I Know It's True

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

September 18, 2011

I Know It’s True

Matthew 20:1-16

[Play: “I Saw Her Standing There”]

The Beatles.

The four lads from Liverpool

with their famous moptops.

Their music, amazingly, is closing in on the half-century mark,

fifty years old,

and yet it is still all utterly timeless,

the very meaning of the word “classic.”

        

The group broke up in 1969,

each of the four going off to a solo career.

John Lennon died in 1980, George Harrrison in 2001.

Only Paul McCartney is still making and performing

music with as much energy and enthusiasm

as when he first took wing from the Beatles.

McCartney will turn 70 next year,

as improbable as that sounds,

especially when you see him perform.

I suppose I should refer to him by his proper title,

Sir Paul.

He was knighted back in 1997 by Great Britain.

But of course, he’s not really Sir Paul.

He’s Sir William.

William, as in William Campbell,

the Paul McCartney look-a-like the other Beatles secretly hired

after Paul was killed in a car crash back in 1967.

Forty five years ago the Beatles

were at the height of their popularity,

with the Sgt. Pepper album about to be released.

They didn’t want anything to get in the way of their success,

so they hushed up Paul’s death

and secretly searched the countryside to find someone

who looked and sounded like Paul.

In William Campbell they found their man.

It was the Beatles themselves who told the world,

even as they tried to continue with the hoax.

They began to put clues about Paul

– mischievous and clever clues –

on and in their albums –

both within the cover art and in the music itself.

A careful eye will spot clues on the Sgt. Pepper album,

the Magical Mystery Tour album,

and most famously,

the cover of the Abbey Road album.

For those of you who remember it

you can picture it, can’t you:

the four Beatles crossing Abbey Road,

John dressed in white as a cleric;

Ringo dressed somberly as a mortician,

George dressed in work clothes as a gravedigger,

and Paul, out of step with the rest,

dressed in burial clothes.

The cover photo also shows that infamous Volkswagon

in the backround,

the one with the license plate that read “2-8-I-F”

Had Paul still been part of the Beatles

when the Abbey Road album was released:

he would have been 28:

“28 IF”

Now, more than forty years later,

Sir William, still masquerading as Sir Paul,

carries on the tradition,

those of us raised on the music of the Beatles

still happily singing, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!”      

Okay.

I’ll confess:

None of what I just told you is true.

Paul McCartney is very much alive,
Sir Paul is, I am sure, 
looking forward to celebrating his 70^th birthday next year.

But back in 1969,

a good part of the world thought it was true,

that Paul had tragically been lost forever,

and then secretly replaced by a look-a-like.

For months, music fans the world over

were consumed by the mystery.

Millions of fans pored over the record albums,

looking for clues:

the obvious ones like the Abbey Road cover;

and the more subtle ones,

the ones that required a sharp eye.

And then there were the secret lyrics

that could be heard only if you played the record backward,

those mysterious, barely discernible words

that clinched it, drove away all doubt.

You can’t do that with CDs and MP3s!

Radio stations and newspapers fanned the flames for months,

even as the Beatles, including Paul,

tried furiously to stamp out the rumor fires that were raging.

It seemed the more they tried to deny it,

the more convinced the world was that it was all true.

Forty years later, there are still websites devoted either

to debunking the myth,

or to advancing it.

It can be hard to figure out what is true,

to separate truth from fiction.

We hear and read things that sound plausible,

men and women who sound authoritative

saying things, writing things

that we find credible.

There are always myths, stories,

rumors, that capture our attention,

capture our minds

and then we feel foolish later when we realize

that what we thought was true

turns out not to be;

something that sounded so certain,

so completely believable,

turns out to be nothing more than myth.

When I was in law school my classmates and I were trained

never to accept on face value,

but always to dig deeper,

go behind the facts,

do as much homework as possible,

examining from every angle,

probing, questioning, to be sure of the facts.

Never assume;

never, ever assume.

                                                              

We should take the same approach

as we read and study the Bible.

This great book, this Holy Book,

looks so deceptively simple:

black words on white pages,

the written word of the Lord.

But we need to read carefully;

we need to study, discuss,

unpack,

examine context, history,

looking at every passage from different angles,

always asking ourselves the key question,

“What is it that God wants us to learn from these words?”

