Settling In

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
December 27, 2009

Settling In
John 1:1-14

The shepherds are back in their fields tending their flock.
Stars glisten in the night sky,
but the heavens are quiet;
The shepherds strain to hear,
but no angelic choir sings out;
a blanket of silence covers the fields.

The memory of the events from just a few days ago are still so vivid,
but the shepherds don’t speak of them;
they don’t know what to say,
what to make of all that happened.

There they were, tending their flocks,
the night’s chill keeping them from falling asleep,
even as their eyelids grew heavy,
when suddenly the sky was ablaze with the glory of God,
an angel speaking to them,
an angelic choir filling the heaven
with such sweet music:
“Glory to God in highest heaven
and on earth peace and goodwill among all people!”

They left their flocks that night
and rushed to Bethlehem
to see the one the angel had spoken of,
“for to you is born this day a Savior,
the Messiah, the Lord.”
They found him just as the angel had said,
a baby lying in a manger,
wrapped in swaddling clothes,
his mother looking worn, yet so serene,
his father standing over mother and child,
his face too showing exhaustion
yet radiant with peace.

The shepherds did not stay long,
it was late and it was cold.
But as they returned to their fields and flocks
they could not keep silent,
and so they told everyone who would listen
the story of what they had seen and heard.

Their long walk back out to the fields
was such a joyful one that night,
each felt as though angels carried them along
as they sang and praised God for what they had witnessed.

But now, three days later, life has resumed its routine;
the shepherds have settled back to their daily chores and tasks.
The life of a shepherd can be so cold, so lonely,
so dull, the only excitement coming when
the occasional unwanted preditor
wanders a little too close,
sensing an easy meal among the flock.

Mary and Joseph are still in Bethlehem,
still at the stable,
but they are alone now.
They will stay there for another couple of days
to give mother and baby a little more time
before they begin their journey home.

They won’t have far to travel the first day,
they will go just a few miles north to Jerusalem.
There, Mary and Joseph will present the child at the Temple
for the circumcision the law of Moses requires
on the eighth day.
It will be on that day their son will named,
named not for an ancestor in the family
as was the custom in those days,
but named “Jesus”,
the name told them by the angel Gabriel.

From there, Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus
will continue northward
to the region of Galilee,
back to their home town of Nazareth,
where they will settle in,
as husband, wife, child,
parents and son,
Joseph plying his trade as a carpenter,
Mary looking after her son and her husband,
Jesus growing in wisdom and strength,
as Luke tells us.

On this third night after Jesus’ birth Bethlehem is quiet again,
the people who came to register and pay their taxes to the emperor
gone back home now.
Some would have only a day’s journey home,
to towns like Emmaus and Jericho and Bethany;
others faced longer trips
to towns like Cana, Capernaum, Bethsaida.
Three days after the first Christmas
and the world is settling back in to its routine,
most people unaware of what had taken place in Bethlehem;
most thinking only about the nuisance of having to travel,
having to be registered,
having to pay their taxes to the Roman government,
knowing that most of their tax money supported
Rome’s military might
and the corrupt government of Herod the King.

Some recalled words from Scripture,
words from the prophet Isaiah,
that spoke to a future with hope:
“Look, the young woman is with child
and shall bear a son,
and shall name him Immanuel”
which means “God with us”.
There were many who still held the hope
that someday a Messiah, a Savior,
would come to liberate them from the grip of the Roman Empire.
But for now, most were focused on their daily routines.
After all, life under Roman authority was not all that bad,
as long as you obeyed their rules,
paid the tax collectors whatever they demanded,
and didn’t cause trouble.

And so, after a few days of disruption,
everyone settles back to their routines,
unaware of what had happened in a stable
behind an inn in the small town of Bethlehem.

And yet, what happened in Bethlehem changed everything.
The world as it had been just a few days before
was gone, gone forever.
The birth of the baby in Bethlehem
gave birth to a new era,
a new world.
a world built not on human authority,
or on political power,
or on military might,
or on economic strength,
but on love,
on grace,
on peace,
on hope.

