The Passion From Christ

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

August 22, 2010

The Passion From Christ

Luke 12:49

“I have come to bring fire to the earth;

how I wish it were already kindled!”

No gentle Jesus meek and mild here!

This is Jesus at his most passionate,

every nerve in his body taut as he spoke those words,

his eyes wide with a ferocious resolve.

He hadn’t come to preach a sermon,

teach a Scripture lesson,

lead the people in singing,

or organize a mission trip.

He had come to speak powerfully,

fearfully,

thunder and lightning coming from the carpenter from Nazareth.

In this one verse Jesus reminds us that

he came to overturn everything

in the same way he overturned the tables

of the moneychangers in the Temple.

In sixteen words he reminds us 
that he came to make all things new

and leave the old behind.

                                            

Jesus had seen how God’s children

had turned his Father’s world,

into their father’s world,

their grandfather’s world,

a world reflecting their own desires,

their own way, their own wishes.

He saw how they had built layer upon layer of rules,

traditions, and practices that made them feel good,

even feel religious,

but had nothing to do

with what God wanted for all his children

with how God wanted his children to live

and build his world.

And so Jesus came to light a fire,

light a fire to burn away the chaff

burn away all that didn’t matter,

burn away anything and everything

that wasn’t his Father’s will, his Father’s way.

Jesus came to light a fire not only to clear away

all the impediments generation after generation

had built up between them and God,

he came to light a fire within each follower,

a fire of passion,

a fire of conviction and commitment,

a fire of dedication and determination.

This is Jesus smoldering as his Father had atop Mount Sinai

more than 1200 years before.

This is Jesus in a powerful display of thunder and lightning.

This is Jesus who should instill in us not fear, but awe.

For this is Jesus filled with passion

calling you and me to listen, to hear,

and then act,

act,

do what he calls us to do.

“Don’t just go through the motions” he says to us.

Don’t just memorize a bit of Scripture,

or blankly, blindly follow the steps of liturgical tradition.”

“Have you ever thought”, he asks us,

“what you are really asking for

when you pray to God, ‘thy Kingdom come’?

Why do you pray those words,

but not work ceaselessly, passionately,

to make it happen?”

I read only the first verse from a passage

that is one of the more difficult texts we find in the gospels.

Do you recall the rest of it as Luke records it?

“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?

No, I tell you, but rather division!

From now on, five in one household will be divided,

three against two and two against three;

they will be divided:
father against son

and son against father,
mother against daughter

and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law

and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

(Luke 12:50-53)

This is such a disturbing passage on its surface,

seeming to go against everything

we’ve come to learn about Jesus

as the Prince of Peace,

the one who calls us to lives of reconciliation

with all God’s children.

But this passage does fit:

God came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ.

God came down from Mount Sinai,

and through Jesus says to us,

“You can choose one of two paths

You can choose my road, and my way,

or you can choose to continue down the path

of your own creation,

the path so many of my children follow,

the path that seeks comfort,

the path that seeks security,

the path of self indulgence,

the path of materialism.

Now this other path isn’t necessarily a path of evil.

You can walk down it and still be a good person.

But Jesus wants to remind us that it isn’t God’s path.

It isn’t a path that leads us to God,

that leads is to grow in discipleship and godliness.

Jesus wants us on God’s path

because he knows that’s where we fill find true riches,

that’s where we will find security and peace,

that’s where we will find all we seek.

But Jesus wants us to make the decision,

each of us to make the choice.

And he, like Elijah before him, wants no waffling,

no straddling, trying to keep a foot on each path.

And he knows that in making the choice he demands of us,

it may lead to a split even within the closest families.

But Jesus knows one thing that we forget:

that reconciliation awaits all in the Kingdom.

When we follow the path Jesus calls us to,

we walk away from otherwise ordinary lives

to truly extraordinary lives,

lives rich in faith,

rich in love and grace.

It isn’t necessarily an easy life that Jesus calls us to,

or a life of material riches,

but we can walk confidently knowing that

God’s arms are always around us,

in the bad times as well as in the good.

As the psalmist put it so poetically,

that God is with us

even in the valley of the shadow of death.

We find this confidence, this trust,

radiant even in Jesus’ death on the Cross

as Luke tells the story.

It is so different from Mark’s and Matthew’s version:

As he hangs from the cross,

Jesus assures the penitent thief,

“Today you will be with me in Paradise”

and then right before takes his last breath,

there is no anguished cry,

but only the serenity that comes from the deepest faith,

“Father into your hands I commend my Spirit.”

