Home to the Traveler

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

February 24, 2013

Second Sunday in Lent

Home To The Traveler

Psalm 27

We know the words so well:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Both Matthew and Mark tell us that

those were the final words Jesus spoke

as he hung dying on the cross.                             

They are words of desperation,

of utter abandonment.

They are words that speak to a deafening silence.

A final prayer lifted in anguished cry,

only to find nothing in response.

Luke and John give us quite different endings:

they both give us Jesus who not only did not feel forsaken,

but felt God’s presence very strongly,

even as he was hung upon that cruel executioner’s tool

we call the cross.

“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,”

is what Luke tells us Jesus prayed,

before saying to his Father with quiet confidence,

“Into your hands I commend my spirit”

and breathing his last.

(Luke 23:34; 46)

                          

John gives us Jesus in full control of the situation,

so certain of God’s presence,

so trusting and faithful.

In John’s gospel we have a Jesus who carries his own cross –

no stumbling on the road to Golgotha,

no Simon of Cyrene to carry the heavy load.

Nailed to the rough wood,

even as the life ebbed from him,

he sees to his mother Mary:

“Woman, here is your son.”

And then, almost like a person

who knows all his tasks are complete

he says so simply,

“It is finished”.

(John 19:26;30)

The words that Matthew and Mark attribute to Jesus

come from the Book of Psalms,

from Psalm 22, a psalm of lament:          

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

What are you so far from helping me,

from the words of my groaning?

O my God, I cry by day, but you don’t answer,

and by night, but find no rest.”

(Psalm 22:1-2)

The psalmist feels so completely abandoned,

his voice whispering, shouting, pleading, whimpering,

“God, where are you

God why are you so silent?

God, why have you left me alone?

Why can I no longer hear you,

feel you,     

find you?

The author of those words may well have written

the words of Psalm 27, as well,

for they too speak to a sense of abandonment:

“do not cast me off,

do not forsake me, O God of my salvation.”

“My mother can forsake me,” says the psalmist,

“my father can forsake me,

for that matter, the whole world can forsake me,

but not you O God,

please, O God don’t you forsake me!”

Who among us hasn’t gone through a time

when we have felt alone, forsaken,

abandoned,

unable to feel God’s presence,

fearful that God had turned away,

lost interest,

left us, never to return.

Who among us hasn’t lifted up our voice to God,

“God hear my prayer,”

only to find silence in response,

not even the echo of our own words to break the stillness.

“God, where are you?

Are you there?

I need you.

I need you to hear my prayer,

I need you to answer my prayer

for I have just lost my job,

my marriage is collapsing,

I fear for my health,

my loved one is dying,

my world has turned bleak,

dim, cold.

I’m frightened,

and struggling to hold onto hope.

Hear me, God.

Answer me, O Lord.”

We put all our trust in God,

and then it seems that when we need God the most

we feel ourselves speaking as though to a void,

leaving us feeling bereft, alone.

But the psalmist reminds us first,

that we are not alone in feeling that way;

that many of God’s children have felt the same way.

So many that God inspired the psalmist

to give voice to those feelings,

to write them down so that,

generation after generation,

the faithful could read them,

identify with them,

have them to speak to their own feelings;

and ultimately find hope in them.

For the psalmist does gives us hope –

we just need to keep reading.

He doesn’t hold back from expressing his anguish,

but then he goes on and tells us:

“The Lord is the stronghold of my life;

of whom shall I be afraid?...

I will be confident,

for God will shelter me,

care for me,

protect me.”

                                   

The psalmist is anguished,

and his feelings are real,

yet still he trusts in God:

“I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord.”

The author of Psalm 22 walks the same path.

We hear him pleading for twenty-one verses,

fifty lines,

the words of a person who seems lost beyond hope.

But then, as we continue reading,

without any word of explanation,

the tone changes, changes radically,

turning 180 degrees:

“you have rescued me!”...the psalmist exults,

and then he proclaims to all the world:

“God did not hide his face from me,

but heard when I cried to him.”

As we walk through Lent,

as we acknowledge our waywardness,

as we acknowledge those times when we have turned from God,

when we’ve forsaken God, even for the briefest moment,

as we acknowledge when we’ve given into temptation,

we should also acknowledge those times

when we’ve given in to despair,

when we’ve given in to doubt

when we’ve given in to a feeling of abandonment,

of having been forsaken.

We should offer as a Lenten prayer

the words the father spoke

after Jesus healed his son:

“I believe; help my unbelief!”

(Mark 9:24)

Living in faith isn’t easy

and we all have our moments of doubt,

desperation and despair.

