ANYthing!

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

February 27, 2011

ANYthing!

Matthew 6:24-34

John McEnroe, the great tennis star of the late 1970s and early 80s,

was famous not only for his skills as a tennis player,

but also for his temper tantrums on the court.

If he didn’t like an umpire’s call,

he would stand at the baseline,

glare at the umpire and shout words

that have since become famous,

“you cannot be serious!”.

Hearing today’s lesson

many of us may find ourselves wanting

to sit down with Jesus and say the same thing:

“You cannot be serious!”

None of us would say it in a fit of McEnroe-like rage, of course;

But still, do you think Jesus really expects

that we will stop worrying?

Over the past few weeks we’ve talked about how much

Jesus expects from us:

that we are called to live “Sermon-on-the-Mount” lives,

called to live holy lives,

that we are even called to be perfect.

But “don’t worry”?

The call to holiness sounds easy by comparison.

        

After all, who doesn’t worry?

Even the calmest person worries from time to time.

We’re wired to worry.

I am guessing that psychologists probably see

a moderate amount of worry as a good thing:

a little worrying may help us to think through

something that confronts us – a problem,

a concern, a relationship –

so we can figure out a constructive, positive way to deal with it.

                 

A careful reading of this passage

reminds us that Jesus isn’t issuing a blanket command,

“don’t ever worry.”

No, he shows us that he understands that

it is human nature to worry about some things.

A parent is going to worry about a child

who is driving home from college in a snowstorm;

A job applicant is going to worry about the interview

he’s just had, wondering whether he said the right thing;

A person facing surgery is going to worry about

the procedure and whether she’ll recover completely.

We heard Jesus clarify things for us at the end of our lesson,

“So do not worry about tomorrow,

for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.

Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

(Matthew 6:34)

Jesus is helping us to let go of at least some worry

by telling us not to worry about what might happen tomorrow;

that we should stay focused on today.

It’s the wise lesson that is at the very heart of

any 12-step program:

One day at a time.

Deal with tomorrow when tomorrow comes.

As Scarlett O’Hara said so famously

at the end of “Gone With The Wind”:

“Tomorrow is another day.”

But our text really isn’t about worrying.

Like most of Jesus’ teachings,

we have to dig a little deeper to discover what it is

that Jesus wants us to learn from his words to us.

This is principally a lesson about putting our trust in God;

putting all our trust in God.

Choosing to trust God in all things,

everything,

anything.

It’s why Matthew pairs the story with the first verse we heard,

that we cannot serve God and mammon,

God and wealth,

God and money.

The text that most clergy save for Stewardship season.

The two lessons do go together, though,

for together they remind us that

we are called to make a choice of where we will put our trust:

in ourselves, our money, our own abilities;

in idols and gods we can see,

touch, count.

Will we put our trust in the comforting idea that

the more we have, the more successful we are?

If we can quantify it, then it must be good:

how much money we have in the bank;

how many friends we have on Facebook;

many texts we receive each day.

Jesus calls us to put our trust completely in God.

He calls us to do so even though he knows that

in spite of his examples,

there’s no guarantee that such a life will be easy:

The birds of the air still have to deal with

heavy snows that can make food all but impossible to find,

fierce winds that can destroy a nesting spot,

and bitter cold that can kill.

The lilies of the field may have their moments of glory,

but drought and brutal summer’s heat can wilt the very life

of a even the most glorious flower.

Is there anyone in the Old Testament who suffers more than Job?

Everything he’d spent a lifetime building is taken from him:

his family, his wealth, and even his health.

The wreckage of his life is strewn before his wife and his friends,

such awful carnage that his wife sees no road

for her husband other than to, “Curse God and die.”

(Job 2:9)

But even in the depths of his suffering and his misery

Job speaks so powerfully of his unwavering faith in God:

“Though he kill me, yet I will trust him.”

Or, as it can also be translated,

“Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.”

(Job 13:16)

Job is part of such a small group we find in the Bible,

such a small group we find anywhere:

men and women who put their complete trust,

their complete faith,

all their hope in the Lord God.

