Birthday Texts

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
August 31, 2008

Birthday Texts
Romans 12:9-21
1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Vermont is the very definition of the word “pastoral”:
with its green mountains,
its sparkling clear rivers,
its frigid lakes and ponds.
Somehow the sky seems bluer in Vermont,
the pine trees a richer green;
even the bark on the maple trees
seems a warmer brown.
There is something extraordinary
about driving through a state
where signs along the highway
warn you to be alert for moose crossing the road.

For all its pastoral beauty and its tranquility,
Vermont is not a quiet place.
There is a cacophony that goes from sun-up to sun-down,
and then sun-down to sun-up, day in and day out,
the sounds changing, but always there:
the symphony of the birds as the sun rises in the sky;
cows bellowing to farmers to be milked and then fed;
sheep and goats bleating, it seems, just to make noise,
Vermont’s answer to New York City taxicabs.

At night, the crickets sing out their love songs,
the same melody they’ve been singing for millennia.
They sing a song composed by God, of course,
and woven into their very fabric.
I find the bullfrogs most amusing.
Listen to one bullfrog grunting by himself
and it isn’t very musical,
but put a bunch of bullfrogs together around the edge of a pond
and you get nothing less than classic 1950s do-wop.

Even the stars in the sky seem to make noise,
crackling and fizzling like sparklers on the Fourth of July.
If you can catch a glimpse of a comet,
you’re sure to hear a very audible whoosh
as it races across the sky;
it doesn’t matter how many millions of miles distant it might be.

Spend two weeks listening to the sounds of Vermont
and I think you’d have a pretty good idea
of what’s on God’s iPod.

Vacation is a time to Sabbath,
to rest, to relax,
to be renewed and refreshed.
God commands us to Sabbath,
commands us to Sabbath weekly of course,
as he calls us to honor the Lord’s Day and keep it holy.
Just as important, God calls us to rest,
to refrain from the busyness
that fills the other six days of our week.
God knows we need to rest;
God knows everything needs to rest.

We struggle with this, though.
We feel like we have too much to do,
always trying to pack 75 minutes of activity into every hour.
We chafe at speed limits of 65,
when we feel a need to go 80
in order to get to where we need to get
to do the things we need to do.

We even have a tendency to pack our vacations full of activities.
The question that always seems to follow,
“where did you go on your vacation”,
is, “what did you do on your vacation?”

We sabbathed on our vacation,
but we also did things.
We saw a wonderful play at the local Dorset Theatre.
We rode the Alpine slide down the mountain
at Bromley Ski Resort.
We swam in the local marble quarry.
We walked miles of country roads with Cole leading the way.

Of course we shopped!
What’s a vacation without shopping?
I speak rapturously of the Northshire bookstore in Manchester,
which I think is one of the best bookstores
to be found anywhere.
But I probably spent more time and money
at the many different Christmas stores
that are scattered around the Southern Vermont.
I am always fascinated by how different artists,
craftsmen and women
hear the words of Matthew and Luke,
and picture the birth of our Lord in Nativities.

I did one truly effortless thing on my vacation:
I turned the page on another year,
as I marked a birthday.
Two weeks ago I went to bed on a Friday night
a mere 53 years old,
and woke up the next morning to find a 54-year-old
looking at me in the mirror.

Birthdays tend to bring with them memories
and with every passing year
more and more nostalgia.
For some reason, a wave of nostalgia grabbed me hard
more than a month before my birthday,
and I found myself going through my CDs
and the iTunes music website
as I built a library of songs from the 1950s and early 1960s
for my iPod, music we could listen to
on the long drive to and from Vermont.

I assembled a playlist of almost 9 hours worth of oldies,
songs I knew as a youngster and teen,
songs that evoked so many different memories,
songs from artists like The Beatles, the Temptations,
the Dave Clark Five, The Supremes.
In the patter of disc jockeys from those days,
they are the “songs that are off the charts,
but still in our hearts”.

Looking back at those years
when I was a boy listening to the Beatles singing,
“She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah”
and the Temptations singing, “My Girl”,
I remember being entranced by a television show called
“Burke’s Law”.
It featured Gene Barry as a captain in a police department.
Imagine that: a television show about police!
But what made this show different
was that Barry was no ordinary cop.
No, he was independently wealthy,
and rode to every crime scene
chauffeured in the back of a luxurious Rolls Royce.

There was something about that that caught me.
I wasn’t impressed by Barry’s mansion,
or his tailored suits,
and age 9 I found the endless stream of beautiful women
who surrounded Barry a nuisance.
No, it was that Rolls Royce, a 1962 Silver Cloud,
that captured my imagination.
I have no idea why, but at that age I thought
“that’s the life for me;
I’d like that some day.”

