Sunday, July 31, 2005

Finding Favor in Your Eyes

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
July 31, 2005

Finding Favor in Your Eyes
Genesis 32.22-31
Genesis 33:1-17

Admit it: you do it all the time.
You get mad at someone for something.
Husband, wife, child, parent, brother, sister,
co-worker, neighbor, perhaps even the minister.
The target of your anger did something,
or said something that got under your skin and set you off.
Or perhaps he or she was supposed to do something and didn’t:
“I asked you to stop at the store and pick up one thing.”
Or you may have hoped that he or she would say something,
but was silent:
“It would be nice to hear the words thank-you once in while,
thank you for the dinner, thank you for the cleaning,
thank you for the work, the friendship…

Word or deed,
committed or omitted: it doesn’t matter.
You are upset, annoyed, irritated,
peevish, petulant, piqued, and pouty.

You don’t say anything to the person.
You don’t say, “You know you said something that hurt me
or bothered me;
You did something that seemed awfully inconsiderate.
I put a lot of work into that dinner.”
No, that’s almost too easy.
If you did that you might work out your differences
and that would take away the power that comes with anger;
your power at holding the other person at a distance;
your power at being cold, removed;
your power that comes with sharing your anger with others:
“Do you want to hear what he did….?”,
“Can you believe what she said…?”

There is power in pique,
potency in peevishness.
We like holding onto our anger;
in fact, it is such a common human trait that we have a word for it,
a very fitting word:
“Grudge”
“Grudge”….It is an ugly word, isn’t it?
There is nothing delicate or light about the word.
It is dark, heavy…. guttural:
“grudge”.
We begrudge something or someone,
we hold grudges, hold them in our minds;
something that is formless, something we cannot see,
yet is so real and powerful to the one who holds it.
Grudge: The dictionary (Amer. Heritage 4th) defines it as
“a deep-seated feeling of resentment”
When you hold a grudge you are unwilling to forgive,
unwilling to give at all.

Here’s the problem: Holding a grudge is profoundly unchristian.
It rejects Jesus’ most basic teachings:
We are to forgive because we ourselves have been forgiven.
(Matt. 6:14)
We are not to judge. (Matt. 7:1)
We are to turn the other cheek. (Matt. 5:38)
We are to love even our enemies. (Matt. 5:43)
It is by our love for others that we are known as Christ’s disciples.
(John 13:35)

Jesus teaches us that none of us is perfect.
We all have logs, planks, great big chunks of wood in our own eyes,
even as we are pointing out the speck in the eye of the one
who has ignited our grudge.

We are all flawed, we all fall short of what God expects from us,
yet God never holds a grudge against any of us;
God doesn’t remind us of mistakes we may have made in the past;
God truly forgives and forgets and moves on.
God forgives us our sins, and loves us unconditionally.
Except – you knew that was coming, didn’t you? –
Except, as Jesus warns us, “[when] you do not forgive others
their trespasses, then neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
(Matthew 6:15)
Translated: if you hold a grudge against another child of God,
God may very well hold a grudge against you.

Yet there are times we feel justified in holding our grudges,
hanging onto our anger: someone did something so awful
that we have every right to be piqued, peevish and pouty.
But long before Jesus taught,
long before Moses received the Commandments,
God provided us with a wonderful lesson how to handle a grudge:
If anyone had the right to begrudge someone,
to hold a grudge, it was Esau, the older brother of Jacob.
As we have learned over the past few weeks,
Jacob cheated Esau out of his rights as the firstborn son --
Esau was a willing accomplice to be sure --
“give me something to eat before I die of hunger” --
but still Jacob could have simply offered his hungry brother
some of the stew he was cooking,
rather than resorting to extortion.
And we know that Jacob did not stop there.
With encouragement from his mother Rebekah,
Jacob deceived their father Isaac into giving Jacob
the blessing that belonged to Esau.

First the birthright, and then the blessing.
if ever a person was righteous in his anger, it was Esau;
if ever a person was justified in holding a grudge, it was Esau.
Both Rebekah and Jacob understood this.
And so, Jacob the cheat and the liar ran away
to save himself from his brother’s wrath.
Jacob ran away to Haran, to live with his Uncle Laban and his family.
There Jacob met his cousin Rachel, Laban’s younger daughter,
and fell in love with her instantly.
He agreed to work for his Uncle for seven years
in return for Rachel’s hand in marriage.
But then the cheater was himself cheated
when on his wedding night, Laban led Rachel’s older sister Leah
into the darkness of the wedding tent.
Laban extracted an additional 7 years of free labor from Jacob
for both Rachel and Leah.
And then at the end of 14 years, Laban again cheated Jacob.

Finally, after 20 years in Haran, God called Jacob
to return to his own family’s home in Beer-sheba.
Jacob set out to retrace the path he followed that took him to Haran,
only this time he had his wives and his children:
11 sons and one daughter;
along with servants and their children,
and hundreds of animals: sheep, oxen, donkeys, goats.
It was a slow-moving caravan, a few miles each day under the hot sun,
moving from well to well
in the same way we travel
from motel pool to motel pool in the summer.
And as Jacob got near the region of his birth, his anxiety grew,
because he was also getting closer and closer to the land known as Edom,
where his brother Esau lived.
Edom was southeast of Beer-sheba, south of the Great Salt Sea,
what we now call the Dead Sea.

Even after 20 years, Jacob believed that Esau still held his grudge,
was still so angry with Jacob, still filled with a desire to see Jacob dead.
It would be another 1500 years before Damocles would sit
under the sword that hung by a single strand of horsehair
but the prospect of Esau’s bloodthirsty desire for revenge was truly
Jacob’s sword of Damocles.

