Remembering Names

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

March 13, 2011

First Sunday of Lent

Remembering Names

Matthew 4:1-11

It has happened to all of us, probably more than once.

You meet someone for the very first time,

perhaps here at church,

or at a party, a neighborhood barbecue;

you exchange names,

and even as you are shaking the person’s hand,

you are thinking to yourself,

“This person just told me his name,

and now, two seconds later,

I have no idea what it is.”

“He looked me in the eye,

He was articulate, firm in his voice,

loud enough for me to hear,

and still, I cannot remember.

Was it Bob or Bill?

Was his last name Talbot or Corbet?”

You try to find someone who knows the person

so you can ask them discreetly, “What is his name?”

“I’m just terrible with names,” you add,

and the other person nods sympathetically.

“I’m just terrible with names.”

Who hasn’t said that at least once?

But, the problem isn’t that we’re terrible at remembering.

Where we run into trouble is with focusing,

concentrating,

paying attention.

                          

What we tend to do when we meet someone for the first time

is simply not listen as they’re telling us their name.

We’re not listening because we’re thinking about

what we’re going to say next, after the introductions.

We don’t hear the name,

because our minds are busy with other thoughts;

we’re distracted,

even if just for the few seconds it takes

to hear someone say, “I’m Bill Corbet”.

My grandfather, the first Whitworth Ferguson

was a very smart man.

Now there are lots of smart people in this world,

but he was also that rarer person:

a smart man who was also a very wise man,

and I learned a great deal from his wisdom.

Among the many things he taught me was: “remember names”.

When you meet someone for the first time, he taught me,

look them in the eye

listen to them as they introduce themselves,

and remember their names.

For my grandfather, a good and faithful man,

remembering someone’s name was not only the polite thing to do;

it was the caring thing;

it showed that you were truly interested in the person.

I tried to protest, “But, I’m terrible with names.”

and he just scoffed, “Nonsense.

Just pay attention;

Don’t be distracted as you are listening.

If you pay attention for two seconds,

remembering is easy.”

                                                     

Remembering names begins with listening;

focusing,

concentrating, not being distracted.

I work hard at it and I am pretty good at it,

but still I know that there have been times

when someone has told me their name

and it’s gone in one ear and right out the other.

And I know it was because I was distracted

from what I should have been focusing on,

that one simple task of listening,

listening to the person say his name or her name.

Distractions are everywhere, all around us,

so many different things vying for our attention,

pulling at us.

It’s hard to concentrate,

hard to focus,

hard not to be distracted.

We meet a character in this morning’s lesson

who just loves distractions,

who thrives on distractions,

who loves anything that causes us to lose our concentration,

lose our focus.

We meet the devil in this morning’s lesson.

He’s a character who is a very minor actor in the literature

of the Old Testament, hardly more than a bit player,

and certainly not the sinister figure

we find in the New Testament. 

It was in the two centuries right before the birth of our Lord

that we find the rise of apocalyptic stories,

and with them the development of the character we call the devil.

The Hebrew word satan,

which had been nothing more than an adjective

that meant “adversary”,

becomes a person, capital “S”,

the personification of evil.

All the Gospels speak of the devil;

Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us of Jesus’ encounter with him

at the end of his forty days in the wilderness.

Mark didn’t think the story important enough

to give it more than two verses:

“He was in the wilderness forty days,

tempted by Satan,…

and the angels waited on him.”

(Mark 1:12-13)

Matthew and Luke give us the three tests, three temptations

that Satan puts before Jesus.

In our lesson, the devil clearly hopes to shift Jesus’ attention

away from God, away from his faithfulness.

Surely, distracting a man who hadn’t eaten for 40 days

should have been as simple as putting a loaf of bread before him.

“If you are the Son of God,

command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

But as hungry as he was,

Jesus wasn’t distracted by the thought of food:

“One does not live by bread alone,

but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

The tempter tried to a second route to distraction,

this time cleverly quoting scripture to Jesus, as he said to him:

“If you are the Son of God,

throw yourself down from the top of the Temple.”

But again, Jesus kept his eyes, his mind,

his heart, his all, firmly on God. 

And then one last time,

the devil took Jesus to the loftiest height to show him all the world,

offering Jesus power and wealth,

but again Jesus remained faithful, focused, firm.

Jesus kept his focus, kept his mind on God,

trusting God to look after him,

even with the prospect of food,

untold wealth, worldly power,

all right there before his very eyes.

