Eyes That See

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
February 28, 2010

Eyes That See
Luke 13:31-35

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him,
"Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you."
He said to them, "Go and tell that fox for me,
'Listen, I am casting out demons
and performing cures today and tomorrow,
and on the third day I finish my work.
Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way,
because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed
outside of Jerusalem.'
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets
and stones those who are sent to it!
How often have I desired to gather your children together
as a hen gathers her brood under her wings,
and you were not willing!
See, your house is left to you.
And I tell you, you will not see me
until the time comes when you say,
'Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

What do we do with this passage?
It is one of the more inscrutable,
mysterious passages we find in the Bible.
The lectionary assigns this text for Lent,
and we do find a few hints of Lenten and Easter themes here:
Jesus speaks of the “third day”
and also hints at his death in Jerusalem.
There’s a nod to Palm Sunday:
“And I tell you, you will not see me
until the time comes when you say,
'Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.'"

But what do we make of the Pharisees
trying to warn Jesus of Herod’s threat?
Weren’t the Pharisees part of that group of
unyielding, arrogant religious leaders
who thought of Jesus as a trouble-maker?
Weren’t the Pharisees the ones Luke tells us
“rejected God’s purpose for themselves”?
(Luke 7:30)
Hadn’t Jesus himself referred to them as a
“brood of vipers”?
(Matthew 3:7)

And Herod – what about him?
This was the son of the Herod
who had been king at the time of Jesus’ birth,
the son no better than his father,
the son who made his way into the history books
by arranging for the death of John the Baptist
to fulfill a vow he’d made to his step-daughter,
because her dancing pleased him.
(Matthew 14:1-12)
He clearly had murder in his blood

But it is Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem that should be our focus:
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
the city that kills the prophets
and stones those who are sent to it!
How often have I desired to gather your children together
as a hen gathers her brood under her wings,
and you were not willing!”

This is such a powerful and sad statement,
a cry of frustration as much as anything else.
A cry from the Son of God:
“Why won’t you listen to God?
Why do you constantly turn deaf ears to God?
Why do you turn blind eyes to God?
Don’t you know how much God loves you?
Don’t you see how God watches over you?
Why do you reject God at every step, every opportunity?
Why do you go through each day
at best ignoring God,
and at your worst, doing everything possible
to blot out God from your lives?”

The author of the apocryphal book we call the Fourth Book of Ezra,
a book written just a few years after Luke’s gospel,
included a similar lament,
only in that book God is the speaker:
“Have I not entreated you as a father entreats his sons
or a mother her daughters
or a nurse her children,
that you should be my people and I should be your God,
and that you should be my sons and I should be your father?
I gather you as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.
…I sent to you my servants, the prophets,
but you have taken and slain them…”
(The Fourth Book of Ezra, 1:28ff)

This is God’s lament, Christ’s lament,
words we hear our Lord speak.
They are words we should hear,
words we should pay attention to,
for they are words directed to us, you and me,
as much as they were directed to the people
who lived in Jerusalem 2000 years ago.
For we too are often as indifferent as the men and women
who lived in Jerusalem,
men and women who, like us,
thought themselves to be men and women of faith,
even favored in God’s eyes,
yet like us, were often deaf to God’s words,
blind to God’s presence.

This is a profound text for us to read and hear anytime
but especially for us during Lent:
to hear Christ say to us that he longs to watch over us,
to gather us up and protect us
“in the shadow of his wings”, as the Psalmist wrote.
Yet even as he longs for us,
we turn from him,
turn from his Father, our Father, in Heaven.

We cannot deny that these words apply just as much to us,
including Jesus’ words that we kill the prophets.
We do kill them: not literally, of course;
we kill them just as effectively
by ignoring their words,
ignoring their teachings:
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel,
Amos, Hosea, and all the others.

We kill them with our certainty that
they spoke to others, not us,
that the words we read now
are quaint words directed to a group of people
in a different time, a different place,
a group of people we all nod and agree
certainly needed to be chastised and rebuked.
We forget that the Bible is the living word,
and that God speaks through the prophets to us
here and now just as surely as God spoke
to the children of Israel,
the citizens of Jerusalem
so long ago.

