Wonderfully Made

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

September 5, 2010

Wonderfully Made

Psalm 139

“…I am fearfully and wonderfully made….”

The Psalmist has composed a song for all of us,

for each of us, for God has made each of us,

God has made each of us in God’s image.

“Male and female God created us,” we read in Genesis.

Every one of us stamped proudly by our Creator,

“Made by God”.

Wonderfully made,

yes, even “fearfully made”,

although the better translation might be,

“awesomely made”.

Wonderfully made,

awesomely made.

That’s you, that’s me,

that’s all God’s children.

Made with eyes to see,

to take in all the wonder and beauty of God’s creation.

Eyes that take in the brilliant red of a cardinal winging by;

the blue surface of a lake reflecting the azure sky;

the verdant green of a pine-covered mountain.

Eyes to look at the night sky and wonder,

Was there once life on Mars?

What’s beyond the stars that make up the Big Dipper?                                   

Eyes that see expressions on faces of family, friends,

even strangers:

a welcome smile,

a frown,

a look of worry,

the sheer delight on the face of a child

whose lips, chin, even nose

are smeared orange with the last of the summer’s popsicles.

We are made with ears to hear,

ears to hear the chatter of hummingbirds

as they fight for space at the feeder;

the wind rustling through the pines that cover the mountain tops;

the voice that says, “welcome”,

the voice that says, “I’m afraid”,

the voice that says, “Why can’t I have another popsicle?”

We are made with noses,

noses so wonderfully engineered

that even the faintest aroma can trigger a reaction.

Next Sunday, the enticing smell of hot dogs and hamburgers

cooking on the grill

will most certainly cause fervent prayers to be lifted up,

“Lord, let the sermon be brief

and the tempo of the hymns be quick.”

A woman of a certain age walks by

and the subtle scent of her perfume

evokes a sudden flash of memory of a beloved grandmother

who wore the same perfume.

The wisp of smoke left after the candles on the Table                 

are extinguished has surely transported

more than just me to Sunday suppers past,

when roast beef or lamb was served in the dining room,

the table set with cloth napkins and candlelight,

and children were expected to behave.

We are made with mouths to speak,

not just a few syllables, grunts or growls or barks,

but whole words,

vocabularies of tens of thousands of words

in hundreds of dialects;

words to describe the beauty we see,

the sounds we hear,

the scents we smell.

I fear that texting threatens to drag us back

to monosyllabic barks and grunts.

For we need words,

words we speak to one another

to encourage, nurture,

teach, guide,

heal, soothe…

Words to reconcile

to fill with peace,

to build up, and not tear down.

Yes, we are wonderfully made,

we are awesomely made!

We sing your praises, O Lord!

                 

But, made for what?        

For what purpose?

God may have graced one person with ambition and intelligence,

but surely he didn’t create him just for business success.

God may have graced another person with athletic ability,

but surely God didn’t create her

just to excel on the playing fields. 

God did make us each for purpose;

God’s purpose.                                   

We were made by God,

because we were made for God.

We were made you and I

to bring glory and honor to God,

to live our lives reflecting God’s glory and love

as we go about our vocations,

as we do our schoolwork,

as we take to the playing fields,

as we live in our community.

The Westminster Confession of Faith.

written in the 1640s,

and for 300 years the Presbyterian Church’s

principal affirmation of our beliefs,

states so cleary:

“Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God

and fully to enjoy him forever.”

(Book of Confessions, 7.111)

Our chief and highest end is to glorify God;

that’s what we were made for,

our life’s work.

Everything else is secondary.

 “For from him and through him and to him are all things.”

the apostle Paul teaches us,

(Romans 11:36)

“So, whether [we] eat, or drink,” Paul goes on,

“or whatever [we] do,

do everything for the glory of God.”

(1 Corinthians 10:31)

“Do everything for the glory of God.”

That’s it;

That’s what we’re made for.

That’s why God made all his children.

But how, when where –

what do we mean, to do everything for the glory of God?

Isn’t it enough to honor the Sabbath,

or at least devote a couple of hours to God on Sunday;

Can God really expect more from us?

And the answer is yes.

We are to glorify God in everything we do,

in all our waking hours,

wherever we are, whatever we might be doing.

We go about our days laboring at things

that seem perfectly acceptable,

that we think God would surely approve of:

earning a living,

take care of family,

playing a sport,

going to school,

pursuing a hobby.

We’re not off robbing banks,

or committing Internet scams,

or engaging in cyberbullying.

                          

“That’s fine”, God would say,

“but I made you to glorify me

in everything you do,

to make me your top priority.

Not because my ego is so fragile, my skin so thin,

but because that’s how together we’ll create my Kingdom,

and I want to build it with you and through you.”

So we are each called by God

to pursue our vocations in ways that glorify God;

we are to nurture our family relationships

in ways that glorify God;

We are to play sports in ways that glorify God,

even go about hobbies in ways that glorify God.

