Anywhere and Everywhere

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

June 24, 2012

Anywhere and Everywhere

Mark 4:35

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them,

“Let us go across to the other side.”

The Sea of Galilee is really more of a lake

than what we might think of when we hear the word “sea”.

It’s about 8 miles across at its widest point

and not quite 14 miles from north to south,

more like the Chesapeake Bay than the Mediterranean Sea.

Like any lake, the Sea of Galilee

can often be a place of calm,

with not a breath of wind to be found

rippling the water’s surface,

the sails of boats scattered along the shore hanging limp,

fishermen’s tough skin scorched red in the heat.

But weather on a lake,

even one as small as the Sea of Galilee,

can change in an instant,

calm waters quickly turned rough with waves,

the water churning in gusty winds that can tear sails apart,

and flip small boats,

taking even the most experienced fishermen with them.

That’s what we’d hear in this story

if we had read through verse 41,

seven verses, rather than the one I read:

the power of a sudden storm,

men caught in the middle of the sea

in the dark of night,

filled with fear for their lives,

imploring their sleeping teacher,

“do you not care that we are perishing?”

But the first verse is too inviting for us to slide past it

in our rush to get to the drama of a dark and stormy night.

“On that day, when evening had come, he said to them,

‘Let us go across to the other side’.”

Much like God’s question to Adam and Eve,

that we talked about two weeks ago,

“where are you,”

this verse sounds like it is about geography:

“Let us go from point A to point B;

and the quickest way to do that is to sail across the lake.”

But there is more to this statement than geography

if we dig a little deeper.

If we were to read ahead,

past the story of the storm,

we’d learn that Jesus was leading the disciples

to the “the country of the Garasenes.”

In crossing the Sea of Galilee

Jesus was taking his new disciples

away from the countryside they knew,

away from their homeland,

to the land of the Gentiles,

to an area populated by men and women

who followed other gods:

Roman gods, Greek gods, pagan gods,

perhaps even no gods.

Jesus was taking his disciples

from the familiar and the comfortable

to the unfamiliar,

the foreign,

perhaps even to the dangerous.

The first person they encountered

in the country of the Garasenes makes the point:

It was the man who has become known as

“the Garasene demoniac”,

a man who we learn was possessed of an unclean spirit,

a man who lived among the tombs,

shackled in his madness,

but constantly breaking free of his chains

so he could run among the tombs and graves

howling day and night.

In saying, “let’s go across to the other side”,

Jesus was saying to his disciples,

“Follow me as I lead you into unfamiliar territory,

as I lead you away from the life you know,

the places you find comfortable.

Follow me as I lead you deeper into a life of discipleship

that you will often find challenging,

unsettling,

unnerving,

exhausting,

and even filled with risk to your very life”

When we say yes to Jesus

we are not accepting an invitation

to be part of an exclusive club,

a select community where life is always as serene as

an outing on lake on a windless day.

To say yes to Jesus,

is to say yes to the risky business of discipleship,

the unnerving business of following him,

following him to new and unfamiliar places;

Following him to serve,

to do ministry even where we’d really rather not go,

where we’d really rather not be,

with people we’d really rather avoid.

Harry Emerson Fosdick calls this

our invitation to “adventurous religion.”

Fosdick explains the term by reminding us    

that faith for the earliest followers of Jesus

“was a matter of personal venturesomeness.

It involved self-committal,

devotion,

loyalty,

courage.”

It was an invitation to a faith that was a “daring thing”,

or, to put it in more scriptural terms,

it was an invitation to a life of faith

that was “a mountain mover.”

        

That’s the faith you and I have been called to by Christ.

It is not something that is domesticated,

tamed,

bent to our will,

reformulated to fit our comfort,

our way of thinking,

our schedules,

our politics.

It is a faith that can and does have

its moments on glassy seas,

moments of calm,

of warmth in the sun.

