Take A Giant Step

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
April 27, 2008

Take A Giant Step
Acts 17:16-34
John 14: 15-17

The Greeks thought they had every base covered:
They didn’t limit themselves to one god,
they had gods for every possibility,
every contingency:
A god of the heavens, a goddess of beauty,
a god of agriculture, a god of war.
Zeus, Athena, Hera, Aphrodite, Poseidon --
they were among the pantheon of gods
who lived on Mount Olympus,
or in the sea, or under the ground.
Their images were in temples everywhere,
carved in stone and metal.
Athens was filled with temples devoted to them.

The Romans followed the same path,
with a long list of gods,
gods with similar purposes
even if they had different names:
Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mars.

This was the setting in which Paul did his work
as he took the gospel out to the Gentiles.
This was the mindset Paul worked with
as he tried to tell people about a different god,
one God, the Lord God, the living God,
a God whose image could not be captured,
a God who was above all other gods.
God who created the world
and all the life that existed in it;
God who would judge the world
through the Messiah who had died
and then been resurrected to new life.

When Paul reached Athens in his travels
and went to the Areopagus
to speak to those gathered there,
he had such a radical message,
such an incredible story to share.
It would not have been at all surprising that
some thought him mad, an idle “babbler”;
others probably found him offensive
as he spoke about one God,
a God who was above all the gods the people in Athens knew.
For anyone to listen, to hear,
to accept and to follow what Paul was saying and teaching
would have required a huge leap of faith.
Those who responded to what Paul had to say
were not making incremental changes in their lives;
They were taking a giant step, a giant leap.
embracing a whole new life,
entering a whole new world.

It really is remarkable that anyone listened to Paul,
that anyone paid attention to him and considered his words.
Yes, some scoffed and walked away,
but others said they would continue to listen,
“we will hear you again about this”
and, as our lesson told us,
“some joined” Paul and became believers.

We live in a time when it seems that
no one listens to anyone else;
we just talk at one another,
rather than with one another.
We don’t want to listen,
except to those we agree with
or who agree with us.

And yet God is constantly speaking to us
in a thousand different voices and ways
as we go about our days
calling us to new ideas, new ways, and new life.
And God speaks as often through voices
we are inclined not to listen to
as through voices we’re willing to listen to.

Did you listen to what our Middle Schoolers taught us last week?
It would have been easy not to listen to their words,
or discount them as they led us in worship.
After all, they are just 6th, 7th and 8th graders.

But yet we know, don’t we,
that God was working through them,
speaking through them,
the Holy Spirit filling them, guiding them, energizing them.
We know that as they led worship last Sunday
our Middle Schoolers were being more than cute or funny --
they were teaching us,
calling us to respond in the same way
Paul called those who stood before him in Athens.

Our Middle Schoolers were calling us to action,
telling us that the time for talk is over
and the time for action is here:
that the earth is the Lord’s
and all that is in it,
and it’s time for us to look after God’s creation.

They taught us that
God created this earth
and delights in the work of his creation.
They taught us that God entrusted the earth’s care to us;
that we’ve been given the responsibility
to look after this earth not just for ourselves,
but for future generations of God’s children,
and for God himself
so that he can always delight in his work.

Our Middle Schoolers called us
to think about the impact our actions have on this earth.
If we chop down a tree to make paper, or build a house,
should we plant a tree to replace the one we took?
Are we recycling the paper we made from the tree
so we can chop down fewer trees?
If we want our homes cool in summer and warm in winter
have we thought about
how we can make them more energy efficient
so we use as little energy as possible?
When we play video games or watch our televisions,
have we thought about how the electricity we use is generated?
In this area much of our electricity comes from plants that burn coal.
Do we think that strip-mining coal
is okay if the result is a decimated countryside?
As we answer these questions, we always have to ask
in how we are living our lives
are we living up to our responsibilities to God?

These are questions we cannot simply dismiss,
for these are questions that come from God -
through God’s Holy Spirit,
through the Middle schoolers,
through our Mission Ministry Team,
through me, through others.

I remember the first Earth Day, now almost 40 years ago.
I was in High School in Buffalo,
which is right on the edge of Lake Erie,
Back then the lake was literally dying from the toxic waste,
chemicals and raw sewage
we’d been dumping into the lake for decades.
Beaches were being closed as health hazards;
people were told not to eat certain fish
because they were filled with toxic waste;
there was growing concern about the safety of the water we
took from the lake for drinking.
Things got even worse as the water flowed
from Lake Erie down the Niagara River to Lake Ontario
over the mighty Niagara Falls.
That picturesque sight hid the vile, poisonous swill
the water had become just up from the falls,
where a number of chemical factories dumped all kinds of poison.

