Sunday, June 28, 2015

Risky Business


The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
June 28, 2015

Risky Business
Mark 5:21-43

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat
to the other side,
a great crowd gathered around him;
and he was by the sea.  
Then one of the leaders of the synagogue
named Jairus came and when he saw him,
fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly,
“My little daughter is at the point of death.
Come and lay your hands on her,
so that she may be made well, and live.”
So [Jesus] went with him.
And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him.
Now there was a woman who had been
suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years.
She had endured much under many physicians,
and had spent all that she had;
and she was no better, but rather grew worse.
She had heard about Jesus,
and came up behind him in the crowd
and touched his cloak,
for she said, “If I but touch his clothes,
I will be made well.”
Immediately her hemorrhage stopped;
and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.
Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him,
Jesus turned about in the crowd and said,
“Who touched my clothes?”
And his disciples said to him,
“You see the crowd pressing in on you;
how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’”
[Jesus] looked all around to see who had done it.
But the woman, knowing what had happened to her,
came in fear and trembling,
fell down before him, and told him the whole truth.
He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well;
go in peace,
and be healed of your disease.”
****************************************

It is risky business, this life of faith.
It is risky to believe.
it is risky to believe in things
we may not fully understand,
believe in things we do not know,
believe in things we cannot know,
believe in things we cannot even see.

It is risky to have faith.
It is risky to trust;
It is risky to accept;
It is risky to follow.

We prefer certainty.
We want to know,
we want to see.
We want clarity,
understanding,
clear definition,
black and white,
no grays.

My early training was as a lawyer.
We were taught the importance of facts,
the importance of evidence.
Never, ever, ever assume.
Find out, …nail it down
so that no one can question or dispute.

But as children of God,
as followers of our Lord Jesus Christ,
we walk by faith, and not by sight,
as the apostle Paul reminds us.
(2 Corinthians 5:7)

And to walk in faith is to walk in trust;
to walk in faith is to walk in hope.

Read through the entire Bible –
as we hope to do as a congregation next year
when we make 2016 “The Year of the Bible” –
and it is only in the New Testament
letter to the Hebrews
that we’ll find an effort to try to define faith –
to try to define what the word means.
This is what we read:
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for,
the conviction of things not seen.”
(Hebrews 11:1)

Our conviction isn’t in evidence,
it isn’t in something concrete;
It isn’t in the indisputable.
Our faith is in “things not seen”.
Our faith is in God,
our faith is in Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
our Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer.
Our faith is in the gifts God gives us,
including the gift of grace,
and the gift of love.

This faith leads us then to have
“assurance of things hoped for.”
As men and women of faith we can and should
walk in hope,
live in hope.

This is just what propelled the woman in our lesson
to move through the crowd,
pushing her way through the throngs
to get to Jesus,
the voice in her head saying over and over,
“just touch his robe,
just reach out and touch his robe.
If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.”

And so she pushed,
and so she reached;
and she took hold of Jesus’ robe,
the fold near the bottom,
the hem covered with dust
from the roads Jesus had walked.

She touched it -- and she was made well,
cured of what one physician after another,
with all their potions and all their incantations,
had been unable to do.
Her faith made her well,
for she had lived in hope.

Our text began with the story of Jairus,
a religious leader;
He was not one of the pompous Pharisees
at the Temple in Jerusalem;
he was simply a leader of the local synagogue
in one of the small towns around the Sea of Galilee.
His young daughter was ill, near death,
and Jairus too sought Jesus,
sought him out to help his daughter,
heal his daughter,
for Jairus walked in faith,
Jairus walked in hope.

The text tells us almost nothing about these two people.
For what little we learn about Jairus,
we know even less about the woman:
we don’t know her name,
or where she came from.
But they had faith in common,
they had hope on common.

Living a life of faith is so much more than
coming to church on Sunday.
A life of faith is lived in response to God,
a life lived attentive to our Lord’s teachings,
a life lived in response to the gifts of grace and love
given us freely by God through Christ.

It was faith that allowed those families in Charleston
to offer such heartfelt words of forgiveness
to an unrepentant, hate-filled killer.

We were all still struck,
even dumfounded by the words
we heard those families speak.
I suspect we were stunned for two reasons:
the circumstances, of course,
how hard it must have been for those families
to have said those words
when the pain of their losses
was still scalding their hearts.
                          
But also, how rare it is to hear
words of genuine, deep, heartfelt forgiveness.
It is so much more common to hear words of anger,
of rage;
to hear words seeking vengeance:
“he must pay”.

