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