whom we agree on matters is not good enough.
That’s too easy.
The living Jesus expects more from us:
he expects us to love those who we think of as enemies,
those we think hate us.
Christ’s love transcends ethnicity, politics, denominations
geographic borders.
It is radical love:
we are not to fight with our enemy
we are not to gossip about our enemy,
we are not even to drag our enemy into court and sue him.
We are to go to our enemy and wash his feet.
When we do that we give life to Jesus Christ.

This is the message of Easter,
the message of the Resurrection,
the reason why the angel at the Tomb said to the women,
“He is not here...”
For Christ is here, alive and in this world
whenever and wherever we live according to his word,
according to his teachings.

Our Lord is alive, alive and in our lives here and now
resurrected through God’s love for us
resurrected to give us life,
to teach us, prod us, challenge us, push us,
forgive us, and love us.

Our Lord is risen,
risen to give us life.
Alleluia!!

Shadows

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
March 20, 2005

Shadows
Isaiah 50:4-9
Matthew 21:1-11

As always, Jesus was awake early in the morning,
long before his exhausted disciples roused themselves.
The morning was precious time for him:
Quiet time; time all for himself,
time for a walk; time to talk with his Father;
and especially time to listen to his Father,
his ears awakened by the Lord,
awakened to the Lord.

But this morning he stopped before he headed out
and turned and looked back at the men as they slept.
Such a ragtag group, so ordinary,
a rich stew of strengths and weaknesses.
Each man struggled with his teachings, his parables, his lessons.
Each man struggled with faith, sometimes getting it,
and at other times each could be so frustratingly dim and dull.
But Jesus loved them for their willingness to walk with him:
to risk themselves trying and failing with such utter humility,
such a complete lack of self-consciousness.
He regretted the times he had lost his temper with them,
especially poor Peter.
Peter could often be as thick as the mast on his fishing boat
but he was also as strong as that mast,
and in only a few short days,
Jesus was going to entrust his motley group to that strength.

Jesus knew his time with his disciples was limited.
There would be no more outbursts, no more anger, no temper,
just love and forgiveness.
He had much to do over the next few days,
before he ended his time with them over one last meal
as they marked the Passover.
As he shared bread and the cup with his disciples
Jesus would be tell them of his love for them
and leave them with no doubts.

Philip stirred and started to wake, a signal to Jesus
that he’d better move along if he was going to have any quiet time at all,
any time to listen to the word of the Lord, his Father in Heaven.
When he came back from his walk,
the men were moving, some a bit more slowly than the others,
but they were ready for their day’s activities,
ready to follow Jesus.
They never knew what Jesus was going to do next
or where he was going to lead them.
All they knew as they wiped the sleep from their eyes
was that they were going into Jerusalem that morning.
They stumbled out into the early morning light,
the sun brilliant, more white than yellow on the eastern horizon.
The sky was cloudless, deep blue, brilliant and rich,
a blue that even the most skilled artisan could never quite match.

Less than two miles from the central part of the city
Jesus stopped and turned to two of his disciples and said,
“Go into the village ahead of you,
and immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her;
untie them and bring them to me.
If anyone says anything to you, just say this,
‘The Lord needs them.’”

As the two disciples left, Andrew and Philip looked at each other,
each wondering what was happening.
Philip seemed to remember a line from Scripture,
something from one of the prophets about
“a king coming, triumphant and victorious, yet humble,
riding on a donkey, a colt;
He shall command peace to all the nations.”
(Zechariah 9:9)
But before Philip could remember which prophet had spoken those words,
the two men returned with the animals, their mission completed.