The world as God created it to be,
the world as God wanted it to be,
a world with the possibility of plenty for all,
a world not marked by rich and poor,
have and have-nots,
those with food, and those without food;
those who lived comfortably
and those forced to dig through the garbage
of Gehanna just to make it through another day.

In Jesus Christ, God swept away
all that stood between him and his people,
all those barriers that humanity had erected over the centuries,
barriers built on arrogance,
on power,
on greed,
on self interest,
on idolatry,
on faithlessness.

In Jesus Christ, the Word became flesh,
God with us,
fully human for us to see, to know, to trust.
And yet, as the Gospel reminds us,
the Word would walk through the world unrecognized by most,
accepted by few,
followed by fewer,
fully embraced by fewer still.

Even now, we struggle to recognize him.
Oh, we see Jesus, but we are more likely to see the Jesus
of our own creation, the Jesus who suits us,
fits our needs, our schedules,
our lifestyles -
the Jesus of bumper stickers,
the Jesus denominations compete to create
and then claim as their own.

We have to work hard to see Jesus,
the Word of God made flesh,
but he’s here,
that’s the promise of Christmas.

Christmas 2009 is now past, but happily
the holidays are not over.
We still have the coming week and
all the festivities that come with the New Year,
but come a week from tomorrow and it’s back to work,
back to school,
back to our routines.

Will you settle back into routine?
Or will you embrace more fully,
more completely,
more faithfully
the new life offered you in the birth of our Lord?

Will you pack away the Spirit of Christmas,
the Spirit of Christ,
with the decorations,
box them all up and put them away until next year?

Or will you keep Christmas?
Keep the Spirit of Christ in your heart
even as you head back to work, to school,
to all the places you are called to go?

Here’s a suggestion:
If you have a nativity, don’t put it away.
Keep it out, put it somewhere where you can see it;
It doesn’t have to be in its December place of prominence,
but put it somewhere where you can see it year round
to remind you of why the shepherds glorified and praised God
that cold winter’s night so long ago:
To remind you that a child has been born for you,
born for me,
a son given to us;
A child we call,
Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God,
Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace.

The one born to help us settle into the new life
offered us in his birth
a life grounded in joy,
a life grounded in compassion for others,
a life grounded in peace,
a life grounded in love.

“And the Word became flesh,
and lived among us
and we have seen his glory,
the glory of a Father’s only Son,
full of grace and truth…
and from his fullness we have received,
grace upon grace."

AMEN

What Should We Do?

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
December 13, 2009
Third Sunday in Advent

What Should We Do?
Luke 3:7-18
Isaiah 12:2-6

Here it is: the Christmas season,
a time that should be filled with warmth,
with hope, with light,
laughter, and joy.
We are busy making our lists,
and checking them twice;
our stockings are hung by the chimney with care,
presents are starting to appear under our trees.
Yes, even without snow
it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

And then – BAM -- along comes John the Baptist,
ranting, raving,
yelling at the people on the banks of the Jordan,
and, of course, yelling at every one of us,
for the Bible is our story,
and we can find ourselves in every page.

There’s no mistaking John the Baptist for Santa Clause.
They may both sport beards,
but the resemblance ends there.
John in his rough clothes,
wild hair;
There’s no “Ho Ho Ho”;
No twinkling eyes;
not even a smile on his face.
Merry Christmas, indeed!
But still we have always been entranced,
almost hypnotized by John,
drawn to him,
compelled to listen to him.

And so it was 2000 years ago,
as people flocked to the banks of the river.
It was no easy journey to get there:
The Jordan was more than 20 miles away from Jerusalem,
back in the day when the only way
to get anywhere was on foot.
Imagine walking from here
to the banks of the Potomac in Alexandria.

But still the people came,
they came to be baptized in the river,
and they came filled with hope,
hope that perhaps John was the Messiah,
the one they had been waiting for.

But of course we know now
what no one was sure of then:
that John was not the Messiah.
No, he was called by God to prepare the way for the Messiah,
to help the people get ready for coming of the Messiah.
He was the one whom the prophet Isaiah
had spoken of so many centuries before,
the one who would call out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
(Isaiah 40:3)

John was the one whom the angel Gabriel spoke of saying,
“He will turn many of the people of Israel
to the Lord their God.
With the spirit and power of Elijah,
he will go before him,
to turn…the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous,
to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
(Luke 1:16ff)

John had a job to do and he knew it.
He knew who had called him,
and he knew the work to which he had been called.
He had been called to serve the Lord,
and he did so with zeal,
with fire, with passion.

