Company Along the Way

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

March 20, 2011

Second Sunday of Lent

Company Along the Way

Psalm 121

“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.”

Those are the words Jacob spoke at Bethel

when he woke in the morning,

after having that strange dream.

Do you remember the story?

Jacob was the lying, cheating brother of Esau,

the one who stole Esau’s birthright from him,

aided and abetted by their mother.

No sooner had he received his father Isaac’s blessing,

the blessing reserved for the eldest son

back in those patriarchal times,

than he was on the run, fearing for his life

for having taken what rightly belonged to his older brother.

Jacob headed north to Haran,

far from his home, far from danger.

Haran was the town his grandparents

Abraham and Sarah had come from.

One night shortly after he fell asleep he dreamed;

it was a strange dream:

he dreamed of a ladder,

a ladder grounded in the earth,

but reaching straight up into heaven,

a ladder with angels going up, and coming down.

Artists have pictured it as a grand staircase linking heaven and earth,

a causeway for God’s messengers to go back and forth,

up and down.

And as Jacob dreamt of his grand angelic staircase,

the Lord God appeared to him in the dream,

standing beside him to speak to him,

to renew the covenant that the Lord God

had made with Jacob’s grandfather Abraham.

But then God added another promise to Jacob,

“Know that I am with you,

and will keep you wherever you go.”

(Genesis 28:15)

“Know that I am with you,”

“Know that I will keep you,”

Know that I will keep you wherever you go.”

This is not a promise God made only to Jacob;

this is God’s promise to us, you and me,

to be present in our lives,

to be with us, at all times and all places,

God in our lives, wherever we go,

whatever we do.

This is the promise that the Psalmist sings of

so movingly in our Psalm:

The Lord is your keeper;

the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,

nor the moon by night.

The Lord is our keeper because the Lord is always with us.

Psalm 139 captures the same promise in a different way,

a very lyrical way:

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning

and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me

and your right hand shall hold me fast.

The Lord God is our keeper, watching over us.

always, at all times,

for the Lord God neither slumbers nor sleeps,

At work, at school,

at church,

on the playing fields;

when we are commuting, vacationing, eating, sleeping;

when we are in the warmth of our homes

with family and friends;

and when we are in the midst of destruction and devastation,

despair and death.

The Lord God is there.

We journey through life and God is with us:

as we walk through life a child,

a teen,

an adult,

a parent, a grandparent.

It doesn’t matter where we go;

it doesn’t matter what we do;

the Lord is with us, you and me,

our everlasting, ever-present company

journeying through life with us.

My life has been a journey to so many places,

so many stops along the way:

Growing up in Buffalo,

Schooling in Canton, New York,

Philadelphia,

Ithaca, and Princeton.

Vocational callings in Chicago, Buffalo,

New York City,

Washingtonville,

and for the past five years here in Manassas.

Travels for work and pleasure that have taken me to London,

Moscow, Paris, Rome, Vienna, Munich,

Toronto, Dallas, Los Angeles, Denver,

and even tiny Dorset Vermont.

A lawyer, an entrepreneur, an editor, a pastor.

A son, a grandson, a brother, an uncle, a husband,

a neighbor, a friend.

But for all my journeying,

wherever I was, whatever I was doing,

God was there as well,

right there with me,

company along the way,

keeping me,

watching my going out and my coming in.

I may not have always been aware of God’s presence.

I have had my share of “Road to Emmaus” moments

when I was oblivious to God’s presence in my life.

        

And I’m sure that I will continue to have “Road to Emmaus”

moments in the future, yes even me as a pastor.

It’s easy to turn a blind eye to God;

to close our ears, our hearts, our minds to God.

As we talked about last week,

life is so filled with distractions,

so filled with things that get in the way,

that clog up the channels, cause interference.

We find countless ways to make God disappear,

as though God wasn’t present in our lives,

as though we didn’t even want God in our lives.