All the disciples gathered around the donkey
and the two who had brought the beast laid their cloaks
over his rough fur and then helped Jesus up on to the animal’s back.
They started again, half the disciples walking in front of Jesus,
half following behind, a small procession,
heading down around the Mount of Olives and across the Kidron Valley
on the road that would take them directly to the Temple.
Much to their amazement and delight their little parade attracted followers,
men and women, young and old, all waving and shouting as they walked by,
“Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Again, Andrew and Philip looked at one another,
wondering what to make of the scene.
The people were shouting out verses from the final Hallel Psalm,
words that were on everyone’s lips during Passover:
“Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
We bless you from the house of the Lord.
The Lord is God and he has given us light.
Bind the festal procession with branches,
up to the horns of the altar….
You are my God, and I will give thanks to you;
you are my God, I will extol you.
O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever.”
(Psalm 118:26-29)

The city was teeming with people, thousands upon thousands
of pilgrims from throughout the countryside,
all there to celebrate Israel’s most important anniversary,
the anniversary of their release from slavery under the Egyptians,
more than a thousand years earlier.

For as many as were shouting out Hosannas,
it seemed to Philip that there were just as many
asking who was the man on the back of the donkey.
When Philip heard one man say to another,
“don’t you know, it is the prophet Jesus
from Nazareth up north in Galilee.”
he cringed as he thought about how Nathanael had once sniffed,
“can anything good come out of Nazareth”? (John 1:46)

As quickly as the crowds gathered, they dispersed in the heat of mid-day.
By the time the procession arrived at the temple,
it was just Jesus, the twelve, and a handful of others.
The men were eager to follow Jesus up the steps
just to stand in the shade of one of the columns on the portico.
The sun was beating down on them without mercy
and they longed for relief from the heat and the dust.
But before Jesus climbed the stairs,
a large cloud moved across the sky
and threw a shadow, a heavy, dark shadow
over Jesus and his followers.
Andrew and Philip who had both been sweating so profusely
now actually shivered in the shade.


We think of Palm Sunday as a festive day, a joyful day
an opportunity for us to shout in church, to make a lot of noise.
Imagine the fun our children have when the minister himself says,
“Shout as loud as you can.” In church!
It is a joyful day, as any Lord’s Day should be.
But even as we shout our Hosannas,
even as we look ahead to Easter,
there are shadows that loom over Palm Sunday,
dark shadows, ominous and foreboding.
Shadows that will darken the sky in the days ahead.
There is the shadow of betrayal.
Even as the little parade was headed for the Temple,
the chief priests and scribes and elders
had determined that they needed to spring a trap,
to catch the man who had scandalized their leadership.
The troublemaking carpenter from Nazareth
threatened them,
threatened their peace with the Romans
threatened their very lives.
They knew in Judas they had their bait to spring the trap,
to catch the troublemaker,
And he could be bought for only 30 pieces of silver!
Not much more than the 20 pieces Joseph’s brothers got for him
when the sold him into slavery almost 2000 years earlier.

Then there is the shadow of denial.
Peter is the one whose denials --
not one, not two, but three of them --
are recorded forever in the pages of the gospels,
but all the disciples melted into the dust and woodwork
melted into the shadows, following Jesus’ arrest.
Peter may have been the one to say,
“I know not the man”,
but all the disciples uttered those words in their actions.
All of them in their fear for their own lives
denied Jesus, denied his teachings, denied his very presence.
All of them denied their own faith as they shivered in fear
behind locked doors following Jesus’ crucifixion.

The sky grows darker still with the shadow of hypocrisy,
as the very people who had shouted out “Hosanna!
raised their voices just a few days later in a mighty chorus of
“Crucify!”…. “Crucify!”….., “Crucify!”.
The ones who had sung out, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name
of the Lord” changed their tune to, “Release Barabbas!”

By weeks’ end the sky had grown as dark as night
and yet the worst shadow was yet to come,
the shadow of death.
This shadow covered all the world,
not just in dimness, but in darkness.
complete darkness, utter darkness,
bleak, mournful, hopeless darkness.

But the Psalmist tells us that we need not fear any shadow,
even the shadow of death,
for the Lord our God is with us
our cup does indeed run over,
and goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives.
Shadows are part of our world, but they are fleeting.
As intimidating as they can be, they pass,
for the Lord is with us responding to our cries of “Hosanna”
which means “save us”.
Saved from
the shadow of betrayal
the shadow of denial,
the shadow of our own hypocrisy,
the shadow of grief,
the shadow of anger.
the shadow that blots out love,
and the very shadow of death.