As they got closer to the land where Esau lived
Jacob sent messengers out to find him,
and the messengers returned with a grim message:
“Your brother Esau is coming to meet you
and four hundred men are with him.” (32.6)
400 men: a small army
no doubt ready to turn the countryside red:
red with Jacob’s blood,
red with the blood of his wives,
red with the blood of his children, and all his servants.
Four hundred men, marching, marching up from Edom,
led by a man who had had 20 years to hold his grudge,
build it, refine it, let it take over his life.

Jacob’s first instinct was to limit the damage,
to keep the bloodshed minimal.
So Jacob separated his family and all his flocks and animals
thinking “If Esau comes to the one company and destroys it,
then the other company will survive.” (32.8)
But then Jacob did something we don’t expect,
something that doesn’t quite fit with Jacob’s character:
Jacob prayed,
prayed as he did when he first set out from Beth-el.
Only this time his prayer was different, it was more humble.
“Deliver me, please, from the hand of my brother
for I am afraid of him.” (32.11)

And then after praying, Jacob did what most of us would do
in the circumstances: he hedged his bets.
Jacob thought he might be able to soften up Esau with presents:
“two hundred female goats, twenty male goats;
two hundred female sheep, 20 rams;
30 camels and their colts;
40 cows, 10 bulls;
20 female donkeys, and 10 male donkeys.
All sent on ahead, “to find favor in Esau’s sight.”
The literal translation of the Hebrew records Jacob as saying,
“I will wipe the anger from Esau’s face,
with the gift that goes ahead of my face.”

But even with prayer,
even after splitting his family to minimize the damage,
even after sending ahead the gifts, Jacob was still troubled.
The sword of Damocles still hung over Jacob’s head:
the grudge Jacob was sure Esau carried.
So we should not be surprised that he had a sleepless night
out in Penuel all by himself, alone with his fears.
The Bible tells us that he wrestled with God,
or an angel of God -
the story is deliberately vague.
But Jacob was doing something we all do:
he was wrestling with his fears,
and when we wrestle with our fears,
we are wrestling with our faith,
and when we wrestle with our faith,
we are wrestling with God.
Morning comes and the struggle ends
with Jacob blessed, and his name changed to Israel,
for “one who strives”, strives not only with God,
but strives with humans, and all human emotions.

And as the sun rose over the hills to the east,
Jacob alone in the dawn, his hip sore,
saw his brother in the distance,
his brother with his company of 400 men.
Jacob limped slowly toward his brother,
bowing once, twice, three times, five times, seven times,
doing obeisance, not even daring to look Esau in the eye,
lest he should see the hatred, the murderous contempt.

And what did Esau do?
Esau, the one who had been so utterly wronged by Jacob.
Esau ran to his brother, and embraced him….
embraced him and kissed him
and the two brothers wept,
wept for joy that after 20 years and so much distance,
all was forgiven, all forgotten.
Esau bore no grudge toward Jacob.
Esau cared only about his brother, not revenge.
Esau cared only about reconciliation, not vengeance.
And Jacob looked into his brother’s eyes
and found favor in them,
found forgiveness in them,
found love in them.

Catholic theologian Henri Nouwen wrote,
“To forgive another person from the heart is an act of liberation.
We set the person free from the negative bonds that exist between us….
We also free ourselves from the burden of being the offended one.
As long as we do not forgive those who have wounded us,
we carry them with us, or worse, pull them along as a heavy load.”
Nouwen goes on to say that forgiveness is the cement of community life.
We cannot hope to have community in our homes, in our neighborhoods,
and in our church without forgiveness.
Grudges erode the mortar of love,
but forgiveness makes community stronger.

What is the story in your eyes?
What do people see when they look there?
We are all wounded, wounded regularly by family, friends,
those we care about, those we love.
But we also do our share of wounding:
wounding family, friends,
those we care about, those we love.

When someone looks in your eyes
what do they see?
What do they find?
Do they find the disfigurement that comes with grudges?
Or do they find favor?
The favor that comes with love,
love and forgiveness,
love and forgiveness that come to us
in the grace of God through Jesus Christ.
AMEN

Sunday, July 24, 2005

An Acorn, A Forest

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
July 24, 2005

An Acorn, A Forest
Genesis 29:15-30
Matthew 13:31-32

One acorn;
one small acorn;
an acorn that doesn’t find its way onto a chipmunk’s dinner table
or into a squirrel’s cupboard:
It will force its roots downward into even the most resistant soil;
roots to draw water and food,
roots to help the acorn push upward,
a hair’s width up at time,
struggling, pushing, determined,
the roots thrumming like a factory, pulling potassium,
nitrates and water from the ground,
and then sending them along up one flight, then two, then three;
another level each day as the acorn pushes against the dirt.
It’s not hard to imagine that the roots even send along
the occasional word of encouragement;
listen carefully and you might even hear a subterranean cheer
flowing up the pipeline: “Go! You can do it!”

And then one day one thin thread does it:
it pokes through the soil and take a deep breath of air.
After all that time in the darkness,
the baby tree is dazzled by the sunlight,
and more than a little disoriented.
It hones in on the light and the warmth of the sun.
Eventually leaves sprout on the pencil-thin trunk;
It looks like a tree from a dollhouse – hardly real.
But the cells filled with chlorophyll chug around and around
inside even the smallest leaf,
the process of transpiration already at work
pulling in carbon dioxide and water,
and giving off oxygen.