C. S. Lewis reminds us it is as easy as focusing our minds

“on money, sex,

status, our health,

and above all on our own grievances.”

(The Seeing Eye)

Wormwood and Screwtape count on us to:

Keep the television on,

the ear buds plugged in,

the cellphone in hand ready for

the next call, the next text,

and in the process push God right out,

banish God to the farthest planet of the Solar System.

Jacob’s grandparents, Abraham and Sarah,

lived a life of constant journeying,

moving from Haran down to Canaan,

a journey of more than 600 miles

all on foot, over difficult terrain,

with all their family, livestock, and possessions.

Even after reaching Canaan, they continued their journey,

to the Negeb, from there down into Egypt,

and again back up into Canaan.

Their lives may not have had the electronics

that cause so much distraction in our lives,

but they had just as many distractions in their lives

as we have in ours –

how easy do you suppose it was for them

to keep their minds on God as they herded and moved

thousands of goats, sheep, donkeys and other livestock?

But with every step they took,

they were aware of God’s presence,

especially, of course, Abraham.

With every step he took, he had faith in God’s abiding presence,

faith that God was watching his going out and his coming in.

Abraham’s faith in the presence of God was so strong,

that even two thousand years later,

the writer of the letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament,

marveled at Abraham’s faith.

Jacob didn’t have that kind of faith,

his was the faith that wants to believe,

but is always looking for some proof,

some concrete evidence.

Jacob response to God’s words in his dream

was no model of faith:

“If God will be with me,

and will keep me in this way that I go,

and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear,

so that I come again to my father’s house in peace,

then the Lord shall be my God.”

(Genesis 28:30ff)

A prayer that begins with a condition:

“IF God will be with me,

then I will believe in him.”

is hardly an example for us,

yet isn’t that how we’re more likely to pray:

asking God for something, bargaining,

setting conditions?

Jacob’s faith wasn’t that of his grandfather

but still God walked with him,

and through God’s unwavering grace

Jacob grew in faith,

turning from a callow young man,

into a man mature in his faith,

so much so that when God appeared again in a dream,

many years after the first dream,

God said to him,

“Your name is Jacob;

no longer shall you be called Jacob,

but Israel shall be your name.”

Israel, the father of a great nation.

(Genesis 35:9)

And Jacob, now Israel, continued to walk in faith,

knowing that God walked with him, keeping him,

his companion along the way,

His prayers no longer the prayers of one who bargained with God;

but rather the prayers of one who knew God walked with him.

God’s hope for us is that we’ll grow in faith,

grow in maturity of faith,

ever more confident that

God is our companion along the way

as we journey through life,

doubts lifting with each step,

lifting like a morning fog,

until we walk in the sunshine that is the glory of God,

confident of God’s unwavering presence

in good times and in bad.

You’ve heard me say many times

that there is no guarantee that

with God as our companion along the way

life will be easy;

When the angel of the Lord first approach Gideon,

back in the Old Testament days of the Judges,

the angel said “The Lord is with you”.

and Gideon’s response was a skeptical,

“If the Lord is with us,

then why are all these bad things happening”

(Judges 6:13)

It is a question we too ask in our own lives,

and in what we see all around us:

war, natural disasters,

a world in which compassion seems to be

considered a sign of weakness,

rather than a sign of Christ. 

Yet, God is with us, walking with you, walking with me,

gracing us with his divine presence,

refreshing our faith, renewing us through his Spirit,

so that we can read the Psalmist’s words as our own:

We lift up our eyes to the hills—
from where will our help come?
Our help comes from the Lord,

who made heaven and earth.

God will not let your foot or mine be moved;
for the One who keeps us will not slumber.
The One who keeps us neither slumbers nor sleeps.

The Lord is our keeper – yours and mine;
The Lord will deliver us from evil;
The Lord  will keep your life and mine.
The Lord will watch over each us

and keep our going out and coming in
from this time on and for evermore.

AMEN