Choices

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
May 20, 2007: Confirmation Sunday

Choices
1 Kings 18:17-21
Mark 9:14-24

Well, how easy was that:
you are now members of the church!
You can vote at meetings of the congregation;
You can serve on the Session;
You can serve on the Board of Deacons;
You can serve on any Ministry Team,
get involved in any way you feel called.
And I hope you will continue to be involved,
as most of you already are.
In a church, membership does not bring privileges;
membership brings responsibilities:
responsibilities for each of you, for all of us,
to be faithful stewards of this church,
of this Body of Christ.

Your Confirmation is not your graduation;
you have not completed your Christian education.
None of us has; certainly I have not.
God calls us to learn,
to grow in knowledge all our lives.
As we grow in knowledge, we grow in faith,
grow in mature faith,
faith grounded in wisdom, understanding, and love.

As you grow in learning and in faith,
you will understand that your journey through life
will not always be marked by smooth sailing.
You may have wonderful days filled with sunshine and calm seas,
but you will most certainly also go through times
when you find yourself caught in storms,
tossed about violently by the waves and winds of life.
As Rabbi Harold Kushner reminds us in his wonderful book,
bad things happen even to good people;
bad things happen even to Godly people.
That’s just how life is.
God makes no promises that every day will be sunny,
that life will always be easy and fun.

What God does promise is that
fair weather or foul, he will be with you;
to guide you, strengthen you, encourage you,
comfort you, soothe you,
give you peace.
Psalm 23 captures the promise:
“even as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me.”
That’s the promise:
even in the valley of the shadow of death,
even in the worst possible situation,
God will be with you.

We gave you copies of Eugene Peterson’s “The Message”,
a wonderful paraphrasing of the Bible.
I inscribed in each of your Bibles part of a verse
from the forty-third chapter of Isaiah,
I inscribed the verse as it appears in our Bible,
the New Revised Standard Version
that I read from our pulpit.
But this is how Peterson paraphrases the verse:
“Don’t be afraid, I’ve redeemed you.
I’ve called your name. You’re mine.
When you’re in over your head,
I’ll be there with you;
When you’re in rough waters,
you will not go down;
When you’re between a rock and hard place
it won’t be a dead end…
So don’t be afraid:
I am with you.”

That’s the promise,
the promise God makes to each us,
the promise makes to each of you,
the promise made flesh in Jesus Christ.

There will be times in your life
when you may find yourself struggling with your faith;
You may wonder why you even need God.
After all, if you are smart and you work hard,
can’t you look after yourself and make your own breaks?
I wondered that myself when I was your age.
Think about it: If you didn’t need God,
that would give you more than 3,000 Sundays
to sleep in the rest of your life!

But having faith in God will make you a different person,
a better person.
Faith will bring out the best in you.
Faith will give you a way of looking at life with hope.
Faith will help you to learn to focus on others,
rather than on yourself.
Faith will give you courage;
Faith will help take away your fears,
and fill you with peace,
even in the most difficult times.

Your faith will help you keep your focus
where it should be,
on the things in life that really matter.
In our society, we seem obsessed with
Celebrities,
wealthy corporate executives,
the politically powerful,
even the splendidly outfitted religious leaders
who know how to talk to the television cameras.

The Psalmist reminds us that people like that,
will all just “fade like the grass”. (Psalm 37:2)
Jesus teaches us where our focus should be:
on the poor,
the hungry, the lonely, the sick,
Jesus teaches us to reach out,
especially to strangers,
to live sharing genuine love:
After all, what did he command us:
love God and love one another.

That’s what our faith calls us to do,
and that’s what our faith helps us to do.

Now I am talking about faith, not religion.
You will get no arguments from me about how
good we humans can be in turning religion into something
that is selfish, destructive and divisive.
The seventeenth-century French theologian Blaise Pascal wrote,
“Human beings never do evil so completely…
as when they do it from religious conviction.”
(aqi, Coffin, Letters to a Young Doubter, 22)
That’s just as true for those who say they follow Christ,
as it is for followers of other faiths.

We look to you to help us do better,
to help us remember that we are the Body of Christ,
called to reflect the love of Christ.
That the doors of this church are open to all,
and that Christ himself, the head of our church,
stands at the door “with his big carpenter hands”
opened wide in welcome, especially to the outcasts.

In professing your faith this morning,
you made a choice,
a choice to follow God,
a choice to follow Christ.
Now that you have each made that choice,
stick with it!
Live your choice as though you really meant it.
The worst thing you can do is drift along,
with faith that is neither hot nor cold.

That’s exactly what had Elijah so mad 2800 years ago.
The people were just going along,
following God one moment, Baal the next.
Elijah was furious:
“How long will you go limping along”
waffling, wavering,
cold one minute, hot the next,
most of the time luke warm.
“If the Lord is God, follow him,
but if Baal, then follow him.” (1K18:21)

Make a choice,
commit yourself; take a stand,
and then live your life by that choice.
Follow Christ with conviction
and commitment,
Don’t follow Christ by convention and convenience.
(Barth)

You will have your times of doubt and struggle,
And that is okay.
We all have our moments and times of doubt.
Even Jesus’ disciples were not men of
perfect, unwavering faith.
Just remember the prayer uttered by the father
in our gospel lesson.
It is the perfect prayer for every one of us:
“I believe; help my unbelief!”

To our newest sisters and brothers in Christ,
I offer Paul’s words from his letter to the church at Philippi:
“Live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ…(1:27)
do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit;
Let each of you look not to your own interests,
but to the interest of others….
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, (2:3)
[and] Rejoice
rejoice in the Lord always;
again, I say Rejoice....
And may the peace of God,
the peace which surpasses all understanding
guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus”
this very special day, and always.
Amen