And as the days pass, the tiny tree becomes a youngster,
gangly and awkward, bending every which way the wind blows,
no pride, no resolution, unable to resist anything
but the lightest breeze.
A year goes by, and then another and then another.
Rings added to mark each year:
thick rings for healthy years,
and thin rings reflecting drought, heat, and sickness.
It will be more than 20 years before that special day comes,
that day when the tree produces its first acorn,
an acorn just like the one from which it sprouted.
The tree won’t hold onto that acorn;
it will send it out into the world eagerly, enthusiastically.
The tree will watch with pride as the acorn rolls away down the hill
hoping that it will find a home in a wonderful patch of dirt,
rich, moist dirt, just perfect for taking root.
Even as one acorn rolls off to the left of the tree,
another drops off to the right,
and then another and another.

In time, where there was once only one acorn,
one seed buried in the soil, invisible,
almost nonexistent, there will be a forest,
a mighty oak forest spreading in every direction,
strong trees, with deep roots,
standing firm against the vagaries of the wind,
the storms, the heat, the drought.
The acorns will rain down year after year,
and new trees will grow, the forest spreading in every direction.
And the acorn’s Creator will watch over the whole process with pride,
calling it good.

An acorn, a forest.
Time is what separates the two,
time, and nurturing,
time, nurturing, and work on the part of each tree.
The tree doesn’t grow just for itself; it grows for the future,
it grows to create a forest;
one tree spreading 500, 800, a thousand or more acorns each year,
year after year,
spreading them in every direction,
knowing that only a few will ever become trees,
but never worrying about which will take root,
and which will whither;
It just continues to spread acorns.

That is the essence of Jesus’ teaching about the mustard seed:
That from one small seed, something big can grow
something powerful, something wonderful.
Jesus words were seeds,
seeds that he scattered here, there everywhere,
knowing that some would be lost,
some would never take root,
some would blow away with the wind.
But some would take root and grow
and then, like trees, continue to spread seeds and multiply the growth.

But even before Jesus could spread the word among God’s children,
God needed to fill the world with his children.
And that’s where Jacob is the acorn in our first lesson.
the seed that would begin the spread of God’s children.
First Abraham, and then Isaac, and then Jacob.
Just one at a time.
But God had great plans for Jacob:
Jacob the liar, Jacob the cheat.

You will recall from last week that Jacob was running away:
running away from Isaac, the father he had deceived,
his elderly, blind, faithful father.
running away from Esau, the older brother he had cheated,
cheated out his birthright.
Jacob was running away to save his life.

He journeyed north from a town in the southern part
of what we now call Israel but in Jacob’s time
was still known as the land of the Canaanites.
He was headed to the village of Haran,
where his grandfather Abraham had originally come from.
His father Isaac sent him there to find a wife.
After a long and difficult journey on foot
he arrived at the most important place in Haran:
the well, the source of water, the source of life.
And there he met his cousin Rachel,
daughter of his Uncle Laban.

Rachel, with her glowing skin and soft, flowing hair;
Rachel: a picture of grace and beauty:
she captured Jacob’s heart instantly.
Over the course of the month that he stayed with his Uncle,
Jacob rarely took his eyes off Rachel,
She was the one he wanted to marry.
He was aware that Rachel had an older sister, Leah.
Leah’s eyes sparkled in the sunlight,
but she was no match for her younger sister.

Jacob asked his Uncle for permission to marry Rachel,
and Laban, unaware of Jacob’s shady doings
was only too happy to arrange the marriage of his daughter.
But there was a condition: Jacob had to work for Laban for 7 years
before he would be allowed to take Rachel as his wife.
Jacob happily agreed, and the time flew by.
Finally the day came when Laban had to give Rachel to Jacob.
Jacob went into the wedding tent after a long evening of celebration.
But in the darkness, and with his mind muddled by too much wine,
Jacob did not notice that Laban delivered his older daughter Leah
to the tent, rather than Rachel.
In the bright sunlight of the next morning Jacob realized
that Laban had tricked him.
But even as he shouted at Laban,
he never thought about the irony of his protesting
that he had been deceived in the darkness
by one person pretending to be another.
Nor did he think about the irony when Laban responded that
it was the custom in that area to honor the rights of the first born.

But Laban was not an unreasonable man,
and so he gave Jacob Rachel as well as Leah.
And Jacob and his wives remained with Laban
and Jacob became a father: the father of Reuben,
and then Simeon, and then Levi, and then Judah.
Acorns, each of them: in these four
and the 8 other sons who followed
we have the beginning of the nation of Israel,
Each son was the foundation of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Jacob may have preferred Rachel to Leah
but it was Leah who was the mother of Judah,
through whom Moses was descended.
Leah was the mother of Levi, through whom King David,
and eventually our Lord Jesus was descended.
Rachel was the mother of Jacob’s most famous son: Joseph,
the second youngest, the one sold into slavery by his brothers.
(And the only one ever to have his own Broadway show!)

A single acorn in Abraham,
and then Isaac,
and then Jacob,
but then from Jacob, twelve acorns,
and from them others
and before long a nation of people
all proclaiming faith in the Lord God.

Seed after seed dropping from tree after tree.
Some seeds taking root, others withering,
some growing strong, others stunted in their growth,
some thriving even under difficult circumstances:
It would be only a few hundred years later that the children of Israel
would be living in bondage under Pharaoh in Egypt,
praying and waiting for a deliverer.
Even as they waited, they maintained hope,
sending acorns, raising faithful children.