Even if we hear the words, what do we do?
We take them apart and reassemble them in a fashion
that we find more appealing, less discomforting.
Even words that are designed
to ignite a flame within us, move us,
we take and drain of their life, their urgency.
When we hear messages we really don’t like
that really get under our skin,
we are quick to condemn the messenger:
“How dare you say such a thing to me?”

God’s instructions to us through the prophets
and through Christ are so simple:
Love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your might;
Love your neighbor as yourself;
Look after the poor;
Feed the hungry;
Live honestly, simply, faithfully;
Trust God.

We know them so well;
We could recite these verses in our sleep.
But then why is it that we pay so little attention to them?
Why, for example, do we tolerate a world in which
fully a third, close to two billion people, live in poverty?

Why is it, to take a timely example here in our own country,
that we are not doing everything we possibly can
to help those men and women who are out of work?
Our unemployment rate stands at close to ten percent;
It is probably closer to twenty percent
if we add back in those who have given up looking for work,
or those who have taken jobs far removed from
what they are trained for and are prepared to do,
the systems engineer who works as a custodian,
the financial analyst who works behind the counter
of a fast-food restaurant.

Yet, how quick we are to say
that our responsibility to the unemployed is limited.
Suggest, for example, that those of us who have jobs
might pay a little more in taxes
to help those in our country who can’t find jobs
keep their families fed,
keep their homes, keep their dignity,
perhaps even create jobs for urgent needs we have
such as rebuilding roads, bridges, schools -
inner-city schools unsafe, literally falling apart,
children here in our own community stuffed in trailers
in overcrowded facilities -
and the very idea is shouted down as a form of socialism
that couldn’t possibly be a way
we live out our discipleship,
our Christianity.

In a book written a number of years ago
a history professor took a look at how we have viewed
unemployment over the past few centuries
and what he found is that
what we have done is labeled the unemployed as criminals,
or sinful,
or lazy,
having only themselves to blame.
This makes it so much easier for us
to close our eyes to their needs.
(Garraty, Unemployment in History, 9)

We see what we have conditioned our hearts and minds to see.
If we condition ourselves to see an unemployed individual as lazy,
someone who is simply getting a lesson in tough love,
or more likely, as simply someone we don’t see at all,
then we will never see that person as God sees him:
a child of God who may well be hungry,
may need some encouragement,
perhaps some training and new skills,
someone who needs a job:
Scripture gives us such a simple lesson
“Why are you standing here idle?...
Because no one has hired me.”
(Matthew 20:6ff)

We are called to see the world with the eyes of Christ,
to see the world as though we are looking through the eyes of Christ.
The people of Jerusalem saw things as they wanted to see;
saw what they wanted to see.
Their eyes were not charitable eyes,
eyes that looked with kindness or mercy;
they were envious eyes, covetous eyes,
eyes prowling, looking for what to buy,
to grab and grasp.
We are always at risk of seeing the world as they did,
seeing through eyes that are envious, covetous,
that are not merciful, that are judgmental.
It takes work to see through the eyes of Christ!

The passage that preceeds our text
is the passage in which Jesus reminds us that we are called
to enter by the narrow gate.
that the road to discipleship is hard,
which is why few take it.
We prefer the wider gate, where the road is easy.
This is the road Jesus teaches us
is preferred by most of God’s children;
the reason why God laments in Ezra,
why Jesus lamented in Luke.

It his book The Cost of Discipleship
the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer warns us
of the dangers of seeking the easy road,
the road that we think is the path to cheap grace,
the road that assures us of forgiveness
without having to acknowledge our sins,
without having to worry about repentance,
without having to worry about changing our ways.
without having to change the way we see things.

Bonhoeffer tells us that what we should see
as we walk through life
is the image of Christ before us,
the image penetrating into the depths of our being,
filling us and making us more like Jesus,
more able to see as Jesus sees.