But he was appalled by what he saw as he looked around.
What he saw were people going through the motions of faithfulness,
convinced that just because they went through the rituals
they were living godly lives.
John understood why God had spoken so furiously centuries before
through the prophet Amos:
“I hate, I despise your festivals,
I take no delight in your solemn assemblies
…Take away from me the noise of your songs.”
(Amos 5:21)

So many empty words, empty rituals, empty acts.
John knew that what God wanted from his children
was for them to turn from their superficial living,
their talk with no walk.
What God wanted was for them to live righteously, justly,
for all his children to live,
as we talked about last week,
holy, godly lives,
lives focused on growing in spiritual maturity.
Lives focused on building a just community,
a just society,
a just world.
A world not split as Jerusalem was then,
between those who were wealthy and comfortable
and those who struggled even for a scrap of food.
Is our world all that different?
Did you see the article in the paper the other day
that hunger in this country has increased almost every year
the past 10 years,
in this, the wealthiest country
and not enough food.

John saw God’s children walking in darkness,
And so he shouted, spitting in anger:
“you brood of vipers…
Don’t think just because you offer your sacrifices,
and sing a song of praise when you worship
that that satisfies God.
If that’s all God wanted,
he would have created worshipers
from the stones and rocks all around us.
No, God wants you to live righteous lives,
to seek righteousness,
to seek justice,
to reach out to the poor, the outcasts,
the sick, the weak,
the hungry, the homeless.

“My job is to prepare you for the coming of the Lord,
and whether you like it or not,
I am telling you: you are not ready.
And if you are not ready,
you are not going to like that day when it comes.
for while you think you are important now,
while you think everything is just fine
because you are comfortable and content,
when the Lord comes it is very probable
that you will be winnowed out,
tossed aside,
like so much chaff.”

John is blunt,
John is brutally honest.
But John is also faithful to his call
as he spoke to the people on the riverbank,
as he speaks now to us.

What is easy to miss in all this noise and temper and fury
is that John is not against the people on the riverbank;
John is not against us.
John is for the people; he is for us.
John wants us to be ready.
John understood what Peter would later say
in his letter,
that God does not want anyone to perish,
but all to come to repentance.
(2 Peter 3:9)

And that’s just what John urges us to do:
repent,
acknowledge the superficiality of our faith,
and seek to live lives of deeper,
richer spirituality and faithfulness,
seek our own spiritual transformation,
from the breezy and easy,
to the deep and truly divine.

John calls us to acknowledge and repent of our waywardness,
so we can bear the fruit God created us to bear,
fruit for God’s world,
not for our own world and our own lives.
Karl Barth, the 20th century Swiss theologian
imagined God speaking to us saying,
“Your eyes, your minds, your hearts,
are always on yourselves,
on what you want.
“But things are based not on you, but on me!
Based on you there is sin;
Based on me, there is forgiveness.
Based on you there is distress and affliction;
based on me there is help and salvation.
Based on you there is opposition, one against the other;
based on me there is togetherness, one for the other.
Based on you there is violence, coarseness, severity;
based on me there is what is fine, quiet,…
Based on you there is death;
based on me there is life.”

“Advent is a time when we ought to be shaken
and brought to a realization of ourselves.”
(A. Delp, Watch for the Light, 86)
And that is just what John is doing:
shaking us up,
calling us out of our complacency,
our comfort,
calling us to stop defining our faith lives
by what suits us,
what fits our lifestyles
and schedules
and temperaments.

John is calling us to turn from our idol worship,
our worship of all that is false:
money, prestige
comfort, celebrity, possessions.
Here in Washington he has to all but drag us
from worshiping at the altar of politics,
looking at our faith
through the lens of political beliefs and ideology.

Is it any wonder that John says to us,
we are not ready for the coming of the Lord?
So what should we do?
It’s the question the people asked of John
and it is the question we still ask today.

