Sunday, October 26, 2014

Something More Pleasant


The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
October 26, 2014

Something More Pleasant
Romans 14:7-9

We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.
If we live, we live to the Lord,
and if we die, we die to the Lord;
so then, whether we live or whether we die,
we are the Lord’s.
For to this end Christ died and lived again,
so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

        
The children laughed as they raced around the yard
enjoying the beautiful fall day.
They chased each other,
giggling,
running this way and that,
and from time to time, tumbling,
but always bouncing back up laughing,
pointing out what tripped them.

Tombstones.
They tripped over tombstones.
The yard was filled with plastic tombstones,
more than a dozen of them laid out neatly
across the suburban lawn,
gray, ghoulish,
ready for Halloween.

Quite a few graveyards have sprouted up
in my neighborhood the past few weeks;
some small and simple,
others elaborate, large,
some even with sound effects,
voices moaning and groaning.
They are all designed to be creepy and scary;
they are all designed for Halloween fun.

Lately it seems we’ve been in the thrall of the dead,
or more specifically, the undead,
the walking dead,
zombies.
Television shows, books, movies.

It isn’t entirely new,
this fascination with the walking dead,
the living dead:
horror movies from the 1930s starring
Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi
had a fondness for things rising from the grave.
The classic 1944 movie “Arsenic and Old Lace”
is set in a house situated next to a graveyard.
And more than 30 years ago, in his video “Thriller,”
Michael Jackson showed us a side of zombies
we never would have imagined –
that they had dance moves
that no Monday night dancing star
could ever hope to match.

We laugh at our cinematic and seasonal focus
on the ghoulish.
But let a conversation,
a serious conversation,
start to go down the road of death and dying,
and our reaction is almost universal:
“Don’t be so morbid;
can’t we talk about something more pleasant?”

Talking about death and dying
makes us very uncomfortable.
We’d rather talk about anything else.
In Protestant churches we’ve gone so far
as to substitute “Reformation Sunday”
for the historical “All Saints Day”.
                                   
To talk about death can be more than uncomfortable;
it can be painful.
it can bring a rush of memories
of loved ones who have died:
grandparents, parents, spouses,
perhaps even children,
as well as friends.
Remembering may well evoke
waves of deep emotion,
profound grief,
feelings we don’t want stirred up,
feelings we work hard to keep tucked away.

To talk about death also reminds us    
of our own mortality,
of the reality that we will all die,
that for as long as any of us might live,
there will come a day, a time
when we will take a last breath;
Who wants to think about that,
even for the briefest moment?

For those of us of a certain age,
we are reminded to do things like
update our wills,
prepare health-care proxies,
make sure we have advanced directives and the like,
but even we don’t like to think about such things.

For years, our denomination has been
encouraging our churches
to have a “Wills Sunday” each year,
a Sunday to remind everyone to have a will,
and, of course, include the church with a bequest;
but I know of very few churches that actually do this.

And yet here we have Paul comforting us
reminding us that we need not be afraid,
for …If we live, we live to the Lord,
and if we die, we die to the Lord;
so then, whether we live or whether we die,
we are the Lord’s.

In Christ, through Christ,
we have the promise of life eternal,
the promise of “life everlasting,”
as we say in the Apostles’ Creed,
for “God raised Jesus from the dead,
… delivering us from death to life eternal,”
as we say in our Brief Statement of Faith.

We hear those words,
say those words that we say we believe,
“life eternal”, “life everlasting”
but still we struggle because,
after all, what do those words mean?
We wonder – what awaits us?
What will heaven be like?
Will the streets be paved with gold?

We’ve tried throughout history
to pull the curtain back
on the life that awaits us,
to catch even a glimpse of what lies ahead.