The Franciscan monk Bernard wrote a simple prayer

that speaks so elegantly to our wobbly faith:

“Lord, I want to love you, yet I’m not sure.

I want to trust you, yet I’m afraid of being taken in.

I know I need you, yet I’m ashamed of the need.

I want to pray, yet I’m afraid of being a hypocrite.

I need my independence, yet I fear being alone.

I want to belong, yet I must be myself.

Take me, Lord, yet leave me alone.

Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.

O Lord, you are there, you do understand, don’t you?

Give me what I need but leave me free to choose.

Help me work it out my own way, but don’t let me go.

Let me understand myself, but don’t let me despair.

Come to me, O Lord - I want you there.

Lighten my darkness - but don’t dazzle me.

Help me to see what I need to do and give me strength to do it.

O Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”

It is a wonderful prayer to use throughout Lent.

It is wonderful prayer to build on,

as we acknowledge the times we’ve felt lost,

forsaken, abandoned.

As we acknowledge those times when

we’ve felt like we’ve lifted up our voices

in fervent prayer only to hear silence in response. 

The psalmist won’t abandon us;

he is right there, arm around us

telling us to take a step back,

take a deep, relaxing breath,

and then listen for God’s word to us,

telling us,

“Be still and know that I am.”

(Psalm 46:10)

Be still, and then be patient:

“Wait for the Lord,” says the psalmist,

“be strong and let your heart take courage!”

Be still.

Wait.

Trust.

Fear Not.    

For silence too is a sign of God’s presence.

As Barbara Brown Taylor has written so poetically,

“Divine silence is not a vacuum that speaks to God’s absence,

but a mystery to be entered into,

a holy of holies for us to enter into,…”

calmly, peacefully, confidently.

(When God is Silent, 118)

And in that silence, once we find ourselves calm,

centered,

we can pray with the psalmist,

“One thing I asked of the Lord,

that I will seek after:

to live in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life,

to behold the beauty of the Lord,

and to inquire in his temple.”

And then, having offered that prayer

we can wait patiently and confidently

for God’s sure, loving response:

“Come in, weary traveler.

Come into my house and rest,

for this is your home, too.

Here you are safe,

here you can find rest and renewal.

Come in and know that I am;

know that I am with you,

just as I always have been,   

and just as I always will be.”

AMEN

Giving In

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

February 17, 2013

First Sunday in Lent

Giving In

Luke 4:1-13

The young man sat at the table gazing out the window.

He looked across the street,

watching workers install a new poster on a large billboard.

image on the poster was of a car –

a luxury car –

a car with a reputation for being among the very best,

and, also, for being among the most expensive.

The young man looked longingly at the car,

enviously,

even covetously.

“If only I could afford a car like that,” he thought.

“If I could afford a car like that,

all doors would be open to me.

People would think I was cool, that I’d made it.

If I had a car like that, I’d have it all.”

The young man was so lost in his thoughts

that he didn’t notice the older man

who had taken the seat across from him.

He too looked out the window;

“Nice car,” he said.

The young man murmured his agreement,

lost in his dreams of possession.

The older man quietly pushed a piece of paper

across the table to the young man,

and held out a pen,

“Make a deal with me, kid and you can have the car…

and, everything that goes along with it.”

The young man looked at the older man

and without even asking a question

he took the pen.

His eyes, his mind, his whole being

were focused on that car.

Images of what his life would be like

carried him away:

dates with beautiful supermodels;

hangin’ at the coolest clubs with celebrities;

wealth, fame –

people pointing at him

eyeing him the same way they looked at

Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, George Clooney.

The young man pulled the piece of paper toward him

and looked for the line where he should sign the document.

But then he took one more look out the window

and at just that moment

the workers uncovered the last part of the poster,

the lower left corner,

which revealed the price of the car.

The young man was stunned.

He had assumed the car had a price tag of

80, 90, even 100 thousand dollars.

But there, in bright red letters two feet high it said,

“$29,000”,

hardly more than a Ford or Chevrolet.

The young man quickly pushed the paper back across the table

and handed the pen to the older man.        

He smiled as he said, “I think I’ve got it.”

The older man, furious in defeat,

instantly vanished in a cloud of sulfur.

This was a television ad that ran during the Super Bowl.

The car company spared no expense producing the ad,

casting the distinguished actor Willem Dafoe as the older man,

the tempter.

The supermodel Kate Upton

and the singer Usher were also featured in the 90-second drama.

And just in case the audience didn’t get it,

the soundtrack was nothing less than the Rolling Stones’

classic song, “Sympathy for the Devil,”

showing no signs of age 45 years after it was first released.