Abraham,

Moses,

Mary, with those trusting words of hers

to the angel Gabriel:

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord;

let it be to me according to your word.”

(Luke 1:38)

None of them lived easy, carefree lives,

lives of comfort, wealth, security.

But still, they put their trust in God.

They put their trust in God

even though they could have chosen otherwise:

Abraham could have stayed put in Haran;

Job could have done as his wife called on him to do,

cursed God and died;

Moses could have ignored his Jewish heritage

and lived in privilege and comfort

in the house of Pharaoh’s daughter;

Mary could have shouted in angry anguish to Gabriel,

“Why would the Lord shame me so? Begone from me!”

But they did no such thing, any of them.

They did as God asked of them;

living holy lives,

lives in obedience to God’s will,

confident of God’s presence in their lives

both on good days and on bad days;

when the sun was shining brightly on them,

and when they walked through

the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

In his letter to the Philippians Paul wrote,

“Do not worry about anything,

but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving

let your requests be made known to God.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,

will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

(Philippians 4:6)

“Don’t worry about ANYthing,” Paul tells us;

Don’t worry because God is never more than a prayer away,

always there,

always with you, always with me.

We can walk through life with that knowledge,

that promise, and leave worry behind

because we will be filled with such an extraordinary peace,

a peace that surpasses all understanding,

peace that comes only from God,

peace that comes only from putting our trust,

our faith,

our hope,

our lives in God.

Peace that comes from knowing

that when we do worry about something,

when something troubles us,

we have only to lift our concerns, our worries,

our anxieties, our fears

to God in prayer,

and God will hear our prayers,

and answer our prayers,

of course, with the caveat that

God answers prayers in God’s time,

and in God’s way.

This is a time of anxiety and worry

for high school seniors here in our church,

in our community, and across the nation,

as they wait to hear from the colleges they’ve applied to.

Many of them are fervently lifting up their prayers to God,

“Please God, let my first choice school admit me.”

And then a few weeks from now,

they’ll open up their mailboxes,

and some will find acceptances,

while others, inevitably, will find
that telltale thin envelope,

the one bearing the news they’ve dreaded,

every school using the same language,

“we regret…

in spite of your impressive record…

we wish you success in your future endeavors.”

The student who has put her faith in God,

his trust in God will still be disappointed, of course,

but they’ll know that God has not abandoned them,

turned a deaf ear to them.

They’ll know that the promise of Deuteronomy has been kept,

that underneath them still and always are the everlasting arms;

the words spoken by God through the prophet Isaiah still true:

“I will be with you, because you are precious in my sight.”

And that student will know

that he’ll end up where he’s supposed to be,

that she’ll be where God wants her to be,

and eventually peace will fill them,

replacing the feelings of disappointment.

I have “written you on the palm of my hand.”
(Isaiah 49)

is one of the more curious ways God reminds us

that he is always with us, walking with us,

“neither slumbering nor sleeping”

as the Psalmist puts us, even when we are.

If we trust in these words

then we can quiet our souls,

trust in God, and walk through life,

through the sun and the warmth,

and the wind and the dark and the cold.

We’ll still worry, of course,

but much less because we’ll know

that with God’s help we’ll find our way through

whatever it is that life might hand us.

A commentator observed that

“followers of Jesus should be the freest persons –

free from anxiety,

free from social conventions of materialism,

free with their generosity toward others.”

Free because we’re at peace;

Free because we’ve lifted our worries to God;

Free because our trust is in God,

our hope is in God,

our lives are in God.

To go through life as Jesus calls us to

is not to go through life singing glibly,

“Don’t worry, be happy.”

Rather, Jesus calls us to the serious work

of living holy lives,

lives in service to God as we follow him,

striving for the Kingdom and God’s righteousness,

lives dedicated to serving,

to building up,

to ridding the world of those things

that get in the way of God’s Kingdom,

things like greed and violence,

poverty and injustice.

