What Will We Teach Them?

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

August 26, 2012

What Will We Teach Them?

Joshua 24:14-15

"Now therefore revere the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD.

 Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD,

 choose this day whom you will serve,

whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River

 or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living;

 but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."

These are perilous times for religion,

for churches,

for denominations of every name and style.

Organized religion seems increasingly to be condemned as

something that draws people

who live by myth and superstition,

who are filled with a sense of self-righteousness,

who are quick to judge,

who speak more words of division,

hatred,

even violence,

than words of justice,

mercy,

or love.

How many televangelists ply the airwaves

pleading for money,

calling them love gifts,

saying they need the funds to keep their ministries going,

without saying that their most important ministry

is their own lavish and luxurious lifestyle?

How many religious leaders from Christian denominations

have been arrested over the past few years

and charged with crimes involving moral turpitude?

And if we find the present picture too unseemly and disturbing,

looking back on Christian history provides little comfort.

Ours is history of much good, to be sure,

but it is also stained with blood.

The Crusades and the Inquisition are only two of

countless instances of shameful violence

committed in the name of Jesus Christ.

The unapologetic atheist Christopher Hitchens

was certainly overstating the case when he argued

that, “religion poisons everything,”

but I don’t think we can disagree with him

when he said that religions of all faiths,

including Christian denominations,

have often been at the root cause of hatred,

of conflict,

of violence,

of war.

A few minutes ago we joyfully welcomed

Maggie, Ava, and Zoe into the

universal church of Jesus Christ,

the worldwide communion of more than 2 billion

men, women and children throughout this world.

As part of their baptismal service,

we all made a promise to them

to nurture them in their faith

and to help them learn of Jesus Christ.

How will we do that?

What will we do?

What will we say?

What will we teach them?

How will teach them the good news

of the gospel of Jesus Christ?

For there is good news in the gospel of Jesus Christ,

as long as we don’t distort it,

bend it to our own whims,

as long as we stay faithful to our Lord’s teachings.

If you remember what we talked about last week,

we will want them to grow into Beatitude lives,

Beatitude living as they grow in spiritual maturity.

That’s down the road, of course;

We’ll start them with a foundation of Ten Commandment lives,

teaching them stories from the Bible,

and then in time helping them to learn

the various creeds and statements of belief

that are part of our Reformed tradition.

We’ll want to teach them that church is not an institution,

but a community,

this community,

any community anywhere

where the faithful are gathered

in the name of Jesus Christ.

We’ll want to teach them that

no one church is better than others,

or in greater possession of truth.

We’ll want to teach them that

the root of the word “disciple”

is to learn;

All disciples are called to be learners,

life-long learners,

and that means no one has all the answers.

Most important,

we will want them to understand that

when they get older,

they’ll have to decide for themselves,

whether to follow Christ,

where, and how.

This is what Joshua was telling the children of Israel;

it is what he was saying to them:

Here we stand all together,

here we stand at a crossroads,

at a decision point.

It is now time for each of you

to make a decision for yourself,

to think for yourself,

to choose for yourself.

You have in the past worshiped idols and other gods;

you can continue doing that,

if that’s what you want to do.

Or you can worship the gods of the people whose land

we will be living in, the Amorites.

Or you can choose to do what my household and I

have chosen to do,

intend to do,

and that is, to worship the Lord God,

Yahweh, the God who has led us out of slavery,

through the wilderness

and here to the promised land.

So friends, choose.

Choose this day whom you will worship and serve.

It is up to you.

The decision is yours.

That’s the best thing we can do for these girls

and for all the boys and girls,

all the young women and men in our church:

help them to grow in knowledge and faith

so that when they find themselves at the crossroads,

they’ll be able to choose wisely,

faithfully,

and well.

One of the loudest complaints among young people

in churches of all denominations these days

is that the churches – the clergy, teachers,

and other leaders, are not truly helping young people

to wrestle with their questions;

that instead we are offering them,

“slick, glib, half-baked” responses,

and platitudes.

We must not do that with these girls,

or any of our young people.

The disturbing trend of ant-intellectualism

that seems to have grabbed hold in society at large

has found a home in many churches.