How hard it is to live by faith,
when our faith teaches us:
“Beloved, never avenge yourselves,
…for it is written,
‘Vengeance is mine,
I will repay, says the Lord.’
No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them;
if they are thirsty,
give them something to drink;”
(Romans 12:15-20)

To live by faith,
to live in faith is often to live at odds
with the norms we are taught by society,
by the world in which we live.
But then, our faith teaches us:
“Do not be conformed to this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your minds,
so that you may discern what is the will of God—
what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
(Romans 12:2)

That is what it means to live by faith:
to work to discern the will of God.
And to do so humbly,
without putting on a Christian’s favorite garment,
the hoodie of self-righteousness.
The garment of self-righteousness,
of smug certainty,
of a conviction that we know God’s will,
and others do not,
is a garment we Christians wear a little too easily.
We have throughout our history,
and as a result, our Christian history
has had many shameful moments.

We have ways to assess whether we are
living our faith faithfully,
Are we reflecting the fruits of the Spirit?
Paul gives us a neat, short, precise list
in the 5th chapter of his letter to the Galatians.
If you cannot remember everything on Paul’s list,
the question to ask is,
are you living a grace-full, loving life,
reflecting the grace and love you’ve received
reflecting it back on others, all others.

As the apostle Paul would ask us,
Are we rejoicing with those who rejoice,
weeping with those who weep,
living in harmony with one another?
Are we living humbly,
never claiming to be wiser that we are,
nor repaying evil for evil?
Are we always taking thought for what is noble
in the sight of all?
(Romans 12:15-20)

James, the brother of our Lord
summed up succinctly what it means
to live a life of active faith grounded in grace
when he asked,
“What good is it,
if you say you have faith but do not have works?
If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food,
and one of you says to them,
‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’,
and yet you do not supply their bodily needs,
what is the good of that?”
(James 2:15)
That’s not living a faithful life.

To live by faith is to live
compassionately and generously,
mercifully and with forgiveness.
To live by faith,
to live in faith is to live in hope,
to live by grace.
to live by love.

It isn’t easy, this life.
And there are risks.
But a life of faith is joyful life,
not at all constricting,
but freeing, liberating.

The Psalmist knew what it meant,
knew what it means to live in faith:
“O my God, in you I trust;
Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
teach me your paths.
Lead me in your truth, and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;
for you I wait all day long.
[You are] my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.
I bless the Lord who gives me counsel;
…I keep the Lord always before me;
Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices;
my body also rests secure.
[for] You show me the path of life.
In your presence there is fullness of joy;
in your right hand are pleasures for evermore.”
(from Psalms 16 & 25)

AMEN

Sunday, June 21, 2015

God the Father


The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
June 21, 2015

God the Father
Selected Texts

The eyes stare straight ahead,
without emotion,
the mouth set, lips slightly pursed;
he sits in regal splendor.

It is an image painted almost 600 years ago,
painted as part of an altarpiece
for a cathedral in the city of Ghent in Belgium.
It is a painting of God the Father.

One hundred years later
Michelangelo would paint God as Creator
on the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel,
bringing life to Adam and all the world.

But in 1430 the brothers Hubert and Jan Van Eyck
painted God as Father
for one of the panels hung above the altar
in the Ghent cathedral.

God our Father;
our Father in Heaven.
How many times does Jesus refer to God as Father?
Certainly we know that
when he taught his disciples to pray,
Jesus said, “Pray then this way,
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name’.”
(Matthew 6:9)

Read through our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,
and you’d find that Jesus refers to God as Father
a dozen times.
God the Father.
Not The Lord Almighty,
Not God our King,
Not God the Ruler of the Universe;
just, “Father”,
our Father.

We hear the word “father”
and it likely means something different
for each of us:
Someone kind and loving;
someone strong and reliable;
someone funny and supportive;
someone sorely missed;
someone cold and unforgiving;
someone temperamental and critical;
someone even cruel and abusive.

What is it that Jesus wants us to learn
about God as Father,
his Father, our Father?
Does Jesus want us to learn that
God is a stern, unyielding, angry Father,
as we often think the Old Testament portrays God,
a God that frightened the children of Israel so
that they said 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)

Or does Jesus want to learn,
as the Old Testament reveals in abundance,
that God is loving,
forgiving,
caring,
nurturing:
a father who wants us to draw near;
a father who created us,
who formed us,
who redeemed us;
a father who calls us by name,
who longs to make for us
“a feast of rich food,
a feast of well-matured wines;
[a father who] will swallow up death forever,
and wipe away the tears from all faces.”
(Isaiah 25 and 43)

“For surely I know the plans I have for you,”
[says our Father in Heaven to you and to me]
“plans for your welfare and not for harm,
to give you a future with hope.
Then when you call upon me
and come and pray to me,
I will hear you.
When you search for me, you will find me;”
(Jeremiah 29:11)

This is the Father Jesus wants us to know,
the Father who will be our
everlasting light and our glory”
(Isaiah 60:9)

Now, of course we cannot paint God
just with male features;
God transcends gender
and Scripture reveals God’s maternal side as well.

