Sunday, February 16, 2014

Going Negative


The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
February 16, 2014

Going Negative
Selected Texts

Oh how easy it is to go negative.
Politicians know this probably better than anyone else,
especially during campaign season.
To go negative about your opponent is so maliciously simple,
you don’t even have to be truthful:
rumors, allegations,
the merest wisp of suggestion,
all throw thick mud just as well as facts.

Going negative isn’t limited to politicians, of course.
Just think of high school;
in fact I think there is more of mean-spirited
snipes and jabs in middle school than in high school.

The mean things we can be so quick to say about others
may seem to us laughable and harmless,
but words can sting, words can scar.
As scripture teaches us, the tongue can be
a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
With it we bless the Lord and Father,
and with it we curse those who are made
in the likeness of God.
(James 3:8)

It is one of our least attractive features
that we humans are usually quicker to
say something negative about another person
than we are to say something positive.

Even within churches and faith communities
we can be all too quick to go negative.
There is a reason why our Lord
confronts us with his stern words:
Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye,
but do not notice the log in your own eye?”
(Matthew 7:3)

There’s been a trend I’ve seen lately,
a growing chorus of negative voices,
negative words, articles, books, texts,
aimed at religion in general,
and particularly Christianity –
Christianity across the board,
all forms and denominations.

A growing chorus seems intent on condemning
Christianity as hostile, often hateful,
exclusive, judgmental,
narrow-minded,
obsessed with power,
greedy,
anti-intellectual.

Now certainly there is no shortage of things
we Christians and Christianity can be criticized for.
We’ve struggled from day one to follow Jesus faithfully.
Turn to Paul’s letter to the Galatians
and hear him express his astonishment
at how easily the new Christians of Galatia
were led astray,
how easily they bought into words
and ideas that sounded far more appealing
than the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The history of the papacy,
particularly in the centuries prior to the Reformation,
is a history marked by corruption
that seemed to know no bounds.

In the early years of the 20th century,
novelist Sinclair Lewis
didn’t conjure out of thin air
the corrupt evangelist Elmer Gantry.
Lewis probably patched together unseemly qualities
and traits from preachers he read about
in his daily newspaper
to form the protagonist of his novel.

Some of the current writers have argued that religion
has become more a force for bad than for the good.
The reflexive defensive strategy on the part of Christians
has been to counterattack,
to go after the critics as “godless heathens”,
attack them as atheists.

Are we who believe,
who try to live by faith,
walk by faith,
are we under attack?
Are we part of an institution
that does more harm than good?
Are we part of an institution that is obsolete,
no longer relevant,
on the verge of extinction?

Perhaps this negativity, this criticism –
aimed at Catholics, Methodists,
Baptists, Fundamentalists,
Pentecostals, and yes,
even Presbyterians,
perhaps it is a good thing,

Perhaps it is a call to us to look hard and long at ourselves,
look anew, afresh,
to re-examine who we are and what we do,
as we live our lives and our faith.

Counterattacking the critics may make us feel good
but wouldn’t our Lord disapprove?
Didn’t Jesus teach us
“Do not resist an evildoer.
But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek,
turn the other also”
(Matthew 5:39)

Listening to those who are on the
other side of an argument or a debate
can often by a very good thing,
a very healthy thing to do.
It can open our eyes to help us see
where we ourselves have gone wrong.

It is easy,
and almost reflexive when we are attacked
to turn defensive,
and then to dig in our heels
going after the one attacking us.
But isn’t that what we’ve been doing in politics
and in our culture all around us
for the past decade or so?
And what’s that got us?
Paralysis.
We are stopped dead on our tracks,
even as the Spirit is always calling us forward
into God’s future.

If we did take a fresh look at ourselves,
then we’d probably agree
with the theologian Douglas John Hall
who argues in his new book,
What Christianity Is Not,
that we’ve only ourselves to blame
because over the centuries we’ve tried n
to reduce Christianity to rules, creeds, slogans,
when Jesus calls us to new life,
transformed life,
life grounded in extravagant love,
love so extravagant that it goes beyond family,
beyond friends,
extending out to neighbor and beyond,
even to critic,
even to enemy.

Hall argues that we’ve trivialized Christianity
as we’ve tried to reduce it to bumper-sticker platitudes.
Hall laments that as a result,
“many of the most sober and thoughtful
men and women of our time
no longer find in this faith
anything profound enough to wrestle with,
or even pay attention to.”
(What Christianity Is Not, xii)

Our recent adult education offering
on science and faith illustrates the point.
It wasn’t all that long ago that men and women of faith
readily, eagerly embraced science,
seeing it as a path that revealed God’s majesty,
God’s glory, God’s incredible creative powers.

