Time in the Wilderness

--> -->

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

February 22, 2015

First Sunday in Lent

Time in the Wilderness

Mark 1:9-12

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee

and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

And just as he was coming up out of the water,

he saw the heavens torn apart

and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.

And a voice came from heaven,

“You are my Son, the Beloved;

with you I am well pleased.”

And the Spirit immediately

drove him out into the wilderness.

****

The Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness,

out into the wilds of the desert,

out among the snakes and scorpions,

out to a place with no water, no food.

The Spirit of God drove the Son of God

out into a land of desolation,

a place utterly hostile to human life.

Matthew and Luke tell us that

Jesus was “led” by the Spirit into the wilderness,

as though the Spirit said, “follow me”

and Jesus followed.

Mark, though, tells us that the Spirit “drove” Jesus

into the wilderness,

as though Jesus was pushed,

almost unwilling.

Here Jesus had just come up

out of the waters of baptism,

the sun shining on him,

the Spirit filling him,

and God himself saying to him,

“You are my Son, the Beloved,

with you I am well pleased.”

And then, Jesus is driven out into the desert,

the wilderness.

We tend to focus our attention

on what comes next in this story:

Temptation,

and how Jesus flicks away the pestiferous Satan,

like an annoying mosquito.

But we should stop and ponder the wilderness,

for what it is,

what it represents:

a place of desolation,

a place without hope,

a place without life.

The wilderness plays an important role in Scripture,

in both Old and New Testaments.

We know, don’t we, that the children of Israel

spent 40 years in the wilderness

following their release from slavery in Egypt

more than a thousand years

before the birth of our Lord.

It is in Exodus that that story begins,

but it’s actually the next book in the Old Testament,

the book we call Numbers,

where we find most of the story

of the Israelites’ time in the wilderness,

and fittingly, the title of that book

in the original Hebrew is “wilderness”.

God sent the children of Israel into the wilderness,

and kept them there for 40 years

as they followed Moses,

and as they complained daily:

“The whole congregation of the Israelites

set out from Elim;

and…came to the wilderness of Sin,

…on the fifteenth day of the second month

after they had departed from the land of Egypt.

The whole congregation of the Israelites

complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.

The Israelites said to them,

“If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt,

when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread;

for you have brought us out into this wilderness

to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

(Exodus 16:2ff)

And that was only the second month;

There were still 478 months still to go.

But their time in the wilderness was formative;

the children of Israel were shaped in the wilderness;

they became a people in the wilderness;

they became a community in the wilderness.

They either learned,

or failed to learn,

to trust God,

to put their faith in God,

to submit to God.

We know, of course,

that God was with the children of Israel,

watching over them,

every step along the way,

providing them with water and food.

But how many of the Israelites learned that lesson,

the lesson that Moses reminded them of

at the end of their journey,

as they prepared to enter the Promised Land:

Surely the Lord your God

has blessed you in all your undertakings;

he knows your going through this great wilderness.

These forty years

the Lord your God has been with you;

you have lacked nothing.

(Deuteronomy 2:7)

None of us wants to go through the wilderness,

but yet the reality is that

we all spend time in the wilderness,

we all find ourselves in the wilderness - regularly

as we journey through life.

Adolesence is time in the wilderness, isn’t it –

a time of uncertainty,

of concern, of anxiety?

Leaving high school, family, and homes;

going off to college,

starting a new job,

these are all sojourns into the wilderness.

As we age, broken relationships;

job setbacks,

financial concerns,

illness,

the loss of a loved one -

all these things can leave us feeling alone,

overwhelmed,

lost –

in the wilderness.

        

But even in the wilderness,

God is there.

Lost deep in anxiety, worry, struggle,

God says to us,

“Talk to me.

[And] then be still and know that I am God.”

(Anne Marie Drew)

“Know that I am with you.

Have faith.

Trust me.”

The author Verlyn Klinkenborg has written,

what we learn in the wilderness is wisdom.

“…Wisdom comes from the bare places,” he writes,

“because they force humility upon us.

In these Lenten places,

where life thrives on almost nothing,

we can see [how we let life separate us from God.

But God is with us in the wilderness;

there to see us through,

eager to turn the aridness of the wilderness

back to the lushness of life in all its glory.

Speaking through the prophet Isaiah,

God’s promise to us is this:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
…then the lame shall leap like a deer,

and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,

and streams in the desert;

(Isaiah 35)

I’ve found myself in the wilderness

many times over the decades.