And then our Lord Jesus came to the people of God
to spread the word of God.
And Jesus calls on us to continue his work spreading the word,
spreading the gospel, a word that means simply “good news”,
as we work to build God’s Kingdom here on earth.

Did you hear Jesus’ imagery of the seed:
“when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree,
so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
(Matthew 13:32)
Jesus picks up his imagery from Scripture, what we now call
the Hebrew Bible: Speaking through the prophet Ezekiel God said,
“I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar;
I will set it out, I will break off a tender one
from the topmost of the young twigs;
I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain.
On the mountain height of Israel I will plant it,
in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit,
and become a noble cedar.
Under it every kind of bird will live;
in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind.
All the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord….
I will accomplish it.”
(Ezekiel 17:22-24)

This is God’s hope, God’s desire:
to build his kingdom here on earth, and he does that through:
Jacob and Leah and Rachel,
Moses, Amos, Judith, and Esther,
Paul and Silas and Timothy,
through Mary Magdalene and Lydia and Phoebe,
and through you and me;
through all the different ways we spread the word,
spread the word: God’s word through Jesus Christ.

Our Vacation Bible School is just one way we spread the word
as we work to build the Kingdom.
We don’t do it by trying to convert,
or by trying to save,
or by asking each child to profess his or faith;
No, that’s not what God wants.
He wants us simply to spread the word our Lord spread,
words of love, mercy, forgiveness, and righteousness.
and we do that all week long
as the children laugh and sing and play:
they learn of the love God gives them through Jesus Christ.

This year’s program was wonderful in the simplicity of each daily lesson:
Monday the lesson was: Know God
Tuesday: Talk to God
Wednesday: Tell about God
Thursday: Love God
Friday: Work for God.

We work for God when we know him, talk to him,
tell about him, and of course, love him.
And we love him, because “he first loved us.”

I love the ecumenical aspect of our Vacation Bible School:
that we draw so many children from other churches
and other denominations.
We don’t know much about the “soil” within each child
but we don’t worry about that:
we leave that confidently in God’s hands.
We simply spread the seeds, spread the word,
share the love, and keep telling the news,
building the Kingdom here on earth.
That’s our job
Building the Kingdom:
And we do that one seed at a time;
one word at time;
one person at a time;
one acorn at a time.
One acorn:
For from one acorn, a mighty forest grows.
AMEN

Sunday, July 17, 2005

One Condition

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
July 17, 2005

One Condition
Genesis 28:10-22
Psalm 139 1-12, 23-24

Last week we heard the story of the birth of Esau and Jacob
the sons of Isaac and Rebekah,
the grandsons of Abraham and Sarah.
Esau was the first born of the twins,
with Jacob following seconds later on Esau’s heel.
Esau was the strong, strapping hunter,……..his father’s favorite,
while Jacob was slight and quiet, his mother’s favorite.
We heard the story of how Jacob got Esau to give up his birthright
for nothing more than a bowl of lentil stew.
In that rash act, Esau lost his standing as the oldest son,
the one who would inherit the bulk of his father’s estate.
Jacob became the older son.

We pick up the story with Jacob stopping for the night
as he journeyed from Beer-sheba to Haran.
But before we look at the text,
before we do our exegesis –
do you remember that word from last week:
our interpretation of God’s word through Scripture -
we need to do go back and fill in the story.
A lot has happened between our reading from last week
and the reading the Lectionary assigned for this morning.

Jacob has not only taken Esau’s birthright,
he has secured his father’s blessing;
and he did this by deceiving his father,
by masquerading as Esau, dressing up as his older brother.
Isaac, their father, was by this time an old and frail man,
and he could no longer see.
Jacob counted on his father’s blindness to pull off his deception.
And as if that was not bad enough,
Jacob had an accomplice in this duplicity, in this deception:
his mother, Isaac’s wife Rebekah!
She favored Jacob over Esau and she wanted to be sure that Jacob
secured Isaac’s blessing before Isaac died.
Rebekah took some of Esau’s clothes and gave them to Jacob
and then she prepared a special feast for Isaac which Jacob
served to his father when he asked for his father’s blessing.

Esau was furious that Jacob had supplanted him a second time,
first taking his birthright, and then taking his blessing.
Esau vowed to avenge himself, vowed to kill Jacob.
But he chose to bide his time and wait until after Isaac died.
Then he would take his grim revenge on his treacherous brother.
Rebekah learned of Esau’s plans,
and told Jacob to flee to escape his brother’s wrath.
To protect Jacob she compounded her crime by lying to her husband:
“Don’t let my son marry one of the local girls”, she said to Isaac.
“None of them are good enough for my son.
Send him north, back to Haran,
back to the land of his grandfather,
where he can find the right kind of girl.”

And so, with his brother’s birthright and his father’s blessing in hand,
Jacob set off and headed north to Haran.
He was on foot facing a journey of more than 500 miles
along dusty roads, across rivers, and over mountains.
all under the relentless glare of the Mediterranean sun.

That’s where we pick up the story:
with Jacob the liar,
Jacob the cheat,
Jacob the deceiver,
Jacob the fugitive,
settling down under the stars for the night.
No hotel, no bed & breakfast, no trailer,
no tent, no air mattress,
nothing but the cold, hard ground,
with a stone as a pillow.

And then he had his dream,
not the kind of dream we would expect from a crook,
a guilty man on the run,
but that marvelous dream,
that dream that even those who have never read the Bible
have heard about and can picture: Jacob’s ladder.
The image that has captured the imagination of artists for centuries;
a portal, a doorway, a gateway between heaven and earth,
by what the Bible says is a ladder,
but really was thought of more as a stairway, a ramp,
yes, I will say it: a stairway to heaven,
with angels ascending and descending,
some heading down to earth to carry out tasks
God had assigned them,
and others going back up to report back to God
on what they had done, seen, and heard.