Palm Sunday is not a festival, not a holiday;
it is gateway, a doorway that leads us into holy week,
a week that is as tortuous a time as we have on the calendar,
not torturous, but tortuous,
twisting and turning as we careen through a week
of emotions that run from the highest to the lowest,
the most joyful, to the most grief-filled.
It is a week that begins like a party,
and seems to come to screeching halt in the darkness
brought by the shadow of death.
Yet even the shadow of darkness that covered the world
for those three terrible days, Friday, Saturday, and into Sunday,
passed on that Sunday morning,
when God raised our Lord from death to life.
“The light shines in the darkness
and the darkness [and it could] not overcome it”
(John 1.5)

We walk into the shadows this week
as we walk with our Lord Jesus Christ
to the cross that he was hung upon,
hung upon for you and me.
But in our Lord’s resurrection, God removed the shadows in our lives.
In Christ we walk in the light in this life and the next.
“Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord;
Blessed is the Son of David;
Blessed is the Son of God, our Savior Jesus the Christ!”
AMEN

Locked On the Inside

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

Locked on the Inside
Psalm 130
John 8:21-30

The passenger woke up to the thrumming of the jet engines.
The plane lurched about like a car on a bumpy road,
not enough to cause concern, but enough to be annoying.
The cabin was dark; in fact the only lights in the cabin that were on
were the three reading lights directly above his seat,
and the two seats adjoining his.
He was in the middle seat,
with a man on his left and another man on his right.
Both men were enormous, really small mountains more than men.
He didn’t remember seeing them get into their seats,
but they both must have needed shoehorns to have squeezed in;
their shoulders, elbows and knees oozed over into his tiny space.
The two seemed to be competing with one another
for which one could snore more ferociously.
The man on his right clearly had the edge,
but the man on his left seemed to be gaining.

He often wondered who designed the seats in the coach section of airplanes.
They were uniformly awful, small, stiff,
uncomfortable for anyone taller than five–foot-four,
or weighing more than 120 pounds.
He envisioned the seat engineering department at each airline
staffed with men and women who got up on the wrong side of the bed
every morning; cranky, curmudgeonly people who never flew,
never wanted to fly, but loved to laugh at the thought
that someone would actually pay hundreds of dollars
to sit in one of their seats for hours on end.
In another era they might have been valuable employees
of the Spanish Inquisition.

He was foggy with sleep;
He had no idea of the time, or where the plane was.
In fact, he couldn’t even remember where he was headed.
Just then, the captain’s voice crackled over the PA system:
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have been informed
that our landing will be delayed another hour.
We have been asked by the tower to remain in our holding pattern,
circling the field.
Because of the turbulence, we must ask you to remain
in your seats with your seatback up, your tray tables stowed
and your seatbelts securely fastened.”

Neither of his seatmates stirred, each snoring away,
busily sawing giant redwoods.
In the darkness of the cabin he could see nothing.
He tried to turn off the lamp above him,
but no matter how many times he pushed the switch next to it,
the light continued to glare fiercely at him.
He shielded his eyes from the brightness
and glanced around the cabin.
As his eyes adjusted to the dimness
he realized that all the other seats were empty;
he and his seatmates were the only people in the coach section.
In fact, there didn’t even appear to be any flight attendants.
He could see the curtain separating coach from first class was closed,
A sliver of light shined through,
and he could hear the muffled sound of voices talking and laughing,
along with the tinkling and clattering of glassware and china.
Where was he, and where was he going?
Everything seemed to be hazy, foggy, dim as the cabin.
The plane continued to bump along in the darkness.


I don’t know what your perception of Hell is, but I have just described mine.
I used to fly regularly on business, and I always dreaded flights.
Not because I feared flying,
but simply because airlines seem to have made it their goal
to make passengers as uncomfortable as they possibly can.
even as they advertise that they are something special in the sky.

The very notion of Hell is one that is loaded,
larded, really, with mythology.
The Bible provides us with so little information,
confusing more than clarifying,
with stories that seem to conflict with others.
The images that we have in our minds have come from the stories,
the legends, and the myths that have been passed down over the centuries.