We should read, and then read again,

and then read yet again,

letting the words soak in,

looking to the Holy Spirit to help us, guide us,

the Spirit blowing the words, the sentences,

the stories, the parables

in us, through us and around us.

We hear the text from our lesson

and our initial reaction might well be

the same as those who spoke up and grumbled:

that the vineyard owner was treating very unfairly

those who labored all day long under the hot sun

in paying them exactly the same amount

he paid those who worked only an hour or two

even as the sun was going down.

We hear the vineyard owner say,

“I am doing you no wrong;

did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?

Am I not allowed to do what I choose

with what belongs to me?”

And we react, yeah, yeah, yeah,

but still, “it isn’t fair.”

But let’s put the question before us:

what is it that Jesus wants us to learn from this parable?

Why is he telling us this parable?

What does Jesus want us to learn about God?

Surely not that God is unfair?

Surely not that God is too cheap to pay a bonus?

Surely not that God is a difficult taskmaster?

No,

It’s all wrapped up in that last line:

“Are you envious because I am generous?”

This is a parable about God’s generosity.

The lesson Jesus wants us to learn

is of God’s incomparable generosity.

Jesus wants us to learn of the God our Father

who is so generous that he loves us unconditionally;

who is so generous that he gives us grace freely;

who is so generous that he forgives us readily;

who is so generous that he is present in our lives

every moment of every day,

his everlasting arms always underneath us,

supporting us;

who is so generous that we can always live in hope,

even in the most difficult times.

God is generous with us,

and God wants us to learn to live generous lives,

lives marked by generosity in kindness,

compassion,

patience, forgiveness

and love for all.

And God wants us to live generous lives

not only toward others,

but toward ourselves, as well,

which can be oh so difficult:

to love ourselves,

be patient with ourselves,

forgive ourselves.

For most of us, it is harder

to be generous with ourselves

than toward a stranger.

We struggle with the very idea of generosity.

We struggle to give when society teaches us to take,

to keep,

to hang onto.

Frederick Buechner has observed,

“By the laws of logic, to give [any part of yourself

or what you have]

would seem to mean that you end up with less for yourself,

end up with less of yourself.

But the miracle is that just the reverse is true.

To live generously is to become fully yourself,

fully the child God created you to be.

In a quirky novel I’ve been reading

entitled “The Leftovers”,

the rapture has come in all its mythological drama,

God’s very tornado of righteousness,

sweeping through and plucking up one here,

while leaving behind another there.

Those left behind included many who thought themselves faithful,

but concluded that somehow they must have failed

to live up to what God expected of them.

They tag themselves the Guilty Remnant.

Not surprisingly, the Guilty Remnant are not happy people,

but what bothers them far more than the fact of

their having been left behind

is the fact that so many who’d been taken up

were men and women

those in the Guilty Remnant knew were faithless –

were so obviously not worthy:

not just men and men who had lived sinful, immoral lives,

but men and women who didn’t believe in God,

men and women who hadn’t set foot in a church in years,

men and women who never showed any interest

in the fundamentals of Christianity.

Why would God take such people?

How could God do something so utterly unjustified,

so utterly unjustifiable?

And the answer the Guilty Remnant miss is simple:

because God is generous,

generous far beyond our ability to understand.

Generous in ways that may leave us feeling baffled,

but as God says through the prophet Isaiah,

“my thoughts are not your thoughts,

nor are your ways my ways.”

(Isaiah 55:8)

so don’t even bother trying to understand.

As we begin a new year of Sunday School both for children

and adults, I invite you to learn more about

the boundless generosity of the Lord our God

by finding a place for yourself

in a Sunday Adult Education class,

or by joining our Wednesday morning or Thursday night

Bible Study classes which I lead:

you might be surprised by how much fun we have

even as we learn about God.

Find a place and learn:

learn of God’s generosity,

learn of God’s goodness and faithfulness,

learn of God’s mercy and patience.

Come and learn:

no hoax, no myth,

just truth –

the truth of God’s unwavering love

given you, given me,

in Jesus Christ.

AMEN

Heaping Coals?

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

September 11, 2011

Heaping Coals?

Proverbs 25:21-22

Is there any adult,

any young person over the age of 15, 16,

who doesn’t remember where he or she was,

what he or she was doing

on that Tuesday morning

September 11, 2001?