But it is also faith in which we can find ourselves

rolling and pitching in a boat on a choppy sea,

the wind howling furiously,

pushing our boat through the waters

to the place Jesus is calling us to.

We all have a bit of Jonah in us:

we’re quick to turn from God’s call,

from Jesus’ invitation, “follow me”.

Where we differ from Jonah is that

we’re not as likely to run the other direction

as Jonah did.

Rather, we are more likely to be stubborn,

persistent in our refusal to accept the invitation

to get in the boat to cross to the other side,

saying to Jesus,

“You want me to get in the boat?

But it’s dark;

surely you don’t expect me to sail across the sea

in the pitch black?

And besides, where are we going?

How long will we be gone?

Do we have enough food?

Water?

Are you sure you really need me?”

                                            

Think of the audacity,

the venturesomeness of our Lord

in asking us to embrace a life of:

loving our enemies;

caring for the poor, the sick, the different;

repenting;

forgiving;

walking humbly and seeking justice;

a life of prayer.

Mission trips remind us of the adventure of faith.

To go off, even to the familiarity of Massanetta Springs,

or Meadowkirk,

or Montreat,

is still to go adventuring.

Our young people are venturing from home,

sailing off without knowing exactly what to expect

in their week away;

venturing off to meet new people,

to do work they don’t normally do,

all in the name of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is always calling us all to new places,

calling us to cross over from the comfortable

to the challenging,

from the familiar to the new,

from the present to the future.

Calling us to the place of beyond:

beyond what we would think or do

without him calling us,

inspiring us, leading us.

Even a tomb could not hold Jesus.

He rose and he moved on,

calling us to journey with him,

saying to us, “I am always going further,

and if you want my transforming friendship,

you must be prepared to travel.”

You and I must be prepared to travel anywhere,

everywhere.

(Leslie Weatherhead)

The poet Walt Whitman captured the life Jesus us calls us to

with these words:

“O we can wait no longer,

We too take ship O soul,

Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas,

Fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail

Amid the wafting winds…

Caroling free, singing our song to God.

…I with thee, and thou with me…

For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,

And we will risk the ship, ourselves, and all.”

(Passage to India)

“Come,”

our Lord is saying to you and me even now;

“Let us go.”

AMEN

Ask Dad…He Knows

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

June 17, 2012

Ask Dad…He Knows

Romans 14:1-4

Movies don’t get much better

than the perennial Christmas favorite,

“It’s A Wonderful Life”, with Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed,

and Lionel Barrymore as the oily Mr. Potter.

Even in summer, the mere mention of the title for most of us

evokes images of Stewart as the guileless George Bailey

struggling against the greedy Potter.

You remember how the movie begins:

Angel Second Class Clarence Oddbody

has been summoned to help George,

but before Clarence can help him,

he has to learn about George, learn about his life,

going all the way back to his childhood.

And so there we are, just a few minutes into the movie

peering, so its seems, over Clarence’s shoulder

as we look at the young George Bailey,

all of 12 years old, full of himself, the world explorer,

working part-time for Mr. Gower at the Drug Store.

The year was 1919, and if you remember your history,

that was the year of the great global flu epidemic,

and sitting on the cash register is a telegram to Mr. Gower

informing him that his son had died from the flu.

George was probably too young to fully realize it,

but Mr. Gower had tried to drown his grief with alcohol;

and in his drunken stupor he had compounded some pills

for a prescription with a poisonous substance.

In the scene Mr. Gower hands George the pills

and tells him to deliver them.

George knows there is poison in them,

that if he delivers the pills they will kill, not cure.

He runs out of the back room into the front of the store,

frantic: what to do?

Then the answer comes to George

in the form of a sign,

a sign not from heaven,

but a sign up on the wall of the store,

a sign from a a company that back in those days

plastered the world with their slogan,

“Ask Dad…He Knows”

George runs out of the store and down the street,

off to find his father.

Off to find the one person with wisdom

who can help him,

help him find an answer.