If we see through Jesus eyes,
we will see that each day we face choices,
as we talked about last week,
narrow gate choices and wide-gate choices,
and we’ll know that the narrow gate
leads to the better path,
even if the wide-gate path looks more exciting and inviting.

If we see through Jesus eyes,
we will see that Jesus is standing there
watching over us
“as a hen gathers her brood under her wings,”
and we’ll go him, rather than running all around
scurrying all about in our dash for happiness,
wealth,
security.
We’ll stand in the “shadow of his wings”
confident,
at peace,
assured.
And it is there we'll find that
we can see as Jesus sees.
AMEN

High Noon

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
February 21, 2010

High Noon
Luke 4:1-13

Sagebrush and tumbleweeds careen down the main street,
the wind blowing them every which way.
The sun stands high in the sky, beating down,
yet there is a chill in the air.
The townsfolk huddle together,
some along the walks built above the dust of the street,
others behind windows, peering out fearfully.

The main street is short, just a hundred yards,
running east to west.
At one end stands the town’s hope,
the marshal, tall, strong,
his face chiseled by wind and sun.
He stares straight down the street
his focus intense, steely.
The man the marshal stares at
has brought fear and trembling into the hearts
of everyone in town.
He is the very embodiment of everything wrong,
everything bad, everything evil.
He glares at the marshal,
oblivious to everything and everyone else,
knowing it is only the marshal who stands in his way,
who prevents him from ruling the town,
who keeps him from power and riches.

Neither man moves as the winds whirl around them.
Both stand ready, hands at their sides,
adrenalin coursing through their bodies.
The town is silent,
even the dogs have stopped barking.
The people watch,
filled with fear,
yet also filled with hope,
knowing that in just a matter of seconds,
their course, their future will be set.
Who will prevail?
Will good win out,
or will evil triumph?

Hollywood has always made it easy for us, haven’t they?
Pitting the good against the bad,
the right against the wrong.
Movies exaggerate the characteristics of both good and bad:
the good are really good,
the bad are really bad.
Even when the good have their flaws,
the bad are so obviously bad,
so completely and utterly loathsome,
that we have no doubt
about who to cheer and who to boo.

The film ends:
good wins,
bad loses
and we go home content.

Real life is more complicated than movies however.
The good and the bad are woven into the fabric of our lives each day,
but rarely as boldly or as neatly as we find in the movies.
The distinctions are more nuanced, more subtle.
We live in the grays, even if we sometimes think
that everything is black and white.

As we go through each day,
we are faced with choices, dozens of choices,
hundreds of choices,
from the simple, such as what to have for breakfast,
or which coat to wear,
to more complicated, difficult decisions
about work, school,
family, health,
finances, the future.

Every choice we make reflects our faithfulness,
reflects on our discipleship.
There is no choice that doesn’t reflect
how seriously we follow Christ,
how seriously we heed him.
There is no choice we make that doesn’t
reflect how well we’ve learned
the first of the two great commandments,
the one called the “Shema”
by our Jewish brothers and sisters:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul
and with all your might.”
(Deut. 6:4)

If we love God with all our heart,
all our soul,
and all our might, then the choices we make
will be godly choices, faithful choices,
choices for good, for living as God wants us to live.

And that’s just how we all live,
everyone of us,
all the time…right?

Honesty requires us all to ask:
Do we really?
Does any of us?
After all, we are surrounded by things
by people, by circumstances
that pull and tug us away from God
pull us away from living Christ-like lives.
from living in a way that shows we love God
with ALL our heart, ALL our soul, ALL our might.

Our young people, for example:
especially those in high school --
they are confronted almost daily with the temptation
to cheat on tests and papers.
The pressure to get into a good college is so intense,
and sometimes the difference between admission and rejection
is a tenth of a point in an overall grade-point average.
What do you do when you know that others
won’t hesitate to cheat
to keep their grade-points high?
What do you do when you know that if you don’t cheat,
you put yourself at a disadvantage
compared to others in the class?

What do you do when you work in an office
and have a colleague who seems always to be getting ahead
even though you know he cuts corners,
even though she’s not truthful?