I was at my office at the First Presbyterian Church in

Washingtonville, New York,

the church I had been called to serve as pastor

18 months before.

Washingtonville is a small town in the Hudson River Valley,

about 50 miles north of New York City.

        

I’d just sat down at my desk

when a member of the church called to tell me

that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

Ten years ago we still got most of our news from radio and television

rather than the internet and smartphones,

so I turned on the radio I had in my office.

Reception in that area was poor, though,

and all I got was static.

So, I called another member of the church,

a woman named Flo, who lived right across the street,

and asked her if I could come over to watch

the television news reports.

I walked into her living room a little after 9:00 am.

By then a second plane had hit the South Tower.

The images on the television showed flames

blazing from the upper floors of the two towers,

thick black smoke pouring into

the brilliant blue September sky.

If the assumption had been

that the first plane hitting the North Tower

had been a freak accident,

the second plane hitting the South Tower

confirmed our worst fears:

that this had been planned,

an attack.

Reporters began to use the word “terrorism”.

As Flo and I sat there,

transfixed by images of the burning buildings

there came still another report:

a plane had crashed into the Pentagon in Washington.

Flo and I looked at each other: what was happening?

Who could have orchestrated such horrific attacks?

And then, even as we sat there

stunned by the news of the widening circle of attacks,

the seemingly impossible happened:

The South Tower began to collapse,

floor by floor, straight down,

110 stories of steel and concrete collapsing

in a mammoth dust cloud that billowed up

the streets and avenues of lower Manhattan.

Thirty minutes later the North Tower collapsed

in the same awful, surreal way.

I sat there and watched it on television,

but I know at the time

I didn’t fully grasp what was happening.

It was as though the rational side of my brain

was saying to my eyes,

“what you are seeing simply cannot be happening.”

I walked back across the street to my office in a daze.

I was not aware of anyone in our congregation of 150

who worked in lower Manhattan,

but I knew that Washingtonville was home

to many New York City

firefighters and police officers,

including a few members of our church.

I spent the rest of the day making and taking telephone calls,

as we all checked in with one another,

asking about family and friends.

It was more than 24 long hours

before we were able to confirm

that we had lost no one in our congregation.

Our community, though, lost five men,

all firefighters caught in the collapsing buildings.

On Wednesday evening we had

a simple prayer service at church.

There was such a palpable feeling in all of Washingtonville

that we simply needed to be with one another,

to be in the same room,

to feel one another’s comforting presence,

as together we sought God’s reassuring presence.

Worship that Sunday was full,

as it was in many churches across the country,

more than a few new faces sitting in the pews,

women and men of all ages, all backgrounds,

perhaps looking for answers,

but mostly there for community.

The next week a box arrived at the church

with a return address from a town in Nebraska.

It was a box filled with quilts,

quilts made by a quilting group in a church and a town

none of us knew anything about.                                  

Apparently the group had heard on television

about our town losing five firefighters,

so they boxed up the quilts,

somehow got the address of our church,

and shipped them to us with a simple note

asking us if we would please pass the quilts along

to families who had suffered losses.

It was such an incredibly powerful,

deeply touching gesture.

Gestures like that continued to abound

as the community reached out to the families,

friends, and neighbors of the five men who had died,

Everyone in town seemed to know someone who had died,

either one of the men from our own community or

others from other towns or work.                                   

But then slowly the mood began to change,

the mood in our community

and the mood in our country

as the drums of war began to beat.

The perpetrators were Muslim,

and soon all Muslims became suspect,

Anyone who looked even vaguely “Middle Eastern”

was looked at warily.

Ignorance and brutal emotion were on the ascendant,

pushing out compassion and reason,

righteousness and justice.

Astonishingly, Christians were in the vanguard,

the bellows of men with names like

Falwell and Robertson and others

pumping out inflammatory words,

words of bigotry, racism, appalling hatred.

They showed no hesitancy to distort the Gospel of Jesus Christ,

distort Holy Scripture from both Old and New Testament

in jingoistic, chest-thumping triumphalism.

Forget, “Blessed are the peacemakers”;

(Matthew 5:9)

Forget “But I say to you, Love your enemies”;

(Matthew 5:44)

Skip over the Proverb from our lesson.