But now many in the religious community,
Christians of all denominations,
reject science as godless,
and in particular reject the idea of evolution,
preferring to look at Genesis as science textbook.
             
Even as our scientific knowledge has grown,
the number of Christians who argue
that Creationism trumps
what they perceive to be the evils of evolution
has remained steady;
in fact, among some groups it has even grown.
(see the Pew Forum study at

Christians have figured prominently
in the debate over climate change,
until recently fiercely and firmly denying
that human activity could be having
any affect on global climate.
It has only been in the last few years
that Christians have responded to
a small but growing group
reminding us of our call to be
faithful stewards of God’s creation.

Where for years we simply said that God had given us     
dominion over all the earth,
power over all the earth,
we Christians in our ignorance and our arrogance,
breezed right by the fact
that the Hebrew word we translate as “dominion”
conveys responsibility more than it conveys power.
When God gave us dominion,
God was imposing responsibility on us
for all God’s creatures.

This is God’s earth;
“the land is mine; says the Lord
with me you are but aliens and tenants.”
(Leviticus 25:23)

Why do we find it so easy to forget
that we are called to walk with humility?
Why do we struggle so to remember those powerful words
spoken through the prophet Micah:
what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
(Micah 6:8)

To walk humbly, to walk in humility
helps us to avoid thinking we know more than we do.
The great 4th century theologian Augustine
offered us wise words with his observation,
“if you think you understand it,
it isn’t God you are thinking about.”

We cannot reduce Christianity to rules, creeds,
slogans and sayings;
Christianity is more than that,
more than a moral code,
more than an ethical code,
even as there is much in the Bible
to guide us morally and ethically:
Don’t kill,
don’t steal,
don’t cheat in business,
don’t be greedy.

Have we missed the bigger picture?
God gave us moral codes
not to set rules for us to live by,
but to help us live with one another,
to help us live in community
with friend and stranger alike.
It is much easier to live with a neighbor
and love your neighbor
if you don’t steal from her,
and she doesn’t cheat you.

We are called to a positive life,
a life focused not on the negative,
but on the good,
on all those things that build up,
not tear down.

We are to go positive
even to those who go negative
saying to them,
“Welcome, come in, sit down,
what can I offer you to eat and drink?
You are my brother,
you are my sister.
We may disagree on this or that,
but let us work together to agree on the importance
of living positive, grace-filled,
grace-giving lives,
the two of us neither judging nor condemning,
neither criticizing nor belittling,
but building up, encouraging,
and working together on those things that truly matter:
feeding the hungry,
helping those who struggle,
living and working for peace.”

For you and me, it is a matter of faith.
For you and me, it is a matter of life –
the life, the positive life, we are called to live
by our Lord Jesus Christ.

AMEN

Sunday, February 09, 2014

The Little Things


The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
February 9, 2014

The Little Things
Romans 7:19
“For I do not do the good I want,
but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

Right and wrong.
Good and bad.
Black and white.
It’s all pretty simple, isn’t it?

We all know what is right;
we all know what is wrong;
we all know what is good;
we all know what is bad.
Stealing is wrong;
lying is bad;
sharing is good.
        
These are lessons we learn when we are young,
lessons we learn about right and wrong,
good and bad,
how to choose,
how to make good choices.

We learn these lessons through our families;
we learn them in school;
and we learn them here at the church.

Most of us learn about the Ten Commandments
in Sunday School;
Even if we cannot recite all ten,
we remember at least one or two:
honor your parents;
don’t kill,
perhaps another one or two.
    
Somewhere along the line,
we may have learned
what are called the Seven Deadly Sins:
·      Lust
·      Gluttony
·      Greed
·      Sloth
·      Wrath
·      Envy
·      Pride

We may even know their positive counterparts,
what are called the seven Cardinal Virtues;
·      Restraint
·      Temperance
·      Charity
·      Diligence
·      Patience
·      Kindness
·      Humility

The lists of Sins and Virtues are not specifically biblical-
you won’t find either of the lists in the Bible.
It was at the end of the sixth century that Pope Gregory I
developed the list of sins as a teaching tool;
The list of virtues came later.

Paul had his many lists scattered throughout his letters,
lists of qualities and characteristics
he believed a faithful Christian ought to have,
ought to show the world.
The lists differ here and there,
but they touch on the same basic themes:
Live with patience,
kindness, generosity,
and faithfulness.   
Don’t be arrogant, jealous;
don’t be quarrelsome;
don’t think you have all the answers.

But even as Paul was writing his lists,
telling his listeners and readers to live in a godly way,
a Christ-like way,
he also acknowledged how hard that can be,
how even he struggled.
That’s what we heard in our lesson,
our verse from his letter to the Christians in Rome.