But if we set worry aside

and put our hope, our faith, our trust in God,

we can walk through life filled with the peace

which surpasses all understanding,

Paul’s words on our lips and in hearts:

“rejoice in the Lord always,

again I say rejoice.”

AMEN

A Matter of Interpretation

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

February 20, 2011

A Matter of Interpretation

Leviticus 19:1-4, 9-18

…(Frank Sinatra singing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”)

It doesn’t get much better than that, does it:

Frank Sinatra singing Cole Porter.

There may be classic rock –

the music many of us grew up on;

and there may be classical music,

which we love to listen to.

But then there is music that is just simply classic:

Cole Porter,

George and Ira Gershwin,

Jerome Kern, Johnny Mercer –

composers of such wonderful songs that

even classic rockers have been turning to them.

Who ever would have imagined Rod Stewart

with his version of the Great American Songbook:

…(Rod Stewart singing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”)

When Cole Porter wrote “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” in 1936,

he put together music and words,

writing them down as he composed at his piano.

The song is a short piece, just four pages, 64 measures.

Look at the score and the pages look very ordinary,

like other songs.

The score doesn’t tell you much about how the song should sound;

the only notations are the words “allegretto sostenuto.”

“Allegretto” means play it lively, but not too lively,

and “sostenuto” means make it smooth, make it flow.

To Frank Sinatra and his arranger

the words together meant, “let it swing”

and his version does – it swings.

But if you want to hear a version that really swings,

listen to Ella Fitzgerald:                 

…(Ella Fitzgerald singing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”)

A composer writes words and music,

writes a song to sound a certain way,

but then a singer puts her own stamp on the song as she sings it;
A singer interprets the song and makes it her own.

What singers and other musicians do with a song

is really not all that different from what you and I do

when we read the Bible,

when we read the words on the pages of the books

of the Old Testament and the New Testament.

We read the words,

words written by men and women

inspired by God to write,

and then we interpret them,

interpret them in the light of our own unique lives,

education, experiences,

age, how we lives our lives,

and, of course, where we are in our faith journey.

When Ella and Frank sang “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,”

even as they made the song their own,

singing in their own style,

they still wanted to remain faithful to Porter’s intent,

to sing the song as they thought Porter wanted it to sound,

trying to make the song as close as possible

to what the composer had in mind when he wrote it.

If a composer said, as Porter did,

“make the song lively and smooth”,

making it swing stays true, stays faithful,

to the composition and the composer.

If, though, a singer turns the song into a smoky, moody ballad,

as Diana Krall did, 

it may sound good,

but it raises the question of whether it is a faithful interpretation:

…(Diana Krall singing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”)

The Four Seasons, those original Jersey Boys,

may have made the song too lively,

when they turned it into a Top 40 hit back in the 1960s.

…(The Four Seasons singing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”)

We read the words of the Bible;

and then we are called to interpret,

always remembering that we are called to stay faithful

to the intent of the one who inspired the writing in the first place.

We don’t read the Bible literally, of course;

but we do read it seriously,

working hard as we read

to interpret God’s words to us faithfully,

God’s will for us faithfully.

We work hard in our interpretation

to discern what God wants us to learn.

And in the process, we make the lesson our own,

each of us, as God speaks to us individually

through the words on the page.

                                                                       

So how are we to interpret this morning’s lesson,

especially those first verses?

“The Lord spoke to Moses, saying:

Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them:

You shall be holy,

for I the Lord your God am holy.”

Were these words directed at a specific group of people

who lived in a specific time and place –

the children of Israel

as they followed Moses through the Wilderness?

Do these words have any meaning to you and me here and now?

        

Of course they do!

We too are called to be holy

in the same way the children of Israel who followed Moses

were called to be holy.

But what does that mean to us, to be holy?

Turn to the dictionary for synonyms for the words “holy”

and you’d find these words:

“saintly, godly,

pious, devout,

angelic, pure,

numinous, beatified.”

These sound like words we might use to describe

the Apostle Paul, St. Francis,

Martin Luther, Mother Teresa,

but us, any of us?