In Jacob’s day, some four thousand years ago,
those who believed in God believed that there was
but one entrance to heaven, a portal located somewhere on earth,
where God’s messengers were able to go back and forth.
No one thought of angels as celestial beings with wings.
No: angels were simply thought of as “sons of God”
“going to and fro on the earth,
and …walking up and down on it.” (Job 1:7)
all at God’s behest.

With everything we know about Jacob at this point,
we can hardly call him a man of God, a man of faith.
When he stopped for the night to sleep,
he was not resting on a religious pilgrimage;
he was a fugitive, a man on the run,
a man trying to save his own neck.
And yet in his dream he stumbled upon the one place on all the earth
where God’s transit system connected heaven and earth.
Even Jacob, with all his other concerns and fears,
knew he was in a holy place, a special place,
which is why he would call the place “Bethel”
which is Hebrew for “House of God”.

And if the stairway and the angels weren’t enough,
God appeared to him there in that place,
standing either next to him on the ground,
or standing above him on the stairway,
depending on how we translate the Hebrew.
And God spoke to Jacob and made Jacob a promise,
the same promise God had made
to his father Isaac, and his grandfather Abraham
the promise of land and descendants.
It is an extraordinary promise to make to this
liar, this swindler.
God should have whipped up a brutal sand storm
to drive Jacob back to his family
guilty, penitent, spitting out sand as he confessed his treachery,
and sought forgiveness from his father and his brother.

But God didn’t not stop there – he kept going.
He said to Jacob: “Know that I am with you
and will keep you wherever you go…’ (28:15)
“I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.”
That was God’s promise to Jacob.
God didn’t say to Jacob, “If you go back and apologize to Esau,
if you confess to your father,
if you agree to live a holy and pure life,
I will be with you.”
No, God said simply, resolutely, and absolutely:
“I will be with you”
As Frederick Buechner puts it so colorfully,
“It wasn’t holy hell that God gave Jacob, but holy heaven.”
(Beyond Words 177)

And isn’t that God’s promise to all his children,
including you and me?
God will be with us,
be with us in every moment of our lives:
here with us on Sunday when we gather
in community to worship him;
With us when we pray,
With us when we act with mercy
and righteousness, and goodness.
With us when we reach out to others in love and kindness.

But God will also be with us when we ignore
his commandments to honor the Sabbath
which we seem to have a propensity to do in the summertime;
with us when we are selfish, arrogant, mean, tight-fisted;
with us when we walk by those who are hungry, sick, or lonely.
with us when we think about praying,
but find ourselves distracted by all the things on our “to-do” lists.

That is the love of God,
the grace of God given to us
with no questions, no tests, no judgment
no periodic checkups and examinations.
We can flee from God, turn away from God,
ignore God, pay no attention to God,
step all over his commandments and his teachings,
and God is still with us.

There is no place we can go,
nothing we can do that can change that.
The Psalmist captures this gift so beautifully:
“where can I go from your spirit?
where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, 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.” (Psalm 139:7-10)

Unlike Jacob, we don’t need to see a staircase
to know of God’s constant presence in our lives.
God’s presence was revealed to us through the womb
of a frightened, unmarried young woman,
the one who gave birth to our Lord Jesus the Christ.
And didn’t Jesus reinforce God’s promise to be with us
“until the end of the age” through the power of the Spirit?
This is grace upon grace!
A gift that can’t be bought,
A gift that can’t even be taken through a well-planned swindle.
It is something God gives, gives from his love,
to all his children.

Now Jacob was a con artist, a crook
a scheming young man who could not begin to understand
the breadth of God’s goodness,
the depth of God’s grace,
So we should not be at all surprised by Jacob’s response
“You will be my God…. if you deliver.”
did you catch that one word that trips him up: “if”?
“If God will be with me
and will keep the way I go,
and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear
so that I come again to my father’s house in peace”
then, and only then will the Lord God be Jacob’s God.

God didn’t use the word “if” when he made his promise to Jacob;
God put no conditions on his promise to Jacob.
But Jacob is putting a condition on his response.
And don’t we do the same thing?
We hear God’s promise to us,
and we promise to respond in faithfulness,
but we always seem to have a condition:
God if you deliver the goods, I will be faithful.
Just like Jacob: feed me, clothe me, house me,
make me prosperous, make me better than my neighbor.
God, if you do all these things and I will honor you.
God if I have time, I will worship you,
if I have extra money I will share my blessings,
if I can manage it, I will help another
if I don’t dislike that person, I may not judge him
or criticize him, or gossip about him.

We may be separated by 4,000 years, but we have something
in common with Jacob: the immaturity of our faith.
Even after his encounter with God,
even after his amazing dream, Jacob continued his lying, cheating ways.
Jacob may have been “born again” to use a phrase from our time
and culture, but being “born again” doesn’t mean we are suddenly
filled with wisdom and understanding.
“Born again” means just what it suggests:
we are infants in faith and we need to work to grow in maturity in faith.
For Jacob, it took the rest of his life.
For each of us, it will take the rest of our lives.
But we will have help through God’s constant presence;
as Paul reminds us, “ God will help us in our weakness
for we do not even know how to pray as we ought.”
(Romans 8:26)

Our Lord Jesus Christ understood the immaturity of our faith
when he used the imagery of his words and teachings
as seeds, seeds to take root and grow throughout life.