        

Pay no attention to the fact that

Paul thought the Proverb so foundational

to Jesus’ teaching that he reinforced its lesson

in his letter to the church at Rome,

his most deeply theological letter, writing:

“Do not repay anyone evil for evil,

but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.

… ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them;

if they are thirsty, give them something to drink;

for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’

Do not be overcome by evil,

but overcome evil with good.”

(Romans 12:17)

They turned the meaning of the curious phrase

“heap burning coals on their heads”

upside down to make it sound like

God approved of violence against an enemy,

paying no attention to the fact

that the phrase is metaphorical,

much like our contemporary saying,

“to kill with kindness”.

In “heaping burning coals” on the head of your enemy,

the heat of the burning coals

becomes “the burning shame of remorse”

(N. T. Wright)

burning out hatred and evil.

And so we chose our path, the path of war,

the path of wars,

wars which have cost us well over a trillion dollars,

wars which will cost us well over $3 trillion

when everything is finally accounted for.

We’ve never been on alert to the threat

the terrorists we fear and fight made back in 2004

that they would ruin us financially,

“bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.”

More than 6,000 men and women have died in our 10 years of war;

that’s just American men and women;

more than twice as many as died in the original attack.

Well over 30,000 American men and women

have been maimed, crippled, and permanently injured.

And those are just the physical injuries.

How can we possibly hope to count the injuries we cannot see,

the injuries to the mind, the psyche, the spirit?

Why is it that we never talk about the civilian casualties

among Afghan and Iraqi children, women and men,

those killed or maimed?

The numbers are surely in the hundreds of thousands.

Dare we as disciples of Jesus Christ

dismiss them with that utterly heartless, faithless term,

“collateral damage”?

Writing in the Washington Post,

interfaith leader Eboo Patel has said,

“Faith can either be a barrier of division,

a bomb of destruction,

or a bridge of cooperation.

Our job is to make it a bridge of cooperation.”

(4/25/2011)

Patel was speaking as a Muslim,

but his words should be our words, as well,

we who follow Jesus Christ.

Our faith should never be a barrier of division,

much less a bomb of destruction,

but should lead us in every part of our lives

to build bridges of cooperation,

now more than ever with the more than one billion Muslims

with whom we share this planet. 

After all, we Christians worship the same God as Muslims,

the God of Abraham.

The Qur’an, the Holy Book of Islam, says just that:

“God is our Lord and your Lord;

We have our work and you have your works;

There is no quarrel between us and you;

God shall gather us together to Him

in our homecoming

… Our God and yours is one God”

(29:46, 42:15)

Yes, there have been and will be Muslims 
who will distort the Qur’an

for violence, vengeance and power,

just as there have been and will continue to be

Christians who distort the Bible,

for violence, vengeance, and power;

but that’s no reason for us to pursue any path

but bridge-building, cooperation, reconciliation.

On this anniversary of such a tragic day,

what is the legacy we want to leave to the men and women

who died in collapsing rubble in New York and Washington

and in a field in Pennsylvania?

Not just the firefighters and emergency responders,

but the secretaries, the computer technicians, the sales managers,

the custodians, the receptionists,

the accountants, the engineers,

the staff sergeants, the captains:

the men, the women from almost 100 different nations,

Jews, Christians, Muslims,

all who were simply going about their business

that beautiful Fall morning?

What is the memorial they would want from us?

“surely something more … than war.”

(G. Niebuhr, Beyond Tolerance, 192)

For, as the novelist John Williams once wrote

“A war doesn’t merely kill off a few thousand

or a few hundred thousand young [soldiers].

It kills off something in a people that can never be brought back.

And if a people goes through enough wars,

…soon all that’s left is the brute...”

(Stoner, 36)

Surely the best memorial,

the best legacy we can offer all those who died

is to live our lives as Christ calls us to,

as God wants us to,

hopes against hope we will:

giving our enemies food when they are hungry,

water when they thirst,

“heaping burning coals upon their heads”,

living and working to burn out hatred

through reconciliation,

their hatred and ours,

the consuming fire coming from

the one power,

the only power,

that is unconquerable:

the power that is love,

the power that is God.

AMEN

The Argument Clinic

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

September 4, 2011

The Argument Clinic

Matthew 18:15-22

It’s a new month.

A new season lies before us.

We begin with Genesis Sunday next week,

the traditional day for us to close the book on summer

and look to fall as we resume Sunday School, Choirs,

and all the other activities that come with a new program year.