And it has been in the wilderness

where my faith has deepened,

grown,

as I’ve looked to God,

trusted God,

put my faith in God,

submitted to God,

understood that for as smart

and capable as I think I might be,

I need God to guide me,

to lead me out of the wilderness,

back to life.

                                   

Now that doesn’t mean I was silent,

and completely accepting of my situation.

No, I’ve done my share of complaining,

like the children of Israel;

my share of Job-like challenging,

when I’ve found myself in a place

that I didn’t want to be,

didn’t think I deserved to be.

I’ve learned that God let’s us complain,

let’s us have our say,

and then says to us,

“Be still and know that I am.”

The words of the psalmist give us hope:

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?...

I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!

(Psalm 27)

Lent is a time of waiting,

a time of preparation,

a time of introspection,

a time of reflection,

a time of patience,

a time of quiet learning.

Lent begins in the wilderness,

very appropriately,

a place where we can learn afresh,

without life’s distractions,

where we can learn to put our lives

completely in God’s hands,

where we can learn again

that we live by the grace of God.

And Verlyn Klinkenborg is right:

Lent helps us to learn humility as well,

something we need to re-learn,

for we Christians can be an arrogant people,

a little too sure ourselves.

Doesn’t God tell us through the prophet to walk humbly?

Didn’t Paul teach us, that our Lord himself,

who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross.

(Philippians 2:6ff)

The 40 days of Lent end in joy,

but we should start in the wilderness,

a place of quiet,

a place where we can each learn afresh

to submit,

to live obediently,

to trust,

to live in faith.

The wilderness can be a formative place,

a place where we can be still

and know that God is,

and that God is with us.

And it can be a place that reminds us

that we too are God’s beloved.

AMEN

See What Love

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

February 8, 2015

See What Love

1 John 3:1

“See what love the Father has given us,

that we should be called children of God;

and that is what we are.”

You hear me say those words,

each time we have a baptism:

“See what love the Father has given us

that we should be called the children of God,

for that is what we are.”

We are called children of God,

for that IS what we are,

you and me;

and Miranda of course,

all of us.

Children of God,

children who are loved;

children who are loved

so that we would know the love,

given us by the Lord our God:

our loving Father, our loving Mother.

The first letter of John speaks more eloquently of love

than any other book in the Bible,

even more eloquently than Paul’s well-known words

from his first letter to the Corinthians.

In that letter Paul describes love at work:

“Love is patient; love is kind;

love is not envious or boastful

or arrogant or rude.

It does not insist on its own way;

it is not irritable or resentful;

it does not rejoice in wrongdoing,

but rejoices in the truth.

it bears all things,

believes all things,

hopes all things,

endures all things.”

        

John takes a different approach;

John tells us where love comes from,

that “God is love”;

God is the source of love,

the giver of love.

And then John takes it to the next logical step,

telling us that since God is love, then,

“those who abide in love abide in God

and God abides in them.”

Or, saying it another way,

those who don’t abide in love

close themselves off to God.

We may be God’s children,

but if we don’t abide in love,

we leave no room for God.

Paul tells us what the outcome of that will be:

“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels,

but do not have love,

I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

And if I have prophetic powers,

and understand all mysteries and all knowledge,

and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains,

but do not have love,

I am nothing.

If I give away all my possessions,

and if I hand over my body so that I may boast,

but do not have love,

I gain nothing.”

(1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

We are nothing without love,

for without love,

we are shut off from God,

closed to God;

and we are the ones who close the door,

not God.

Following all the churchly rituals

we can ever hope to create

cannot replace love for knowing God,

for abiding in God,

for understanding what it means to be

a child of God.

The love that abides in us

comes from the source of love:

the Lord our God.

It is a gift given from our loving parent

to every child of God,

given freely, gracefully, lovingly.

This is not romantic love,

Valentine’s Day love,

all hearts and roses –

as nice as Valentines’ hearts and roses

can be!

                          

This is the love that the Greek language –

the language of the New Testament –

differentiated with the word “agape”

which does mean love,

but is the love our Lord Jesus refers to

when he spoke of the two great commandments,

to love God and our neighbor:

It is love for brothers and sisters,

love for friends and neighbors,

love for strangers,

and even that love

our Lord calls us to strive for:

love for enemy.