We don’t seem to want to learn,

to use our minds, to explore for answers.

The dismissal of science

as incompatible with faith is the most obvious example

of this anti-intellectual trend.

The churches who readily proclaim

as an essential tenet of their faith,

“we believe in the literal 7 days of Creation

as set forth in the book of Genesis,”

dismiss evolution in favor of a book

that was never meant to be a science text.

Two hundred years ago ministers in this country

argued that a new practice in medicine

surely flew in the face of God’s will.

It was the practice of vaccinating people

against certain diseases.

Church leaders were appalled,

arguing that if it was God’s will

that a person should be afflicted with disease,

even die of it,

so be it.

Clearly we want to create an environment in our church

where we remember that we are called to worship God

with our minds as well as with our hearts,

and that faith and science are not mutually exclusive,

but rather two interconnected ways

for us to know God

that much more,

that much better.

The English theologian Austin Farrer put it this way,

“The God of religion is not different from

the God of rational inquiry.

To see into the active causes of the world

is to find a sovereign and creative will;

and that is the will which religion embraces.”

This is the God we want the girls to learn:

the God who is sovereign, creative,

still creating and re-creating,

active in the world all around us,

the natural world as well as the world of faith.

This God calls us to use our minds

to shape new lives for ourselves,

transformed lives,

Beatitude lives.

We want to teach them that we don’t expect

and don’t seek uniformity of opinions,

that we will have differing opinions.

But surely we will want to assure

that they are part of a church in which,

as theologian Richard Mouw has put it,

civility trumps all,

that we understand that our call to civilized living,

reconciled living,

supercedes every other concern.

And we will want to help them to learn

that it’s not just acceptable,

but indeed expected,

that they will change their minds

about all kinds of things as they grow up.

If we are open to the transforming spirit of God,

then surely we will find our minds changed

on matters both small and large.

I’ve always liked the way William Sloane Coffin put it

in a letter to a young man,

“It is a good time to change your mind

when to do so will widen your heart.”

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting,

as some like Hitchens might argue,

but rather it has been tried and found difficult,

(W.S.Coffin)

and this is perhaps the most important lesson

we will teach,

the most important lesson any of us will learn.

Our calling to these girls,

to all our children

and to one another

is to teach through our words,

but even more important,

teach in how we live our own lives,

to live the gospel each day.

honestly, faithfully,

even if imperfectly,

for living the Christian life is not easy.

We want to teach them

as Paul taught the Philippians:

Keep on doing the things that

you have learned and received

and heard and seen in me, …”

(Philippians 4:8)

Each of us trying our best to model Christian living

in our own lives.

If we do that,

we will write the history God intended for us,

a history of God’s children living together

in peace, in harmony,

all of us living Beatitude lives, 

lives of goodness and compassion,

not lives of violence and conflict,

division and disagreement.

All of us,

them, you, me,

all us of us living faithfully

showing one another and the world

our choice for Christ.

AMEN

I’ve Seen All the Cool Bands

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

August 19, 2012

I’ve Seen All the Cool Bands

John 4:23-24

“But the hour is coming, and is now here,

when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth,

 for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.

God is spirit, and those who worship him

must worship in spirit and truth.”

I was walking into the grocery store

when I spotted the bumper sticker on the back of a car:

“I may be old, but I’ve seen all the cool bands.”

I don’t normally pay much attention to bumper stickers,

but that one caught my eye;

I liked it.

I liked it because…

well,

I have seen all the cool bands!

Come back in time with me, 44 years,

to a place called Melody Fair,

an 800-seat outdoor theater in a suburb of Buffalo;

it was on the grounds of what had been

the giant Wurlitzer factory, where for decades

the Mighty Wurlitzer organs were produced.

My older sister and I had persuaded my father

to take us to there to see a British band

that was touring America for the first time,

a band called, The Who.

They’d only released two albums at that point;

their great rock opera “Tommy” was still in the future.

But we were eager to see them;

we wanted to hear them sing:

“My Generation”,

“Happy Jack”,

and their newest hit, “Magic Bus”.

A few months later I was with friends

at Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium

for a concert by the Beach Boys.

