Two Thousand Verses

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

August 30, 2015

Two Thousand Verses

Selected Texts

Angel Falls in Venezuela –

the highest waterfall in the world,

water rushing down the river to the precipice

and then dropping,

dropping down,

nothing to stop the fall,

water dropping 1000, 2000,

almost 3000 feet,

straight down,

and then even at the base of the falls,

the water continues its downward path,

down, down,

nothing to stop its downward rush.

That was rather like the stock market this past week

as it plunged at the beginning of the week,

down at one point more than a thousand points,

a fall so breathtaking,

the news even managed to push politicians

out of the spotlight.  

You don’t have to be a Warren Buffett

to be affected by the stock market.

Most of us have funds invested in the market,

either directly or indirectly:

retirement and pension funds,

perhaps a part of a college savings fund,

or a small inheritance.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) headquarters

has an investment portfolio

for retirement funds

for me, other pastors,

and other church workers.

I don’t know what investments they have

but I do know the portfolio is actively invested

in both stocks and bonds.

Obviously, I want it to do well,

as do all my professional colleagues,

so even we in the ministry were awestruck

by the drop and subsequent gyrations

in the market this past week.

My interest goes deeper, though,

because of the business career

I had before I went to Princeton Seminary.

I earned my masters of business administration

degree in finance back in 1978,

and while I was in school

I worked on Wall Street,

and thought about a career there.

So I read with both interest,

and some degree of amusement,

the opinions of many “experts”

as they reacted throughout the week

to the market’s ups and downs.

Some said the drop was

only the beginning of a

major financial implosion,

while others said it was a healthy correction

in a frothy market.

More than a few said that the drop

made it a good time to put money

into savings and retirement portfolios.

I’m no stock market expert,

no Warren Buffett,

but like all of us, I think about money.

After all, we all need money to pay for housing,

cars, gas, insurance,

utilities,

the food on our tables

and the clothes on our backs.

Even as we pay our bills,

pay for the basics,

we all try as well to set aside money

for special things,

including vacations,

retirement,

children’s education,

or even some special splurge –

new furniture,

remodeling,

a boat.

                                   

As women and men of faith

we sometimes struggle with how

we should think about money.

We want nice things for ourselves

and our families,

but we don’t want to feel guilty about success,

or the occasional luxury.

Happily, we Protestants tend

to go light on the guilt,

so that’s not a problem.  

Yet still we hear people say,

“Don’t you know that the Bible says that

‘money is the root of all evil’?”

That’s not what the Bible says, though.

What it says in the first letter to Timothy

in the New Testament is,

“For the love of money

is a root of all kinds of evil”.

The love of money

is a root

of all kinds of evil.

The writer is warning us how easy it is

to find ourselves consumed by money,

to find ourselves too focused on money,

on accumulating more and more,

on thinking that we don’t have enough,

that we are not satisfied,

that we want more,

we need more.

The result is that in our eagerness to get more,

it is easy to lose our way;

it is easy to stray from the path of faith.

(1 Timothy 6:10 ff)

The Bible in both Old and New Testament

warns us repeatedly

about the dangers of focusing

too much on money.

too much on accumulating

money, wealth and material possessions,

even if we don’t consider ourselves rich.

                          

In fact there are more verses in the Bible

that deal with the subject of money

than any other subject or issue.

Scholars estimate that there are

more than 2000 verses

that speak to money.

And virtually all are verses

with flashing yellow lights:

“Warning!”

“Be careful!”

“Caution!”

“Danger Ahead!”

You may recall what our Lord said

to the rich young man,

“Go, sell what you own

and give the money to the poor,

and you will have treasure in heaven;

then come, follow me”
(Mark 10:21)

We hear that and,

if we are honest about it,

we’d have to admit we don’t like it.

Is that really what we are supposed to do?

As followers of our Lord Jesus Christ,

are we really called to give away

everything we have,

everything we’ve worked for?

Is that really what our Lord expects of us?

No, not at all,

say those popular preachers

who preach what has become known as

the “prosperity gospel.”

“On the contrary”, they say,

“God wants you to have a Mercedes,

Jesus wants you to live in a large house.

Believe and your faith will make rich.”

I won’t ask for a show of hands,

but who wouldn’t want to hear

that message preached from the pulpit

Sunday after Sunday?

That sounds a lot more appealing than

the story of the rich young man.

That sounds a lot more appealing

than a sermon built around the words of our Lord

from the gospel of Luke, where he says,

“Woe to you who are rich

for you have received your consolation.

Woe to you who are full now,

for you will be hungry.”

(Luke 6:24)

Wouldn’t we all prefer instead these words:

“See your business taking off…”

see your family prospering…

With God on your side you cannot lose…

Think increase,

think abundance

think more than enough!”

These are words from one of the most

well-known, popular televangelists,

a man who is, not surprisingly, very wealthy.