This is love grounded in compassion;

it is love that is selfless, giving,

serving, generous,

untainted by judgment or envy,

anger or criticism,

haughtiness or disdain.

This is the love that binds us together

as children of God.

This is the love that calls us to tell all the world,

“See what love God has given us!

So much love that we can’t contain it,

so much, given so freely,

that we must share it!”

This is the love in which we baptize.

This is the love in which

we honor the promises we made

to Erin and Matt, as well as to Miranda,

to nurture their faith,

and help them grow as children of God,

children of grace,

children of love.

As Miranda grows, we’ll teach her

what we teach all our children,

what we teach one another,

that the “love given us by God isn’t static”;

it is something within us that grows

as we grow in faith,

as we learn how to share love more freely.

One of my favorite books is entitled,

“If God is Love”.

The title suggests that it is a book about

the very nature of God,

a book that wonders, is God love,

or is God a smoldering volcano,

as the children of Israel thought

as they gathered more than 3000 years ago

around the base of Mount Sinai,

called by Moses,

but then recoiling in fear,

saying to Moses,

‘You speak to us, and we will listen;

but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.’

(Exodus 20:19)

The authors know that God is love,

so they turn the words “if God is love”

into the beginning of a series of questions:

If God is love,then how should live?

If God is love, then how should we

work in the world?

If God is love, then how should we worship?

If God is love, then how should we treat one another

family member, friend, or stranger?

The authors are two pastors

of different denominations

and they express dismay that if God is love

and we are graced with God’s

unconditional, unwavering love,

then why are our actions as children of God

so often critical,

judgmental, indifferent,

selfish, disdainful,

vengeful,

sometimes even violent?

We will begin the 40 days of Lent

in a little more than week.

Lent begins, of course,

with our Ash Wednesday service,

a somber, serious service

in which we focus on our waywardness,

and on our need for repentance.

                                            

We focus even more ominously in that service

on our mortality

as we receive ashen crosses on our foreheads

accompanied by the words,

“Remember you are dust,

and to dust you shall return.”

But for as somber and serious as the service is,

the message of Ash Wednesday is,

“See what love God the Father has given us”

that we can know God’s mercy,

that we can know God’s forgiveness,

no matter what our sins might be.

“See what love God the Father has given us”

that even death cannot take that love away;

even though our bodies may return to dust,

we will continue to know the love of God

in the life to come.

The psalmist has written,

[God] knows how we were made;

he remembers that we are dust.

(Psalm 103:14)

and yet even though we are dust

the steadfast love of the Lord

is from everlasting to everlasting.

See what love God the Father has given us.

The German theologian Jurgen Moltmann

observed, “The more I love …

the more immediately and [completely] I exist.”

We cannot know fully the life

that God created us for

if we don’t know love,

if we don’t live love actively.

Baptism reminds us

that we have been graced with love,

given love,

by the source of love: God our loving parent.

Baptism calls us to renew our commitment

to that extraordinary gift

to abide in love,

and abide in God,

that God would abide in us.

To God be the glory!

AMEN

Hope Springs

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

February 1, 2015

Hope Springs

Habakkuk 3:17-19

Though the fig tree does not blossom,
    and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails,
    and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold,
    and there is no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
    I will exult in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
    he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
    and makes me tread upon the heights.

Habakkuk was a prophet in ancient Israel.

He was a contemporary of Jeremiah,

speaking God’s word to the Israelites

some 600 years before the birth of our Lord.

Habakkuk’s reputation, though,

certainly isn’t that of Jeremiah.

He’s been relegated to the minor leagues,

lumped in with the group called the “minor prophets,”    

to distinguish them from Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.

Quite frankly, I wonder whether Habakkuk

even deserves to be grouped with

the likes of Jonah, Daniel, and Micah,

or whether there should be a third group,

one level down from the minor prophets,

a group called the “all-but-forgotten prophets”.

Yet Habukkuk’s words are included in the Bible

for their power and their faithfulness;

his words are included as well for their sheer audacity.

Read through his short book

and you’ll find that Habakkuk not only confronted

his brothers and sisters in faith with their hypocrisy,

their weakness, and their faithlessness;

Habakkuk also confronted God

with a determination and courage

 that set him apart from every other prophet.

