He Is Still Risen

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
March 30, 2008

He Is Still Risen!
Philippians 2:1-11
John 20:19-23

It was the end of the day on Sunday.
The early evening sky had a purple hue
as the sun dropped over the horizon.
The disciples had gathered back in their safe house,
behind locked doors.
They were still filled with fear,
as they waited for the opportunity
to slip out of the city to avoid arrest.

Mary Magdalene knocked on the door,
and slipped in when the door was opened just a crack.
“I have seen him!” she said.
She spoke not in a shout, but in a loud whisper,
aware of the need to be careful,
as she tried to contain her excitement.
“The tomb is empty.
The Lord is risen.
I have seen him!”

The disciples reacted with utter disbelief.
Poor Mary, they all thought,
once possessed of seven demons,
then cured by the Lord,
she had clearly relapsed back into madness:
She was seeing and hearing things.
She had been there at the foot of the cross.
she had seen the Lord die,
watched him take his last breath,
watched his head fall to his chest,
his arms and legs go limp.
She had been there with Jesus’ mother,
both of them numb with grief.
She was the one who was going to prepare the body
earlier that morning.
The experience of the past three days
had obviously overwhelmed her.
Poor Mary….

The room was dimly lit, just two small lamps
burning olive oil, giving off a vague light.
And then as the disciples fumbled for words,
trying to figure out what to say to Mary,
how to respond to her delusions,
there he was!
The Lord!
Was it a ghost?
Were they all suffering from the same delusion?
Had their collective grief taken hold of them
and driven them all into madness?
Were they all seeing the same thing?

Jesus spoke.
“Peace be with you.”
The sound of his voice,
the very way he said the words,
“peace be with you”
filled them all with an incredible feeling:
a feeling of calm, of confidence, of hope,
and yes… of peace.

No one said a word.
But their senses were all tingling
as they looked and they listened.
And then Jesus invited them to touch,
so that they would know that it was
indeed him, the Lord,
alive, raised,
with them.
And they all rejoiced and crowded around him.
But still, no one said a word.

Jesus broke the silence a second time,
“Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me,
so I send you.”
And then he breathed on the gathered group,
and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them,
if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

And with that he was gone.
Gone.
What had they seen?
What had they witnessed?
They were so exhausted emotionally and physically,
they were likely to see and believe anything.
And yet, they knew he had been there,
been with them, not a ghost, but the Lord!

The Lord risen! There with them! Alive!
As though he had never died.
And as night fell on the disciples,
a feeling of hope filled them,
flooding the room,
as though the roof had been removed
and the morning sun was beaming on them.

John gave us a different recounting
of how the disciples received the Holy Spirit;
different from the story we are more familiar with,
the one that Luke recorded in his Acts of the Apostles,
where the disciples received the Holy Spirit
on the day we know as Pentecost.

John’s story is compelling, I think,
because here the Resurrection of Jesus,
Easter Sunday, marks the start of the new life in Christ,
and the new mission the disciples are called to.
There is no delay; the time is now!
But either way, the followers of Jesus Christ
are empowered and enabled by the Spirit,
and then sent to take the good news of the gospel
out into the world,
sent out to bear witness to God’s unwavering love
given in Jesus Christ.
A group that had cowered in uncertainty and fear
were now strong, convicted, committed, courageous
and ready to work.
This first group of Easter people
had been commissioned by Jesus and now
had a Kingdom to proclaim,
a Kingdom to build.

We are their successors as Easter people;
And we have the same calling:
to go out and proclaim the Kingdom,
to go out and build the Kingdom,
to go out and bear witness to God’s love in Christ.

We have received the same tools
the apostles in that room had:
the peace of Christ,
and the power of the Holy Spirit.
And that’s all we need.
Some five hundred years earlier,
the Lord spoke through the prophet Zechariah,
and said that was how he was going to send
out his children into the world,
“Not by might, nor by power,
but by my spirit”
(Zechariah 4:6)
That’s how you and I are called,
empowered, and sent out as Easter people.

As we talked about last week,
Easter is not the end of Lent,
but the beginning of new life,
“God’s new project” in the world
and that new project means we have work to do
as God’s children and as disciples of Jesus Christ.
Empowered by the Holy Spirit,
you and I are called to be Kingdom builders.
Professor Daniel Migliore reminds us that
“The Spirit is in constant motion
to further human transformation
and to bring the whole creation
to completion in God’s kingdom of peace and justice.”
(Migliore, The Power of God, 75)

“to bring the whole creation to completion
in God’s kingdom of peace and justice.”
To complete the job,
that’s our calling as God works through you and me.