It is a charming reminder

that life often presents us with problems,

struggles of all kinds,

and we won’t always have the answers,

that we need to turn to others for wisdom.

This is just as true when we are 40, 50, 60

as when we are 12.

It may be Dad;

it may be Mom;

it may be Grandad or teacher or friend;

and of course, it may be our Father in Heaven

whom Jesus wants to know as Abba.

                                                                                                                                                                                     Some 30 years following the crucifixion of our Lord,

the new Christians in Rome found themselves in turmoil

and they turned to Paul for an answer

to a question that had split their community:

was it acceptable to eat meat?

On its face it seems like an odd question.

even Leviticus doesn’t forbid eating meat;

the laws simply banned the eating of

certain kinds of creatures as food:

things like pork, lobster,… bugs.

In the formative years of Christianity,

many followers of Jesus were Jewish,

and still lived according to Jewish law and custom,

and those laws and customs included

the strict dietary laws found in Leviticus.

What the Jewish followers of Jesus struggled with

was the reality that in Rome

if a person was going to eat meat,

it was probably going to be meat that had been offered

as a sacrifice earlier in the day at a Roman temple

a sacrifice to a Roman god,

to a pagan god,

to an idol.

The Gentile Christians,

those who hailed from Italy, Greece, Asia, North Africa,

who had not been part of the Jewish community,

saw no problem in eating the meat.

They were not participating in the worship or sacrifice;

they were simply buying the meat left after the sacrifice.

To them, the meat was ordinary meat;

the fact that an hour earlier

it might have been part of a sacrifice to Jupiter

was unimportant;

it didn’t matter.

The two sides argued;

the Jewish followers of Christ

appalled at those who ate meat;

the Gentile followers of Christ looking down on those

who ate only vegetables

so they would not taint themselves with idolatrous meat.

And of course, each side believed

that they were acting more faithfully,

they were living more faithfully in accordance with Scripture,

in accordance with Jesus’ teachings.

Arguments that seem to split apart our community

aren’t anything new;

they have been with us right for 2,000 years.

Into this thicket waded Paul,

providing counsel grounded in

the wisdom of our Heavenly Father:

Those who eat must not despise those who abstain,

and those who abstain

must not pass judgment on those who eat;

for God has welcomed them.

Or, to put it in conversational terms:
live and let live, and let God.

But then Paul’s tone turned angry as he rebuked both sides:

Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another?”

In other words:

Who are you to think that you have the answer,

that you are in the right?

As Paul put it a few verses later:

Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister?

Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister?

For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.

(Romans 14:10)

How quick we are to forget

that we all stand before the judgment seat of God,

every one of us,

and none of us is in a position to judge,

much less condemn.

How quick we are to forget

what Jesus taught in his Sermon on the Mount,

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.

For with the judgment you make you will be judged,

and the measure you give will be the measure you get.

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s^* eye,

but do not notice the log in your own eye?

(Matthew 7:1)

Paul teaches the Roman Christians and us:

God has welcomed both the one who eats

and the one who abstains.

…Let us therefore no longer pass judgment

on one another,

but resolve instead never to put

a stumbling-block or hindrance

 in the way of another.

The great theologian Karl Barth

interpreted this passage as telling us:

“The … Christian does not complain of those

who hold opinions different from his own,

nor does he abuse them;

rather he stands behind them sympathetic,

believing that the other

must be permitted to follow his own road to the end.

There is no reason to disrupt the community;

on the contrary,

there is every reason to maintain fellowship.”

(Barth, The Epistle to the Romans)

Being right is less important than keeping community,

building community;

building up others

rather than trying to show them up.

If those who were buying and eating meat

were wrong to do so,

they’ll eventually have to answer to God

for their waywardness,

that’s the wisdom Paul shares with both sides.

Stop arguing, he says, and instead,

Outdo one another in showing honor

love one another with mutual affection   

…Do not be haughty;

do not claim to be wiser that you are.