(Luke 23:43,46)

Jesus wants us to be as assured,

confident, serene,

and filled with peace as he was;

yet he also wants us to be as passionate as he was,

the spirit glowing as brightly within us

as it was in him,

the flame of faith burning brightly.

Jesus reminds us that when we put our complete trust in God,

we can live without worry, without anxiety,

even in difficult times.

We live a life, as Peter Marty puts it,

“…constantly moving through labyrinths of ambiguity,

hardship, pain, ecstasy….”

moving forward, trusting God every step along the way.

(Anatomy of Grace, K363)

To put in today’s vernacular,

God’s got our back,

and if we know that and truly believe that,

then we can walk forward confidently,

living our faith passionately.

doing the work Jesus calls us to do.

And what is this work?

The Rev. Frederick Buechner,

who lives one town over from where we stay

each summer in Vermont,

puts it so simply:

“It is to be the light,

to be the salt of the earth,

to be truly alive,        

and to be a life-giver to others.”

(A Room Called Remember, p.150)

This is a life in which we embrace the stranger,

including the immigrant.

A life in which we tell the Muslim and the Jew

that we understand that we follow the same God,

the God of Abraham.

In which we tell the Muslim we understand that the acts

of a violent, twisted few don’t reflect the beliefs of the whole

anymore than the acts of a violent, twisted few who call themselves

followers of Christ reflect us.

This is a life in which we are more concerned about the people

at the bottom of the economic ladder

than we are about CEOs or celebrities and their absurd salaries.

This is a life in which we work to remove barriers

that keep the hungry from food,

the sick from the care they need,

the homeless from the shelter they seek.

And we do this with passion,

with commitment,

with devotion,

even as we do it with grace and joy.

Now the term “passionate” is certainly not one that we

are accustomed to hearing or using to describe Presbyterians,

anymore than we hear Presbyterians described as “spiritual”.

But Jesus would say to us, “why not?”

Why aren’t we passionate?

Why aren’t we spiritual?

Why don’t we embrace those words and live them?

We have every reason here at MPC to be passionate Christians.

We’ve got so many exciting things happening in our church.

Things that clearly reveal the hand of God guiding us,

as we follow Jesus.

Just two months ago we shared the exciting news that

Session had approved the restoration of the Associate Pastor position.

We received a letter from Presbytery the other day

giving us their formal approval to re-create the position

and in the letter they noted how many churches

were going in the other direction,

doing what we were forced to do six years ago:

eliminate the position.

We’re still two years and about $30,000 away

from calling an Associate Pastor,

but the very fact that we’ve taken the first step

should fill us all with excitement

and passion to make it happen.

And we don’t have to wait two years for us to witness

another exciting step forward for us a community of faith:

In two weeks we will welcome our new

Director of Education Ministries,

Melissa Kirkpatrick.

                          

Our Personnel Ministry team,

led by Scott Myers and Terry Saylor,

working hand-in-hand with our Christian Education Team

led by Charlene Bradley and Bruce Tuckerman,

have been working diligently,

and, yes, passionately, these past few months,

to find a successor to Pam Rice.

We had many applicants for the position,

but Melissa stood out for her background, her experience,

and her passion for education,

for helping the youngest Christian to the oldest

grow in faith and discipleship through learning.

She brings so many wonderful gifts to us

that we modified the position,

expanded the scope of the work,

and changed the title from Christian Education Coordinator

to Director of Education Ministries

to reflect more accurately what Melissa will do,

and our passion for educational opportunities for all.

Bringing in Melissa hasn’t changed in any way

our need for an Associate Pastor

or our passion for making that happen.

On the contrary, Melissa’s gifts should complement

what we expect the Associate Pastor will do.

In the apocryphal gospel of Thomas,

Jesus is recorded as having said,

“Whoever is near me is near fire;

whoever is distant from me is distant from the kingdom.”

(Gospel of Thomas 82)

Walking with Christ is to walk near fire

Walking with Christ is to walk, 
as Frederick Buechner writes, with “a tiger”

For, as Buechner goes on to say of our Lord,

“…Where he was, passion was, life was.

To be near him was to catch life from him

the way sails catch the wind….”

(Room Called Remember, p 150)

Where are you walking? On which path?

Are you walking on the path that draws you nearer the flame,

the fire, the passion?

Do you feel it burning within you?

Do you feel the breeze that fans the flame

the breeze that comes from God’s Holy Spirit,

the breath of God?
Are you filled with passion?

For “Where Christ was, passion was, life was,”

and where Christ is, passion is, life is.

AMEN