Paul tells the Philippians in the passage that follows
our First Lesson,
“God …is at work in you,
enabling you to work for his good pleasure.”

And our first task, even before we feed the hungry,
house the homeless, or clothe the naked,
is to take that peace of Christ we’ve been given,
given by Christ himself,
given by the Holy Spirit,
and take that peace out into the world
as we build the Kingdom.
And we take that peace when we work for reconciliation
in our church, our communities,
our nation, and the world.

We live in a world that is desperate for this ministry,
this ministry of reconciliation.
We live in a world riven by divisions,
cultural, ethnic, political, social, and theological divisions,
that polarize us and paralyze us.
Even in churches we find deep divisions,
everyone staking out turf,
and then protecting that turf with a furious obsession.

I suspect that if Paul were to witness the divisions
that threaten our churches
and listen to the things we argue over,
he’d respond as he did
in his letter to the churches in Galatia,
a letter that is not a happy letter,
a letter which Paul begins not with
the warm greeting he used for the Philippians,
but with the words, “I am astonished!”
astonished and appalled by the things you are saying,
the things you are doing.
I think he’d go on to say,
“Don’t you remember what I wrote to those foolish Galatians:
“The whole law is summed up in a single commandment,
‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
If however you bite and devour one another,
take care that you are not consumed by one another.”
(Galatians 5:14)

Have we lost sight of our what it means to be Easter people?
Have we lost sight of what it means to be called,
empowered and sent forth
to minister in the name of Jesus Christ?
Have we lost sight of the fact that we have been called
not to minister in the name of judgment,
but in the name of Jesus Christ,
which means in the name of grace,
of love, of mercy, and of forgiveness?

it was James, the brother of our Lord,
who reminds us of how much damage we can do
each time we open our mouths.
How can we hope to build the Kingdom
if we are engaged tearing down ideas, individuals,
hope, progress, love, peace?
With every criticism, every snipe,
every attack, every judgment,
we tear down;
and fail our calling, in every setting:
not just in the church

This path of fractiousness and divisiveness
is one we’ve been down before;
In fact, it is a well-worn path.
The 1960s were years marked by deep divisions
politically, socially, and theologically.
Divisions and rifts had grown so deep
that the Presbyterian Church felt compelled to respond
with a new Confessional statement,
the first wholly new Confession in more than 300 years,
The Confession of 1967,
a confession that takes as its starting point
God’s reconciliation with his children through
his Son’s death and Resurrection.
The authors of the Confession said,
“God’s reconciling work in Jesus Christ
and the mission of reconciliation
to which he has called his church
are the heart of the gospel in any age.
Our generation stands in peculiar need of
reconciliation in Christ.”
(Confession of 1967, 9.06)
It is a rich, wonderful Confession
and the words have become rather distressfully timely.

Another voice observed,
“Much of our contemporary Christianity
is not making people better,
but worse.
It accentuates bitterness, brings meanness, sanctions,
ignorance and bigotry,
[it] divides…and lapses from its high possibilities
into a force of spiritual deterioration and decay.”
(Harry Emerson Fosdick, Adventurous Religion, 276)

This powerful statement captures our need to work on reconciliation.
It also captures our need to work on history,
and to learn from the past.
For this statement was not from the Confession of 1967,
but rather from a essay written by the great preacher
Harry Emerson Fosdick in the year 1926!

Today is called the Second Sunday of Easter
on our liturgical calendar,
the Second Sunday in our new beginning.
The Second Sunday in our new calling
as we follow the Risen Christ
and bear witness in our words and deeds to
the love, mercy, peace and forgiveness of God
that is ours in Jesus Christ.

It is time to move beyond divisiveness and rancor,
it is time move beyond the biting and the devouring,
as Paul puts it so colorfully and accurately,
for no matter what the setting -- church, family,
society, nations –
we will consume ourselves.
At the beginning of the Book of Isaiah,
God calls his children to “reason together”
to set aside labels,
selfish interests,
judgment,
and work for a common good.

Did you hear Paul’s words to the Philippians:
“Be of the same mind, having the same love,
being in full accord and of one mind.
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit,
but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.
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.”

