Don’t Wait a Minute!

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
May 17, 2009

Don’t Wait a Minute!
2 Peter 1:3-11

[Note: In preparing this sermon I relied on Eugene Peterson’s
paraphrasing of this text in The Message]

In a life that’s already filled with too much,
along comes one more person
giving us something more to do,
and in the process, telling us: hurry up, do it now,
don’t waste a minute,
don’t let the grass grow under our feet!

Peter’s letter sounds almost like an infomercial:
“Hurry up and buy this product!”
We almost expect him to say,
“Call in the next ten minutes
and we’ll double your order!”

This letter reflects a vibrant time in the early years
of the Christian community.
It comes at the very end of Peter’s ministry
some 30 years after the crucifixion
and resurrection of our Lord.
Peter, Paul, and all the apostles had spent those years
fanned out across the nations,
proclaiming to people from east and west, north and south
the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In some places they found ready listeners,
men and women with eager hearts and minds
ready to embrace Christ.
In other places they found unreceptive audiences.

Paul’s experience at the Areopagus in Athens was typical:
most of the crowd were just fine holding onto the ideas
and traditions they knew,
and that they were comfortable with,
including the pantheon of gods they knew so well.
But a few responded to Paul,
“tell us more…”
God had touched a spark,
a tiny flame had been lit within a few hearts,
a small glow, waiting, just waiting,
for someone to come along
and fan the flame.

Virtually every group Peter, Paul and the others spoke to
were much like our Confirmands:
men and women new to the faith,
new as professed followers of Jesus Christ.

Paul took a more scholarly approach,
but Peter was excited and
shared his excitement as he spoke:
“You’ve been given everything you need!”
Or as Eugene Peterson puts it in his marvelous translation:
“Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God
has been miraculously given to us …”
How? “by getting to know, personally and intimately,
the One who invites us to God.”

Everthing we need that goes into a life of pleasing God
has been given us in Jesus Christ.

And then Peter is even more emphatic:
it is “the best invitation we’ve ever received”;
it is the best invitation we ever will receive:
I choose you, says our Lord Jesus Christ.
And we respond as our Confirmands have done:
by publicly choosing Christ.

Peter knows, though, there is more to it than that.
There’s more to life as a disciple
than just standing up and saying,
“I am a follower of Jesus Christ”,
no matter how loudly and how publicly
we might make our profession.

Peter knows that our response to the invitation
begins with words of faith,
but that’s only the first step in utterly and completely
transforming our lives;
the old ways left behind,
a new life in Christ,
with Christ,
and through Christ embraced.

So Peter gives us some help to move us along the way,
some lessons, some instruction.
At first, it sounds like he is just giving us a list, a to-do list.
Here -- do these things, fill your life with them:
faith,
goodness,
knowledge,
self-control,
endurance,
godliness,
mutual affection,
love.
Got them all?
Check!

But Peter’s method is more subtle.
Over the years, the fisherman has become
an accomplished and skilled teacher.
What he is doing is giving us a training plan,
an exercise plan,
a plan that ramps up,
and helps us to climb and grow in faith.
Call it Peter’s ladder,
or better,
call it Peter’s stairway.

We start in faith, of course.
That’s the first step,
the step our Confirmands witnessed
as they professed their faith in Jesus Christ.
It’s the first step everyone takes
on the road to discipleship.

Now, onto the next step:
Peter tells us that we are to
“complement our basic faith with good character”
Good character: that’s doing the right thing,
the honorable thing,
not telling lies, not cheating,
not even a little.
That’s the athlete who would rather lose honorably
than cheat to gain the trophy;
The student who will accept the B+
rather than copy from a website
and pass the work off as her own.
The business person who seems to be less and less common
these days: the woman or man whom we can trust,
who operates honestly and ethically, with integrity.

The next step up from character is knowledge;
spiritual understanding is the term Peterson prefers.
This comes from worshiping regularly,
remembering the Commandment
to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy.
This also comes from reading the Bible each day,
whether through a study group here at the church,
or with friends, or on your own.
This also comes from making time for prayer,
We are all busy, but who is too busy to pray?

It also comes from asking questions:
that’s one of the best ways to learn.
When Jesus teaches us to have the faith of little children,
we should remember that one of the things children do
is ask questions, sometimes lots of them --
that’s how we learn.
It’s why I love to teach:
I learn by the questions students ask. .
This year’s Confirmation Class was filled
with lots of wonderful questions
as we all learned together.
Answers may elude us,
but that may be God’s point:
that he wants us learn to love simply wrestling with questions,
rather than always trying to nail down answers,
as we chase certainty and absolutes.