As concerned citizens began to raise their voices,
they were quickly shouted down by business interests,
including friends and contemporaries of my father and grandfather,
who said that if they had to make any changes
in how they did business,
it would put jobs and businesses at risk.
No one wanted to put anyone out of work,
but faithful disciples of Christ and children of God,
understood that caring for God’s creation
it is first and foremost a matter of faith,
before it is a matter of dollars and cents.

Over the years those who have been in the vanguard of awareness
about our need to be good stewards of the environment
have been derided and mocked
as wooly-headed “tree-huggers”.
Think about such comments with me for a moment.
First, calling someone a derisive name
is judgmental and critical.
Doesn’t our Lord Jesus teach us
not to do such things?
Second, what has baffled me for years is
why any faithful Christian,
and faithful child of God wouldn’t want to embrace
the term “tree-hugger”.
Who created the tree in the first place?
Why wouldn’t you want to hug one of God’s
magnificent and majestic creations
and see it for what it is – something only God could create,
and something in which God delights?

Only God can create;
The Hebrew word we translate as “create”
is used only for God.
We humans may be creative,
but we cannot create.
Unhappily, our specialty as humans is destruction.
We can and we have eliminated whole species,
wiped them out,
pushed into extinction creatures God created,
creatures in which God delighted.

The radical message our Middle Schoolers shared with us
last week is that we must change
we must change,
because that’s what God expects from us.
We are called to take a giant step forward.
God expects nothing less and has empowered us with the Spirit
to enable to do just that.

Now a giant step can come from taking one big leap,
but it can also result from taking a series of incremental steps.
We’ve taken some incremental steps in this church
to be better stewards of God’s creation:
reducing the number of pages in the weekly bulletin;
reducing the number of pages in the newsletter,
placing recycling containers throughout the building,
changing bulbs and ballasts in light fixtures,
developing and adopting an environmental policy.

There’s more we can do, much more,
and to move forward we need everyone to be involved.
If you are not using the recycling containers,
find them and use them.
We are surprised by how much garbage we find
in recycling containers,
and how many recyclables we find in garbage cans.

What are you doing at home?
One incremental step might be to change
some of your light bulbs to more energy efficient
compact fluorescent bulbs.
They are especially good in outdoor lamps
because you won’t have to change
the bulb for a few years.
Are you using your tote bags and trying to stop using plastic bags
when you go to the grocery store,
the drug store, any store?
Are you refilling your MPC bottle rather than buying new
water bottles?
And yes, the bottles are safe.

I would encourage you
to join an environmental advocacy and awareness group
to help you learn more about things we can do:
Environmental Defense (www.edf.org)
Natural Resources Defense Council (www.nrdc.org),
World Wildlife Foundation (www.worldwildlife.org)
Nature Conservancy (www.nature.org),
Chesapeake Bay Foundation (www.cbf.org),
Ocean Conservancy(www.oceanconservancy.org)
these are just a few.
Find one that matches your interest.
Charity Navigator (www.charitynavigator.org)
is a good place to start,
to help you find a reputable organization.

As Paul traveled throughout the region
we now call Turkey and Greece,
he was following Jesus’ lead and taking the good news
to all who would listen.
Brian McLaren describes “the good news” in his new book
“Everything Must Change” this way:
It’s “a story that calls all humanity to creativity, harmony,
reconciliation, justice, virtue,
integrity, and peace”;
[calls us to these]
because these values reflect the the character
of the Creator whose world is our home
and in whose presence we live and move
and have our being.”
(Everything Must Change, 295)

“The Creator whose world is our home…”
God’s world.
Our Home.
God put it more bluntly in Leviticus
when he told the Israelites
that the land was his;
they would simply be tenants.

We all thought our children put on a good show last week,
a show that was cute and charming.
But what you may not have realized
is that what they did was as radical
as what Paul had done 2,000 years earlier.
They were calling us to be transformed,
to take a giant step on a new road,
to leave the old ways behind
and embrace new life.

You heard the message.
You’ve been called by Christ,
and you’ve been empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Now all our young people are wondering and waiting;
in fact, God himself is also wondering and waiting:
what is your response?
AMEN