This is the ministry of reconciliation,
the ministry of “Peace be with you.”
For the joyful news is this: Christ is still risen,
and is here with us,
just as he was with the disciples
in that room on that first Easter Sunday.
Through Christ’s death and resurrection
we have been reconciled to God
and we are called by Christ
to build on God’s ministry of reconciliation with us
by taking a ministry of reconciliation out into the world.
We have been called, empowered,
and each of us is now being sent.
So go into the world ministering
in the name and life of Jesus Christ.
And Peace be with you.
AMEN

9:00 am Monday Morning

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
March 23, 2008 - Easter

9:00 am Monday Morning
Matthew 28:1-10
Romans 6:1-11

9:00 am Monday morning, tomorrow morning:
Easter will be past.
Search high and low,
and there probably won’t be
an Easter egg to be found,
except perhaps in the deepest recesses of the family room couch.
Chocolate rabbits may still be hopping around,
but none of them will sport ears.
Leftover Peeps will settle in for another year’s sleep,
smug in their confectionate knowledge that
they already know the secret to eternal life.

9:00 am tomorrow morning
and Easter vacation will be over for school children and teachers.
9:00 am tomorrow morning
and clergy from every denomination
will make their morning coffee
a little stronger to give them the push they need
to pack up for post-Easter vacations.
9:00 am tomorrow morning
and most church offices will be closed,
staff and lay members alike happy for the break
following the busy-ness of Lent.

This year’s Lenten schedule seemed particularly heavy,
with Lent beginning so early.
I’m guessing that most of my clergy colleagues
have already checked calendars
and have breathed a sigh of relief in learning
that we will not have another March Easter until 2013,
and even then,
it will be a full week later than this year.

With the end of Lent
penitential purple is put away as our liturgical color
in favor of the purity of Easter white.
We will keep the color white as our liturgical color
until we replace it with the fiery red of Pentecost on May 11th.
The next 6 Sundays until Pentecost are referred to as the
Sundays of Easter,
but who will really be thinking of Easter
once tomorrow morning rolls around?

Everyone will be eager to resume normal schedules
and normal routines after a busy and full Lenten Season
culminating in today’s glorious Easter service and
the many family celebrations that will follow.

Yet how can we even think about resuming a regular schedule,
a regular routine knowing what we know?
Knowing what happened on that first Easter Sunday?
Knowing what Mary Magdalene didn’t know
when she found the tomb empty?
Knowing what we now know across four gospels,
and two thousand years of Christian history,
writings, and preaching?

How can we even think that
come 9:00 am Monday morning,
life will be back to normal?
Come 9:00 am Monday morning,
even as we head back to classrooms, offices, and worksites,
we should go believing that life is different,
radically different,
utterly transformed,
for Easter is not the end of Lent,
but the beginning of life!
Christ is risen!
Yes, Christ is risen!
The tomb is empty, empty for a reason,
empty because of the love of God that is ours in Jesus Christ,
empty because we have been given the grace of God
that is Jesus Christ.

The tomb is empty because God raised Jesus for you:
for each of you,
for me……for all of us.
How can we even think that life tomorrow will be the same?
9:00 am on Monday morning begins our lives
“AE”: After Easter,
and “EN”: when “Everything’s New”.

The Resurrection didn’t have to happen
for us to continue being the children of God.
Jesus could have left things as he promised the Disciples
when they gathered in that Upper Room
for their final meal together:
that he would go
but in his place would come the Advocate,
the Paraclete,
the Holy Spirit to fill them and teach them,
to fill us and teach us.
Jesus could have simply vanished into the darkness of the night
the ministry his Father sent him to do completed.

But that’s not how it happened, of course.
Jesus let himself be betrayed
arrested, beaten,
crucified and killed.
And not by some nameless figures lost to history,
but by you and me.
The answer to the question posed by the Passion hymn,
“Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?”
has to be “yes” for each us.
It was humanity’s sinfulness that sent Jesus to the cross;
we were part of the howling group that shouted out “Crucify!”;
we helped hammer in the nails through our
sinfulness, our weak faith and our disobedience.

But in God’s great mercy and love,
Jesus was raised, freed from the tomb,
freed from death,
death utterly defeated
so that we might have life.
so that we might know God’s mercy
so that we might know that our sinful nature is forgiven;
not excused, never excused;
but always forgiven.

How can we think that we will go back to a normal life tomorrow??!!