C. S. Lewis’s wonderfully creative “Screwtape Letters”

picks up on this notion of diabolical distraction

in a hilarious, yet insightful way.

“The Screwtape Letters” are the product of Lewis’s imagination

but they purport to be a collection of letters

from a young tempter named Wormwood

to his mentor, a senior devil

who refers to himself as Wormwood’s affectionate Uncle Screwtape.

In letter after letter,

the young Wormwood writes of the challenges he faces

as he tries to bend the mind and will of an Englishman,

toward the realm of what Screwtape calls, “our Father below”.

Screwtape repeatedly reminds Wormwood

that he doesn’t need to turn his man to profound evil;

he doesn’t need to turn the man into a murderer,

or a bank robber.

All he needs to do is distract him from God’s will,

God’s word,

God’s way.

                          

And the easiest way to distract him

is to work at turning the man’s attention inward,

on his own needs, his own desires, his own wants.

The more he focuses on himself,

his own whims and wants, likes and dislikes,

the less focused he’ll be on the needs of others,

the less focused he will be on doing the will of God.

“Your job is to fuddle [the man]”, writes Screwtape,

“Make his mind flit to and fro.”

Let him go to church on Sunday

but then distract him from concentrating on the words of the sermon

by having him find offensive the scent of the cologne

the man sitting in front of him is wearing.

During the hymns, distract the man from the words

he should be singing to God,

by having him think about how the singing of the woman

behind him sounds like a cat being swung by its tail.

“Find ways, any ways, the simpler the better,

to turn the man’s gaze away from God,...”

(Letter 4)

Wormwood is a rather dim bulb

but eventually he gets it,

that he doesn’t need to plant the seeds of evil in the man’s mind;

Simply distracting him with the unimportant,

the inconsequential,

the trivial and the trite,

all work just as well if not better.

As Screwtape reminds the young Wormwood,

“It is funny how mortals always picture us

as putting things into their minds;

in realty our best work is done by keeping things out.”

Jesus teaches us in our lesson,

“Live by the words that come from God.

Worship the Lord your God

and serve only him.”

That’s it; nothing else matters.

Anything else is a distraction;

anything else should be batted away.

                                            

Lent is the ideal time to develop new discipline,

new practices to help you recognize distractions,

to help you stay focused

and keep your mind more fully on God

on God’s will, God’s way,

on Jesus’ teachings

on living a Sermon-on-the-Mount life.

A wonderful resource I highly recommend

is a book entitled “Soul Feast” by Marjorie Thompson.

We have a copies of the book in our library.

Thompson guides her readers through simple ways

to develop new spiritual practices.

She starts with reading the Bible – no surprise there!

Read the Bible like a love letter, is her advice.

Read the Bible as though you were reading a love letter

from God to you.

Savor each word,

listen for God’s voice to you.

A good place to start reading might be the Psalms.

Begin with Psalm 1 and this is what you’ll hear:

Happy are those
who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers;
but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law they meditate day and night.
They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.

Now, Wormwood and Screwtape might try to distract you

from hearing God’s voice to you

by having you start picturing this person or that

as a sinner, a scoffer,

anyone other than yourself,

all in their effort to distract you

from hearing God’s voice to you in the Psalm.

But if you follow Thompson’s advice

reading the psalm as a love letter,

you close the door to Wormwood and Screwtape.

Instead, as you focus on God’s voice

speaking directly to you,

this is what you’d hear:

Happy will you be, my beloved child,
when you do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers;
but delight in my law
and meditate on it day and night.
Then, you will be like a tree planted by a stream of water,
yielding your fruit in its season,
your leaves never withering.

Of course, you’ll find some passages are harder than others to read

as a love-letter from God to you,

yet with a little work,

you can find yourself in every page,

you can find yourself in almost every story in the Bible.

It takes work, it takes discipline,

but with a guide like Thompson you can delve more deeply

into the pages of Scripture and

and find yourself growing in faith,

more focused on God,

God’s will for you;

you’ll find yourself less distracted.

We are just starting Lent.

We have the whole 40 days stretching out before us,

a wonderful gift to each of us to work on discipline,

to work on focus and concentration,

to learn how to fend off all those things that distract us

from following God’s will more faithfully,

from Jesus’ call to us more willingly.

Take advantage of these 40 days.

Work at taking on a new discipline

to help you grow spiritually,

to help you grow in faith.

And don’t be surprised

if you also find it easier to remember names.

AMEN