Will it be as Mark Twain described it in his story,
Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven:
“A harp and a hymn-book,
a pair of wings and a halo, size 13,
for Cap’n Eli Stormfield, of San Francisco!—
make him out a clean bill of health,
and let him in….
…When I found myself perched on a cloud,
with a million other people,
I never felt so good in my life. 
Says I, ‘Now this is according to the promises;
I’ve been having my doubts,
but now I am in heaven, sure enough….’
I gave my palm branch a wave or two, for luck,
and then I tautened up my harp-strings
and struck in. ”

Perhaps John Bunyan captured it
when he wrote in Pilgrim’s Progress
more than 300 years ago:
“You are going now…to the Paradise of God,
… and when you come there,
…your walk and talk shall be every day with the King,
even all the days of Eternity.
There you shall not see again such things as you saw
when you were…upon the earth:
sorrow, sickness, affliction and death,
for the former things have passed away.”

Bunyan’s picture is probably a lot closer than Twain’s,
but still, we don’t know.
And I think that’s because
God does not want us to know.
What God wants us to do is trust,
take on faith,
rely on the promise that we have life eternal
in Jesus Christ.

What God wants us to do
is trust the promise that comes
from our Lord himself:
“Those who believe in me,
even though they die, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me
will never die.”
(John 11:25)

In Marilynne Robinson’s lyrical novel Gilead
the elderly pastor John Ames
wonders what lies ahead for him
as he nears the end of his life.
He ponders in a letter to his son,
“In the twinkling of an eye.
…I am imperishable,
somehow more alive than I have ever been,
in the strength of my youth…
I live in a light better than any dream of mine.
…I have wondered about [this] for many years.
Well, this old seed is about to drop into the ground.
Then I’ll know.”
(Gilead, 53)

I love Halloween as much as anyone else,
and I love movies, including scary movies,
as much as anyone else,
but I wonder if our current obsession
with zombies and the like
makes it that much harder for us to think
not just seriously about death,
but more important,
for us to think faithfully about death,
so we can find comfort in the promise,
the assurance,
that we will have life,
life for all eterinity,
and that we will know love in this life
and in the life to come.

This promise of life is ours in our baptism
the beginning of life, new life in Jesus Christ,
when we die to what separates us from God,
and are raised to new life in Christ.
In our baptism life begins,
a life that will blossom and flourish
with the riches of love;
a life that begins and will have no end.                 

As Paul wrote to the Corinthians,
No one’s ever seen or heard anything like this,
never so much as imagined anything quite like it—
what God has arranged for those who love him.
(1 Corinthians 2:9, from The Message)

What God has arranged is life,
life grounded in love,
life that begins with a few drops of water
and such simple words:
“In the name of the Father,
and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.”

Such simple words,
such pleasant words,
words that lead us to life,
words that lead us to love,
now, and always.

AMEN

Sunday, October 12, 2014

What If?


The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
October 12, 2014

What If?
Exodus 32:1-14

“I will do no such thing.
I am appalled that you would even ask me.
You should be ashamed of yourselves.
Do you really expect me to turn from Moses,
my own brother?
Are you ready to forget him already?

Are you really ready to turn from the Lord God
who brought you out of Egypt,
out of slavery?
Are you ready to abandon the Lord God
who saved you from Pharaoh and his army,
who has fed you with manna from heaven?”

What if Aaron had said these things,
said these things to the Israelites
when they approached him
and said to him,
“Come, make gods who will go before us”?
What if Aaron had dismissed them as foolish,
faithless,
and selfish?

Aaron should have.
After all, he’d been leading the people with Moses.
In fact, he’d even been up on the mountain,
on Mount Sinai, not long before,
invited by the Lord God to go up with Moses,
and seventy of the elders of Israel,
where, Scripture tells us,
they all saw the Lord God;
where Aaron and the others beheld the Lord,
and then ate and drank in God’s presence.
(Exodus 24:9-11)

But of course, Aaron didn’t confront the people,
the children of Israel.
He did just as they asked,
without hesitating, without questioning.
He fashioned the calf from gold,
and even built an altar for it.