The Anglican cleric N.T. Wright speaks of Jesus’ resurrection
as “the beginning of God’s new project…”
And, Wright tells us,
that new project was nothing less
than filling earth “with the life of heaven.”
(NT Wright, Surprised by Hope, 293)

That new project was to bring to fruition what we pray for
every time we say the Lord’s Prayer:
“thy kingdom come… on earth as in heaven.”
That’s not a prayer to bring on the eschaton,
the end times,
that’s a prayer for the here and now,
a prayer for us to recognize that in the resurrection
that’s what God wants us to do:
to do his will to create his kingdom here on earth,
as Easter people: children of the resurrection,
children of new life in Christ,
through Christ, and with Christ.

The kingdom of God is present
in the person of Jesus Christ.
Where Christ is, the kingdom is.
Where you and I give life to Christ,
we give life to the Kingdom of God.

Wright tells us, “…those who have heard the message
that every act of love,
every deed done in Christ and by the Spirit,
every work of true creativity –
doing justice, making peace,
healing families, resisting temptation,
[reconciling divisions] –
is an earthly event in a long history of things
that implement Jesus’ own resurrection
and anticipate the final new creation…”
(Wright, 295)

This is the new life you and I are called to:
called to by the resurrection,
called to embrace today,
called to embrace on Monday morning at 9:00 am.
The old life is past, gone,
and the new life is ours to embrace.
Nothing is the same,
everything is new.
Not just today,
on this glorious Easter Sunday,
but even moreso tomorrow and the next day.

The resurrection is about more than the promise of eternal life,
that extraordinary promise that we speak of
with so much hope in funerals,
as I have so many times these past few weeks.
That promise is implicit in the resurrection, absolutely.
But the resurrection is also about the here and now.
As Wright puts it,
“Jesus is raised,
so God’s new creation has begun…
and we have work to do.”
(Wright, 56)
The new life is not something that is
off on the far horizon,
but something we can embrace today, now, here.

What is that work that Wright tells us we have been called to do
by the power of the resurrection?
The same work God has been calling his children to
for thousands of years:
“doing justice, making peace,
healing families, resisting temptation.”

We are called to build a world of hope,
a world built by hope,
a world built on hope.
Hope given us through the resurrection,
grounded in our faith.

This is not a job that we assign to one of our Ministry Teams.
We Presbyterians love to do things through Committees, don’t we?
But there is no “Kingdom Building Ministry Team”
that we can give this work to.
Don’t you see: we are all called to this work,
all called to a new life,
all called to this service in the new life
that is ours through the Resurrection.

Some of the work will take place within this
body of Christ that we call Manassas Presbyterian Church:
through our Ministry Teams, and other groups.
But even more of the work,
more of the service of Kingdom building,
will happen apart from the church
outside of Ministry Teams or organized church groups.
Our real service as disciples of Christ
takes place the moment we walk out the doors
back into the world that Christ loved being part of.
Our real service takes place in families, neighborhoods,
with colleagues, with strangers,
here, in downtown DC,
in communities far away,
often when we haven’t even planned for it.

Your resurrection service may be
to take on a greater commitment in looking after God’s creation.
going beyond recycling, reducing, and reusing
at home and here at the church.

Or you may find in the new life that
you are no longer able to turn a blind eye
to the growing gap between the wealthy
and the poor in this country and throughout the world.
The power of business interests that are too often selfish,
greedy, and increasingly corrupt widens the gap.
And I say that even as a proud Wharton alumnus,
and proud of my career in the business world,
a world I still keep my hand in.
But rationalizing every decision by saying a business’s only
job is to maximize profit is not only irresponsible
to the society in which it operates,
study after study has proven that it is a bad way
to run a business.

Last week the news was filled with stories about
the Supreme Court hearing arguments
on the constitutionality of DC’s gun laws.
Perhaps this week in the new life
you will find yourself thinking that
taking a more sensible approach to how we sell and monitor guns
in our society is not the argument of those who are
painted with the label “liberal”,
but a Christian’s response to Christ’s call to be a peacemaker.

We sing out alleluia this joyful day for Christ is risen.
But tomorrow at 9:00 am, what will you be singing?
Will you be lifting high the cross?
Following it in the same way our ancestors in faith
followed the pillar of fire through the wilderness,
following in obedience and faithfulness?
Through the resurrection
the cross has been turned from a fearsome killing machine,
as lethal and frightening as a guillotine,
into a symbol of hope and new life.
We should lift it high!
And in every place we plant the cross
we should be confident that
we are injecting new life into that patch of ground,
that in that place is another patch of God’s Kingdom.

