Action! Adventure! Excitement!

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
June 17, 2007

Action! Adventure! Excitement!
Luke 4:16-30
1 Peter 4:1-11

They have been slipping away,
slowly, but surely, one by one,
and the numbers continue to slide:
50, 47, 45, 43:
The percentage of members in the Presbyterian Church
who are men.
Three years ago the magazine Presbyterians Today reported
that on a typical Sunday,
of adult worshipers, 39% were men,
compared to 61% who were female.
(Presbyterians Today, November 2004)

Books, programs, and special ministries
have flooded the marketplace
with advice on how to get men back in the church.
Don’t call it a church: call it “Jesus’ Place”;
Find things that provide action, adventure and excitement,
the things men like;
Launch a ministry on motorcycles;
have services that are amped up, muscled up, pumped up,
all to give men faith with the gleam of a ‘57 Chevy,
the effervescence of a cold-one on a hot summer’s day,
faith that is dialed-up, strobe-lit, technological,
faith that has the power of a Cummins Diesel,
in a Peterbilt rig.

Don’t use words like “nice”, “kind”, “good”;
Don’t encourage men to “bond”;
Don’t ask them to “share” or hug.
And for gosh sakes don’t ever tell men
that they need to be more “nurturing”!

Ten years ago, the big movement was Promise Keepers.
Stadiums filled with men who were told
it was time for them to take back the reins,
to be in charge,
to be a man’s man.
Promise Keepers is still around,
but it has lost much of its horsepower to other movements,
many of which have the subtlety
of a Harley with the aftermarket muffler conversion,
you know the one, the illegal one
that lets people know three counties
away that you are an Easy Rider.

I am not surprised that men’s participation in church is sliding.
We often send out a confusing message for men,
a mixed message.
The Bible gives conflicting messages;
our society gives conflicting messages.

Twenty-five years ago a popular book told us,
“real men don’t each quiche”.
Real men eat steak and potatoes,
pizza and wings,
burgers and fries.
Of course the chapter that wasn’t included in the book
was entitled
“real men die of arteriosclerosis at age 60”.

Tim Allen’s character on the television show “Home Improvement”
wrestled with what it means to be a man.
He always thought the answer to any and every problem
was “more power”.
Problem at work, problem at home,
problem in the world at large
and there was always a
Binford model 6100 power tool to fix it.

Ten years ago, there was a popular show on Broadway
that had the same premise called,
“Defending the Caveman”.
The one-man show reveled in the man who
could rarely see beyond the end of
his Craftsman socket wrench.

Everyone knows: that real men don’t give up the remote,
never ask directions,
and keep the Lava soap company in business.
Or at least that’s what our society seems to teach us.

What does Jesus teach us about being a man?
We’ve got some confusion there, too:
What is the image that typically comes to mind
when we think of Jesus?
“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild”,
as the old Charles Wesley hymn goes;
Jesus who is kind, caring, sensitive and nurturing.
It’s hard to imagine Jesus under the hood of a ’65 Mustang,
tweaking a Holley four-barrel carburetor.

If that’s how we think of Jesus, we’d be right,
but we’d be only half right.
The picture of Jesus as gentle, mild,
sensitive, and caring is accurate,
but it is incomplete.
Read through the Bible carefully
and you will find a more complete picture of Jesus:
Jesus who is both gentle, and yet at the same time,
“sun tanned, bronzed, fearless”.
(Peter Marshall: Gallery Christians)

In our gospel lesson, we most definitely do not see a Jesus
who is gentle, meek or mild.
He comes across as rather rude to the people in his own town.
Did you hear him as he spoke to the people
gathered there in the synagogue
after he read from the book of Isaiah?
“No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”
He had written off the people.
The people were so offended,
so angry that they tried to push him over a cliff.

How did he react? What did he do?
He walked through the crowd,
parting them as seamlessly and as completely
as Moses parted the Red Sea.
Right there we see Jesus as a man, fully and completely.
Fearless, strong, powerful,
as he walked through the howling mob,
the mob that was filled with rage;
yet he was also loving, forgiving, even gentle.
He didn’t lash out,
not even so much as an angry word,
he just moved silently through the crowd,
displaying a powerful fearlessness.
In that lesson, Jesus shows us that we men can be
strong, yet gentle,
powerful, yet forgiving,
bold, yet loving.