But so many of God’s words and Christ’s teachings
don’t take root, or are smothered, or simply left to wither.

We too are on a journey, just like Jacob,
a journey that will take all of our lives.
We will continue our journey with Jacob over the next few weeks;
as we journey with him, look for the ways in which he grows in faith,
and ask yourself if you too are growing as he did.
By the time Jacob reaches the end of his life,
the word “if” is no longer part of his conversation with God.
There are no conditions;
he develops the faith of his grandfather Abraham.

And if there is hope for a liar, a swindler, a cheat,
then there is surely hope for you and me.
Hope that we will come to know God’s love,
Christ’s peace,
and the Spirit’s wisdom more completely,
more maturely, more faithfully.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Let it take root.
Tend it, nurture it…
all the days of your life
AMEN

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Anyone For a Little Exegesis?

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
July 10, 2005

Anyone For A Little Exegesis?
Genesis 25:19-34
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

“I’m starving, famished; my stomach isn’t just growling;
it is roaring!
If I don’t eat something soon – now- I’m going to die.”
How many times have mothers of teenage boys heard these words?
Most mothers would probably respond as my mother might have:
“if you want something, fix it yourself.”

Our lesson from Genesis could have been written yesterday:
Twins are born, both boys,
and they quarrel and scrap right from the start.
One day when they are older, perhaps in their mid-teens,
one says he is so hungry that if he doesn’t eat immediately
he’s going to die.
He’s the slightly older one,
the tough one, the one who likes to be outside, and hunt.
He’s his father’s favorite.
The younger one has smooth skin; he is thin, slight; not terribly muscular.
He is quiet, and prefers cooking to hunting.
He is his mother’s favorite.
He sits cross-legged in a tent stirring a pot filled with a savory stew;
the aroma drifts from the tent
and settles on the older brother, pulling him in.
The younger one is only too happy to share his food with his brother,
but of course, there will be a price to pay,
and the price will be high.
This is all of 4,000 years ago, though, so the younger brother can’t
demand the older brother’s computer, Gameboy, or Ipod.
He demands the one thing his older brother has
that he the younger one would never have:
the older one’s birthright.

The older brother is impetuous, rash,
the kind who acts first and thinks later.
All he cares about right now is filling his stomach.
In his own mind he is on the verge of dying from hunger
so he agrees to his pesky brother’s terms.
He will say anything, do anything for food.

The younger has been down this path before with the older:
the older promising something only to back out of the promise later.
This time the younger takes no chances:
“Swear to me first.”
The older spits out the words with anger
and grabs the bowl the younger offers him.
He devours the stew; not a lentil is left.
His belly full, he goes out of the tent,
giving no thought at all to the bad bargain he has just made.

That’s the story;
Now what is the lesson?
What is it that God wants us to learn from this text?
Is the lesson: don’t ever negotiate with a crafty younger sibling
on an empty stomach?
Or is there more here?
Do we need to take a closer look at the text,
before we come to a conclusion about what the lesson is?
Or is it clear, right there before us?

Last week we talked about what a sermon is.
You may recall that I said that a sermon is a way for all of us
to understand the word of the Lord:
the word as it comes to us through Scripture.
Scripture is read, and then it is interpreted….
interpreted so that we can all understand what God is saying to us.

A sermon is not something I preach at you.
A sermon is God speaking through me to all of us,
myself included, teaching us, helping us to understand.
I am the vessel through which God works,
but I am also one of the listeners.
You may recall I quoted Barbara Brown Taylor,
who reminds us that a sermon is a communal act,
with God, you, and me all at work,
God pouring out his words, his teachings, his hopes, and his desires
for us through Scripture and then through interpretation,
hoping for a response from both preacher and congregation,
a response that is nothing less than our
individual and collective transformation.

To understand this text, we need to unpack it,
we need to analyze it, and then we need to interpret it together… communally.
There is a word for this: Exegesis.
Exegesis is a Greek word that means “to interpret”.
Exegesis is the foundation for any sermon.
It is how most ministers spend a good part of their week.
So let’s do a little exegesis together
and interpret this text so we can understand
what God is saying to us.

We are eager to get to the story of Esau and Jacob,
but we can’t overlook the five verses that precede their birth.
We read at verse 21 that Rebekah, Isaac’s wife, was barren.
She was unable to have children.
Does that strike you as a little disconcerting?
Remember who Isaac was: he was the Son of Abraham,
the second generation of the Covenant.
God covenanted with Abraham at least 5 different times,
“…I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven
and as the sand that is on the seashore…”
(Genesis 12:2; 13:16; 15:5; 17:2; 22:17)
Yet here is Abraham’s son who is childless.
On its face it does not make sense.

But Isaac is a man of faith,
and so he does what we would expect a person of deep faith to do:
he prays. We read:
“Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife,
because she was barren,
and the Lord granted his prayer,
and Rebekah conceived.” (Genesis 25:21)
Isaac prayed and God responded.
In twenty-one words, hopelessness turns to joy in faithfulness.
But there’s one more thing happening here.
did you hear it?
Isaac was 40 when he married Rebekah,
and he was 60 when his sons were born,
which suggests that Isaac must have prayed for 20 years.
He did not just lift up one prayer and have God respond.
As Paul wrote some two thousand years later,
we are to “pray without ceasing.”
(1 Thess. 5:17)
There is a lesson #1, a lesson that’s easy to miss.