Did you hear Paul’s words?
“We have been buried with [Christ] by baptism into death,
so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead
by the glory of the Father,
so we too might walk in newness of life.”
(Romans 6:4)
“newness of life.”
That’s our Easter gift,
our glorious gift given to us new each day.

No one has captured the power of Easter
better than Paul's partner in ministry,
the “big fisherman” Peter,
in his first letter:
“By his great mercy,
[God] has given us a new birth into a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead...”
(1 Peter 1:3)
“New birth into a living hope.”
Today
And tomorrow morning at 9:00 am
and every day.

We are Easter people,
children of the resurrection,
born to new life in Christ
new hope through Christ and with Christ.
We should begin every day singing “Lift High the Cross”
and then go out following the cross,
following Christ,
and building the kingdom.
For Christ is risen!
Risen to give us life!
Alleluia!
AMEN

Something in the Air

Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
March 16, 2008
Palm Sunday

Something in the Air
Matt 21:1-11
Phil 2:5-11

It was early Monday morning,
the sun only just beginning to come up over the horizon,
the blanket of the night’s silence
thrown off as the world awakened to a cacophony of sounds.
Look east, north,
south, or west
and all the eye could see were pilgrims:
men, women, children, dogs, donkeys, chickens --
all awakening, stretching, wiping sleep from their eyes.

For some of the pilgrims,
the journey had been only a few miles;
For others, the journey had covered hundreds of miles
and had taken days.
For all, Jerusalem was the goal:
hopes and hearts set on being in the Holy City
in time to celebrate the Passover,
the great Feast of Unleavened Bread,
the Festival that helped the children of God
remember that day from more than a thousand years before
when death had passed over the children of Israel in Egypt
and they were set free from centuries of bondage.

Jerusalem: the great city:
the city of David,
the city of God.
And there in the middle of the great city stood the Temple,
the place that every pilgrim
longed to see, longed to go to,
where every pilgrim longed to offer a sacrifice to the Lord God.
The Temple, first built by David’s son Solomon
according to plans given him by God himself
more than 900 years earlier.
It had been gilded, grand, and great.
Solomon’s Temple had been destroyed by the invading Babylonians
more than 500 years before,
and then rebuilt
standing strong century after century
to the glory of God.

Even in the early morning hours,
the Temple was already a busy place.
The moneychangers were setting up their stalls
in the courtyard.
They knew only too well that every pilgrim
would need to buy a dove or two
for the priests to sacrifice.
Only the local currency would do,
so those who came from other cities,
other localities, would have no choice
but to exchange their coins for the local currency.
The moneychangers were happy to help pilgrims
offer their sacrifices;
and they were even happier that they would profit
so handsomely in the bargain.

The day before a young man named Simon
had stepped off a boat at the port city of Joppa,
eager to complete his journey to Jerusalem,
a journey that had brought him across the Great Sea
almost a thousand miles
from the north African city of Cyrene.
This was for him the journey of lifetime.
As soon as his feet hit solid ground
he had headed southeast through Emmaus,
and from there east to Jerusalem.
It was only a day’s journey for one as young and strong as Simon;
He’d made the journey effortlessly,
filled with a sense of eagerness.
As late in the day as it was when he arrived in Jerusalem
he still walked by the Temple --
he just had to see that great structure.

When evening came, he joined so many others
who went out of the city by the Golden Gate,
on the east side of the city,
the side that led to the Mount of Olives.
He found that entrance to the city much more appealing
than the road from the west he’d taken from Joppa.
That road forced him to walk through the hill called Golgotha,
where the Romans crucified criminals on crosses;
crosses that stood as powerful sentinels
warning against the danger of dissension,
disagreements with Roman policy and politics.

Now on his first full day in Jerusalem
as the sun moved across the sky,
Simon found the mood on the Mount of Olives light,
fit for a festival,
He could see off in the distance to the east
that the road that led away from the city --
the road that led to Jericho, Bethany, and Bethpage --
was still thick with travelers,
pilgrims still coming, more and more,
all headed to the city.
A cloud of dust hung heavy in the air
from the shuffling feet on the road.

But there was something else in the air, too.
Something that Simon could not see,
but only feel.
He wondered whether every pilgrim felt that way
on their first journey to Jerusalem.

As Simon joined the throng in their revelry,
he noticed that those coming in from the east
had picked up palm branches along the way.
Why, he wondered:
To fan away the heat?
to chase away the gnats and flies?
to provide a bit of shade from the sun’s glare?