What about the disciples?
Were they real men?
Think about where Jesus called them from:
was it from the genteel world of the cloisters
where faith was more talked about than lived?
No, he called men from everyday vocations and backgrounds.

Matthew was a tax collector:
that meant he was corrupt.
Today Jesus would find him loan-sharking
in a gritty urban neighborhood.
Four of the disciples were fishermen.
Do you watch the Discovery Channel?
Then you know what one of the world’s
most dangerous professions is: fishing!
Now the four were not crab fishermen in the icy waters
of the Bering Sea, but still they went out each morning
in the winds and the waves of the Sea of Galilee,
a sea that could turn violent in a moment.
They worked under the blistering sun,
arms, shoulders and backs
straining at the nets and oars,
never, even for a moment, able to get that
fishy smell off their skin, or out of their nostrils.

And yet, did you hear Peter’s words to us?
Big, powerful, profane Peter tells us
it’s time to move past the way we once lived;
time to grow up, time to grow smart,
time to knock off
the drunkenness,
the lecherous leering,
the carousing.
Time instead to turn our focus on the things above.

He’s not telling his listeners to stop enjoying life;
he’s just telling them and us,
it’s time to move to a new level of living;
for men, it’s time to leave the “frat boy” life behind,
to move beyond being a caveman.
“Don’t be conformed [any longer],” he wrote,
“ to the desires you formerly had in ignorance”
(1 Peter 1:14)
Grow up; Grow mature in life
so that you can grow mature in faith.
Grow mature in faith by growing in Christ.

I think what every man needs is what I have in my office:
Very few folks notice it on the shelf;
they usually go for the “Wash Away Your Sins” soap.
But it stands there, silently, a reminder, teaching me:
It is my Jesus: Action Figure.
Not Jesus: superhero,
but Jesus: Action Figure.

Jesus was, after all, a man of action, wasn’t he?
Read through the gospels: he was always on the go,
always on the move,
teaching, healing, praying.
He was always with people, sharing a meal,
listening, laughing, comforting.
He most definitely made time each day for prayer,
quiet time, time for God.
But most of the time he was out,
“striding the dusty roads of Palestine”.
(Peter Marshall)
His disciples, as strong as they were,
struggled constantly to keep up with him.

This man of action calls us to a life of action,
a life of adventure, a life, yes, even of excitement.
Following Christ is not a road to a life of ease and comfort,
not a ride in an air-conditioned luxury SUV on a smooth highway,
Following Jesus is more like an off-road adventure.

Christ calls us,
and he challenges us:
Do you have what it takes
to give up your 16-ounce steak sizzling on the grill
to feed 10 starving children?
Do you have what it takes to work for peace,
when others call you to march to war?
Do you have what it takes to hold a hand,
or offer a hug to an elderly man, a sick man, a lonely man?
Do you have what it takes to put a muffler on your Harley,
and care for God’s creation?
Do you have what it takes not to let society
define what it means to be a man?
Do you have the courage, the strength,
the faith to be yourself,
the man God created you to be?
The person God created you to be?

Do you have the courage, the strength
and the faith to be more Christ-like:
to be strong at times,
but at other times to be gentle,
to be caring, to be kind,
and yes, to be nurturing.

I don’t think Jesus would have much interest
in how much horsepower is under the hood of your car.
I think he’s more interested in how much
horsepower your faith has,
and what you are going to do with it -
to increase it, tune it,
as you put it to work in his name.

Peter, big, strapping Peter,
Peter the temperamental, profane, fisherman
teaches us that Jesus calls us to a higher standard,
calls us to leave the old ways to the past,
because we’ve been called to a new life in Christ
a better way, a more mature way.

Peter urges us all, men and women:
“Prepare your minds for action”,
(1 Peter 1:13)
for we have each been called to a life of action.
Not to lives as action figures:
That’s the trap we fall into;
It is much easier to be an action figure,
to take on poses of Christian goodness and righteousness
as we glide along from Sunday to Sunday.

It is much harder to be men and women of action.
But that is what our Lord calls us to:
An adventure as we follow our Lord,
“walking by faith, and not by sight”
becoming more Christ-like with every step,
and realizing as we mature in faith
that the road we are on
truly is the road,
the only road,
to “more power”.
AMEN