And John’s responses were so simple so straightforward:
If you have two coats, and you see a person who has no coat,
then share your extra coat.
When was the last time you went through your closet?
Do you really need everything that’s in there?
Just because the contractor built a walk-in closet
doesn’t mean it should be full.
And this Christmas perhaps more than
any Christmas in recent years,
there are so many who need coats,
sweaters, gloves, pants, shoes.

His response to the tax collector and the soldiers
can be summed up:
live your lives honestly, with integrity.
We live in a world in which dishonesty abounds:
businesses in this country, even the most prominent,
built on disingenuousness, deception,
that famous word, “spin”,
which is itself a disingenuous word for “lie”.

A few years ago, in response to the last group
of corporate scandals –
Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Arthur Anderson,
two authors who were themselves longtime consultants
to numerous Fortune 500 companies wondered
whether we had entered a whole new era in business,
a time of “managed mendacity” .
Mendacity: lying, deception,
deliberately distorting the truth
The title of their book said it all,
“How Companies Lie”
(A. Larry Elliott and Richard J. Schroth)

Corporate executives have been quick to respond
in much the same way Ebenezer Scrooge did:
“it’s just business.”
But you recall how the ghost of Jacob Marley responded
“Business??!!
Mankind is our business,
humanity is our business.”
It is a response that I think John would have approved of.

What can we do, though,
since none of us runs a Fortune 500 corporation?
We can seek out and do business with companies
that are socially responsible,
that operate ethically, fairly, honestly.
Going to Wal-mart and saving money is always a good thing,
especially in tough economy times.
but not if we are buying clothing and other goods
made by child labor,
made in unsafe conditions in developing countries.

“Oh, that’s too much work”,
is how the people standing along the bank of the Jordan River
might have responded.
“That is the life we are called to”,
is what John would have said.
No one ever said this was going to be easy.
There are a growing number of websites
that can help us find out which businesses
operate ethically and with integrity,
and which businesses have poor reputations.

John is calling us to nothing less than new life,
shaking us, awakening us,
to a new way, not just for the holidays,
but every day, in all parts of our lives,
all so we can be ready,
ready for the coming of our Lord.

John calls us: “Repent!
Turn from yourself and your selfishness;
Turn disobedience to wisdom and righteousness;
Seek justice;
work for righteousness.
Don’t just feed the hungry; eliminate hunger!
Walk the talk.
Bear fruit, the fruit God calls you to bear,
the fruit God created you to bear.
For the Lord is coming.
Are you ready?
Are you?
AMEN

Reflections on Refinement

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
December 6, 2009
Second Sunday in Advent

Reflections on Refinement
Malachi 3:1-3

“Be careful what you wish for,
you just might get it.”
Most of us have heard this well-known maxim.
I wonder whether this saying lurks in the back of our minds
during the Advent season,
holding us back from deeper Advent reflection,
turning us to focus more attention on the birthday
than on the promise that Christ will come again.

There is something a little unnerving about the very idea
that Christ will come again.
How will he come? When? Where?
Will it be after endless earthquakes, wars,
famine, pestilence, disease?
Will Christ come again when the world is literally
on the verge of destruction?

It may not be those images
that make us so uncomfortable, though,
that keep us from truly embracing the idea,
the promise of Advent.
What may really hold us back
is the thought that when Christ comes again,
it will be a time of judgment for all of us,
a time of judgment for each of us.
There’s no getting out of it.

The very thought of standing before our Lord in judgment
may be enough to lead even the most faithful
to prefer skipping right past the words
we will say in a few minutes in the Lord’s Supper liturgy:
“Christ will come again”.

After all, did you hear the prophet’s questions in our lesson?
“…who can endure the day of his coming,
and who can stand when he appears?”
Who? You? Me?

Malachi isn’t the only one to throw the door open
to a cold blast as we seek warmth
in our Christmas preparations.
Hear these words from another book in Scripture,
“Be alert at all times,
praying that you may have the strength…
to stand before the Son of Man.”
(Luke 21:36)
These words come from no ordinary prophet;
these are words straight from the mouth
of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But let’s be realistic –
It’s been 2,000 years.
If Christ has waited this long,
surely he’s not likely to return in the next day or two.
Surely he of all people
would understand just how busy we are this time of year,
and wait until January, when things are a little slower,
right?

