Have You Not Heard?

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

April 17, 2016

Have You Not Heard?

Isaiah 40:21-31

Have you not known?

Have you not heard?

Has it not been told you from the beginning?

Have you not understood

from the foundations of the earth?

It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,

and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;

who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,

and spreads them like a tent to live in;

who brings princes to naught,

and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.

Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,

scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows upon them,

and they wither,

and the tempest carries them off like stubble.

To whom then will you compare me,

or who is my equal? says the Holy One.

Lift up your eyes on high and see:

Who created these?
He who brings out their host and numbers them,

calling them all by name;
because he is great in strength,

mighty in power,

not one is missing.

Why do you say, O Jacob,

and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,

and my right is disregarded by my God”?

Have you not known?

Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God,

the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not faint or grow weary;

his understanding is unsearchable.

He gives power to the faint,

and strengthens the powerless.

Even youths will faint and be weary,

and the young will fall exhausted;

but those who wait for the Lord

shall renew their strength,

they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,

they shall walk and not faint.

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

Who doesn’t love the “good old days”?

Who doesn’t love to wax nostalgic,

to look to the past?

So let’s do that this morning –

let’s go back in time,

far back;

let’s go back 200 years,

back to the year 1816.

You would be quite uncomfortable,

sitting on hard wooden benches,

rather than the upholstered chairs

we have now.

And your discomfort would only get worse

as I begin to preach my sermon,

a sermon that would go on and on,

for two, maybe even three hours,

a sermon that would focus on how bad you are,

on how sinful,

on just how far down the road to hell

you all have traveled.

My sermon would not be designed to teach,

or encourage,

or proclaim;

it would be a sermon designed to instill fear,

fear more than anything else,

fear to awaken you

to how sinful a life you are living.

Hellfire and brimstone have gone out of fashion

from most pulpits these days.

Preaching fear is certainly

not an effective way

to share the good news of

the gospel of Jesus Christ.

More to the point,

it is bad theology.

A few years back,

a prominent evangelical preacher

told his congregation

he no longer believed

in the concept of hell

as he and his church had learned it;

as he had preached it;

as he had taught it.

In that pastor’s church,

hell was very real,

a place of eternal fire and torment

for nonbelievers;

and nonbelievers were thought to be anyone

who didn’t think exactly the way they thought

within the walls of that church.

What caused him to change his thinking

was an art show his church had organized,

an art show in which

contributors had been asked

to produce works of art featuring

men and women who had earned reputations

as peacemakers in history.

Among the works

was portrait of Mahatma Gandhi –

no surprise there: he was a man whose life

had been devoted to peace,

to peace-making,

to reconciliation of races and peoples.

Shortly after the exhibit opened,

the pastor noted that

someone had taped a piece of paper

on the corner of the frame

with Gandhi’s picture,

a piece of paper with words that said,

“Reality check: he’s in hell”,

presumably because Gandhi was not a Christian.

When the pastor saw the note,

he was stunned,

and questions flooded his mind:

Really, Mahatma Gandhi is in hell?

Do we know that for a fact?

Has someone checked?

Has someone confirmed this?

Why? Why would Gandhi be in hell?

Why, if we believe in a God of love,

a God of grace,

a God of mercy,

why would such a God want

to subject Mahatma Gandhi,

a man who devoted his life to peace,

to an eternity of hellfire and torment?

To the pastor, this made no sense.

To the pastor, who, up to that point,

had never questioned

the concept of hell he had learned,

the concept he had preached,

found himself asking,

“Does God really punish people

…with infinite, eternal torment?

Does God really punish people

…with infinite, eternal torment

for things they did in their

few finite years of life?”

The pastor went back to the gospels

and realized that every time

Jesus made a reference to hell,

Jesus was not talking about

a place deep underground.

That concept had come from Roman

and Greek literature.

No, Jesus was talking about

the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem;

he was using the garbage dump,

with its ever-present flames

and overpowering stench,

to illustrate the points he was making,

as part of his teaching.

The pastor began to wonder how

his long-held beliefs

fit with the words from

the first letter of John in scripture

which teaches us that God is love,

and those who abide in love, abide in God,

and God abides in them.