But doesn’t our Lord teach us,

“Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth,

where moth and rust consume

and where thieves break in and steal;

but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven…

for where your treasure is,

there your heart will be also.”

Jesus was not teaching anything radically new

when he spoke of money.

He knew the many lessons in the Old Testament

that flashed warnings,

words like these from Proverbs:

“Do not wear yourself out to get rich;

do not trust your own cleverness.

Cast but a glance at riches,

and they are gone,

for they will surely sprout wings

and fly off to the sky like an eagle.”

(Proverbs 23:4-5)

“Believe big”,

counter the prosperity gospel preachers,

believe in abundance,

believe in riches,

and they will flow.

“What you receive is directly connected

to what you believe”, they say.

But didn’t Moses warn the children of Israel

as they prepared to enter the Promised Land,

“When you have eaten your fill

and have built fine houses and live in them,

and when your herds and flocks have multiplied,

and your silver and gold is multiplied,

and all that you have is multiplied,

then do not exalt yourself,

forgetting the Lord your God,

who brought you out of the land of Egypt,

out of the house of slavery”

(Deuteronomy 8:12)

Recently Pope Francis decried what he calls

the “idolatry of money”.

For that, he was roundly criticized,

condemned,

and told to keep his nose out of

economics and business

and stick to theology.

But don’t you see:

that’s just what the Pope was doing –

calling the Roman Catholic faithful

and others who read or heard his words

to remember the words of the gospel,

the words of scripture,

the teachings of our Lord,

the warnings, the perils.

Jesus calls us to new life,

a life rich in grace and love,

a life of abundance,

not in mutual funds,

not in things,

not in private jets and yachts.

Things turn to dust,

but faith endures,

peace endures,

contentment endures,

love endures.

There is nothing wrong with having ambition;

and there’s nothing wrong with

achieving success.

What Jesus wants us stay focused on is

how we achieve our success:

do we do it with honesty and integrity,

with honor and decency?

And then what do we do with our success:

is it about indulging ourselves,

buying all things we want,

using money as a measure of value,

throwing a few dollars here and there

to charity to ease our conscience?

If we go back to that first letter to Timothy,

we can find some guidance,

the writer telling us all,

but especially those with wealth, to

“do good,

be rich in good works,

generous,

and ready to share…

so that [you] may take hold of the life

that really is life.”

(1 Timothy 6:17)

All we have comes from God,

and we are called to share what we have,

share especially with those who struggle,

who lack even the basics,

share generously;

we are to be rich in good works,

each of us, all of us,

regardless of what we have in the bank.

Jesus calls us to keep ourselves

in the love of God,

not in cashmere and caviar,

not in Mercedes and material possessions,

for God’s love is a gift we been given freely..

                          

Two thousand verses guide us,

warn us,

teach us,

steer us,

help us to understand

where true abundance,

where true riches lie.

AMEN

Coming Home

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

August 23, 2015

Coming Home

Psalm 84:1-4, 10

How lovely is your dwelling place,

O Lord of hosts!

My soul longs, indeed it faints

for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy

to the living God.

Even the sparrow finds a home,

and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O Lord of hosts,

my King and my God.

Happy are those who live in your house,

ever singing your praise….

 For a day in your courts is better

than a thousand elsewhere.

**************************************

People come,

people go;

people join,

people leave.

Churches are places with open doors

that are also revolving doors.

We use the word  “church” to describe a place

where people come together

to worship God

in the name of Jesus Christ.

It is one word,

one God,

one Lord.

Yet each church is as different

and as distinct as a snowflakes falling in January.

Churches are small and large,

rural and urban,

gothic and colonial,

quiet and boisterous,

sleepy and active;

and, yes, faithful and unfaithful.

The differences and distinctions reflect

the people who make up the church,

those who sit in the pews,

serve on the committees,

contribute their time, talent, and treasure.  

Every church,

no matter how homogenous it may seem,

no matter how uniform it may look on the surface.

is a sea of diversity,

a place of differences,

and distinctions.

Here, or in any other church,

as we worship on a Sunday morning,

you are likely to find that a hymn that was sung

resonated profoundly with one person,

even as another person thought it uninteresting.  

The preacher’s words in a sermon,

mine or anyone else’s,

may touch deeply the heart and mind

of one person,

even as another person tunes out.

Over the years I have worshiped at many churches,

both Presbyterian and other denominations,  

and I have always been struck by

how much we have in common

even as surface differences

are so readily apparent.

When I began my career as a lawyer

back in the early 1980s,

I lived in downtown Chicago.

and I worshiped occasionally at the

Fourth Presbyterian Church

which was right in the heart of downtown.

It was very big,

and it was very formal:

the ushers were men dressed in morning suits,

the kind of formal wear that we see now

only in movies from the 1930s and 40s:

long tail coats and striped trousers

were worn in the daytime,

as opposed to the white tie and tails or tuxedo

the well-dressed man would wear in the evening.