Why do we call it corruption when the politician
is from the other party,
but turn a blind eye to the same behavior
when he or she is one of our own?

Why do we scream in fury when the referee misses
a facemask call against our team,
but remain silent when the ref misses
one of our players committing the same foul?

We rationalize behavior, especially our own;
we compare ourselves with others
and say “we’re not so bad.”
But God’s measure is absolute;
God doesn’t compare us with his other children.
God looks at us individually:
“Are you living as Christ calls you to live,
all the way,
If you are not, why not?”
And before you try to excuse your behavior,
remember that God has heard more excuses
than all the State Troopers on I95.

Jesus put his trust completely in God,
not just in our lesson,
but every day.
And what did it get him:
he was alienated from friends,
he was mocked,
he was threatened;
and finally he was arrested,
beaten,
and killed.

Would it have really been that bad
if he had commanded the stone to become a loaf of bread?
After all, he’d been disciplined and faithful for 40 days.
Hadn’t he earned the right at least
to quiet his growling stomach?
Who would he have hurt if he had done that?

Bu Jesus put his trust in God,
which meant he put his life completely in God’s hands.
Jesus loved the Lord God with all his strength,
all his might,
all his soul, all his heart.
And that meant he would do nothing
that was not God’s will.

The season of Lent is the time for us
to take a hard look at ourselves.
To be honest, brutally honest, as to how we are doing,
or more specifically, more pointedly: how YOU are doing.
Each year, I stress that the best symbol for Lent is a broom,
a broom to sweep away all those things that clutter our lives,
that get in the way of living godly lives,
things we have put there.

We began the Lenten season four days ago with Ash Wednesday,
and we use the symbol of ashes two different ways:
first as a sign of our mortality:
to remind us that we came from dust,
and to dust every one of us will someday return.

We also use ashes as our ancestors in faith used them,
as a sign of repentance,
as a sign that we acknowledge our sinfulness,
a sign that we acknowledge
just how quick we are to turn from God
in favor of pursuing our own wants and desires.

The ashes remind us that we probably would not have hesitated
to turn the rocks into bread,
later rationalizing our behavior to God:
“Look, I was obedient and faithful in two out of three,
and the two I did do were the big ones.
You wouldn’t let me eat for 40 days
and I didn’t complain about that, did I?
You can’t really blame me for letting go
on the bread thing.”

But oh, how hard it is for us to say,
“Lord I have sinned:
sinned against you in thought, word, and deed.”
Our inner voices want to scream out,
“I am not so bad, God; really!
I don’t rob banks; I don’t hurt anyone.”
But “if we say we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves
and the truth is not in us”.
(1 John 1:8)

We had a surprising example of repentance,
a wonderful model of Lenten behavior the other day,
from of all people, a professional athlete.
Athletics, so rife with corruption:
college players taking payoffs,
having their grades changed to maintain eligibility;
professional athletes using steroids and other drugs;
and engaging in behavior far worse.

But there stood Tiger Woods, the great golfer
looking into the camera straight and direct, saying,
“I was unfaithful.
I had affairs.
I cheated.
What I did is not acceptable.”

He didn’t blame drugs, or alcohol,
He didn’t blame the stress or pressure of his profession.
He didn’t blame his family, his coaches:
Again, he was blunt, direct:
“I am the only person to blame…
for my irresponsible and selfish behavior ….

It would be easy to say
that it was all a performance,
that it was all stage-managed
by Wood’s publicity staff to make him look good.
Perhaps it was;
But to my ears, he was sincere;
to my ears, he said all the right things.
What I saw, what I heard, took courage.
And what he said was what we all need to say,
even if our slip-ups aren’t in the same category
as those of Tiger Woods.

We all need to say:
“I did wrong;
I am sorry;
I have no one to blame but myself.”

We do this not so we end up feeling guilty.
Repentance isn’t about feeling guilty;
it is about learning,
learning from our mistakes so we don’t make them again,
learning so we can grow as disciples of Christ,
grow as children of God.
As Barbara Brown Taylor has put it,
“Recognition that something is wrong
is the first step toward setting it right again.
There is no repair for those who insist nothing is broken.”
(Speaking of Sin, 59)

It isn’t perfection that God wants;
It is obedience, learning,
a willingness to work at constant improvement,
based on a true desire to be transformed.