Summer is a quieter time,

but certainly not a sleepy time in our church.

We worshiped each Sunday with wonderful guest musicians.

Our Adult Education class featuring the

DVD series on Christian History was very popular.

Both our Middle School and High School Youth Groups

had terrific mission trip weeks.

We had yet another successful Vacation Bible School

with one hundred children laughing and singing

their way through a week of learning

and making new friends.

        

This is a wonderful church, a wonderful place:

Manassas Presbyterian Church.

It is a place where we can find renewal and refreshment;

where we can find support and encouragement;

where we can grow in faith and discipleship;

where friendships deepen and love is genuine.

One of the things that sets MPC apart from other churches

is that we are group of brothers and sisters in Christ

who always think alike,

who always see things the same way.

Here within the walls of this church

we never quarrel

never speak a cross word,

never let our tempers flare,

or hear angry voices.

It’s okay, you don’t need to stifle your laughter any longer;

Go ahead and let it out!

We’d certainly like to think that in church of all places,

and especially in our own church,

harmony always prevails,

but the fact is that sharing a common faith,

doesn’t necessarily mean that we will always agree.

We will differ on matters ranging from

theology to what cookies to serve at coffee hour.

We are, after all, fully human,

and when we walk through the doors of our church

we bring all our human emotions with us.

Even our Lord Jesus Christ showed that he had a temper;

He displayed anger – on more than a few occasions.

There were many times he was anything but

“gentle Jesus meek and mild.”

Yet, Jesus set the standard for us

for our behavior toward one another

when he said:

“By this everyone will know

that you are my disciples,

if you have love for one another.”

(John 13:35)

“if you have love for one another.”

But loving one another doesn’t mean

that we won’t have differences;

it doesn’t mean we won’t quarrel

or get angry from time to time.

Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine,

and he understood human emotions.

He felt them himself,

and he certainly witnessed them in the twelve

who walked with him.

How do you suppose the other ten

felt about James and John

after they asked Jesus to be granted the privilege

of sitting on Jesus’ left and right

when Jesus came in glory?

(Mark 10:35)

                                                     

So even after he calls us to love one another,

 Jesus, always the wise teacher,

gives us a bit of guidance

for how we are to manage conflict,

how we are to manage disagreement.

Our lesson seems straightforward

but as we tend to do with Jesus’ teachings,

over time we have distorted the lesson,

the verses too often read as rules of engagement

to be used against anyone with whom we disagree.

Step 1: Talk nicely with the person

with whom you are having the disagreement

and hope that they see that you are right

and they are wrong;

If that doesn’t work, bring in reinforcements,

preferably someone whose presence is at least mildly threatening

to the person with whom you disagree;

If the person is still obstinate and refuses to change,

then Step 3 allows you to spread gossip about the person

among the entire church,

with the intention of embarrassing and belittling the person.

Finally, Step 4 - hope the person gets angry enough

to leave the church,

storming out in a display of anger

justifying your actions.

That’s clearly not what Jesus wants from us,

Jesus expects us to act with grace,

act with wisdom,

act with forgiveness,

and with love.

He expects that from us

because that’s how God acts with us and toward us.

Jesus wants us to be reconciled with one another;

he wants us to work out our differences.

As one commentator put it,

Jesus wants us to work constantly and faithfully

to assure that the church is not destroyed

by the “slow erosion of unresolved antagonisms.”

We live in highly polarized world.

We shout at one another;

We talk at one another.

And the more we talk at one another,

the less we listen to one another;

the less we empathize with one another,

the less of an effort we make

to try to understand the point of view of the other person,

why the other person thinks as he or she thinks.

We hear God’s call to work for reconciliation and peace,

and we think,

“Yeah, if only the other person would do that,

then we’d get along fine.

If only the other person would be a little more reasonable,

a little more flexible,

a little more forgiving,

then we wouldn’t have a problem.”

But don’t you see the problem here:

if we start with the assumption that it is the other person

who is the cause of the trouble,

the cause of the problem,

the one who is inflexible, unyielding,

or just plain wrong,

then we have put ourselves thick in the forest of

self-righteousness,

of judgment,

of arrogance,

of smug certainty.

Speaking through the prophet Isaiah,

God said to the children of Israel,

“Come, let us reason together”

or as our NRSV translation puts it,

“Come now, let us argue it out.”

