Way Past Good

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
August 5, 2007

Way Past Good
Colossians 3:1-11
Luke 12:13-21

A glass of ice-cold lemonade on a hot summer’s day;
a cannonball from a dock into the cold waters
of a mountain lake;
a chocolate chip cookie fresh from the oven;
an approach shot from 100 yards out
that comes to rest a foot from the cup;
sitting in the stands on a perfect Fall day
watching the Redskins win;
snuggling into 300-count sheets on a cold winter’s night;
hearing Humphrey Bogart say to Ingrid Bergman,
“we’ll always have Paris”.

These are things that make us feel good;
Just hearing them described fills us with a sense of pleasure.
We love simple pleasures,
things we do that make us feel good
that make us happy, put a smile on our faces.
We try to fill our days with them;
Not all day, but little treats here and there.

We Presbyterians have a healthy,
relaxed attitude about good times.
Some may think we have a dour, serious approach
to our faith rooted in our Scottish heritage,
but find a Presbyterian Church
and you are sure to find fellowship, laughter,
genuine friendship, warmth, and of course, good food.

It wasn’t that long ago that some churches
frowned on dancing, or going to movies,
or playing cards, even when the card games
had nothing to do with gambling.
But we don’t.
Most Presbyterian Churches never have.

Read through the Bible and you’ll find laughter,
merriment, dancing.
Jesus enjoyed the company of others at meals.
At the wedding in Cana,
didn’t he make sure his hosts didn’t run out of wine?
And of course, if there were children around him,
we can almost hear his laughter
as he said to his disciples,
“let them come to me!”

There isn’t anything wrong with enjoying ourselves,
doing things that make us feel good.
We feel it’s particularly okay for us to do good things
to feel good as long as we are paying attention
to those things we are told we must not do,
those things on the lists of “don’t”
and “you shall nots”
we can find scattered throughout the Bible.

Jesus provides us with a few “don’ts” in our gospel lesson:
“don’t be greedy;
don’t measure yourself and your life
by your wealth and your assets;
and don’t build a McMansion.”
The last one isn’t a problem in this real estate market.
Paul has his lists of “don’ts” in his various letters,
including the list he sent in his letter to the Colossians.

But if we stop there, stop with thinking
that we can have a fair amount of latitude
in how we live our lives as long as we
are scrupulous about the “don’t’s”
and the “you shall nots”,
we risk missing the point of
what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

We are not called to observe rules:
“do this” and “don’t do that”.
No, we are called to nothing less than
an entirely new life in Jesus Christ.
A life transformed by Christ,
a life transformed through Christ,
a life transformed in Christ.

This is not a life marked by the absence of
villainy, vulgarity, and vileness,
or a life that is focused strictly on the good.
This is a life that is way past good:
a life that is dead to the old ways
as it embraces new life in and through Christ.
This is not a life without its pleasures,
its laughter, its lightness,
but it is way more:
it is a life that is filled with joy;
filled with peace;
a life filled with serenity.

It is not about feeling good,
it is about feeling God,
feeling God at all times,
in all places, in every part of our lives.

Let’s go back to the rich man:
For all we know, he tithed faithfully at the temple,
offered his prayers and sacrifices,
and observed the law.
But, as Eugene Peterson points out
in his paraphrase of this text in The Message,
the barn that the rich man was going to build
to house all his wealth,
his crops, everything,
the barn was going to be filled with himself,
when it should have been filled with God.
The rich man had never turned from the old ways,
and embraced the new life
offered him in Jesus Christ.

When we embrace this new life,
we still enjoy feeling good:
enjoying life’s pleasures,
But our lives move past good to serene:
a sense of calm, peace,
that fills us, even when life isn’t so good,
when pleasures are absent,
when problems come knocking,
even pounding, on the door.

The word “serene” comes from a Latin word
that means “clear”, and that fits:
when we are serene,
it is because the path before us is clear,
the path that Jesus calls us to walk as we follow him,
follow him, working each day on transformation,
to be more Christ-like.

When you hear the word “serene” or “serenity”
you may think of the “Serenity Prayer”,
the prayer that has been connected to Twelve-Step
programs like Alcoholics Anonymous.
It was in fact a prayer written in the midst of World War II
by a theologian, Reinhold Neibuhr,
a professor at Union Theological Seminary
in New York City.
He was looking for serenity in a time
when the world seemed to be imploding
in war and hopelessness.

The prayer as Neibuhr wrote it goes like this:
“God, give us grace
to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
courage to change the things that should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.”
(Elisabeth Sifton, The Serenity Prayer)

“God give us grace to accept with serenity”
those things we cannot change.
We cannot change the weather;
we cannot do much about the current real estate market.
But there are things we can change,
things we should not accept,
things that should call us to action
as disciples of Jesus Christ:
the growing number of hungry men, women and children;
our tolerance of diseases that kill and maim
in other parts of the world
but which are not a threat to us;
the way we fill God’s creation with our
dirt, our garbage, our pollution;
The growing imbalance between rich and poor
in this community,
in this nation,
and throughout the world.

As you come to this table in a few minutes,
ask yourself whether you have truly left the old life behind,
whether you have fully embraced your new life in Christ,
whether you have opened yourself to transformation
through Christ,
in Christ,
by Christ,
Ask yourself whether you have
fully embraced the serene,
or whether are you focused on doing good,
feeling good,
as you avoid the “don’ts”.
Ask yourself whether your home filled with your self,
or is it a place filled with God.

Come to this table to be fed by our Lord Jesus Christ,
that you might slough off the old
and embrace the new,
and then, renewed and refreshed by the
power of the Holy Spirit,
and filled with the serenity that comes only from God,
embrace the new life offered you
by Christ,
in Christ,
through Christ.
AMEN