They were at the height of their popularity back then,

but it was the warm-up band I was more interested in,

a relatively new group from California

that had had one hit on the radio,

a song called, “For What It’s Worth”.

The band was The Buffalo Springfield,

fronted by a buckskin-fringed lead guitarist

named Neil Young,

and second guitarist Steven Stills,

who would later lead a group called Manassas.

The peak of my concert-going came in the fall of 1969

when my older sister and I went to Kleinhans Music Hall,

the home of the Buffalo Philharmonic,

to hear another relatively new group from Great Britain.

This band was very different from The Who,

the Beatles, Herman’s Hermits, and other British bands.

This group’s music was loud, driving, pulsing,

blues deeply embedded in every song.

They had just released their first album

and not that many people were aware of them,

which explained why a thousand seats were empty

in the 3,000-seat music hall.

The next day, my friends at school

were not at all impressed when I told them

I had seen a band called, Led Zeppelin.

Over the next few years, I continued to see cool groups

as they came through Buffalo:

The Who on their Tommy Tour;

Led Zeppelin when they returned in 1971;

The Rolling Stones;

The Grateful Dead;

Pink Floyd;

Emerson, Lake & Palmer;

Iron Butterfly;

The Moody Blues;

I was a high school senior when I saw Eric Clapton

in his Derek and the Dominoes iteration.

It’s hard for me to believe that it was 40 years ago

that I saw all those cool bands;

it doesn’t seem that long ago.

I still listen to much of that music,

but now more as a way to time travel,

to wax nostalgic,

to reflect on my teen years

without the anxiety or the acne.

These days my iPod has an eclectic mix,

but my musical preferences lean to jazz and classical.

My musical tastes have changed over time

as my musical tastes have matured.

I don’t say that as a criticism of the rock bands;

But as we grow older we should grow in maturity.

Our taste in music, clothing,

reading preferences,

food,

the cars we drive –

they all change with time,

or at least they should as we mature.

                                   

The same is just as true in our faith life;

that too should change,

evolve and deepen

as we grow in spiritual maturity.

                                   

Both Paul and Peter in their letters

to the first followers of Christ

referred to them as newborns in faith.

Peter wrote,

“Like newborn infants,

 long for the pure, spiritual milk,

so that by it you may grow….”

(1 Peter 2:2)

Paul was typically more blunt,

even confrontational with the Christians in Corinth,

writing to them.

“I fed you with milk, not solid food,

for you were not ready for solid food.

Even now you are still not ready.”

(1 Corinthians 3:2)

Neither Paul nor Peter was trying to be

patronizing or condescending;

they simply wanted their hearers

to understand that as disciples of Christ,

they began, as we all do, as beginners.

The adage is true: we need to crawl before we walk.

But if we work at it,

we will grow in maturity in faith.

As Paul would later write to the Colossians,

“It is Christ whom we proclaim,

… teaching everyone in all wisdom,

so that we may present everyone

 mature in Christ.”

(Colossians 1:28)

That’s our goal: to be mature in Christ.

And that doesn’t come just with years,

but only with intention, with work.

In his book, “Falling Upward”

Franciscan priest Richard Rohr

speaks of our having two halves to our spiritual lives,

our faith lives.

The first he calls the “Ten Commandments” half.

This is where we begin,

by learning rules, creeds,

what we should and should not do.

The second half Rohr calls the “Beatitudes” half.

This is when our spiritual lives tip to spiritual maturity

as we learn to live not as much by rules

as by grace;

not as much by creeds

as by love;

when we learn to live in,

and with,

and through God’s blessings.

It is in this part of our life that we learn

that living our faith isn’t simple,

a matter of easy black and white rules,

but rather that our faith life is nuanced,

requiring discernment and wisdom

if we would live faithfully and well.

Certainly no text from the Bible makes that point clearer

than the lesson we heard not that long ago,

the lesson of the adulterous woman,

where Jesus ignored the clear words of Scripture,

not just one verse,

but two separate, distinct passages

that should have led Jesus

to pick up a rock and lead the group

to stone to death the clearly guilty woman.

But you recall that’s not what Jesus did;

he showed the woman grace and mercy

as he forgave her and sent her on her way.