In Old Testament times, there was no distinction between Heaven and Hell.
Our ancestors in the faith accepted the notion
that the dead went to place called Sheol.
The Greeks called it Hades, which is the term
Jesus tends to use in the gospels.
It was neither Heaven nor Hell,
simply the dwelling place of the dead,
good, bad or indifferent.
The notion of a Heaven and Hell began to develop
in the centuries immediately preceding the birth of Christ.
Sheol evolved in the minds of many as a place for those who died in sin,
while Heaven became the final stop for the faithful.

The imagery for Hell likely came from Gehenna,
which was a real place outside of Jerusalem.
It was the garbage dump, a place as foul smelling
and as awful as one could imagine
with a piles of rotten garbage, food,
and even dead animals fueling the flames day and night,
the stench strong enough to overpower
even the strongest stomach.

Two thousand years later, the image of Hell
as an inferno deep within the bowels of the earth
is firmly embedded in our minds.
Novelists, artists, filmmakers and others have found it fertile ground
for their imaginations.
There is a cartoonist from the “New Yorker” magazine
who loves to play with the imagery of Hell.
In a recent cartoon he picked up on our security-minded times
and had a long line of newcomers waiting their turn
to go through a metal detector before being admitted
into the fiery depths.

However we might describe it,
Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, the underworld, or Hell,
it is the place where we go if we die in sin,
if die unrepentant,
if we die with our minds focused on the things of this world,
if we die with our focus anywhere but God.
What makes it Hell is not the fire or flame;
what makes it Hell is that we are separated from God:
separated from God’s love and God’s grace.

In fact, we don’t have to die to make our way into our own versions of Hell.
We walk in an close the door behind us
when we turn away from God
when we are selfish, nasty, jealous, envious,
unkind, merciless, arrogant, thoughtless,
when we don’t follow Christ’s teachings,
when we are unrepentant.

That’s the point that Jesus was trying to get across to his listeners
in the passage we heard from John’s gospel.
“You are from below, while I am from above”:
below in the sense that they were so focused on worldly matters,
on the things of the earth, and not on God.
Power, money, prestige,
fine food, expensive clothing, opulent houses.
The religious leaders Jesus spoke to could not have cared less
about the people who came to the Temple with their sacrifices;
the leaders just wanted their offerings, their money.
They wanted people to do what they told them,
to think as they thought, to interpret Scriptures
they way they thought Scriptures should be interpreted.

Jesus was telling them -- and us –
that if that is where our focus is,
then we will surely die in sin.
We will die in sin even while our hearts still beat,
and our lungs still breathe;
even as we walk this earth, otherwise fully alive.
We will be dead in Spirit, even as the flesh continues to live.
And if we die in sin, we will be cut off from God,
cut off by our own words, our own actions.

But Jesus doesn’t want us to have endure even one day
separated from the grace and love of God.
So he preached and taught,
exhorting all to focus our hearts and minds on our Heavenly Father,
and to seek redemption and forgiveness now, and not later.
He wants us to turn our focus from the things of this world
to the world of our Heavenly Father.

Thomas Talbott, a professor of theology and philosophy out in Oregon
suggests that God’s love for us is so strong,
his hope for our redemption that powerful,
that redemption is ours even if we should die in sin,
Now we know redemption is available to us
in our mortal life, no matter how far we might stray from God.
We have only to look at the parable of the prodigal son to know that.

But Talbott goes further and suggests that God’s love for us is so strong
that redemption is still available to us
even after our mortal lives have come to an end.
In his fascinating book, “The Inescapable Love of God”
he propounds the thesis that if indeed there is a Hell,
the roaring flames and burning fires
are not there to torment the unrepentant sinner for all eternity.
Rather, the fire and flames are there to purify,
a refiner’s fire for even the most recalcitrant,
to bring even the most unrepentant person eventually to God.
That’s how strong God’s love for us!


As we read in the Second letter of Peter,
“the Lord [does not want] any to perish
but all to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

But of course, Jesus tells us again and again
that God would rather have us come to repentance now in this earthly life.
We simply have to decide where our focus is going to be:
above, or below, on God, or on the things of this earth.