We’re just good worker disciples,

no halos here, right!

But when God spoke to Moses

did you hear him limit the call to holiness?

No! God said,

say to everyone,you shall be holy.

You shall ALL be holy, every one of you,

the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker.

Try to interpret this any differently,

try to get yourself off the hook

for what sounds like an impossibly high standard,

and guess who’d be the first to confront you?

Our Lord Jesus Christ.

He reinforced God’s call to holiness

with his words from the Sermon on the Mount,

“Be perfect,

as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

(Matthew 5:48)

Be perfect?

The call to be holy sounded like a big enough stretch,

and now Jesus calls us to be perfect!?

When you said yes to Christ, yes to faith,

did you have any idea that this was the life

you were called to?

As children of God and followers of Jesus Christ,

you and I are called to live holy lives,

you and I are to strive for a Christ-like perfection in our lives.

That’s the call;

God expects nothing less from us.

We cannot faithfully interpret the words of God,

the words of our Lord Jesus Christ,

in any other way.

When Eugene Peterson wrote “The Message”,

he was trying to interpret the words of both Old and New Testament

in more of a vernacular, colloquial way –

more the way we speak today;

“The Message” is not a translation of Hebrew and Greek into English;

it is a paraphrasing,

Peterson’s effort to interpret the written Word of God        

in his own words.         

It is not a substitute for the Bible,

but it is the ideal companion to whatever version of the Bible

you might have.

If we were to look at how he paraphrases our lesson,

we’d find that he doesn’t change the word “holy”.

When God said “holy,”

God meant “holy,”

and Peterson leaves it just as God wanted it.

Peterson does, though, re-interpret Jesus’ words,

in what I think is a very helpful way

a very helpful interpretation that still stays faithful

to our Lord’s intention:

“In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up.

You’re kingdom subjects.

Now live like it.

Live out your God-created identity.

Live generously and graciously toward others,

the way God lives toward you.”

(The Message, emphasis in the original)

“Live generously and live graciously toward others”,

all others,

just as God lives toward us.

That’s the life Jesus calls us to,

And to help us understand,

so we don’t misinterpret,

God provides us with very specific guidance in our lesson

of how to live a holy life.         

“When you reap the harvest of your land,

you shall not reap to the very edges of your field,

or gather the gleanings of your harvest.

You shall not strip your vineyard bare,

or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard;

you shall leave them for the poor and the alien.”

How do we interpret this since none of us are vineyard owners?

You and I are called to make sure that the poor,

the alien,

the stranger,

have food to eat;

God wants no one goes hungry.

No one.

God provides us with plenty of food;

we have to assure a fair distribution.

That responsibility has not changed in the three thousand years

since God spoke through Moses.

                 

“You shall not steal;

you shall not deal falsely with one another;

and you shall not lie to one another.

You shall not defraud your neighbor;

You shall seek justice…”

And on goes the list.

Live in obedience to God’s words,

and we’ll live holy lives.

We are kingdom subjects;

and as kingdom subjects,

we are called to live in obedience to God’s will.

We are called to live generously and graciously toward others,

especially the poor, the sick, those who are struggling;

the alien, the stranger,

because it is the way God lives for us,

generously and graciously toward us.

You and I have God deep in our hearts,

so deep that God is really a part of us,

God’s Holy Spirit filling us.

With the Spirit enabling and empowering us,

guiding us, filling our sails,

it really isn’t as big a stretch as it sounds

to live a holy life,

even to strive for Christ-like perfect.

God is deep in our hearts,

calling us to lives that are “allegretto,”

lively as can be,

even if not always smoothly “sostenuto”.

But still, a holy life is a joyful life,

filled with singing,

and, yes, even a little swinging.

It’s all just a matter of interpretation.

AMEN

Will He Thank Us?

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

February 13, 2011

Will He Thank Us?

Psalm 119:1-16

In the year 2067, Luke will be my age.

Looking at a seven-month-old baby,

it’s hard to picture him as a man in his mid-fifties.