(John 8:1-11)

        

In the “Ten Commandments” part of our lives

Rohr observes that “religion is almost always about

various types of purity codes,

or ‘thou-shalt-nots’

to keep us upright, clear, clean.”

In the “Ten Commandments” part of our lives

we define ourselves by differentiating ourselves:

who is smarter,

who is more successful,

who is more athletic,

who is more attractive,

who is more popular,

who has more money.

This type of thinking infects our faith lives:

who is more religious;

who is God’s preferred;

Who has Jesus in his or her pocket;

Who understands the Bible better.

I spotted this kind of thinking in yet another bumper sticker

that said,

“You worship God in your way,

while I worship God in his.”

That’s what is happening in our lesson:

In Jesus’ day, the Samaritans and the Jews

were always arguing with each other,

and among their arguments

was the proper way and the proper place to worship.

The Samaritans thought they had it right

and the Jews were wrong

and the Jews, of course, thought that they had it right,

and the Samaritans were wrong.

Jesus’ response was that it isn’t a matter of one way

being better or preferred,

that one group was right,

while the other was wrong.

In the Kingdom of God, rules, creeds,

buildings, decorations,

priestly vestments,

differences -- none of that will matter.

“But the hour is coming and is now here,

when the true worshipers will worship the Father

in spirit and in truth.”

This is all that matters.

                                            

Every time we look to Jesus

to reinforce our way of thinking,

that we have it right,

while others have it wrong,

he seems to turn things upside down.

And that’s just what Jesus does with the Beatitudes

that we find in both Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels.

So, in our Beatitude half of life

we learn to stop focusing on the things that differ,

that separate us from others,

and instead look for the things we have in common.

We become bridge builders;

We open up doors,

removing barriers that get in the way of community,

that get in the way of Kingdom building.  

Rohr makes the point so simply:

“the classic spiritual journey always begins elitist

and ends egalitarian.”

Rohr acknowledges that this is a hard path

for us to walk, though:

“The ego clearly prefers an economy of merit,

where we can divide the world into winners and losers,

to an economy of grace,

where merit or worthiness loses all meaning.”

But the reality is that the life we are called to

is a life of grace, not merit,

where the glory is God’s,

not ours.

And so, Jesus teaches us,

blessed are the poor in spirit;

blessed are those who mourn;

blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness;

blessed are the peacemakers;

and most troubling to our egos,

to our competitive spirit, to our drive,

blessed are the meek, the humble,

for they will inherit the earth.

(Matthew 5)

Peter tells us that we are invited

“to participate in the divine nature”

(2 Peter 1:4)

but we’ll be able to do this only if we grow spiritually,

only if we mature in faith,

only if we move from the “Ten Commandments” way of life

to the “Beatitudes” way of life.

It is why Jesus teaches us,

“For those who want to save their life will lose it,

and those who lose their life for my sake,

and for the sake of the gospel,

will save it.

For what will it profit them to gain the whole world

and forfeit their life?”

(Mark 8:35-36)

“No man is an island,”

wrote the poet John Donne.

Our lives are interconnected.

For good or for ill,

we touch and affect one another’s lives,

family, friend, and even the stranger.

It is why Jesus teaches an all-inclusive,

all-encompassing definition of the word, “neighbor”.

When we are indifferent,

when we fail to live with compassion,

when we hesitate to live generously

with what isn’t even ours in the first place

no matter how vigorously we may argue it is,

we aren’t living Beatitude lives;

we aren’t working to grow in spiritual maturity.

But when we see someone who shivers in the cold,

or who moans from an empty stomach,

or who struggles to think of a reason to smile

and reach out with compassion and kindness --

that reflects maturity,

that reflects that we are living Beatitude lives;

that reflects that we are truly living

the life to which Jesus has called us.

Yes, I saw the cool bands when I was younger;

but I am older now,

more musically mature,

and, I certainly hope, more spiritually mature.

The music that matters most to me

is the music God is playing,

with the lyrics written by Jesus

calling me to be salt,

to be light,

to be a life-giver.

This is the music of maturity,

this music of Beatitude life,

for it is music of blessing and joy.