C. S. Lewis has written, “It we insist on keeping Hell,
we shall not see Heaven; if we accept Heaven,
we shall not be able to retain even the smallest…souvenir of Hell.”
(The Great Divorce, p. 9).
Lewis is right: we keep ourselves in our hells by not focusing on Heaven.
Lewis goes on to remind us that the one thing that we fail to realize
is that the doors to Hell are locked on the inside,
and that we can open them at any time and walk through them.
The key to the lock is repentance,
repentance, turning from those things that lead us from God
and turning back to the grace given us by God through Jesus Christ.

The Psalmist cries out to God for redemption:
“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord, hear my voice!”
And God will hear our voices, no matter where we are in our lives.
God will redeem us – that is the promise that God has always made to us,
the promise given life in Jesus Christ.
We need not fear Hell –
for Hell is a place of our own making.
We put ourselves there.
and we can open the door that lets us out.
All we have to do is seek the face of God,
seek the grace of God, the love of God.
seek the redemption that is always, always
there for us from God through Jesus Christ.

Where is your focus?
Are your eyes, your minds, your hearts fixed firmly
on our Lord, our Lord above
or are they fixed on the things of this world?
If your focus is on the wrong things,
then you are in the wrong place
In these final days of Lent,
in these final days of our season of repentance,
take a good look to see which side of the door you are on,
confident that even if you are on the wrong side,
repentance is yours through the grace and love of God
that is our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ.
AMEN

A Pocket Full of Stones

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

A Pocket Full of Stones
Leviticus 20:10/Deuteronomy 22:22
John 8:1-11

We read first from the book of Leviticus, the third book of the Bible,
the book that was originally called “The Priest’s Manual”,
for the Levites, the priestly tribe of Israel.
Reading from chapter 20, verse 10, we hear these words:
“If a man commits adultery with the wife of a neighbor,
both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.”

We now jump ahead two books in the Old Testament, to Deuteronomy,
the book that was Moses’ final speech,
really his final sermon, to the children of Israel
before they entered the Promised Land
following their forty-year trek through the wilderness.
Much of Deuteronomy repeats texts found in Numbers,
Leviticus, and Exodus,
as Moses reinforced God’s word and God’s teaching to all the Israelites.
Turning to chapter 22, verse 22, we read:
“If a man is caught lying with the wife of another man,
both of them shall die;
the man who lay with the woman as well as the woman.
So you shall purge the evil from Israel.”

Right there in those verses we have the beauty of the Bible:
It is so clear, so black and white.
We read these verses, and we cannot possibly misunderstand,
misinterpret, or miss the point:
Commit adultery, get caught, and die.
How simple is that?

Turning to the Gospel according to John,
we find in chapter 8 a vivid illustration of the law in action.
Reading from verse 1:
“The scribes and the Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman
who had been caught in adultery.
Throwing her at his feet, they said to Jesus,
‘Teacher this woman has been caught in the act of adultery.
In the law Moses commanded us to stone such a woman.
What do you say?’
Jesus said to them, ‘The law is clear. We must kill her.’
And saying that, he picked up a rock and threw it at her
striking her in the head.
The scribes and the Pharisees immediately followed Jesus’ lead,
all of them throwing stones at the woman until she was dead.
Then Jesus turned to them and said,
‘Let she who is with sin be stoned,
as Scripture demands.’
(from “If Grace is True” by Phillip Gulley & James Mulholland, 71)

Now those of you who were reading along in the pew Bibles
are scratching your heads, wondering whether I might have read
from a different translation.
Your version was quite different from mine wasn’t it?
In my version, Jesus is faithful to the literal word of Scripture.
But in your version, Jesus seems to pay no attention
to a law that appears not once, but twice in Scripture.