The next step up Peter’s staircase is self-control,
alert discipline in Peterson’s words.
We need self-control and discipline in every part of our lives:
it is how we assure ourselves of strong, active bodies and minds,
ready for service.
Through self-control and discipline
we learn how to control ourselves
in an era of instant gratification;
in an age when the focus is on ourselves:
when our mindset is more likely to be:
“what has the world done for me lately”,
“how many friends do I have on Facebook?”
“how many followers on Twitter?”

We learn how to think of others
before we think of ourselves
We learn how to think of the impact our actions may have
on others, or on the world.
We learn to control our tongues
so we don’t speak rashly,
hurting others with our remarks,
or possibly ending up looking foolish ourselves.

We’re ready to take another step up:
from discipline to endurance.
Peterson’s term here is perfect: “passionate patience”.
passionate patience:
we are still passionate in our discipleship;
still eager to serve,
yet patient,
trusting God to tell us when,
as well as what to do.
We can endure the setbacks that are inevitable in life.
One of the many important lessons we discussed this past year
was that living a life of faith following Jesus Christ
is not a guarantee of a life of ease, of wealth,
of comfort, of material success, of money in the bank.
All lives have their difficult times,
bumps in the road.
Sometimes the bumps can be wrenching,
almost more than we think we can endure,
but the promise is sure: that God will be with us
even in the most difficult of times.

Now we’re ready for the next step:
finding godliness in everything,
learning to go through life
with a sense of “reverent wonder”.
We see God’s hand in all things, all about us.
I attribute the growing realization
in churches of all denominations
of our responsibility to look after God’s earth
as a re-awakening of the sense of reverent wonder.

Reverent wonder helps us to grow to a deeper level of spirituality.
Spirituality is a term we Presbyterians are
not terribly comfortable with
even though it describes us perfectly –
because we are all filled with the Holy Spirit,
given us by the grace of God.

From the step of reverent wonder,
seeing God’s work and God’s hand all around us
and in every person as well as every thing,
it’s easy to move to the next step of genuine affection.
Peterson again finds a better way to help us understand
with his term, “warm friendliness”.
Warmth and friendship, deep, caring,
reaching out to all, not just those people
we like, those who think the way we think,
look the way we look, dress the way we dress,
vote the way we vote,
those who are on our Facebook lists.
It’s remembering Jesus’ teaching that everyone,
everyone,
is our neighbor.

Once we stand firmly on step of warm friendliness
and mutual affection, the best step is within reach:
the step of love,
real love, deep love
that we can feel coming from God,
love that abides in God,
because we abide in God.
Love that is giving,
love that is generous, reaching out,
nourishing,
that builds up --
love as our Lord lived it and modeled it,
and calls us to live and share.

As Peter teaches us his stairway, we realize that
“each dimension fits into and develops the others”.
It is like climbing a set of stairs, one step at a time,
taking the next step only when we are confident,
when we are ready for the next step.

This is the life we are called to,
the invitation we have been given.
No wonder Peter is telling us,
embrace it now, don’t waste a minute.
Peter is not nagging us, or haranguing,
he’s genuinely excited for us to embrace the life
he had been chosen for,
the life he’d been living
for more than 30 years
since Jesus first invited him to set aside his fishing nets.

The briny, temperamental fisherman
became a man of God, a man of Christ,
willing, literally, to give his life for his Lord
as he proclaimed the good news.

Peter’s right!
There is no time to waste.
In fact, we’ve wasted too much time:
It’s been 2000 years since Christ walked with Peter
and the others and we still have a world
wracked with war, poverty,
divisiveness, anger, hopelessness:
all those things Jesus came to eliminate,
all those things Jesus calls us to eliminate.

In a book I was reading the other day,
(James C. Howell, The Will of God)
the author stressed that God is constantly pushing us
to move from “is-ness” to “ought”.
God is calling us through Christ,
to move from what is
to what ought to be:
What is war
ought to be peace;
What is hunger
ought to be enough for all;
what is misery
ought to be hope;
what is greed,
ought to be sharing;
what is selfishness,
ought to be caring.

We move farther from “is”
and closer to “ought”
with each step up we take Peter’s staircase.
So don’t wait another minute.
Do it now.
“confirm God’s invitation to you, his choice of you.
Don’t put it off!”

“Do this, and you’ll have your life on a firm footing,
the streets paved, and the way wide open
into the eternal kingdom of our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

AMEN