His letter to the church at Rome was probably
the last of his letters.
It is deeply, sometimes even confusingly theological.
But it is also deeply human,
especially the text we heard:
“I do not do the good I want,
but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

Paul expressed this sentiment twice
within the same chapter:
Just a few sentences before our lesson
he wrote, “I do not understand my own actions.
For I do not do what I want,
but I do the very thing I hate.”
(Romans 7:15)

Paul captured the struggles he had,
the struggles we all have,
in trying to live a godly life,
a Christ-like life,
a truly faithful life focused on the good,
focused on doing what is right.
As Paul expressed with such anguish,
we’re not always going to be right,
we’re not always going to be good,
we’re not always going to do right, or do good.

Paul knew what we all know,
if we’re honest enough to admit it:
that life doesn’t sort itself out neatly
into the good and bad,
right and wrong,
black and white.  

Try as we might to make things simple,
we learn, as Paul did, that life is filled with nuance,
that we live in the grays most of the time,
and as a result, we find it that much harder
to make good choices, godly choices.
It is easy to say, what would Jesus do.
It’s often very hard to do it.

But Paul teaches us that we will be more successful
at living the good life, the godly life,
doing what is right in the eyes of God,
if we focus on living in the Spirit,
if we turn away from earthly concerns,
what Paul calls very broadly the life of the flesh.
What he means by that is anything,
everything that turns us from God,
everything that distracts us from following Christ.
Be transformed, Paul urges us,
from lives of the flesh to lives of the Spirit.

Paul understood that that doesn’t happen in an instant—
one time and then we are good.
Even after his moment on the Damascus Road,
Paul still lived in the earthly world,
struggled in the world,
faced all the challenges of everyday life
that leads us to store up more treasure on earth,
than we do treasure in heaven.

He understood that life confronts us minute by minute
with choices, big choices,
but even more important,
little choices we make each day, every day.
throughout the day.

And Paul wants us to understand that
it is more in the little choices,
the little details of daily life,
that we learn how to live more fully in the Spirit,
that we learn how to live more godly lives.

We will struggle, just as Paul did,
even after 20 years of discipleship,
20 years of praying, talking, preaching,
listening, learning.
We will understand Paul’s frustrations
when he lamented,
I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it;
I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway.
My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions.
Something has gone wrong deep within me
and gets the better of me every time.
(Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase in The Message)

In giving voice to his frustration,
he is reminding himself and us
of the importance of work, of discipline,
of persevering, just as we talked about last week.

The more we work,
the more intentionally we focus on growing in the Spirit,
the better equipped we’ll be to make right choices,
godly choices,
even bold choices.

You may have seen or heard the news this past week
that the management of the drugstore chain CVS
have decided to stop selling cigarettes
and tobacco products.
By the end of the year,
they will no longer sell any form of tobacco
in any of their more than 7,000 stores.

They said they did this because
they want to focus on helping customers stay healthy,
on being part of their customers’ health care team.
They will lose about $2 billion dollars in revenue,
which sounds enormous to you and me,
but in fact represents just 1.6% of their annual sales.

Now, I don’t know anything about the faith lives
of any of the senior managers of CVS;
I am guessing that the decision to
rid themselves of tobacco products
was based on economic projections and market research.

But I’d like to think that at least one executive argued
that it was simply wrong to sell tobacco products,
that at least one executive concluded
in his or her heart and mind
that selling a product that kills
more than 400,000 people a year,
selling a product that is highly addictive,
even if it is legal,
is wrong.

I’d like to think one executive decided in his or her heart
that they could no longer hide behind the argument
that they were simply selling a product in the marketplace
that customers choose on their own to buy.
To argue that way – that they were simply
providing a product in the marketplace,
that no one was forcing a customer to buy tobacco –
don’t you see that that argument is thinking in the flesh,
it isn’t thinking in the Spirit,
thinking what is honorable, right, and just.

Our Lord reminds us that every little detail
of our lives matter:
Whoever is faithful in a very little, our Lord tells us,
is faithful also in much;
(Luke 16:10)
Living faith is not about grand gestures;
it is the many details of daily living.

Here’s how Paul sums up his thinking and his advice
for the Romans and for us:
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you:
Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating,
going-to-work, and walking-around life—
and place it before God as an offering.
Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.
Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture
that you fit into it without even thinking.
Instead, fix your attention on God.
You’ll be changed from the inside out.
(Romans 12:2ff, from The Message)

So let’s all of us do that:
Take our everyday lives,
the details that fill our every day,
and make them all an offering to God.
The details of our lives at home,
at work,
at school,
at play – everywhere.
All the little things that fill our days.

Let’s all of us truly fix our attention on God,
on the Spirit
so that the good we want to do
becomes more and more
the good in fact we do.                                      

AMEN