On to the twins, Esau and Jacob.
Sons of Isaac and Rebekah….grandsons of Abraham and Sarah.
Esau is born first, with Jacob following literally at his heel.
In those days, the first born automatically inherited
his father’s title and a double share of his father’s estate.
If Isaac had had only the two boys and died,
Esau would have inherited two thirds of his father’s property,
while Jacob, who was only seconds younger,
would have inherited just one-third.
It hardly seems fair, though, because for all practical purposes
Esau and Jacob were exactly the same age.
But Esau was considered to be the first born,
and so Jacob was out of luck.
That was not God’s rule, that was mankind’s rule.

But then, of course, the story gets turned around:
Esau gives up his birthright to his brother for a bowl of lentil stew.
Now either Esau was a rather dim bulb,
or Jacob was awfully crafty, or perhaps it is both.
So we still haven’t found a lesson in this.
We have to ask ourselves, “Could this outcome be because
God wanted it this way?
Yes! God decided to toss out a critical structure of the social system.
God swept it aside, like so much chaff in the wind.
Swept it aside to make a point
and to set the stage for other things God had planned.
Here is lesson #2: God is always in charge.

On to Lesson #3:
Esau the first born is now the second,
and Jacob the second born is now the first.
Does that sound familiar?
Two thousand years later,
our Lord would help us to understand this lesson:
“But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”
(Mark 10:31)

God picked the one whom the social structure of the day
would have passed over, ignored,
even laughed at: the weak one, the mama’s boy.
God turned away from the first born,
the strong swarthy one…. the hunter,…the man’s man.
Didn’t Jesus do just the same thing:
didn’t he turn away from the strong, the wealthy, the attractive,
the celebrities, the athletes,
Didn’t Jesus teach us to focus on the outcasts: the sinners,
the orphans, the lame, the weak,
those we consider different, not “our kind”
In favoring Jacob over Esau, God provides us with lesson #4.

Why did God do this to Esau?
After all, he didn’t seem to be a bad person,
he hadn’t killed anyone, or stolen anything,
or committed a crime.
He was just rash and tempestuous.
But that may be the problem right there:
He wanted food and he wanted it right then and there….Now,

This is a man who wanted immediate gratification.
Esau was the kind of person who today might be inclined to run up
his credit cards buying himself things
because he wanted them NOW:
the plasma television, the SUV, the vacation,
the Nike sneakers, the Ipod.
Esau was a man who lived for the things of the flesh,
those things that provided him with pleasure,
immediate pleasure and gratification.
But doesn’t Paul tell us that we should not live for the flesh,
but for the Spirit?
In fact in the epistle the Lectionary assigned for today,
Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, that is just what Paul says:
“For those who live according to the flesh
set their minds on the things of the flesh,
but those who live according to the Spirit
set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
To set the minds on the flesh is death,
but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”
(Romans 8:5-6)
Esau did not understand lesson #5; but now we do.

There’s our exegesis of the verses we read from Genesis.
Did you ever expect to find five different lessons packed into 16 verses?:
1. We are to pray without ceasing;
2. God is always in charge;
3. The last shall be first and the first shall be last;
4. We are to remember the outcasts the weak,
those we consider different
5. “To set the mind on the flesh is death,
but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”

So where does our gospel lesson fit in all this?
Does it fit at all?
It fits perfectly, for our Lord tells us that we have to do more than hear;
we have to work at understanding.
And we cannot hope to find understanding with a quick read, a quick listen.
Jesus is teaching us that every time we hear the word of the Lord
as it comes to us through the Bible we all have to do a little exegesis.
We have to listen, reflect, analyze and interpret,
all with guidance from the Holy Spirit,
all with the goal of understanding,
so the word will take root and grow.
The fact that Jesus spoke in parables,
which even his disciples often found confusing,
was to emphasize the point that understanding God’s will
requires effort.
Jesus says, “The reason I speak in parables
is that seeing they do not perceive,
and hearing they do not listen,
nor do they understand.” (Matthew 13:13)

We think we see, and so we think we understand;
We think we hear, and so we think we understand.
We read a passage and we think we understand.
But we need to interpret.
Our Lord Jesus Christ read Scripture and then interpreted.
He helped those gathered to hear understand.
And we do the same today,
working through the text to hear God’s voice
so we can grow in faith and obedience.

We are going to continue our journey with Jacob and Esau
over the next few weeks.
Next week’s readings are printed in your bulletin.
Take a look at them over the next week,
and do a bit of exegesis on your own,
perhaps around the dinner table with your family.
What do you think God is saying to us through the texts?

As we read through the texts, we will hear many lessons;
some may be difficult for us to hear –
God is not hesitant to say to his children, “I am not happy with you.”
But the one lesson that comes through consistently in every text
is God’s love for us,
the grace God has given us through Jesus Christ.
That is a lesson that never needs interpretation,
never needs analysis,
That is one lesson that will never need exegesis.
Amen.

Sunday, July 03, 2005

Where is God?

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
July 3, 2005

Where Is God?
Nehemiah 8:1-8
Mark 6:2-6

The most heavily used book in my study at the Manse is my Bible.
No surprise there.
I have more than half-a-dozen different Bibles I use regularly,
but my favorite is now held together literally by duct tape.

The second most heavily used book in my study is my dictionary.
It sits on a stand directly next to my desk.
I turn to my dictionary not only for new words
but also for words I think I know, when I want to check to be sure
I am using the word properly, precisely.

