Living on the Edge

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
July 19, 2009

Living on the Edge
1 John 4:7-12

This past week in our Vacation Bible School
we taught more than 100 children
to live on the edge,
to live on the edge as disciples of Jesus Christ.

We began each day with a video
featuring a woman named “Extreme Jean,”
who used “extreme” sports to illustrate each day’s lesson
as she urged the children to live on the edge.
Extreme Jean was so hyperkinetic
she would have “made coffee nervous,”
but she managed to tie rock climbing,
kayaking, and skiing to Reformed theology.
Even more impressive,
she managed the hold the children’s interest.

Living on the edge,
extreme sports,
the theological implications of rock climbing…
These all sound out of place for us as Presbyterians,
a little too “radical dude”
for disciples who find great comfort
in the words “decent and in order”;
After all, the light bulb joke for us
when you ask about how many Presbyterians
it takes to change a light bulb is 7:
one to change the bulb
and 6 to lament how much better the old one was.

But as radical as it was,
we didn’t hesitate to teach the children to live on the Edge.
“EDGE” was an acronym that stood for
“Experiencing and Discovering God Everywhere”
and that was just what we wanted the children to learn:
That God is everywhere,
everywhere in their lives.

Each day’s lesson built on that theme:
that God is with us,
that God guides us,
that God teaches us,
that God loves us,
and that God sends us
to help others experience and discover God
everywhere.

The children learned not only in each morning’s
Opening Assembly, but through a daily Bible lesson,
a science room, playtime, crafts, music,
and of course, snack-time.
Judging by their constant smiles
and their boundless exuberance,
I think the week was a huge success.

Extreme Jean was right:
we are called to live on the edge
as disciples of Jesus Christ,
lives in the extreme:
We are called to lives of extreme love,
extreme faith,
and extreme peace.
We are called to live this way
by our Lord Jesus Christ.
His was a life of extreme obedience,
extreme confidence in his Father in heaven,
extreme commitment to the work
his Father called him to do,
and extreme love for all,
even for those who sought to kill him.

In the Year of the Bible class
we are just starting to read through
Paul’s letter to the Romans.
What Paul teaches us is that through the extreme love of God
revealed to us in Jesus Christ,
all the rockiness that had marked our relationship with God
going all the way back to Adam
was set aside, forgotten,
as we were given new life in Christ.

That’s God’s extreme grace,
extreme love.
Through the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ,
we are no longer living on the edge of darkness,
the edge of death.
We are living fully in the life of faith
given to us solely by the grace of God.

But, through the extreme grace and extreme love of God
revealed in Christ,
we are called to extreme lives too,
as we carry on Christ’s work.
We are called to live on the edge,
just as Jesus did.

“Follow me” is what Jesus says.
Jesus never said “worship me”.
“Follow me:
Do what I do,
go where I go,
Do what I teach you to do,
go where I send you.
Following me means living on the edge;
if you don’t want to live that way
that’s okay; just make your choice.
If you prefer to lament the old bulb,
then you are welcome to sit in the darkness.
But if you are going to follow me,
you will live on the edge,
live often in the extreme.
It will feel at times unsettling,
even uncomfortable,
but always remember:
God is with you;
I am with you,
the Spirit fills you."

That’s Jesus extreme promise.

It takes courage to live fully in faith,
courage to respond to “follow me”
with an unwavering, “yes”,
yes, wherever Christ calls us and leads us.
Courage. A word that means
“it comes from the heart”.

We admire courage when we see extraordinary examples of it.
Men and women who serve in the armed forces --
those who serve in combat, of course,
but also others as they go about their work:
watch a Coast Guard swimmer jump from a helicopter
into 20 ft waves to save the victims of a capsized boat,
and you will see courage at work.
Firefighters show incredible courage
as they climb ladders to dizzying heights,
or rush into buildings filled with smoke and flames.
Police officers who respond to any radio call,
but especially the one that says “shots fired”,
show extraordinary courage.

My friend Charles, whom I spoke about last week,
lives in a place that requires physical courage.
In the part of the world where he lives his faith,
Christians have been known to be arrested,
and beaten if they live their faith too openly.

How many times was Paul beaten,
beaten within an inch of his life?
Living on the edge, living fully in faith
requires physical courage.

But living on the edge requires more than physical courage;
It requires moral courage;
it requires intellectual courage:
examples of courage that seem to be less and less prevalent
in our society today.

Moral and intellectual courage is grounded in truth,
it is grounded in honesty,
grounded in doing the right thing
without concern for what people will think of you.
The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. had moral and intellectual courage;
Mahatma Gandhi had moral and intellectual courage;
Desmond Tutu has moral and intellectual courage.