Simon was a learned man:
he knew his history and his Scripture.
He knew that for the Festival of Booths,
God had taught the children of Israel through Moses
to rejoice and wave palm branches throughout the seven days
of the Festival. (Lev. 23:40)
He knew that palm branches were also used
for the procession of a King.
Was something about to happen?
That feeling he had,
that something was in the air,
grew stronger.
Even in Cyrene there had been rumors of a Messiah,
a successor at long last to the throne of David.
What had the Psalmist written?
The Lord is God and he has given us light.
Bind the festal procession with branches!
… Bind the festal procession with branches.
Open to me the gates of righteousness
that I may enter through them
and give thanks to the Lord.
(Psalm 118:27)

Simon could feel the excitement of the crowd building
Something was happening,
Someone was coming!
The crowds moved to the side of the road
as they heard a commotion.
What could it be?
He could hear voices singing out, shouting out:
“Hosanna!
Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest heaven.”
(Matthew 21:9)

Simon moved with the crowds to the side of road
as the group came through singing and shouting.
The crowds greeted the revelers with palm branches waving,
joining in the shouts of “Hosanna!”

And then Simon saw him,
the one in the middle of the revelers,
the man sitting on the back of the donkey.
The man looked intently at the crowds,
not waving, not singing, not laughing.
To Simon, it seemed like the man was
drinking in the crowds, taking them in,
each person, every person, one at a time.

And then, just as quickly as the group had come,
the group passed, headed to the gates of the city.
Simon noticed that most of the crowd chose not to follow,
chose not to head into the city,
but instead remained outside the gate on the Mount of Olives.
Slowly, they all drifted away,
intent now on buying some bread and fish
for the evening’s meal.

“The Son of David” is what the crowd
had called the man on the back of the donkey.
But why?
To Simon the man had looked so ordinary.
The Son of David on the back of the donkey?
It made no sense.

Simon’s mind raced.
He could still feel that there was something there,
something still in the air.
And then he remembered his Scripture:
hadn’t the prophet Zechariah
spoken 500 years before:
“Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey…”
(Zechariah 9:9)
“Your king comes to you,
triumphant and victorious
yet humble, riding on a donkey.”

“Your king comes to you.”
For a few brief moments,
there had been something in the air
that had caused the crowd in their excitement
to look upon the man on the back of the donkey
as their king.
Had it been some elaborate joke?
After all, this week was a Festival and a holiday.

But then again, hadn’t Zechariah also prophesied
that the future king would stand on the Mount of Olives,
to the east of Jerusalem?
(Zech. 14)

Simon felt so confused.
As he walked back to where he'd left his belongings,
Simon’s feet crushed the discarded palms
strewn all about.
He heard people talk about the man
as some carpenter from Nazareth.
As the sun dropped on the horizon over Jerusalem,
Simon could hear laughter and revelry in the air.
The week ahead promised to be a great holiday
for those camped on the Mount,
a week with few demands,
a time for rest.

And yet Simon could feel it,
feel that there was something there,
something still in the air.
And all he could hear were the words of the psalmist,
“The Lord is God and he has given us light.
Bind the festal procession with branches…”
AMEN

The Man Who Does Nothing

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
March 9, 2008
Fifth Sunday in Lent
Reaffirmation of the Baptismal Covenant

The Man Who Does Nothing
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Mark 1:9-11

I don’t know if Karl Barth was a grumpy old man,
but I do know that when it came to babies,
he was very grumpy.
Not because he didn’t like babies;
But mention the idea of baptizing a baby to Barth
and where most of us would light up at the very idea,
Barth would fulminate and fume.

His smoldering was the result of his deep belief
that churches had no business baptizing infants,
and even children.
He was adamant that there was nothing in the Bible
on which we could ground our practice
of baptizing youngsters.

Barth was not some gaseous talk-radio host,
he was one of the most famous theologians of the 20th century.
His multi-volume work “Church Dogmatics”
is still considered to be the finest, most comprehensive work
of scholarship in Reformed theology
since Calvin’s “Institutes”.
It is a dense, heavy set of books.
Try to read through even one page
and you can’t help but feel that every word
must have been set in lead type.
Still, there is breathtaking scholarship, knowledge,
and wisdom in his words and writings.
There is also profound faith, deep faith.
So when Karl Barth questions infant baptism
we have to take him seriously.