As slow as churches are to embrace change,

I am guessing the morning suits are long gone,

and the brigade of ushers is no longer exclusively male,

but Fourth is still big,

and, I am guessing, still fairly formal,

vastly different from the small Congregational church

in Dorset where I worship when I am on vacation,

or our own church.

We are all drawn to church for different reasons,

but some 400 of us have been drawn here

to this church, our church,

the place we have made our church home,

the place we call our church home.

It is our home because we feel welcome here,

each of us,

accepted,

a part of the community.

We can go away on vacation,

or, travel extensively for business,

or, as in the case of our young folks

head off to college,

and even if we’re gone for weeks or months,

still we know that when we return,

we’ll feel at home.

                                   

The Psalmist knew this feeling as he wrote

more than 2000 years ago,

long before the faithful gathered in a church,

gathered as a church, to worship.

For the psalmist, just going to the Temple,

the synagogue,

stepping up to the altar to offer his sacrifice to the priest

was to immerse himself in the presence of God,

to feel himself wrapped in the everlasting,

everloving arms of God:

My soul longs, indeed it faints

for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy

to the living God.

It is God who creates the feeling of home,

for this is God’s house,

but we, you and I, are the church,

and we can either enhance that feeling,

or we can tear it apart, tear it down.

There are many churches

that don’t feel like home;

that feel more like battle grounds,

with angry people boiling in the pews.

Some churches try to ensure harmony

by demanding that anyone who wants to join,

who wants to be part of the church,

must agree to the particular church’s creed

and statement of belief.

“Sign on the dotted line,” they say,

“to assure us you think like us,

and won’t cause any trouble.

Sign and then we’ll welcome you.”

We don’t do that here,

because Jesus didn’t do that.

Think about how that first

body of Christ was formed,

those men who made up the first group of followers:

Did they call come from the same background?

No.

Were they all men of unshakable faith?

Hardly.

Were they all men of deep theological

understanding?

Hardly.

Were they all men who could set aside

their human feelings,

like envy, jealousy, anger, and impatience

so they would show nothing but

Christian love to one another?

In a word: no.

The Reverend Frederick Buechner observes

“Jesus made his church out of human beings

with more or less the same mixtures in them

of cowardice and guts,

of intelligence and stupidity,

of selfishness and generosity,

of openness of heart and sheer cussedness

as you would be apt to find in any of us.”

(Secrets in the Dark, 147)

Those first twelve disciples,

along with the women who joined them,

those women we heard about a few weeks back,

they were you and me 2000 years ago.

“Cussedness” is such a wonderful word,

so appropriate for someone who lives in Vermont,

as Buechner does,

just down the road from where I stay

each year on vacation.

It means “annoying” or “stubborn”

and certainly it’s a word that

can describe any one of us

from time to time,

if we are honest.

And yet, even if cussedness is all too easy to find

in any body of Christ,

still we come together in the name of Christ

to try our best to work together,

as we follow our Lord Jesus,

as we try to model our lives on his life,

and as we try to live as Jesus teaches us to live.

We know that Jesus wants us to create a church

not of unbending theological purity,

but rather a place that is home,

a place that is welcoming,

accepting,

nurturing;

a place of peace,

a place of healing,

a place of wholeness.

We need this church as home

because we are restless,

and, as Augustine wrote so long ago,

our hearts will never come to rest

until they come to rest in God,

until we find our way home,

drawing ourselves into the presence of God.

Rev. Buechner, who is now nearing 90,

has written that even if we don’t acknowledge it,

our lives are spent searching,

searching for

“a good self to be and for good work to do;

searching to become human in a world

that tempts us always to be less than human;

searching to love and be loved;

and in a world where it is often hard to believe

in much of anything,

searching to believe in something holy

and beautiful

and life-transcending

that will give meaning and purpose

to the lives we live.”

Our church home helps us to find

what we are searching for,

helps us to set our hearts, our minds at rest,

gracing us with peace,

restoring us and making us whole.

This imperfect place,

filled with imperfect people – me and you –

is the place we call church,

the place we call home,

home for me, home for you,

home for each of us.

For here we can find holiness,

here we can find beauty,

often in such unlikely, unexpected ways:

the holiness of a child who

while she waits impatiently

for her parents at coffee hour,

scribbles words on a white board,

“I love Jesus”;

the beauty of laughter coming from a group of knitters

who find such joy in their service;

the holiness and beauty of such a large

disparate group of men and women

who gather faithfully each Sunday

eyes, minds, and hearts focused on the cross.

It is here in church that we find,

“warmth and love,

[our selves] submerged in a larger, richer life.”

(Buechner)

It is here we find home.

“How lovely is your dwelling place,

O Lord of hosts!

My soul longs, indeed it faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy

to the living God.

Even the sparrow finds a home,

and the swallow a nest for herself,

where she may lay her young,

at your altars, O Lord of hosts,

my King and my God.

Happy are those who live in your house,

ever singing your praise….

For a day in your courts is better

than a thousand elsewhere.”

AMEN