The pastor eventually told his congregation

that his thinking about hell had changed,

changed radically from

what they all believed within his church.

Many of his congregation reacted angrily.

The pastor had challenged a foundational belief

that he himself had taught.

Many parishioners left the church;

and before long the pastor himself

stepped down from the pulpit,

and left the church,

the church which he had helped establish.

The pastor’s belief in God,

in Jesus,

his faith –

none of that had changed;

just his thinking about the concept of hell.

But his re-examination of his long-held beliefs,

even the very act of questioning,

had shaken the congregation

to its very foundation.  

(Rob Bell, from his book “Love Wins”)

Two weeks ago,

we talked about how vital it is to our faith

to question, to ponder,

to inquire,  

to look afresh even at deeply-held gospel truths,

I quoted the author David Kinnaman, who asked,

“Is the Christian community capable of

…welcoming hard questions …

Or will the church continue to be seen as a place

where doubts don’t belong

because certainty is the same as faith?”

It is this resistance to looking afresh,

this resistance to looking within,

this resistance to questioning

that has caused so many young people

to turn away from church.

These young people aren’t leaving

one church for another,

as so many did a generation ago,

seeking a livelier experience,

seeking anything other than

their parents’ church.

No, these young people are leaving church, period,

finding churches too stultifying,

closed-minded,

judgmental,

self-righteous.

We are beginning to plan for celebrations

to mark our 150^th anniversary next year.

We should rejoice in our rich history.

But we should also use our

anniversary celebrations

as an opportunity for us

to think deeply, faithfully about our future,

about what kind of church we currently are,

and about what kind of church we want to be,

what kind of church we believe God is calling us to be

in God’s future – 5, 10, 25 years from now.

I think the two texts

that are part of our service today

should guide us,

should help shape our thinking for the future,

shape who we are as children of God

as disciples of Christ,

and as a body of Christ.

The underlying message of

both the text in Isaiah

and Psalm 23 that Bel Canto

will sing in a few minutes

is so simple:

God is with us;

God is with us because God loves us.

God is with us,

in good times and in bad.

God is with us,

and God will see us through,

even if find ourselves in the darkest valley,

even the valley of death.

Jesus never tells us that life will be easy,

nor do our texts.

Jesus never tells us

that our lives will be overflow

with material abundance and riches,

nor do our texts.

But what Jesus does assure us of,

what our texts assure us of,

is that no matter what life brings us,

no matter what life throws at us,

God will be with us.

Health concerns,

financial worries,

relationships collapsing,

job stress,

concern for loved ones –

God is with us,

lifting us up,

giving us strength;

helping to see us through.

Is there a more stressful time in life

than the teenage years

as we transition from child to adult,

as we struggle to learn who we are

who God created us to be?

Even in those tumultuous years,

God is there, with us,

renewing our strength,

lifting us up.

Even in those often terribly lonely years,

we are never alone.

                 

Rabbi Harold Kushner,

who wrote the now classic book,

“When Bad Things Happen to Good People”

wrote in another of his books that,

“Religion should not be

the carping voice of condemnation,

telling us that the normal is sinful

and the well-intentioned mistake

is an unforgivable transgression....

Religion should be a voice that says,

I will guide you through this minefield of

difficult choices,

sharing with you the insights and experiences

of the greatest souls of the past,

and I will offer you comfort and forgiveness

when you are troubled by

the painful choices you made.”

and you will make painful choices…

That’s what I think our text

and Psalm 23 teach us.

That’s what the Risen Christ teaches us.

And that should be the message we convey,

the cornerstone of our ministry,

our mission

as we follow Christ into God’s future.

Here in this pile of bricks,

situated halfway between Costco and Walmart,

anyone, everyone

should be able to find God’s presence.

Here, even the prodigal son should find welcome,

forgiveness,

acceptance.

If we had the space,

it seems to me that new sign

we hope to install later this year should say:

“Have you not known?

Have you not heard?                          

The Lord is the everlasting God,

the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He doesn’t come and go;

He is always here,

to give power to the faint,
and strength to the powerless.
Those who wait for the Lord

will renew their strength,

they will soar like eagles,

they will run and never tire,

they shall walk and never faint.

For God will be with them.

God is here…

for you.”

AMEN