The plot was timeless:

a young man with temptation squarely before him,

about to make a Faustian bargain:

the car, “and everything that goes along with it,”

all for what lawyers would call so tactfully,

“future consideration.”

But the car company saved the young man from the tempter’s power

by setting the price of the car within his reach.

“Set your soul free”, invited an announcer at the end,

set your soul free behind the wheel of this,

and only this, car.

Do you see the irony here?

The young man may not have signed on the dotted line;

he may have sent Willem Dafoe away in a puff of angry smoke,

but he still gave in;

He gave in to temptation.

He gave in to the seduction that the car would somehow

open up a new world for him –

a world of glamor, fame, excitement.

We find temptation all around us,

in front, behind, on either side of us,

everywhere.         

And the temptations that surround us aren’t offered

with knowing smiles by shadowy, sinister figures,

caps pulled low on their foreheads to hide their horns,

pitchforks disguised to look like umbrellas.  

Just like the young man,

we are tempted by money,

by fame,

by power,

by glamor,

by excitement,

by almost anything.

        

There is temptation in even the simplest aspects of life:

“Should I call in today and claim I’m sick

so I can have a day off?”

“Should I listen to the friend who tells me

that I shouldn’t worry about cheating on the exam,

or cheating on my income taxes:

1.    because every else does it;

2.    because I probably won’t get caught;

3.    because no one will be hurt by my cheating;

4.    and besides, it isn’t really that big a deal;

it’s not like I’m robbing a bank.

But when we give into temptation of any kind,

we rob ourselves, we hurt ourselves,

because when we give into temptation,

we turn from God, we turn away from God,

even if just for the briefest moment.

That’s what our lesson teaches us.

This isn’t a lesson about the devil;

this is a lesson about how Jesus calls us to live

by the first of the two Great Commandments,

that we are to:

love the Lord with all our heart,

with all our strength,

with all our minds,

with and, of course, all our soul.

Live this way, Jesus would have us learn,

and we can handle life’s temptations as they come,

strengthened by the Spirit of God,

brushing temptations aside,

as more nuisance than threat,

just as Jesus did in the wilderness.

Read through the pages of both Old and New Testament,

and we can find story after story of temptation.

Time and time again, it is the faithful person

who manages to steer clear of temptation,

while the person of weak faith succumbs.

The Book of Proverbs,

written long before anyone developed the notion,

the idea,

of the character we now call the devil,

warned young men in particular,

of the temptations that were all around them.

warned them that only by faith,

only through faith,

could they hope to steer clear of

those who would lead them to

“forsake the paths of uprightness

and walk in the ways of darkness.”

(Proverbs 2:13)

The Proverbs put it so simply:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart

for he will make straight our paths.”

(Proverbs 3:5)

The forty days of Lent that lie before us

provide each of us with the opportunity

to reflect on when, …where, …how

we give into temptation.

It is tempting, though, to ignore this opportunity,

to think to ourselves, “I’m okay”;

or perhaps with a little false humility,

to think, “I may not be perfect,

but at least I’m better than most.”

Don’t you see, though, that that is giving into

the irresistibly tempting power of denial,

of giving into the temptation to close our minds to the truth.

But, as Scripture teaches us, if we say we have no sin,

we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  

We’re not good at being introspective.

We’re so much better at

pointing the finger at others.

We’re so much more comfortable saying,

“I’m not all that bad,

but I know an awful lot of people who are.”

The strength of Twelve-Step programs is

that they demand an honest look within;

denial is unacceptable.

The first words out of the mouth of newcomer

to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous are,

“I’m an alcoholic.”

There is no hope for new life in denial.

Lent invites us to look honestly in the mirror at ourselves,

you at yourself,

me at myself,

to face squarely where we have turned from God and

to acknowledge what temptations repeatedly

and all too easily lead us from God.

It isn’t easy to live faithfully;

especially with so many temptations all around us.

But the life we are to live as disciples of Christ

calls us to face the choices we have before us each day,

acknowledge that very few are clear,

that most of them fall into patches of gray,

and try our best to make the godly choices,

try our best to live by

“Doing what is right and good

in the sight of the Lord”

(Deut 6:18)

Don’t give into the temptation

that giving up French fries or ice cream or chocolate

is all you need to do to observe Lent.

The purpose of Lent is to arouse in each of us

a sense of where we have turned,

a sense of where we’ve given in,

a sense of where we have sinned,

all so that we can we washed clean,

strengthened,

renewed.

All so we can follow more faithfully our Risen Lord,

the One who is the light of the world,

the light that no darkness of any kind

can ever overcome.

AMEN