Of course, as we grow up and mature,
things that grabbed us at one age,
as often as not lose their lustre at a later age.
Paul captured the sentiment so well
in his letter to the Corinthians when he wrote,
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child,
I thought like a child,
I reasoned like a child;
when I became an adult,
I put an end to childish ways.”
(1 Corinthians 13:11)

As we grow older, we do put away childish ways,
or at least so we hope,
as we grow in maturity and wisdom,
as we grow in faith.
And as we grow in wisdom and faith,
we understand that Paul meant
when he wrote that we see in the mirror dimly,
the glass darkened by our immaturity,
our immaturity in years,
and our immaturity in faith.
The glass darkened by the distractions that fill our lives,
by our obsessive busyness,
by our focus on things
that are not the things of God.

But as we grow in mature faith,
the glass becomes clearer and clearer.
We begin to discern those things in life that really matter.
We begin to understand why Paul wrote
that over time, it is faith, hope, and love that abide,
even as everything else fades and turns to dust.

Simply growing another year older
won’t necessarily make us another year wiser, though,
or deepen our faith.
Growing another year older won’t make the glass clearer,
if we don’t work at growing in faith.

Birthdays provide a wonderful time
to reflect on how we are doing
on our faith journeys.
The two lessons we heard make superb birthday texts,
lessons to read, to hear,
to learn from,
to help center us,
refocus,
call us back to where we should be,
remind us of the things that really matter:
remind us that as nice as a chauffeured 1962
Rolls Royce Silver Cloud might be,
that’s not something that will endure.

Frederick Buechner, the wise pastor and and prolific author,
reminds us that “We find by losing.
We hold fast by letting go.
We become something new
by ceasing to be something old.”
(“A Room Called Remember”, 130)
This is to grow in maturity in faith:
that even as we age by the calendar,
by the grace of God in Jesus Christ
we can become new each day
by ceasing to be something old.

We become new by loving one another with mutual affection,
and outdoing one another in showing honor.
The old ways we leave behind include
envy, jealousy, a sense of self-righteousness,
smugness, certainty that we possess truth,
and that others around us don’t,
unless they agree with us.
The old ways we also leave behind include denying
that we are ever envious, jealous,
self-rightous or judgmental.

We become new by persevering in prayer
constantly in conversation with God,
talking to God,
but also spending as much time, maybe even more,
listening to God, discerning God’s will for us.
The old way we leave behind is saying we
just don’t have time to squeeze in prayer in our lives.

We become new by rejoicing in hope,
trusting God,
trusting God utterly and completely with our lives.
And, as I am starting to learn now that I am in my fifties,
trusting God utterly and completely with my death,
even if my hope and prayer is that it is many years away.

We become new by contributing to the needs of the saints,
contributing freely, joyfully, eagerly,
recognizing that all we have comes from God,
and when we give time, talent, or treasure,
we are simply giving back a portion
of what’s been given to us by God,
given to us freely, joyfully and eagerly.

We become new by extending hospitality to strangers,
and there is no better place to start that practice than
here in church.
When was the last time you went up to a person in church
you didn’t know and introduced yourself?
That’s something everyone should do every Sunday.
Our favorite on our long list of excuses
for why we don’t reach out
is “what if I go up to someone only to find out that
he or she has been a member for the past 20 years?
That would be embarrassing!”
Don’t you see: that’s old thinking!
The new thinking is,
if you don’t know them, then they are strangers to you,
and you to them,
so go extend hospitality
because that’s what Jesus calls you to do.
Here’s my challenge: reach out to one new person
after worship today,
and then do it again next Sunday: everyone.
It gets easier each time you do it!

We become new by blessing those who persecute us,
those who we feel threaten us,
those we consider our enemies.
We leave the old ways behind of thinking we
can achieve peace through war,
that we can kill our way to reconciliation.
“Repay no one evil for evil”, says the Lord,
“Leave it to me”, says the Lord,
“Vengeance is mine, not yours”, says the Lord.
“Feed your enemy when he is hungry
give her something to drink when she thirsts”

As we grow in faith and wisdom,
as the glass grows clearer,
we begin to appreciate those things that really matter in life,
those things that will endure.
We may enjoy watching the Olympics,
and appreciate the hard work of the athletes,
the talent, the dedication,
but we know that gold medals do not endure.
We may be excited about the NFL season that’s
just getting started,
but we know that football teams do not endure,
winners or losers.
And as we look ahead to what promises to be
a highly contentious election season,
we know that political parties of every persuasion
do not endure.

Only faith, hope, and love endure,
only faith hope and love abide.
They are gifts each of us receive anew not just on our birthdays,
but every day, always there,
wrapped in bright paper that radiates God’s grace.
Faith, hope, and love.
gifts given us, anew, each day,
through the grace that is Jesus Christ,
God’s way of saying, “Happy Birthday”.
AMEN