But Jesus pointedly spoke of God as Father,
even God as Abba,
an Aramaic term of endearment
that doesn’t convey the formality of “father”
as much as it conveys the closeness of
“Dad” or even “Pop”,
that wonderful term we hear more often these days
in old movies: Micky Rooney as Andy Hardy
sitting down with his beloved Pop, Judge Hardy,
looking for a little wisdom,
a little guidance, a little encouragement,
maybe even a little straightening out.

We are still stunned by the
brutal murders of the 9 men and women
in Charleston this past week
all of them gunned down in a church,
killed because of the color of the skin,
killed by a young man whose face and features
are more a boy’s than a man’s.

We’ve all had our anguished questions,
from “why did this happen?”
to “how do we put a stop to such violence,
such tragedy?”

I’ve had those questions too.
But the questions that seem to keep
bubbling up to the top for me are:
where were his parents,
and what did they teach him?
And more specifically,
what did this young man’s father teach him
as he was growing up?

We are not, after all, born as bigots or racists.
Haters are gonna hate only if they learn hatred.
Someone teaches another hatred,
racism,
bigotry;
someone fans the flames.
Someone says, “those people,
they are different,
they are bad,
they’re threatening,
they’re dangerous.
Something must done to them;
we must do something about them,
or they might do something to us. ”

And such teaching often comes from a father.

Now I know nothing about the young man’s upbringing,
nothing about his family life,
nothing about his father,
so I certainly neither judge nor condemn;
but still, the questions burn in my mind.

Fathers:  what are you teaching your children?
What are you teaching your
daughters as well as your sons?
No, you’re not teaching them hatred,
racism, or
bigotry,
but are you teaching them tolerance or intolerance?
Are you teaching them acceptance or judgment?
Are you teaching them compassion or indifference?
Are you teaching them mercy, kindness, charity?

Are you teaching them we are all created in God’s image,
or are you teaching them some are
more equal than others,
some are inferior to others?
Are you teaching them to reach out,
or draw back and build walls?

Are you teaching them to add their voice
to the growing chorus
calling for the death sentence for the young man?
Or are you teaching them to add their voice
to the smaller chorus,
the remarkable chorus,
that has come from some of the families
of those killed,
voices  offering forgiveness,
forgiveness even in the face of what so far,
has been a complete lack of repentance
on the part of the young man.

Fathers: are you teaching your children
 what our Lord Jesus has taught us:
For if you forgive others …,
your heavenly Father will also forgive you;
but if you do not forgive others,
neither will your Father forgive you.”
(Matthew 6:14)

It was a mother who said to the murderer,
“You took something very precious away from me…
I will never talk to [my daughter] ever again.
I will never be able to hold her again.
But I forgive you”
(New York Times, June 20, 2015)

Fathers, could you say those words?
would you say such words?
Could you teach them to your children?
Would you teach them to your children?
Would you teach them not only by your words,
but by example,
by how you live your life?

God our Father is not some stern, detached king,
sitting on his throne,
his eyes looking past us,
focused on loftier matters.

No, God is our Father
who longs to make his home among us,
dwell with us,
be with us,
so that he can wipe away every tear,
and mourning,
and crying
and pain;
he longs to dwell among us so he can
even wipe away death.
(Revelation 21:3)

This is God our Father,
our Abba,
our Love.

AMEN

Sunday, June 07, 2015

“But Enough About You; Let’s Talk About Me”


The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
June 7, 2015

“But Enough About You; Let’s Talk About Me”
Luke 16:10

It was a wonderful cartoon in The New Yorker magazine:
a couple sitting at a table in a restaurant,
in the midst of dinner,
apparently on a first date,
when one says to the other,
“But enough about you;
Let’s talk about me.”

I saw the cartoon some years ago,
long before the term “selfie”
became part of our vocabulary,
but it reflected a trend that’s been going on
for quite some time in our society.
                                            
We live in an increasingly “selfie” era;
we seem to be losing a sense of community
as we turn more and more inward,
more and more focused on ourselves.