        

AMEN

The Power

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

August 12, 2012

The Power

1 Kings 19:1-8

The movie’s premise is wonderfully absurd:

God wants to take a vacation

and needs someone to fill in for him while he is away,

someone to oversee the world,

indeed, the whole universe.

He reaches out and picks a

washed-up television news reporter as his replacement,

and then without much explanation,

God endows the man with all his godly powers.

Just as quickly God then exits for vacation,

for parts of the universe unknown.

You know the movie, don’t you;

It’s “Bruce Almighty”,

with Morgan Freeman portraying God with wit and warmth,

and Jim Carrey as the effervescent supply god.

Once God leaves for his vacation,

we see Carrey struggle as he tries to understand

what has happened to him.

He looks the same, acts the same,

but still – he’s got all God’s power!

He starts to experiment,

to try out his new powers,

to see what he can do.

He starts small, parting a miniature Red Sea

in a bowl of tomato soup.

But slowly he begins to understand:

he’s become as all-powerful as the Lord God.

He’s got power!

And with that realization the soundtrack amps up

with the pulsing beat of the song, “The Power,”

the screen showing Carrey swaggering down the street,

the song pumping,

the singer wailing,

“I’ve got the power,

I’ve got the power.”

This is what the Elijah’s life should have been like;

Our lesson from First Kings should have recorded that

2800 years ago Elijah walked with

Jim Carrey’s strut and swagger,

as though the soundtrack in his head

anticipated the song,

“I’ve got the power, I’ve got the power.”

The screenwriters should have been able

to lift Carrey’s scene straight from Elijah’s life.

Just two chapters after he is introduced

so simply as “Elijah the Tishbite”,

Elijah had become the Michael Phelps

of the prophet-of-God world.

He singled-handedly confronted

and defeated the prophets of the pagan god Baal,

all 450 of them,

all at the same time.

He withheld the rain;

he raised a boy thought dead back to life.

Elijah was “the man”!

He should have been walking the dusty roads of Israel

like a rock star.

Yet we find him in our lesson alone,

out in the desert wilderness,

under a broom tree,

which is really more shrub than tree,

saying to God,

“It is enough;

now O Lord, take away my life.”

What happened to make Elijah so

despondent, dejected,

depressed,

low and lonely?

Where was the power of God

that had been so evident in Elijah’s life?

Why can’t Elijah feel it?

What we learn is that Israel’s Queen Jezebel

was a follower of the pagan god Baal,

and she was outraged when Elijah

not only humiliated her prophets,

but then killed them on God’s instructions.

She vowed vengeance.

She vowed to track down Elijah and kill him.

Elijah was consumed with fear and ran for his life,

down into the southern kingdom of Judah,

down to Beersheba,

far from the vicious Jezebel.

We find him in our lesson collapsed under the shrub,

breathing heavily after his flight from danger,

his robe soaked with sweat,

his eyes scanning the horizon,

his ears alert to every sound.

We can almost hear his thoughts:

“This isn’t what I agreed to when I accepted God’s call,

when I agreed to serve.

God never said anything about people wanting to kill me

for doing what God told me to do.

This is not what I bargained for!

Jezebel is a vicious queen and

she won’t rest until her soldiers

bring her my head.

So that’s it, enough,

I might as well die here and now.”

We find him so low,

so despondent,

so filled with feelings of abandonment,

alone,

completely hopeless.

But we know, don’t we,

that he was not alone,

that God had not abandoned him,

not even for a moment.

God sent his angels to watch over him,

to care for him,

to feed him,

to grace him, so exhausted physically and emotionally,

with restful, renewing sleep.

And in the morning God’s angels fed Elijah yet again,

and then led him further south

deep into the wilderness,

far from danger.

And if you remember your lessons from Sunday School,

you will remember that Jezebel

was the one who met an untimely end,

not Elijah.

Elijah continued to do the work God sent him to do,

until he had a successor in Elisha,

and then in that wonderful scene

was carried up into the heavens,

in a flaming chariot.

(2 Kings 2:11)

Elijah never lost God’s power;

he never was separated from God,

away from God’s presence.

As low as he felt,

as despondent, as dejected as he felt,

he was never completely alone;

God was always with him.