Why did he do it?
Did he fear the people?
Was he afraid that some might have
rebelled against him,
that some might have decided to
split off from the rest,
and make good on their complaints,
returning to Egypt,
to the life they’d left behind;
the certainty of life in slavery
somehow more appealing to them
than the uncertainty
of following the Lord God through the desert?

How many times had Aaron heard them
complain to Moses,
“Why did you bring us out of Egypt?”
Aaron knew how frustrated and
exhausted his brother was.
Aaron knew his brother had pleaded to God,
“What shall I do with this people?
They are almost ready to stone me.”
(Exodus 17:4)

Aaron may well have concluded that the easiest path
was to placate the people,
give them what they asked for,
give them their idol.

But Aaron’s action and the peoples’ response
infuriated the Lord God,
who spit out his words in anger to Moses,
“Go down at once!
Your people,
whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt,
have acted perversely;
they have been quick to turn aside
from the way that I commanded them;
they have cast for themselves an image of a calf,
and have worshipped it and sacrificed to it,
and said, “These are your gods, O Israel,
who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”

But before Moses could even
take a step down the mountain,
to try to restore order,
to try to bring the people back to the Lord God,
God said to Moses,
I have seen this people,
how stiff-necked they are.
Now let me alone,
so that my wrath may burn hot against them
and I may consume them;
and of you I will make a great nation.”

What if Moses had replied to God,
“Go ahead.
You know how sick and tired I am of those people,
how they have worn me down
with their constant complaints,
their faithlessness,
their selfishness.
I never wanted to lead them in the first place,
so please, set me free of them.
Do to them what you will;
and make of me a great nation.”

Moses didn’t do that, did he?
He interceded for the people.
He spoke up for them,
reminding God that they were not Moses’ people,
they were God’s own people.
“Turn from your fierce wrath,” Moses implored.

How easy it would have been
for Moses to have said nothing,
to have watched from on high
as the Lord God destroyed the people below,
every last one of them.

And what if God had done that?
What if God had paid no attention to Moses,
and turned from the people?
God didn’t even need to push that button
on God’s computer keyboard,
that button that says, “SMITE”.

God simply could have let them alone,
let them fend for themselves in the desert,
let the lack of water and food,
the burning rays of the sun,
all combine to consume the Israelites.

How long would it have taken –
a couple of weeks at most?
The windblown sand would have covered up
every last trace of them,
as many as there were.
In 40 days the children of Israel
would have been no more.

But God did not do that.
God was merciful,
God was forgiving.
Yes, Moses advocated for the people,
but God went from enraged to forgiving
in almost the blink of an eye,…
because that is God.
God is merciful,
God is forgiving.
God loves us, his children,
even when we are disobedient,
and faithless.

Ours is a history of turning from God.
What God lamented to Moses,
God could lament today:
they have been quick to turn aside from the way
that I commanded them;”

A thousand years later, the shameful story
of the children of Israel’s disobedience and idolatry
was captured in the book of Nehemiah,
the people painted as faithless,
but God as merciful, faithful, loving:

“But … our ancestors acted presumptuously
and stiffened their necks
and did not obey your commandments [O Lord];
they refused to obey,
and were not mindful of the wonders
that you performed among them;
… they stiffened their necks
and determined to return to their slavery in Egypt.

But you are a God ready to forgive,
gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,
and you did not forsake them.
Even when they had cast an image of a calf
for themselves and said,
“This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt”,
and had committed great blasphemies,
you in your great mercies
did not forsake them in the wilderness;

…The pillar of cloud that led them in the way
did not leave them by day,
nor the pillar of fire by night
that gave them light on the way
by which they should go.
You gave your good spirit to instruct them,
and did not withhold your manna from their mouths,
and gave them water for their thirst.
For forty years you sustained them in the wilderness
so that they lacked nothing;”
(Nehemiah 16)

This is our Lord God:
a God of faithfulness, of goodness, of mercy.
a God ready to forgive,
ready to embrace,
ready, eager to enfold his children in love.