Listen to the story as it in fact appears in the Gospel of John:
“Jesus went to the Mount of Olives [in Jerusalem].
Early in the morning he came again to the temple.
All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them.
The Scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman
who had been caught in adultery;
and making her stand before all of them, they said to [Jesus],
‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of
committing adultery. Now in the law
Moses commanded us to stone such woman.
Now what do you say?’
They said this to test him,
so that they might have some charge to bring against him.
Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.
When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them,
‘Let anyone among you who is without sin
be the first to throw a stone at her.’
And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.
When they heard it, they went away, one by one,
beginning with the elders;
and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.
Jesus straightened up and said to her,
‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?'
She said, ‘No one, sir.’
And Jesus said, ‘neither do I condemn you.
Go your way, and from now one do not sin again.’"
(John 8:1-11)

Do you hear the difference between the two versions?
In the first version I read, which is fiction,
Jesus is obedient to the law, obedient to Scripture:
The Bible says it, and that’s it.
But the problem is that that way of looking at things
is completely devoid of mercy and forgiveness;
there was neither grace nor love in Jesus’ actions.
And didn’t our Lord Jesus Christ come to teach us of
God’s mercy and forgiveness,
God’s grace, and love?

Had Jesus picked up a stone in one hand and thrown it,
he could have easily waved Scripture in the other hand
and said, “The Bible says we must condemn and punish the sinner!!”
He would have been faithful to Scripture.
An awful lot of preachers do just that every Sunday,
waving the Bible around as though it was a weapon,
a sword to smite evil in the world.
In the Presbyterian Church, a small angry contingent
has been doing just that for the past 10 years,
standing at doorways of churches
blocking entrances to men and women
who are no different from any other child of God
other than the fact that they happen to be gay.
These angry people, so sure of themselves, so self-righteous,
are quick to quote Leviticus and Romans and other passages,
quick to speak and act,
but always without the least interest in or concern for grace.

God wants us to be faithful, yes,
but faithful to his mercy, his forgiveness, his grace, and his love.
God wants us to be faithful to his word,
the word that is Jesus Christ: the Living Word,
the one who reveals God’s love and mercy
his goodness and his grace.
Jesus Christ is the grace of God, the love of God;
Jesus is the Word of God:
the First Word and the Last Word.
Jesus Christ is the one through whose eyes
we should read and interpret the written word of God.

The Pharisees and the Scribes believed themselves to be
men of exemplary faith.
Had there been a Time magazine of Judea,
they would have been on its cover
as the era’s most influential religious leaders.
They were men quick to point out the faults of others,
even as they hid their own faults:
their greed, their hypocrisy, and yes, even their adultery.
Men whose pockets were always filled with stones,
ready to throw them at anyone and everyone
whom they had determined had violated the law.

Are we all that different?
Don’t we walk around with our pockets filled with stones,
Aren’t we all too ready to criticize others;
Aren’t we all too willing to judge others,
Aren’t we all too eager to condemn others?

It is so easy to point out the faults of others.
The harder task is the one we are called to do
by our Lord Jesus Christ.
The harder task is the one that God calls us to do
all year round, but especially during Lent:
We are to turn our focus intently, exclusively, on ourselves.
We are to use the forty days of Lent
as an opportunity for reflection, for a self-examination.
We are to use the forty days of Lent to empty our pockets
of the stones we each carry.
But introspection and acknowledgement of our own need for repentance,
our own need to change is something we tend to resist with all our hearts,
all our minds, all our strength, and all our soul.

Yes, we are all focused on sin,
but our focus is on the sins of one another,
when it should be on our own sins.
What business do we have judging others,
when our Lord tell us not to judge?
What business do we have condemning others,
when our Lord says to a woman who was
clearly guilty of a capital offense,
‘neither do I condemn you'?
What business do we have throwing stones,
when our Lord refrained from throwing stones,
even when the law clearly gave him that right?

Before you come to this table,
empty your pockets,
empty your pockets,
and then look at yourself,
not at others, but yourself.
Acknowledge your sins,
all the ways you have turned from God,
all those things you have said and done,
all those things you should have said, should have done.
God knows our sins, every one of them.
He’s just waiting for each of us to acknowledge them
so that we can turn from them.
His mercy, his forgiveness, his grace, and his love,
are all there, waiting to be poured out on each of us
but first we have to look inward,
first we have to acknowledge our own sins;
First we have to empty our pockets.

Come to this table
and be refreshed, renewed, and washed clean
by the grace of God,
the grace that is our Lord Jesus Christ.
Come to this table with empty pockets,
and then go
and sin no more.

AMEN