For some 2,000 years, we’ve been trying to pin down
the date and time certain when Christ will come again.
There is no shortage of preachers
who claim to know exactly when and where
the Second Coming will happen,
who claim to be able to decipher codes
they say are hidden in the Bible,
especially in the Revelation.
Apparently they never bothered to wonder why
our Lord said repeatedly
that even he did not know when that day would be,
and that only God knew when that time would come.

Still, Jesus warned his own followers to be ready,
that the day would come in their own lifetime:
“Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away
until all things have taken place.”
Luke 21:32

Paul and Peter both warned the first generation of Christians
that Christ’s coming was imminent,
that they should be alert, ready,
for if it did not happen today,
then it would surely happen tomorrow.
Both men had no doubt Christ would come again
in their own lifetimes.

But time passed, and Jesus did not return.
Paul died, then Peter.
By the end of the first century,
after more than 60 years of watching and waiting,
many followers of Jesus Christ began to think
the whole notion was a myth.

Two thousand years later we wonder.
But still we wait.
And that’s what’s important: we do wait.
Christ’s return is not a myth;
It is foundational to our faith:
Christ will come again
and will come to judge the world.

Advent calls us to embrace that notion for what it is:
not a threat,
but a promise,
a promise filled with hope.
For when Christ comes again,
the world will be made new,
all God’s hope for us, his children, fulfilled,
as God dwells with us,
his home with us and among us.
(Rev. 21:3)

But still we face Malachi’s awful question:
Who can endure it?
Who will be able to stand before the Lord on that day?
Malachi is asking the right questions for us
to ponder during Advent,
even if we’d rather not think about such things.

Here’s the good news:
We will be able to stand confidently before our Lord --
if, if we live our lives righteously,
pursuing holiness, godliness,
and spiritual maturity
in every part of our lives.

Malachi provides us with a yardstick
to help us measure ourselves:
Are we living faithfully?
Do we act with integrity and speak honestly?
Are we concerned for others,
especially the poor and the outcasts?
Do we reach out to the strangers among us,
the aliens and the foreigners?
Do we live truly generous lives,
giving of ourselves:
our time, our talent, and our treasure?
Malachi must have anticipated the greed that has infected
so much of the upper echelons of the corporate world:
for he even asks, are we paying fair wages to the worker?

Advent calls us to do some deep introspection,
deep reflection,
to look inwardly,
to take stock of where we are.
Advent calls us to look within ourselves;
not to compare ourselves with others.
Ebenezer Scrooge justified his life with the words,
“I may not be perfect, but I am no worse than the rest”.
We are to look only at ourselves.

We are to open ourselves, each of us,
each of us in our own way,
to God’s refining power of love,
to burn out those things that we know are within us,
that cause us to turn from God,
those things that, if we are honest with ourselves,
we know would cause us to be unable
to look Jesus in the eye when we stand before him.

The Brief Statement of Faith in our Book of Confessions
leads us where we would rather not go,
but where we must go
with words we are so reluctant to say,
“we rebel against God,
We hide from our Creator,
ignoring God’s commandments.
We violate the image of God in others and ourselves,
accept lies as truth,
exploit neighbor and nature,
and threaten death to the planet entrusted to our care.”
(Brief Statement, 10.3)

Our Advent call may sound a great deal like our Lenten call,
but is in reality, our call each day all year round.
There is no seasonality in holy, godly living.

I invite you to reflect on your life.
What has hold of you,
that keeps you from reflecting the image of God
as brightly as God wants you to,
as brightly as God created you to?

Advent can and should be a time of transformation for you,
for me,
for every one of us
as we anticipate the coming of the Lord,
And it will be if,
if,
and only if,
we work at it.

Reflect where you need to refine yourself
this Advent season,
so that your own reflection
on Christmas day
and each day after
might be closer to that
of the baby born in the manger,
our Lord Jesus Christ,
the one who came,
and the one who will come again.
AMEN