This is the God you and I know through Jesus Christ.
This is the God we want Tobin to know.
This is the God we want all our children to know.
                 
This isn’t just a story about our ancestors in faith;
this is our story, we are in this story,
we who are so quick to turn, to disobey,
ignore God’s commandments and teachings.
“If we say we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves.”

But God is merciful,
abounding in steadfast love,
eager to forgive us, to welcome us back.

Our lives as disciples can be challenging;
it is easy to fall into the trap of what
Eugene Peterson calls tourist faith, tourist religion,
where we look only for things that make us feel good,
make us feel happy.
                                   
What we should focus on, though,
is what Peterson calls “long obedience”,
a recognition that discipleship is a calling,
a calling that begins at baptism
and carries through every day of our lives,
including the inevitable time in the wilderness
that we will all have at some point,
until we take our final breath.
It is a calling that requires effort, diligence,
obedience to God’s will,
even when we cannot see tomorrow from today.

We have the promise in Jesus Christ
that God is with us, present in our lives,
seeing us through, lifting us up,
God’s everlasting, ever-loving arms always around us.
Tobin now has this promise, too.

And so we can all sing joyfully with the psalmist,
“The Lord will keep my life,
the Lord will keep my going out and my coming in,
from this time on and forever more.”

AMEN

Sunday, October 05, 2014

The Church Universal


The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
October 5, 2014
World Communion Sunday

The Church Universal
Ephesians 2:11-22

They came from every corner of the known world.
Some came eagerly and willingly,
while others came reluctantly.
Some came by boat,
others by donkey,
still others by horse, or cart.
Many came on foot.

They all came because they had been
commanded to come,
commanded by the emperor.
They had all been commanded to travel
to the town of Nicea,
a town in the region then known as Asia,
in what is today modern Turkey.

The emperor was Constantine,
and the year was 325,
some three hundred years following
the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord.

They came because Constantine was tired of the quarrels,
the bickering,
the fighting among the churches,
fighting among the leaders of the churches,
the elders, the bishops.

They all claimed to follow Jesus Christ,
but they couldn’t even agree on who Jesus was:
Was he the Son of God,
or was he God himself?
Was he fully divine,
or did he take on divine powers at his baptism,
or his transfiguration?
If he was divine,
then how could he have been human,
born of woman?

Constantine decided that it was time for
the leaders of the church to gather together
and talk,
debate,
argue,
shout if need be,
but reconcile, agree,
come together as one.

Constantine put out the call,
telling all the bishops their travel expenses
would be paid by the empire.
Constantine, the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire
was also Constantine, a precursor of Priceline.com.

The church leaders came,
more than 200 bishops and others,
perhaps as many as 300 ecclesiastical leaders,
overseers of the growing Christian church.

They came from Spain, from France,
from North Africa, from throughout the Mediterranean,
There is evidence that Christian leaders
even came from the island we now call Britain.

Constantine wanted order and peace
in his far-flung empire
and he knew the church could help,
the church could be instrumental
in establishing peace,
but only if the leaders of the church
weren’t arguing among themselves.

Christianity was just emerging from the shadows
where it had been forced to hide
for three centuries.
Constantine’s embrace of the faith
allowed it to come into the sunlight,
out into the open.

Over three hundred years
church leaders found much to divide them,
many issues about which they disagreed,
from the petty to the profound.
They couldn’t even agree on
an acceptable date for Easter.

But it was the question of who Christ was
that was roiling the church.
Scripture wasn’t clear;
in fact, Scripture seemed to have
conflicting messages.

How could Jesus be God,
and at the same time be the Son of God?
And if Jesus was something other than God,
something less than God,
even if he was fully divine,
did that mean that Christians worshipped two Gods?

It was a man named Arius
who argued most forcefully
that Christ was not equal to God,
that Christ had been created by God
at a point in time and was not fully divine.
Arius thought Christ was unique and “godlike,”
but not equal to God;
there was but one God.