A couple of months ago, when I was working on one of my papers
for Princeton,I looked up the words “preach” and “sermon”.
Among the definitions I found for the word “preach” was:
“to give religious instruction….”
Sounded good to me;
but unhappily the definition continued:
“…especially in a tedious manner”
I did not have much better luck when I turned to the word “sermon”:
“a religious discourse, delivered as part of a church service;
Once again, so far, so good, but the next line read:
…an often lengthy and tedious speech of reproof and exhortation.”
After reading those definitions I felt like I was 6 runs down
with two outs at the bottom of the 9th.


I’ve been thinking about preaching a lot over the past few months,
and was grateful to have had the opportunity
to take a fresh look at preaching while I was on my study leave.
Even with all the other demands on my time that have come with
our growth over the past five years,
the focus of my effort week in and week out
is on our worship service and especially on the sermon.
I begin my week reading for the sermon
and I think about it and work on the sermon all week long.

Why do we have a sermon?
The simple answer sounds very Presbyterian: because we always have.
But the fact is that we have had sermons in our worship services
for more than 2500 years.
We have sermons in our worship to help us understand the word of God
as it comes to us through scripture.

That’s exactly what was happening in our first lesson:
in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah,
more than 400 years before the birth of Christ.
Ezra the chief priest called the people together
to hear the word of the Lord as it came through Scripture;
He read from a “wooden platform that had been made
for that purpose”: the first pulpit. (Nehemiah 8:4)

The word was first proclaimed,
and then the word was interpreted.
Ezra and the other priests “gave the sense
so that the people understood the reading”
Jesus was doing much the same thing in our second lesson:
he shared Scripture with people
the word of the Lord as it came through the Pentateuch,
the Psalms, and the prophets,
and then after he read the lesson, he taught.
The practice in Jesus’ day was to have someone read from the Scriptures,
in the synagogue on the Sabbath,
and then after reading, teach, interpret and explain
to help the people understand.

We continue the practice to this day,
Over the centuries we lengthened the sermon so much
that it did become a long, often tedious, discourse;
It was not that long after Jesus’ death on the cross
when the apostle Paul went on at such length,
that a young man who was listening to Paul
fell asleep and tumbled backwards out the window.
(Acts 20:7ff)

Two centuries ago I would have preached for two hours;
a century ago I would have preached “only” for an hour or so,
but of course that was just the morning service;
I would have preached for an additional hour in the evening service.
Not that long ago sermons went on for at least 30 minutes.
Over the past decade there has been a movement to shorten sermons
to respond to an era in which we are bombarded with
rapidly changing images and situations.
Most of my colleagues now preach for about 15 minutes,more or less.
Some are experimenting with different methods
including PowerPoint presentations,
with computer graphic and music.
But whether a sermon lasts 5 minutes or 50,
whether it is accompanied by music and computer images,
a sermon is always about interpreting the Word of God,
explaining the word of God,
teaching the word of God,
the word as it comes to us from the Bible
the word as it comes to us through the life of Jesus Christ.

A sermon is always about the love of God,
the gift of God’s grace through Jesus Christ.
But that doesn’t mean that a sermon will always be gentle, warm
soothing, and comforting.
We all come to church on Sunday looking for a lift,
a bit of inspiration after a long week,
but there are times when the word of God is difficult to hear.
There are lots of places in the Bible where God says:
“I am not happy with you:
You are my children but you are judgmental, vicious,
covetous, lying,
deceitful, cold,
uncaring, heartless.
You think you are living according to my laws
and my son’s teachings,
but you are just going through the motions."
Speaking through the prophet Amos,
God was hardly delicate in excoriating his children,
“Hear this you cows of Bashan….
who oppress the poor, who crush the needy,
who say …, ‘bring me something to drink!’
… the time is surely coming upon you
when they shall take you away with hooks,
even the last of you with fishhooks.”

These are hard words for us to hear,
and preachers know this.
Many preachers stay clear of some of the more difficult texts
because they know that preaching them
will only anger their congregations
and most of us in the clergy prefer to start each week
without a lot of angry e-mails sitting in our in-boxes.

But we have to be faithful to God’s word to us,
all God’s words to us:
the delight and the disappointment
the approval and the anger,
the kind and the critical,
the love and the lament.

When Jesus preached in his hometown in Nazareth,
The people didn’t like what he said at all.
In fact they were so upset by his words
that they tried to run him out of town
and push him over a cliff.
(Luke 4:28ff)

When I prepare a sermon it is not about what I think you need to hear,
it is always – ALWAYS – about what God wants all of us to hear,
Sermons are for me, too.
When I preach, I am the vessel through which God pours
his teaching, his instructions,
his hopes and his desires for all of us.
My own prayer as I prepare a sermon is that
I am attentive to God’s lead through the Spirit,
that my words that I type on the page are God’s words.

Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that sermon is a communal act.
It is not something I do at you;
It is something we all do together.
Every sermon is an act of God,
something that God creates through my words
and your response.
The end result should be nothing less than transformation:
yours and mine.

In the weeks ahead, I am going to work through the Lectionary texts,
the suggested texts for each Sunday.
We print the next week’s texts in the bulletin each Sunday,
so I encourage you to take time during the week to read the texts,
think about them, and listen for God’s voice to you.
Then as you listen to the sermon, listen again God’s voice,
for God is there in every sermon, active through his Holy Spirit
working in the same way he works through this meal
we are about to share:to renew us, refresh us, ………
restore us to his path,

God is everywhere in our worship service,
but especially in the sermon, seeking to help each of us,
myself included, grow in faithfulness, obedience, and love.
God is in every word of every sermon
working for what he wants for each of us:
transforming every one of us into more faithful disciples
of his Son, our Lord Jesus the Christ.
Amen.