In our stress-filled world,

we all have our moments of deep discouragement,

of profound loneliness,

of the all but certain feeling that all hope is gone,

that the darkness that covers us

will never give way to light.

But the promise is sure,

that underneath us,

even in those moments,

are the everlasting,

ever-loving arms of God,

always there to help us through the most difficult times,

to get us back on our feet.

This is something I know well in my own life.

I have had my own moments of darkness:

a serious health issue when I was in my late twenties;

living with an alcoholic in my first marriage

when I was in my thirties;

watching a business I was part of

implode and collapse underneath me

as I approached forty.

But I found that it was in those most difficult times,

that my faith actually grew;

that I could feel God’s presence and comforting power

even in the midst of turmoil and trouble,

even as I stumbled in the dark.

I learned in those moments, those times, 
those days,

even those weeks,

to sing with the psalmist:

“Seek the Lord and his strength;
seek his presence continually”

(Psalm 105:4)

And when I sought God,

God was there.

Every summer when I return to Vermont for vacation

I re-read at least one of the more than 30 books

written by the Reverend Frederick Buechner.

Buechner (BEEKner) lives in Rupert Vermont,

which is the next town over from where we stay.

He’s well known in the area,

and the local bookstore always carries

a good selection of his books,

so it always seems to be to the right time and place

for me to go gleaning in the vast fields of his wisdom.

His writings make so clear that he is a man of great faith,

yet he readily admits his tendency to worry,

his tendency to anxiety.

He writes movingly and eloquently

of how dark clouds have descended around him

so often his life.

But time and time again,

just when he might have expected

no longer to feel the power and presence of God,

there it was.

This is how he put it in one of his sermons:

“To remember my life

is to remember the countless times

when I might have given up, gone under,

when humanly speaking I might have gotten lost

beyond the power of any to find me.

But I didn’t……

I’ve not given up….

[For] as weak as we are,

a strength beyond our strength [pulls] us through…

Foolish as we are, a wisdom beyond our wisdom

[flickers] up just often enough

 to light [the way forward for us];

Faint of heart as we are

a love beyond our power to love

[keeps] our hearts alive….

[This love, this power] is the Lord;

it is God,

who has been with us throughout all our days and years

whether we knew it or not….

with us in our best moments

and our worst moments.”

(“A Room Called Remember” in Secrets in the Dark)

This is the power of God that is in our lives,

my life,

your life,     

Buechner’s life,

and yes, Elijah’s life.

It is the power that gives us strength,

gets us back up on our feet

shows us the way forward;

It is the power that lifts the dark clouds

and lets light come flooding in to give us hope.

As Buechner reminds us

God is always there,

whether we know it or not,

to comfort us,

to heal us,

to fix our brokenness,

to guide us,

to grace us with hope.

The very name we call this room reminds us of that power.

We call this room a Sanctuary,

a sacred place, a holy place,

a place of refuge, of renewal,

where we are safe,

safe even from Jezebel and her soldiers.

God is certainly not confined to this place,

but in this place we are a little more attentive,

a little more aware of God’s presence.

Who among us doesn’t feel a little different

walking through the doors of this Sanctuary?

We walk a little straighter,

we feel a little more at peace.

We see the Cross, and we know that

whatever is going on in our lives,

somehow it will all work out.

And the wonderful thing is that

we know God’s presence and God’s power

not just here, but everywhere,

even when we are out in the wilderness,

exhausted,

terrified,

collapsed under a tree.

Elijah will again hear God’s voice,

will again feel himself in God’s presence.

He will find the power to persevere and carry on,

going about God’s work,

all the challenges and even the dangers still there,

but Elijah confident,

assured,

empowered by God’s love.

We too are empowered by that love,

God’s presence in our lives,

God’s grace given us in Jesus Christ.

For God is our Rock,

our Redeemer,

our Savior,

our sure hope,

our power.

AMEN 

If you are interested in learning more about Frederick Buechner, 

I recommend the following books as good starting points:

Listening to Your Life  - daily devotionals

Secrets in the Dark - a collection of sermons

Beyond Words - daily readings

Wishful Thinking - "A Seeker's ABC"