Moral and intellectual courage set a person apart.
A person with moral and intellectual courage
isn’t afraid to upset the balance,
go against the mainstream,
swim against the current.
The person with moral and intellectual courage
understands what it means to live on the edge.
Moral and intellectual courage
comes from living a principled life,
grounded in something that is more,
so much more, than yourself.

Moral and intellectual courage comes from God,
is grounded in Christ,
and empowered by the Holy Spirit,
giving us the strength to stand up and speak up,
when we see something that is wrong:
where justice is absent,
where hypocrisy and selfishness prevail,
where the strong thrive at the expense of the weak.

We live in a time when we need
moral and intellectual courage
in our society.
The current debate about our health care system
is not just a political issue,
or even a social issue,
it is very much a matter of justice and mercy,
righteousness and love.
How often do we read in both Old and New Testaments
of our calling to care for the sick?
That’s a calling to do more than just deliver
a pot of chicken soup to someone with the flu.
Christians of every political persuasion should be
speaking up for reform in our health care system,
to assure that everyone has access to good health care.

Every clergy man and woman works within the health care system
as we visit in hospitals and nursing homes, and other
health facilities.
I spent a year as a hospital chaplain
and I’ve seen enough over the years to know
our health system is in need of a major overhaul,
especially to eliminate the chokehold
of the insurance industry.
How can we allow an industry that labels
every claim it pays out as a “loss”
to control your health care, my health care?
Had insurance companies been in business 2000 years ago,
they no doubt would have dismissed Jesus’ healing
as “out-of-network” and denied all claims.

We need moral and intellectual courage to make this happen,
to do the right thing for all men, women and children.

Every Christian of every political persuasion
should be speaking out against the shameless greed
in the business world,
a world in which corporate CEOs
seem to have more in common
with “smash-and-grab” thieves
than with principled leaders.

Stephen Green, the chairman of HSBC,
one of the world’s largest banks
has shown moral and intellectual courage in a book
he’s written (Good Value)
in which he expresses his dismay at the greed
he’s seen in business in general
and his industry in particular.

Banks have been at the center of the economic collapse
largely due to poor management, selfish management,
and greedy management,
management that Green argues has been lacking in
moral and intellectual courage.

Green’s thesis is that we begin to slide down the road to trouble
when we begin the practice of compartmentalizing:
when we separate our lives as bankers or business people
from our lives as neighbors,
our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ.
Once we start to compartmentalize,
we sever the Sunday-Monday connection,
and we are like an ice-road trucker who’s lost all traction.

Green, who was trained as an Anglican priest,
reminds us that we are called to live whole lives,
living love in every part of our lives:
in work, in family life, in church, in the community
and in the world at large.
The business person who considers himself a Christian,
but compartmentalizes his business life
separating it from his Christian life,
so he can focus on the bottom line in the office
maximizing profit,
is showing neither faithfulness,
nor moral or intellectual courage.

It will take courage,
it will take living on the edge,
to re-create and re-build our economy
as we come out of this recession,
to rebuild an economy in which the rich
don’t get richer at the expense of the poor.
Over the last decade, the number of people
living in poverty went up every year
as the rich grew richer.
That is unjust; that is wrong.

Green reminds his colleagues and peers
that businesses have a responsibility
to the larger community,
something the dean of management writers,
Peter Drucker, said time and time again.
Green knows that every business needs to make a profit;
but the business person who shows
moral and intellectual courage,
balances his focus on profitability with
his responsibility to employees,
the community, customers,
and even the environment.
Ironically, studies have shown that businesses
that operate this way are more profitable
over the long term.

We are living on the edge,
a tipping point with
how we provide health care in our society
and with how we manage our economy.
Living on the edge, living on the tipping point
means we can go either direction.

If we live in the Christian edge,
the place where God is, where Christ calls us
we will live our faith,
work our faith, as we talked about last week,
and live in love, love for all
as John teaches us.
“Whoever does not love,
does not know God.”
The minute we compartmentalize,
and close off love,
we close off God.
We have fallen off the edge back into the darkness.

Extreme Jean would tell us that life as disciples has risks,
just as skiing down a mountainside has risks,
or navigating a kayak down a rushing river has risks.
But Extreme Jean would remind us that God is with us,
as we live on the edge,
calling us to live courageously,
and gracing us with the courage we need
to do what God calls us to do.

So let’s join the boys and girls who filled this building
with such energy this past week:
let’s join them as we all live on the edge,
experiencing and discovering God everywhere:
in our lives here,
at work, at home, at school.

So come on, all God’s children,
grab your gear and
feel the Spirit fill you,
as you experience God everywhere.
Come on - let’s every one of us live on the edge.
AMEN