Some church leaders agreed with Arius,
others thought him a heretic.
Still others were not sure.

The historian Robert Wilken has written
Arius’s arguments showed that
“there was a wide range of opinion in the Church,
even distinct schools of thought
on Christ’s relation to the Father,
and the differences could not be easily reconciled….
The disagreements ran deep,
and the disputes were often bitter.”
(The First Thousand Years, 90)

Constantine called the bishops together,
gathering them in assembly in Nicea,
in what became the church’s
first ecumenical council.
Constantine presided at the opening,
and “expressed an ardent desire
that [church leaders] would put
dissention behind them
and bring about a spirit of peace and concord
to please God, as well as himself.”
(The First Thousand Years, 92)

The debate that followed was vigorous,
argumentative, often angry and hostile.
The heated tone of debates we have
within our contemporary church is nothing new.
Disagreement among believers
reflects apostolic succession
as much as leadership in the church does.

Ultimately, though, the bishops did manage
to find consensus;
not unanimity, a minority disagreed.
But a majority agreed on a common path to walk
in order to bring peace and harmony to the church.

The result was the Nicene Creed.
A creed in which we say that God and Christ are one,
one and the same,
that Jesus is of one Being with the Father,
fully human, fully divine.

The creed doesn’t explain;
it simply states,
states what we take on faith,
what we believe even if we don’t understand.

60 years after the Council of Nicea met,
another council modified the Creed
to add language regarding the Holy Spirit,
and from that we developed
the idea of the Trinity,
one God in three persons,
something that Scripture alludes to,
but doesn’t speak to expressly,
unequivocally.

The history of our church is one of both
conflict and consensus,
devoted discipleship and disagreement,
followers of Jesus all professing their faith,
but then often living their faith,
interpreting their faith in different ways.

Still, we are part of the church universal,
what we call the holy catholic church,
catholic with a small “c” to mean universal,
all of us followers of Jesus Christ,
without distinguishing denominations,
geography, language or culture.

We are all one in Christ Jesus,
and we are called by God to work together,
to live in harmony with one another,
to break down barriers, not build them,
to build instead the Kingdom of God.

That has been our call since Paul took
the gospel of Jesus Christ to the broader world,
beyond the Jewish community
that Jesus and his disciples were part of,
out to the Gentile world,
back when that word, Gentile,
referred to anyone who wasn’t Jewish,
wasn’t a follower of the Lord God.

Paul’s first struggle was to get past the disagreements
that separated those Christians who had been Jews,
and those Christians who had come
from the Gentile world.

In the letter to the new Christians at Ephesus, we read,
So then, remember that at one time
you Gentiles by birth,
called ‘the uncircumcision’
by those who are called ‘the circumcision’—
a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands—
remember that you were at that time without Christ,
being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,
and strangers to the covenants of promise,
having no hope and without God in the world.

But now in Christ Jesus
you who once were far off have been brought near
by the blood of Christ.
For he is our peace;
in his flesh he has made both groups into one
and has broken down the dividing wall,
that is, the hostility between us.

He has abolished the law with its
commandments and ordinances,
so that he might create in himself
one new humanity in place of the two,
thus making peace,
and might reconcile both groups to God
in one body through the cross,
thus putting to death that hostility through it.

So he came and proclaimed peace
to you who were far off
and peace to those who were near;
for through him both of us have access
in one Spirit to the Father.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens,
but you are citizens with the saints
and also members of the household of God,
built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.
In him the whole structure is joined together
and grows into a holy temple in the Lord;
in whom you also are built together spiritually
into a dwelling-place for God.

These are words for us today,
reminding us that even with all our
denominational differences and
all those things we argue about,
we are one,
all members of the household of God,
with Christ our cornerstone,
all of us reconciled by the love of God
to one another in one body.

You and I are part of the church universal,
and each of us is a dwelling place for God,
each of us a reflection of the Son,
the only Son.  

AMEN