Why was he so firmly against something
we consider so joyful?
First, following the lead of the Reformers,
he looked closely for a biblical foundation
for baptizing children, and he found nothing;
He could find no example of infant baptism
anywhere in the Bible.
But more important for Barth,
He believed that the act of baptism
was not sacramental,
as much as it was a response --
a response to what God had already done
in the one about to be baptized.

Baptism was for Barth not action,
as much as reaction;
It was not “sponse”
but response.
Baptism for Barth was merely a liturgical act
in which the minister does nothing,
because God has already done the work
in filling the person – child or adult –
with the Holy Spirit
and calling the person to a life of faith
following Jesus Christ.

For Barth, such a powerful act on the part of God,
such an extraordinary gift from God,
a gift so freely given,
a gift grounded in grace
needed a response;
it had to have a response.
And for him, that meant that the person being baptized
had to be old enough to understand the
magnitude of the gift,
so that he or she could respond.

Barth reminded us that for the first thousand years
of its history the Christian Church did not baptize babies.
Baptism came when a person was ready to profess
his or her faith.
For us now, that would mean that baptism
would come with Confirmation.
Many denominations still follow that practice.

Now don’t worry! I am not proposing that we change
the way we do things.
Infant baptism is part of our Presbyterian heritage
and that is not going to change.
Barth’s arguments were powerful,
but they never found broad acceptance.
Yet, he makes a compelling point:
“baptism is …our liturgical work
in recognition of what God has already done for us in Jesus Christ……
It is performed in gratitude for what God has already done…”

“…what God has already done…”

Most of us were baptized as infants
and so we were unable to respond
as Barth believed we should.
A service like this provides us with that opportunity
we did not have as infants to respond:
to respond joyfully, eagerly, and faithfully,
to respond with gratitude,
to the work done by God
done even before a minister took you in his or her arms,
done even before a drop of water touched your head.

Barth was right:
in the act of baptism, I am a man who does nothing,
for it is God who does the work,
who has already done the work.
An extraordinary gift given us by God
by the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

How can we not respond!
For even before your baptism,
God claimed you,
“[freed you] from sin and death,
[united you] with Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection.
and joined you to Christ’s ministry
of love, peace, and justice.”
(Book of Order)

As we go through the litany in a few moments,
I encourage you to respond with enthusiasm to the words,
respond as though today was your baptism.
When you come up in a few minutes,
and put your hand in the bowl,
take a moment to feel the water:
the water that gives life,
the water that washes you clean.

Thank God for the water.
Thank God for your life.
Thank God for calling you to faith.
Thank God for filling you with the Holy Spirit.

Thank God for giving us the gift of baptism
as the act of the church to remind us all
of the gift given us through grace.
Thank God that through baptism
we make a covenant promise with one another
to nurture one another in faith
and help one another to know more completely
the love of God that is ours in Jesus Christ.

Thank God for the covenant of love
that is written on your heart.
Take your stone as a reminder of that covenant.
Take the stone as a symbol of the grace given you
in our Lord Jesus Christ.
“the foundation stone, a tested stone,
a precious cornerstone,
a sure foundation” (Isaiah 28:7)

In your baptism,
you began your journey as a disciple of Jesus Christ;
you began “striding forward in the future
that is filled with Jesus Christ.”
Today you have the opportunity to acknowledge that gift
given you by the grace of God.
Today you have the opportunity to embrace it,
and take a confident, bold step forward,
filled with the Holy Spirit
as you give glory to God the Father,
and follow our Lord Jesus Christ.
AMEN

Heart Healthy

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
March 2, 2008
Fourth Sunday in Lent

Heart Healthy
1 Samuel 16:1-13
Psalm 23

Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar were talkative men.
They were the three friends who sat with Job,
the three men who came to comfort Job in his suffering,
in chapter after chapter of that rich and poetic book.

Read the words they spoke and it is clear
that the three felt confident of their understanding of God.
Some twenty-five hundred years ago,
when the book of Job was written,
humanity’s understanding of God was simplistic:
if you were well off, comfortable, living a good life,
it was evidence that you were a righteous person,
and that God was blessing you.
If you struggled in life,
it was evidence that you were not righteous,
and that God was withholding his blessings.
If things were bad,
it meant that was God was actively punishing you.

It made it easy to size up someone,
to look at them and their situation
and quickly conclude that they were either good, bad,
or …wavering in the middle.
Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar looked on the pathetic,
pitiful creature that Job had become and
they knew without question that Job was a sinner,
a sinner apparently of epic proportion
given his miserable condition.