(Isaiah 1:18)

Now if there is anyone who stands on firm and certain ground,

it is God.

But even God understands that the essence of relationships

is built on give and take, working together,

finding common ground.

God was outraged by the behavior of his beloved children

in Israel during Isaiah’s time,

but even God said in effect, “let’s find some commonality,

something we can talk about

so we don’t just break apart,

each of us so adamant of our own certainty

that we are willing to walk away from one another,

walk away in anger,

walk away forever.

You heard Peter ask Jesus,

“Lord, if another member of the church sins against me,

how often should I forgive?

As many as seven times?”

Jesus’ response is simple, yet powerful,

“Not seven times,

but I tell you seventy times seven.”

(Matthew 18:22)

In other words, we are to offer forgiveness

time and time again,

as we work for reconciliation,

work seeking common ground,

work to find harmony.  

Yes, of course, there may come a time

when a parting of the ways is the best step.

But even that can be done fairly, equitably,

and with dignity and peace.

After all their squabbles, all their fighting

Jacob and Laban finally resolved their differences

with a covenant as they each went their separate way

parting in peace.

(Genesis 31:43ff)

                 

Paul is right when he says that,

“we see in a mirror dimly;

we know only in part.”

I don’t have all the answers;

I’ve never met anyone who has all the answers;

no one here has all the answers;

no one anywhere has all the answers.

Forty years ago five young British men and one American

formed the famed Monty Python group

and quickly established themselves as brilliant comedians.

One of their best sketches from their original television show

was called the Argument Clinic.

The premise is absurd:

a man walks into an office

and tells the receptionist

he’d like to have an argument.

She inquires whether he wants an introductory lesson,

or the full 10-session course.

The man decides on the introductory lesson

and is sent down the hall to room 12.

He walks in and finds a man sitting behind a desk.

The customer takes a seat opposite,

and immediately the two men begin to argue,

back and forth, back and forth

sounding like two small children:

Yes, I did,

No, you didn’t.

Yes, I did,

No, you didn’t.

Back and forth they go,

until the customer abruptly stops to complain

that they weren’t really having an argument;

they were just contradicting one another.

An argument, he says,

is an intellectual process;

it isn’t just automatically contradicting or denying

what the other person is saying.

There in the midst of an hilarious comedy routine

is great wisdom.

Arguing should be more than just disagreeing;

it should be working through differences.

Listening carefully;

Arguing properly done requires reasoning,

and reasonableness.

It requires flexibility,

grace, and a desire to find the path

to reconciliation.

Unhappily, we live in a world where we don’t argue,

we just contradict, deny,

stand adamant,

opposed,

resolute,

closed.

Manichaean is the theological term:

no shades of gray,

I’m right; you are wrong.

The very nature of community is that we are the Body,

each of us given different gifts

and different perspectives by the Holy Spirit.

We need one another,

and we are called to listen to one another

as we work together to build up the Body of Christ.

We do it well here;

but of course, what we learn here,

we need to take out into the world around us.

for the world needs more and better arguing,

and less contradiction and opposition.  

Each time I preside at a wedding as I did on Friday,

I share with the bride and groom a text

from Paul’s letter to the Colossians

in which he wrote:

“As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved,

clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness,

humility, meekness, and patience.

Bear with one another and,

if anyone has a complaint against another,

forgive each other;

just as the Lord^* has forgiven you,

so you also must forgive.

Above all, clothe yourselves with love,

which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, …

(Colossians 3:12ff)

This is how we are to live our lives

both in relationships where we get along,

but even more important,

in relationships that are fraught with disagreement.

Frederick Buechner reminds us that,

“We have it in us to be Christ to each other…

We have it in us to work miracles of love and healing…

We have it in us to bless with Christ

and forgive with him

and heal with him”

Buechner is right: we do have it within us

to be Christs to each other,

here within this church

to all our brothers and sisters in faith,

to all God’s children everywhere.

But we will never be Christs to anyone

if our words,

our actions,

are not grounded in grace,

not grounded in compassion,

not grounded in empathy and love.

We will never be Christs to anyone

if we find ourselves on opposite sides

trapped in a whirlwind

like those two British comedians,

the pointless whirlwind of

The Argument Clinic.  

AMEN