We live in a society in which apologies are seen to be
a sign of weakness.
But I would argue just the opposite:
that only the man or woman who is truly strong,
is capable of humbling himself, herself before God
before family, friends, even strangers,
and saying,
“I did wrong
I have only myself to blame.”

For Tiger Woods as well as the rest of us
the diabolical force that infects our hearts and minds
that sends us down the wrong path,
that keeps us from repenting, from learning
is not some cunning celestial creature:
it is an entirely homegrown characteristic:
it is pride,
pride,
a sense of our own rightness, our own importance,
our own certainty.
Pride, which is another term for selfishness.

Woods understood this:
“I knew my actions were wrong,” he said,
“but I convinced myself that normal rules didn't apply.
…I thought only about myself.”
Mahatma Ghandi, who lived as Godly a life as any man
put it this way:
"The only devils in the world
are those running around in our own hearts—
that is where the battle should be fought."

If you don’t love God with all your heart,
then you are leaving room,
leaving the door open,
letting in other things,
even saying, “welcome”
to things that will turn you from God.

Lent is a time to come clean with yourself.
Time to sweep out the clutter,
the junk you’ve let in,
especially through the door labeled “pride”.

Our every day is filled with high noon moments,
none of them worthy of Hollywood,
most of them small, seemingly insignificant.
But remember what our Lord says,
“whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much,
and whoever is dishonest [and does wrong] in a very little
is also dishonest [and does wrong] in much.”
(Luke 16:10)

You may never stand on a windswept street,
in a small town, ready for a showdown
in a clear battle between good and evil,
but in Christ, with Christ, through Christ,
you, I, we each of us can move confidently
through each high-noon moment
that fills our days,
no drama, no riding off in the sunset,
but you and I but most definitely assured
of a happy ending.
AMEN

Helpers

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
February 14, 2010

Helpers
Genesis 2:18

It isn’t good that we be alone,
man or woman.
God knew that even before we knew it.
God created us to be family, to be community.

You may recall that there are two different creation stories
in the first two chapters of Genesis.
The first tells us that God created male and female together,
at the same time,
both in God’s image.

In the second creation story,
the one that we think of as the Adam and Eve story,
God first created man,
and then, as we just heard,
God created woman as a partner for the man,
a helper.

This passage has been badly misinterpreted over the centuries,
misinterpreted as an argument for a lesser role for woman,
that God created woman to be subservient,
the man primary.
But let’s stop for second and think about that:
Did Adam need someone to prepare meals for him?
No, God saw to it that all his creations were fed,
including his human creations.
Did Adam need someone to wash and mend his clothes?
What clothes?
Did Adam need someone to look after his home
while he was at work?
What home?
What work?

We need to remember that when we hear this passage,
we are hearing an English translation
of words written 3000 years ago in the Hebrew language.
What was the meaning and context of the Hebrew
at the time this passage was written?
The Hebrew word we translate as “helper”
means someone who is there,
someone we can rely on,
someone who provides comfort, support,
encouragement,
companionship,
and, love.

If we think the word suggests an inferior position,
a secondary place,
we’d better be careful before we drive too far down that road.
We find that very word used to describe God
in a number of places in the Old Testament
especially in the Psalms:
“[My] soul waits for the Lord,
he is [my] help…”
(Psalm 33:20)
“I lift up my eyes to the Lord,
from where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.”
(Psalm 121)

To be a help, a helper, is to be more than a companion,
more than Facebook friend,
even more than a Valentine;
It is to reflect the very presence of God
in the life of another person.

I suspect that what God wanted Adam and Eve to learn
was that in marriage both husband and wife
are called to be one another’s helpers,
each called to reflect the presence of God
in each other’s life;
that’s how two become one.

