First Person Plural

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
February 26, 2006
Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

First Person Plural
Isaiah 55:1-9
Mark 2:13-22

I have a startling revelation to share with you this morning.
I am glad you are all sitting down because
what I learned this past week
and am about to share with you will amaze you,
astound you,
probably even shock you.
At first you may have difficulty believing it;
but once you think about it, you will know that it is true:
This church – our church –
the First Presbyterian Church of Washingtonville,
is filled with ……sinners.

Now many of you may well be thinking,
“That’s nothing new. I’ve known that for a long time.
All I have to do is look around me
and all I see are sinners.
Sinners to the right, sinners to the left,
and certainly when I look up at the chancel on Sunday
I see a sinner.”

But here’s the revelation,
the fact that is hard for us to swallow:
there is no one in this church who is not a sinner.
There has never been a worshipper at this church
who was not a sinner
and there never will be a worshipper in this church
who is not a sinner.
We are all flawed, every one of us.
And the lesson that Jesus wants us to learn is,
that is precisely why we are here:
You are here because you need to be.
I am here because I need to be.
We are all here; we are each here
because we need to be.

You would not be here if you were not sinner.
So any time you want to know what a sinner looks like,
you don’t need to look around;
all you need to do is look in a mirror.
The person looking back at you in the glass is a sinner.
And the larger lesson that Jesus wants us to learn
is that that sinner looking back at you in the mirror,
is the only one whose sinful nature you should ever think about,
ever talk about, ever worry about.
That sinner in the mirror is the only one
whose behavior you should ever try to change.

Jesus spends a great deal of time trying to teach us not to do
the one thing we seem to find so easy to do:
judge other people.
Go back and re-read the lesson where Jesus says,
“Stop thinking about the splinter in another person’s eye,
when you have a veritable two-by-four plank in your own.”
Listen for his tone;
His tone is angry! (Matthew 7:1-5)
Why? Because when we are judgmental we get in the way
of God’s work through the Holy Spirit,
especially God’s work that we are called to
through Jesus Christ: building community.
Anything we do, any judgmental comment,
any critical comment; any snide comment,
anything that does not work for reconciliation
and building community
gets in the way of God’s work through the Spirit.

Did you hear how this was happening in our gospel lesson?
The disciples of John the Baptizer, along with the Pharisees
found themselves on rare common ground:
both groups complained about Jesus and his followers,
why they weren’t given to fasting and prayer
with more conviction.
John the Baptizer was considered to be a great holy man,
a man who lived a lean, spare, ascetic life
focused on prayer, baptism, and a message of repentance.
The Pharisees were of course the leaders at the Temple;
they followed Scripture literally, every word,
and were quick to condemn anyone,
including our Lord Jesus,
who did not follow Scripture as literally as they did.

And into their lives walked a man
whom many thought to be the Messiah,
the Christ, the Savior.
Such a man should, they thought, excel in holiness,
putting all others to shame in terms of righteous behavior.
But what did he do?
He went to weddings;
he ate and drank;
he associated himself with malodorous fishermen
and lubricious tax collectors,
shadowy, shady people,
People whom John’s followers and the Pharisees
were both quick to sniff,
“they are not like us.”

And we can just hear the comments:
“He doesn’t fast enough;
He doesn’t pray the right way;
He doesn’t follow Scripture carefully enough;
He eats and drinks all the wrong things;
Can you believe the people he associates with?”
Comments coming from people
who thought of themselves as faithful children of God,
obedient and righteous.
But what do you think God thought of their gossipy comments?

What God wants us each to do is to look at ourselves:
God wants you to hold a mirror in front of yourself
and reflect on your own life, where you are now,
to look at yourself honestly.
Honestly, frankly,
knowing that you can fool yourself,
and you can fool others,
but you can never fool God.

Only if we focus on ourselves,
each of us individually,
can we hope to build a true community of Christ,
which is what Jesus calls us sinners to do.
We cannot do that if we are constantly overlooking our own faults
while we wag our tongues and fingers about someone else.

In church we are to focus on the first person plural: the “we”
rather than the first person singular: the “I”
or the second person singular: “you”

In Matthew’s version of this story Jesus says to those around him,
“Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
For I have come to call not the righteous, but sinners.”
(Matthew 9.13)
Do you hear what Jesus wants from us: mercy,
mercy for one another,
because all those he has called: you and me, are sinners.