(Romans 12)

This is the church we are called to build,

the church we are called to build for ourselves,

and even more important,

for Audrey, Hanna, Brendan,

the children, the generation who will follow us.

A church of unity, of community,

not one of dissension, quarreling,

squabbling, fighting.

Younger Christians of all denominations

are telling us they are sick of the fighting,

sick of the time, energy and resources wasted

when we should be feeding the hungry,

welcoming the stranger,

working for peace,

building up, rather than tearing down.

This younger generation doesn’t see wisdom

in dissension and division.

They seem to have a better understanding

than my own generation of Paul’s words:

God welcomes all believers;

the Lord will make them stand;

the Lord is the one before whom all is done;

The Lord is the one to whom we live or die

 and to whom we belong.

When we fight, when we squabble

when we hunker down so certain of ourselves,

our knowledge,

we tear down, break apart,

smash the community our Lord calls us to be part of,

to build.

But when we work together

when we live as Paul teaches us

living in the grace-filled wisdom

of our Father in Heaven,

honoring one another,

building up one another as we build community,

leaving judgment to God in Christ,

then as Anglican priest Austin Farrar put it so poetically:

“God walks in his temple,

and the house is peopled with cherubim;

then heaven descends to earth,

and earth is exalted to heaven,

in the praises of him from whom

all things everlastingly proceed,

and to whom they unfailingly return,

glory above glory,

light beyond light

love immortal.”

To God, our Heavenly Father,

our beloved Abba,

be the glory.

        

AMEN

Where Are You?

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

June 10, 2012

Where Are You?

Genesis 3:8-9

The snap as a twig is stepped on,

the crunch of leaves underfoot,

the rustle of branches in bushes

jostled by a passing figure.

What sounds did he make,

the Lord our God,

as he walked through his garden

in the cool of the evening?

We are quick to give God human features,

but Jesus reminds us that God is Spirit, not flesh.

(John 4:24)

Had God taken on human form in this wonderful story?

How big had he made himself?

Did he have hair?

A beard?

What color was his skin?

What was he wearing?

A robe?

A tunic?

Was it made from cotton? Wool?

Who made it for him?

What did he wear on his feet?

Sandals?

Who made them?

What size were his feet?

As he walked through the garden,

did brambles catch the folds of his robe?

Did briars stick to his robe?

Were there flies or mosquitoes he had to brush away

or was the cool evening breeze enough

to keep them from being a bother?

So many questions raised by 19 words in one verse!

And then there is the question God himself asked,

asked of the man and woman he had created:

“Where are you?”

What kind of question is that

from the omnipotent Lord God?

Surely if God was capable of creating

the sun and the stars,

the earth and the moon,

the mountains and the trees,

every living thing,

surely God must have known

where the man and woman were;

surely they could not have hidden themselves

from the Lord God’s sight!

Surely if God had created the tree they crouched behind,

God would have known they were there.

Why did the man and woman hide?

What did they think they had done wrong?

Their eyes had been opened we learn,

opened to the knowledge of good and evil,

right and wrong.

Had they learned that they had done something wrong?

Did they really understand this?

Why, once God confronted them,

did the man react defensively,

really rather pathetically,

without a shred of honor or integrity?

Why did he try to shift the blame not just to the woman,

but to God: “this woman YOU gave me –

it’s her fault.”

And the woman,

not wanting to bear all the responsibility herself,

tried her own hand at defense and deflection:

“The serpent tricked me.”

Do you suppose she wanted to follow the man’s lead

and say to God,

“the serpent you put in this place tricked me…”?

This is such a wonderful story.

May we call it a story, though?

Yes, of course we can.

It is a story and we need not concern ourselves

with the literal truth of what happened here.

It is a story that has over the centuries been

misinterpreted,

mistranslated,

misunderstood,

misused.

The Bible is filled with stories,

wonderful stories that we begin learning as children,

stories we teach the young and old.