It’s hard work, though,
requiring effort every day throughout the marriage.
Adam and Eve of course got into trouble right away,
quickly shedding any reflection of God
as they tried to blame one another
in the infamous “Fruit-of-the-Tree” incident.

The sad reality is that in many marriages
it just doesn’t happen
husband and wife don’t become one another’s helpers.
Husband and wife may get along
but they don’t work to be come one another’s helpers.

We’ve seen the statistics:
that fully one of every two marriages
ends in divorce.
There are those who argue that these numbers are so high
because divorce is too easy to get.
I’ve witnessed enough divorces over the years,
to respond to that with one word,
“Nonsense.”
Divorce is excruciatingly painful,
an experience no one finds “easy”.

What is easy is getting married.
Pay a fee, get a license, find a justice of the peace,
and that’s it – you are married.

We in the clergy have played a part in this;
we love weddings as much as anyone else,
but we have a responsibility to help a couple considering marriage
approach their decision maturely, faithfully,
understanding that for all the detail and work
that may go into planning a wedding,
the real work begins as soon as the couple
walk down the aisle as husband and wife,

Back in Moses’ day,
back when Jesus attended the wedding at Cana,
marriage was little more than the culmination of a contract
between two fathers,
two families merging to become stronger
through the union of a son and daughter.
A man left his mother and his father,
as the Bible tells us,
because that’s what the man’s father negotiated for his son.

But God wants more for us in a marriage
than just a good merger:
God wants husband and wife to be one another’s helpers
to be fully part of one another’s life
so that the two can become one.

We capture this sentiment in the words we use
in our marriage service:
“God gave us marriage so that husband and wife may help
and comfort each other
living faithfully together in plenty and in want,
in joy and in sorrow
in sickness and health
throughout all their days.”

We don’t stop there, though;
we build on what we understand to be God’s hope for us,
God’s intent for us:
“God gave us marriage
for the full expression of the love between a man and woman.
In marriage, a woman and man belong to each other,
and with affection and tenderness
freely give themselves to each other.”

Husband and wife belong to each other,
give themselves, setting selfishness aside,
to encourage, nurture,
build up,
strengthen, comfort……Help.

Most divorces happen because couples drift apart,
stop talking,
stop growing together,
stop learning about one another,
stop being one another’s helper.

The first step to being your partner’s helper
is to know your partner,
know him well,
learn about her.
Do you know his or her favorite food?
Not what he or she liked when you first were married,
but now, today?
What’s her favorite color?
What’s his favorite song?
What’s her favorite movie?
What’s his favorite musical group?

How have his or her preferences, likes,
dislikes changed over the past few years?
It is an absolutely true statement to say,
“you are not the person I married.”
We all change over time.

Do you know what the three most exciting things are
that have ever happened in her life?
Do you know what the three most difficult times are
that he’s experienced in his life?

If she has a hobby,
what is it that she loves about it?
If he is on vacation,
what is the one thing he wants to do
more than anything else?
Why does she read what she reads?
Why does he watch what we watches?
What’s going on in her life now?
In work?
At home?
With family?
What are his dreams, hopes, goals?

How much do you know about her faith?
What do you know about his walk with Christ?
What helps her faith grow?
What gets in the way of his faith?

Here’s a question that will sound a little odd at first:
Could you write a eulogy for him, for her?
We tend to tie the word “eulogy” with funerals,
something to be said of a person
after he or she has died.
But the word means “a speech of praise”.
Don't wait to speak words of praise;
doesn’t Paul call us to speak words that “build up”?
What would you write now,
beyond generalities --
what details would you include
to capture her life,
that would really tell his story?

Questions for you to ponder
not just on this secular holiday
but every day
as you seek to build on the relationship that God called you to.

Ponder them as you come to this Table,
as you come to be refreshed by the Holy Spirit,
through this meal our Lord has prepared for us.
And then renewed by the Spirit,
go and work on growing as a helper
today, tomorrow, every day.

Reflect the presence of God.
Reflect the presence of the one
who is part of your marriage,
part of every loving relationship,
the one who is always there to guide,
strengthen,
comfort, lead
and … help.
AMEN