About the only thing he and I have in common now

is the thinness of our hair,

and we’re traveling in very different directions on that!

2067 sounds so far away,

a year as far distant as a galaxy in the night sky.

2067 – what will the world be like in that year?

Will Luke’s life be much the same as ours:

off to a job each morning,

home each evening to family?

Will he have the same concerns we all have:

making ends meet,

looking after family?

If he lives and works in this area,

will the traffic be even more unbearable,

or will Luke step out his back door,

don his personal jetpak

and zoom off into the sky

for a three-minute supersonic flight to his office in Reston?

Perhaps by then Skype will have taken us

into the world of Star Trek,

and everyone will simply be “beamed up”

to wherever it is they want to go

and cars will finally be left behind.

One of the few things we can predict with any certainty

is that the world will be more crowded.

The population of this country will likely grow

from its current 310 million people

to more than 500 million;

World population is predicted to grow from its present 6.9 billion

to more than 9 billion.

Will the world be able to feed 9 billion people?

Will a third of the world’s people still live in poverty,

without things we take for granted:

food, water, medicine, shelter?

Will we make any advancement toward living in peace,

or will the competition for food, water, and resources

ratchet up already troubling trends of tribalism and nativism?

Luke will have no choice but to live with the results of climate change

that our lifestyles are causing now.

Deniers can continue to laugh and mock,

but they reflect their own faithlessness.

Will we have learned by 2067 that in giving us dominion,

God didn’t give us power over the earth and its inhabitants;

God gave us responsibility for looking after the earth,

responsibility for looking after all God’s creatures

now and in the future.

Will we have learned that this earth

is, always has been, and always will be God’s:

“The land is mine” says the Lord,

“with me you are but tenants.”

(Leviticus 25:23)

Will Luke attend church,

worshiping each week in community,

honoring the Sabbath and keeping it holy?

Certainly his parents and family hope and pray that he will,

and will raise him to want that.

But there is a very real possibility that by 2067,

while he may still consider himself a disciple of Jesus Christ,

he may not go to church.

                                   

He may opt out,

but not because he’ll be able to download

the weekly service on his iPad or iPod,

attending church on network,

No, he may opt out for more troubling reasons.

He may stop going to church

because he may agree with the growing consensus

among young people

that churches are more an impediment, a hindrance,

to spiritual growth and nourishment, than a help.

A national survey done a few years back shows that

a growing cohort of young people are saying “yes” to faith,

but “no” to church.

The survey, done among young people,

people under the age of 25,

found that they think churches across the board

of every denomination,

are filled with hypocrisy, judgment,

that they are places filled with the insensitive,

the close-minded,

places too eager to align themselves with political issues,

too eager to embrace war as Crusade;

places that are simply too dull, too boring.

(Kinnaman & Lyons, UnChristian)

Young people see churches as places filled with people

who are all too willing to read the Bible selectively,

pulling out passages that suit their ideology,

not hesitating to use biblical texts more like clubs

to attack those who disagree with them,

who don’t see things in exactly the same way.

Young people see churches as places filled with people

who are far more eager to tell you what they are against,

than they are to tell you what they are for.

Young people are telling us,

“the church is a poor advertisement for its Lord.”                 

(Charles Raven)

We cannot dismiss these findings;

we cannot say, “well it’s just young people.

When they get a little older they’ll think like us

and be happy with the way things are.”

We have to listen and we have to respond.

After all, we just made a promise to Luke,

every one of us,

the same promise we’ve made

to every person we’ve baptized,

a promise to “guide and nurture him,

by word and deed, with love and prayer

encouraging him to know and follow Christ

and to be a faithful member of his church.”

Does dismissing someone’s concerns because of their age

honor that promise?

We want to honor our promise to Luke,

our promise made to every young person,

by encouraging them all to know and follow Christ

through our words and deeds,

through our love and prayer,

so that they’ll be able to look back

years down the road

and be thankful for what we’ve done for them.