A book I read recently cited studies
that show that we are becoming a
more and more narcissistic society.
Do you remember Narcissus
from your high school mythology?
He was the one who was so fascinated
by his own reflection in a pool of water,
his own “selfie,”
that he lost sight of everything and everyone else,
the world around him.

The lyrics of that popular song
that is so annoyingly infectious
could be probably rewritten:
“Because you know I'm all about myself
‘bout myself, no others,;
I’m all about myself, ‘bout myself…”

We’re teaching our young to focus on,
what David Brooks, in his new book,
“The Road to Character”,
calls “resumé virtues”;
those virtues that will set them apart,
and distinguish them from others
in a highly competitive world,
a highly competitive workplace:
Things like graduating with honors,
captaining the soccer team,
serving as president of the student council.

These are wonderful accomplishments, of course,
things rightly to be proud of.
But Brooks argues that we’ve become
so obsessed with “resumé virtues”
that we’re losing sight of what he calls,
“eulogy virtues,”
those things about us that reflect
character more than accomplishment:
inner goodness,
rather than outer glory and glamour.
                                                                       
He calls them “eulogy virtues”,
a term I will say I like,
because they are the things
that people will remember long after
they’ve forgotten all those accomplishments
on our resumés.
                                     
Brooks thesis is that while
accomplishments are important –
we all want to succeed –
what matters is character.
                          
A simple example of character: two different people ask
“how are you?”
You know the first person who asked the question
did so in a glib, uninterested way;
he clearly wasn’t interested in your response;
he was more interested in telling you how he was.
                                                     
But when the second person asked,
you knew she meant it;
you knew she really wanted to know how you are
and was ready to listen,
ready to focus on you,
rather than herself.

We Christians get caught up in “resumé virtues”
as much as anyone else,
not only in our own personal lives
but even in our lives as disciples,
our lives in the church.
                                   
It is easy to succumb to the same temptation
that James and John did,
those sons of Zebedee,
pushed by their mother
to seek seats of honor
on Jesus’ right and Jesus’ left;
leading Jesus to teach them and us,
“Whoever wishes to be great among you
must be your servant…
just as the Son of Man came not to be served,
but to serve.”
(Matthew 20:20ff)

Another time, Jesus was asked by his disciples,
“Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
In response, Jesus pointed to a child,
a child who had no resumé virtues,
and said,
“Whoever becomes humble like this child
is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
(Matthew 18:1-5)

Jesus calls us to lives that can seem so out of sync
with what our society teaches us.
It is up to us to choose which path we follow.
We can follow our Lord,
listen to him,
and learn from him.
Or we can sit in the back of the classroom,
texting our friends,
as we make Jesus our personal chaplain,
there to approve and bless what we do,
rather than guide us, lead us,
teach and and transform us –
help us to develop character.

Our lesson, that single verse from Luke’s gospel,
has always been so instructive to me,
“Whoever is faithful in a very little
is faithful also in much,
and whoever is dishonest in a very little
is dishonest also in much.”
(Luke 16:10)
The lesson speaks to the very essence of character,
the lesson speaks to the very essence of virtue.
The lesson speaks to how Jesus calls us
to live our lives.

Brooks argues that character is grounded in humility,
and isn’t that what God teaches us,
what our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us:
to walk humbly?

Some two hundred years
before the birth of our Lord,
the Roman philosopher Cato wrote,
“I would rather men should ask
why no statue has been erected in my honor,
than why one has.”

That was a quotation my grandfather
always kept on his desk,
a reminder that it wasn’t his success in business
that ultimately mattered;
but rather what mattered was his life,
his life as a child of God,
his life as a disciple of Christ,
his life in service to others,
in his community, his church, his home,
in all the world.
Those are things I remember about him,
and they are the things I spoke of
when I gave the eulogy at his funeral.

Gary Trudeau, the creator of
the comic strip Doonesbury, has said,
“We live in an age where people
would rather be envied
than esteemed.”
That’s the “selfie” path,
the path that’s “all about myself, ‘bout myself.”
It is not a path that builds community
or character.
It isn’t a path that’s walked humbly.
It isn’t the path of discipleship

Our resumés don’t define who we are.
Who we are reflects whose we are.
When we remember whose we are;
when we live our lives guided
by whose we are,
then who we become
will be a women and men of goodness,
compassion,
selflessness;
men and women who walk humbly,
seeking no statues or glory,
but seek simply to follow,
follow our Lord Jesus Christ.

AMEN