As Habakkuk looked at the world around him

in the years immediately preceding

the Babylonian invasion,

he saw injustice everywhere:

economic injustice as the rich grew richer

and the poor grew poorer;

political injustice as those in power

used their positions to enrich themselves,

and keep themselves in power,

even as they showed little concern

for the common good;

and legal injustice:

those without power and influence

unable to find justice even in the courts.

Habakkuk was outraged,

not only at those who were guilty of

perpetrating the injustices he saw,

he was outraged at God

for allowing such things to happen.

His book begins with these words:

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
    and you will not listen?
Or cry to you “Violence!”
    and you will not save?
Why do you make me see wrongdoing
    and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me;
    strife and contention arise.
So the law becomes slack
    and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous—
    therefore judgment comes forth perverted.

(Habakkuk 1:1-4)

Much like his contemporary Jeremiah,

Habukkuk wasn’t afraid to confront those who ruled:

the powerful and the wealthy.

But he also wasn’t afraid to direct his anger,

his outrage at God.

How was one supposed to keep faith and hope,

when God seemed distant, even absent,

unconcerned, uninvolved,

uncaring?

Who among us hasn’t felt that way from time to time,

wondering how to hang onto hope

when we feel that God either

doesn’t care,

or worse, God isn’t there?

Twenty-six hundred years later

we certainly see the same kinds of injustices

that troubled Habakkuk:

Injustices in the world;

injustices in our own country;

injustices in our own community,

and even injustices in our own lives.

How are we to hold onto hope

when God seems indifferent, unmoved?

It was the English poet Alexander Pope

who gave us the phrase “hope springs eternal”.

The words are found in his Essay on Man,

a work written almost 300 years ago,

Pope wrote his essay in an effort to do

much the same thing Habakkuk did so long ago:

try to make sense of a world

that so often seemed to Pope and Habakkuk

vicious, cruel, and chaotic;

out of sync with what God’s hope for humanity

seemed to be.

Pope wrote his essay to

“vindicate the ways of God to man,”

and certainly to himself as well.

Pope understood that it is only

“a part we see, and not a whole;”

that we don’t grasp the whole;

or as Job said, after he confronted God

with his own outrage,

“I have uttered what I did not understand.”

(Job 42:3)

God responded to Habakkuk,

letting the prophet know that he, God,

was fully aware of the injustices

that troubled Habakkuk so,

saying to him,

Look at the proud!

Their spirit is not right in them,

…Moreover, wealth is treacherous;

the arrogant do not endure.

(Habakkuk 2:4ff)

God was saying in effect

“I do see;

I do know.

Don’t slow your own efforts

to address injustices you see,

but trust that I’ll deal with them too –

in my time and in my way.

Remember: I am making all things new.”

Habukkuk finally understood what we all know,

but what we all struggle with:

we are called to “live by faith”

(Habakkuk 2:4),

trusting in God,

hoping in God.

We see injustice in the world,

and if we’d take a step back

we’d understand that injustice exists

not because God is absent or uncaring,

not because God allows it,

but because we allow it.

Economic injustice,

political injustice,

social injustice

injustice of any kind:

we are the ones who create injustice,

we are the ones who tolerate injustice,

we are the ones who turn a blind eye to injustice

when it’s to our advantage to do so,

or when it is just too much effort to deal with.

At the beginning of our service

we said these words from the Brief Statement of Faith:

“we rebel against God;

we ignore God’s commandments;

we violate the image of God

in others and in ourselves;

we accept lies as truth;

we exploit nature and neighbor

we threaten death to the planet

entrusted to our care….

Yet God acts with justice and mercy

to redeem creation”

And that’s what gives us hope:

God is always present

acting with justice

acting with mercy,

working for redemption –

ours and the world’s.

We live by faith, you and I;

we live in hope,

for God is with us,

never absent, never unconcerned,

never heedless, always caring,

saying to us as he said to Habukkuk

“I do see; I do care;

I am with you;

I am making all things new.”

Come to this Table to be renewed.

Come to this Table to be refreshed in faith and hope.

Here at this Table you will find

the bread of life and the cup of salvation,

food that will nourish and strengthen you

for the work you and I are called to do

by God through Christ addressing the injustices

we create, we allow.

Here at this Table you’ll find faith that is eternal.

and, yes, here at this Table you will find

hope that is eternal,

for here at this Table you’ll find God.

Though the fig tree does not blossom,
    and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails,
    and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold,
    and there is no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
    I will exult in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
    he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
    and makes me tread upon the heights.

AMEN