In the year 2067 will Luke be able to look back

and say thank you to you and me,

and those who come after us,

thank you that he’ll still be able to find a vibrant faith community

here at MPC,

a faith community that would be celebrating its 200th anniversary,

two hundred years of nurturing men and women,

girls and boys as disciples of Jesus Christ?

The kernel of the complaint that many young people have

is that too many churches focus on beliefs,

living and operating by creeds, even ideology,

encouraging everyone to think the same way,

or be ostracized, even forced out.

But as we’ve talked about the past couple of weeks,

when Jesus preached his Sermon on the Mount,

that Sermon that is the very core of his teaching,

he wasn’t offering a theological reflection;

It wasn’t a sermon about what to believe,

it was a sermon about what to do and how to live;

that we show our discipleship by acting, doing,

acting and doing in grace and love.

Luke will be able to say thank you to us

if we continue to build a church

that is a Sermon on the Mount church.

A church that isn’t hypocritical, but honest;

that isn’t judgmental,

but is filled with disciples who recognize

how easy it is to overlook the log in their own eye

if they are busy pointing out the speck

in another person’s eye.

He’ll thank us if we build a church

filled with disciples who take seriously

Jesus’ call to work on learning to live in peace with all,

going so far as learning how to love an enemy,

to live by the words of Scripture,

“if your enemy is thirsty give him water to drink

and if your enemy is hungry give him bread to eat…”

(Proverbs 25:21)

As one practical example,

Luke will be able to say thank you to us

when we finally resolve the endless debate

over ordination issues,

the debate which has wasted countless hours

in thousands of Presbyterian churches and presbyteries,

and distracted us from living Sermon on the Mount lives,

a debate filled with judgment

and has been at times mean spirited.

Luke’s generation won’t care about a person’s sexual orientation;

won’t consider a gay person a threat;

won’t consider their own marriages at risk

if a same-sex couple moves into the house next door.

Luke will thank us if we encourage him to come to his faith

with his mind as well as his heart.

An article in the paper recently

noted that that fully 40% of the American people

believe that creation happened

just the way we read about it in Genesis,

rejecting any notion of science and evolution.

It is truly astounding to think that

science and faith have been scrapping for more than 300 years,

ever since Galileo challenged the notion that it wasn’t the sun

that revolved around the earth,

but the earth that revolved around the sun.

“That simply cannot be,” came the response from the Church.

“Scripture is clear on that point:

‘God has established his world,

it shall never be moved’.”

(Psalm 93)

If we teach Luke to grow in faith with both mind and heart

he’ll understand that the Bible is neither a scientific text,

nor a historical text.

If we teach Luke to come to his faith

with both mind and heart

he won’t hesitate a moment

to say that God created the heavens, the earth,

and all that lives upon the earth.

But he also won’t hesitate a moment

to stand in awe of God’s ability to create

over hundreds of millions of years, even billions,

that evolution reflects God’s glory, God’s magnificence

and reminds us that all life on earth is connected.

If we teach him to grow in faith with both mind and heart

then the more he learns about science,

the more his faith will grow as he marvels

at God’s incredible creative powers!

                                   

Luke will thank us if we continue building

Manassas Presbyterian Church as a place

that “forms Christlike people,

people of Christlike love,

where he and everyone who comes here

can grow fully into the women and men God created them to be.”

(McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity)

Luke will thank us if we continue building a church

filled with disciples who live each day

lifting up the words of the Psalmist,

“…With my whole heart I seek you;

I treasure your word in my heart,

I will meditate on your precepts,
and fix my eyes on your ways.
I will delight in your statutes;

I will not forget your word.”

Luke may not be able to form the words just yet,

but in time he’ll find words of gratitude

for the promise we have made to him

to encourage and teach him by our lives,

showing through how we live

God’s grace and love given us and him in Jesus Christ.

If we each live Sermon on the Mount lives

and continue building this church

as a Sermon on the Mount church,

a place filled with Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God,

then, as he and others prepare for this church’s

200th anniversary, he will be able to stop

and think of us gathered here in the year 2011, and say,

“Thank you, my friends, thank you.”

AMEN