Now this doesn’t mean that if you play an instrument,

you’re limited to hymns, songs written by Christian composers;

and it doesn’t mean that if you paint

every work you produce has to have as its theme

some great biblical story.

Take, for example, a businessman or woman,

someone who has a gift for organization,

who has entrepreneurial flare,

who knows how to develop and sell products

and get them out into the marketplace.

She doesn’t have to sell religious supplies:

Bibles, Crosses, devotional items,

to glorify God in her work.

She can run a business that designs parts for computers,

or makes cement for building foundations,

or even makes the kitchen sink.

She glorifies God by running her business honestly;

She glorifies God by being known

for her integrity, her ethics.

She’s aware that her responsibility goes well beyond

making a profit;

she knows she has a responsibility to her customers,

to her employees,

to the community where she operates,

to suppliers and other businesses she deals with.

The athlete who plays with a sense of fairness, decency,

who plays honestly, doesn’t cheat or cut corners,

the athlete who knows how to lose with grace,

is an athlete who glorifies God on the playing field.

Glorifying God isn’t about evangelizing,

it’s not about thumping Bibles

while pointing judgmental fingers,

“sinner, don’t you know what the Bible says…”

Glorifying God is accepting others for who they are;

it is welcoming the stranger;

it is remembering that our Lord has called us to serve.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. used his gift for oratory,

for inspirational and impassioned speaking,

to glorify God even as he sought equality of opportunity

for the millions of men and women who,

one hundred years after the signing

of the Emancipation Proclamation,

still lived shackled by discrimination,

shackled by poverty,

shackled by poll taxes, shackled by lynch mobs,

shackled by the sheer indignity

of signs that said, “whites only”.

King glorified God by grounding his speeches and sermons

in words of reconciliation and peace,

following the example of his Lord and our Lord Jesus Christ.

The dream that King spoke of so eloquently

under the resolute countenance of the great Emancipator

on that hot August day in 1963,

was a world of justice and righteousness,

social justice, social righteousness,

equality for all,

where everyone understood that

they were all made by God,

made for God,

made equally in God’s image.

“I have a dream,” King proclaimed,

echoing the words of the prophet Isaiah,

“that one day every valley shall be exalted,

every hill and mountain shall be made low,

the rough places shall be made plain,

and the crooked places shall be made straight

and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed

and all flesh shall see it together.”

This is the dream that God has for us,

that we will build a world, a community

in which “justice rolls down like waters,

and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”

(Amos 5:24)

We glorify God when we work for justice,

when we seek justice for all,

but especially for those on the margins of society,

who are struggling.

And we do not glorify God when

we turn a blind eye to the reality

that there are so many in our community,

our nation, the world who are struggling

as a result of the global recession,

the millions upon millions who lost jobs

and still cannot find a job.

We don’t glorify God when we sneer at those men and women,

as lazy, loafers,

complaining that they are content to live at our expense

as they collect unemployment checks.

Try living for just one month

on what you collect for unemployment.         

        

We don’t glorify God when we listen to those

who try to brand social justice as some sort of liberal scheme,

the first step on the deadly road to socialism.

One popular commentator went so far

as to tell his audience that preachers

use the term social justice

as code for “communism” and worse:

“Look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice'

on your church Web site,” he said,

“If you find it, run as fast as you can.

Social justice and economic justice,

they are code words”

(New York Times, March 11, 2010,

referring to Glen Beck’s comments of March 2)

There’s the door right there.

But before you leave,

you might want to re-read

both Old and New Testament

and count the dozens and dozens,

indeed hundreds of times God calls us to

work for social justice,

Jesus teaches us

that we are to work for for economic justice.

When we work for social justice, for economic justice,

we show the world that we are, to use the popular phrases,

“Bible-believing” and a “Jesus-following” church.

More to the point,

when we work for social and economic justice,

we glorify and honor God.

In his speech accepting the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964,

Dr. King said,

“I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere

can have three meals a day for their bodies,

education and culture for their minds,

and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.

I believe that what self-centered men have torn down

men other-centered can build up.

I still believe that one day [humanity] will bow

before the altars of God

and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed,

and nonviolent, redemptive good will

proclaim the rule of the land.”

King call us to the life God made us for,

the life God wants for us:

building God’s kingdom here and now,

a kingdom in which equality, justice,

and righteousness prevail;

a kingdom of community, of compassion,

of deep love and concern for one another,

including the stranger and the alien,

living as Jesus lived,

the Son’s life glorifying the Father,

and we glorifying the Father in turn.

“Thy will be done” O Lord,

we pray as our Lord taught us to pray.

“Thy will be done on earth

just as it already is in heaven.”

And God’s will will be done,

done through you and me

if, in every part of our lives,

we follow Paul’s counsel:

“… whether [we] eat, or drink,”

“or whatever [we] do,

do everything for the glory of God.”

Amen