We have been chosen, you and I precisely because we are sinners,
precisely because we have flaws.
And as we look ahead to Wednesday and the beginning of Lent
it is the perfect time of year for us to be thinking
about ourselves, to look in the mirror
to reflect honestly and openly about ourselves as sinners.
That is hard for most of us to do;
It is so much easier to turn our gaze to someone else,
to be critical of someone else.

Most of you will recall that my
preferred symbol for Lent is the broom,
the ordinary broom,
to encourage us to do some housecleaning,
some spiritual housecleaning.
Housecleaning in our own houses.
If you are busy thinking about how dirty
someone else’s spiritual house is,
then you’ve missed the point.
Lent provides the perfect opportunity
to dig into those dark corners of your own house,
those corners you have worked so hard to look past,
to pretend don’t exist.
But they are there.
You know it,
and God knows it.

A wonderful book every disciple of Christ should read
and re-read, especially during Lent
is the book “Life Together” by the
great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Bonhoeffer did most of his writing during the 1930s
and early 1940s.
He reminds his readers that we have been called here
solely by the grace of God.
He writes, “It is easily forgotten
that the fellowship of Christian brethren
is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God
that any day may be taken from us,
…Therefore let him who…has …the privilege of
living a common Christian life with other Christians
praise God’s grace from the bottom of his heart.
…It is grace, nothing but grace
that we are allowed to live in community
with Christian brethren.”
(Life Together, 20)
It is by the grace of God that we are here,
here each of us sinners.

Each of you has your ideas about what a church should be;
We each have a vision that we try to impose to create
what each of us thinks will make the perfect community.
But don’t you see that when you do that
you are not treating our community as a gift from God.
The church ends up becoming a group of competing fiefdoms,
with pods of people grouped around pet issues,
likes and dislikes.
How is that faithful?
How is that merciful?
How is that loving?
How is that Christ-like?

We begin Lent by remembering that we have each
received forgiveness through Jesus Christ
even though we have each deserved judgment.
Why would you not offer everyone else the same grace
that you have received from God,
and receive anew each day?
Didn’t Jesus say to his disciples, “this is my commandment:
that you love one another as I have loved you.”
(John 15:12)
Isn’t that Jesus’ commandment to you and to me,
to each of us, to all of us?
To love one another as Christ loved his disciples.
Only when we do that
can we hope to build a truly Christian community.

Bonhoeffer writes, “the more genuine and the deeper
our community becomes,
the more will everything else between us recede,
the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work
become the one and only thing that is vital between us.”
(Life Together, 26)

Lent reminds us that in Christ
we are always given the opportunity to begin anew:
the old ways have passed,
and a new life in Christ has begun.
That is true right here, and right now,
The gift of grace given to every one of us sinners,
even though none of us deserves it.
Get out your mirrors and have look at yourself.
Get out your broom and attack those dark corners
of your Spiritual house,
the house you know is not as bright and clean
as God wants it to be.

The more you focus on your own spiritual housekeeping,
the more you will realize that our community of faith
is never going to be your picture of the ideal community.
If you work on your own spiritual housekeeping,
you will understand that God is the one who builds this house.
Bonhoeffer helps us to understand then that
“because God has bound us together in one body
with other Christians in Jesus Christ,…
we enter into that common life
not as demanders, [not as shapers of that life,]
but simply as thankful recipients
And is not what has been given us enough:
[brothers and sisters] who will go on living with us
through sin and need,
under the blessing of God’s grace?” (Life Together,28)

The Psalmist has written, “how very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity.” (Psalm 133.1).
That does not mean that we will all think alike
and agree on everything.
But we will work together for the common good
as we talk, listen, and learn together.
We will work together for the “we” and the “us”,
understanding that the “very hour of [our] disillusionment
with [our brother or our sister] becomes incomparably salutary,
because it so thoroughly teaches us that
none of us can live by our own words and deeds,
but only the one Word and Deed that binds us together:
[our Lord, our Savior, Jesus the Christ],
the one who forgives our every sin
as he calls us to a life of mercy in community]. “ 28
(Life Together, 28)
Amen