Anyone with eyes could see;
Anyone with eyes would know.
So, chapter after chapter in the book of Job is filled
with Job’s friends urging poor Job to repent of his wickedness,
his sinfulness,
to confess whatever it was that he had done
because it was so clear he had done something awful
to have earned such punishment from the Lord God.

Job argued vehemently that he had done nothing wrong,
nothing to deserve the suffering that he was going through,
that what his three friends saw did not reflect his life,
his righteousness, his goodness.
For Bildad, Eliphaz and Zophar, though
the evidence lay before them,
right before their very eyes.
They could see that Job was a wretched sinner,
a man in desperate need of repenting
from his sinful ways and turning back to the Lord.

We see and we believe.
We see and we conclude.
We see and we judge
We see and we decide.
We see a person who is well-dressed,
well-groomed, poised and polished
and we immediately develop a good impression of that person.
We see someone who is dressed in torn or dirty clothes,
hair blown about, unwashed hands,
and we develop a different impression,…
a negative impression.

That’s just the trap the prophet Samuel fell into
in our second lesson.
When God called Samuel to anoint a new king
to replace the failure that Saul had become,
Samuel did as God told him
and went to the family of Jesse in Bethlehem.
And when he got there and his eyes fell upon Eliab,
Jesse’s oldest son,
Samuel knew that he was looking on the one
God wanted him to anoint.
But did you hear what God said to Samuel:
“Don’t look on his appearance,
or the height of his stature.”
“the Lord does not see as mortals see;
they look on the outward appearance,
but the Lord looks at the heart.”
(1 Sam. 16:7)

“The Lord looks at the heart.”

The friends of Job,
men who considered themselves to be faithful men of God,
judged Job’s sinfulness
by his pitiable appearance,
by what their eyes saw.
Samuel was a faithful priest and prophet,
a man of God,
but he too let his eyes lead him astray.

We judge by appearances all the time,
don’t we?
We’re no different from Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.
We probably would have done the same thing Samuel did,
looking to the biggest, the strongest,
the one we thought looked right.
None of Job’s friends listened carefully enough
to Job’s anguished lament
to hear what was on his heart,
what was in his heart.
Samuel asked no questions of the young men
to discern what was in their hearts;
He simply let his eyes do the work.

Seven sons, each rejected,
and then a lanky, ruddy boy stood before him,
face dirty, skin burned from the sun,
his eyes darting about, wondering why his father
had called him in from the field,
the place he loved to be.
He stood before the strange old man,
fidgeting with his sling,
eager to get back out to the pastures,
even as he tried to be an obedient son.

God saw what Samuel did not see,
that this boy had heart,
a good heart, a big heart.
God saw that this young man would grow in strength,
in wisdom,
and in faithfulness.
His heart would lead him one day to write
words of such love and devotion to his Lord God
that 3,000 years later, men, women and children
would still be saying and singing the boy’s words,
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…”

It is what is in our hearts that matters most to God.
Jesus reinforces this lesson again and again.
“for it is from within, from the human heart,
that … intentions come…”
(Mark 7:21)
Good intentions,
bad intentions,
indifferent intentions.

As we do our spiritual housecleaning in Lent,
we should replace the clutter we are sweeping out
with new disciplines and practices
that are heart-healthy,
that will help us have loving, caring hearts.

In the same way we do physical exercises
for the muscle that is our heart,
in the same way we try to eat foods
that are good for our hearts,
and avoid those foods that are bad,
we need to have heart-healthy spiritual practices.

We’ve talked about some of them these past few weeks:
Participating actively and joyfully in worship;
Having an active prayer life;
reading the Bible;
Forgiving others as we have been forgiven;
Not judging others;
Serving others;
Our list could go on and on.

We have only two weeks until Palm Sunday,
only two weeks before Holy week begins.
I would like to challenge you in these next two weeks
to develop one new heart-healthy practice for yourself,
one new thing you are not currently doing,
one thing you can do each day
to help you grow in love and faithfulness.

Think about what you’d like to do
as you come to this table
and share in this heart-healthy meal
that’s set before us,
this heart-healthy meal to which
our Lord Jesus Christ invites us.
Come to this table
and be nourished in spirit and in heart.
Come to this table and be refreshed and renewed.
Come to this table and be restored
heart and soul,
Come to this table for this heart-healthy meal,
“for surely goodness and mercy shall follow each of us,
and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
AMEN