We teach stories because that’s how we learn:

we hear them and we draw lessons from them.

We hear the words,

and then we take a step back

and work to discern meaning,

what is it that God wants us to learn

from the words we are reading and hearing.

When, for example, we hear Jesus tell us,

“If your right hand causes you to sin,

cut it off and throw it away.”

(Matthew 5:30),

surely the lesson is not

that we are to take the words literally.

This is where we need to do the hard work of studying,

of working to understand.

It is why we Presbyterians put so much emphasis on learning,

on education,

starting with Sunday School,

but continuing all the way through Adult Education.

The Bible may seems straightforward on its surface,

a simple rule book:

Here’s what you shall do,

and here’s what you shall not do.

But when we read with deeper eyes

we realize that is not the case.

God’s question to the man and the woman

seems on its surface such a simple question:

“where are you?”

It sounds like a question of geography,

of location.

“Tell me where the two of you are in my garden,

because I cannot see you.”

But is it a question about geography,

or is it question of relationship?

Is it God asking them,

“Where are you in relation to me?

Not physically, but spiritually.

Because something has just happened

that has moved you away from me

spiritually, not physically.”

What had been an intimate relationship

became fraught;

the man’s response says it all:

“I was afraid.”

Why was he afraid of God?

What had God done to instill fear in the man?

Was it fear the man really felt,

or was it perhaps shame?

Shame not at his nakedness,

the reason he gave for hiding,

but shame that he had failed to obey God,

shame that he had chosen to listen to the serpent

rather than to his Creator, the Lord God?

We have turned this story into “The Fall,”

the beginning of “Original Sin,”

but if only we’d take the time to learn,

to study, to open our minds,

we’d realize that there is nothing in the Bible

that teaches us that.

Those concepts come from

a 4^th century theologian,

a man named Augustine

Humanity may have made a bad choice in this story,

but what we learn is that this is how life works for us:

that we are confronted with choices throughout our lives

and we need to learn how to make good choices,

godly choices.                        

In his valedictory address to the children of Israel

Moses said just that: Children of Israel

you have two choices before you:

Make the right choice.

“Surely, …this is not too hard for you”

(Deuteronomy 30:11)

Joshua re-emphasized this idea when he said,

“Choose this day whom you will serve.”

Even Elijah said as much in that wonderful scene

with him and the prophets of Baal, the pagan god,

when he challenged the people,

“Quit waffling;

make a choice

one way or the other:

God or Baal,

but either way, do it all the way.”

As Moses taught the children of Israel,

and as our Lord Jesus teaches us:

if we are going to love the Lord,

then we are to do it with all our heart,

all our strength

all our soul,

and all our mind

as we grow in knowledge and understanding.

That’s what we learn as we dig into this story,

as we dig into the Bible.

Where you are in your learning

is absolutely correlated with where you are with God.

The more you learn,

the more you will choose the godly way.

When we learn together,

we learn that we need not waste time

worrying about Augustine’s term of Original Sin,

for, as Paul teaches us, while

“our outer nature is wasting away,

our inner nature is being renewed everyday.”

(2 Corinthians 4:16)

Renewed by the Holy Spirit,

renewed by the grace of God,

renewed to help us to make good choices,

better choices,

more faithful, godly choices.

The great scholar and teacher Walter Brueggemann

has written, “Our concern is not the origin of evil,

or the power of the fall.

It is, rather, God’s summons for us to be his creatures,

…to live in God’s world,

 not a world of [our] own making; …

but God’s world,

with God’s other creatures,

on God’s terms.”

We won’t know this if we don’t learn it;

if our mind is filled with myth and misunderstanding.

To learn is to grow closer to God,

not to be afraid of what obedience might cost us.

To learn is to grow in faith,

in godliness,

so that when God asks, “where are you,”

we each of us can respond with confidence,

“Right here Lord,

and learning constantly how to move

ever closer to you.”

AMEN