Out in Joy, Back in Peace

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

May 29, 2016

Out in Joy, Back in Peace

Isaiah 56:6-8

And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,

to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,

and to be his servants,
all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it,

and hold fast my covenant—

these I will bring to my holy mountain,

and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices

will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer

for all peoples.

Thus says the Lord God,

who gathers the outcasts of Israel,
I will gather others to them

besides those already gathered.

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

The uniform is starched, pressed,

creases sharp.

The young man looks intently into the camera,

trying to effect Hollywood cool,

Hollywood glamour;

cigarette smoke wafting upward,

he is part Humphrey Bogart,

part Tyrone Power,

the black and white photo

a moody blend of light and shadow.

The year was 1947,

and the man was my father,

barely 18,

newly enlisted in the Navy.

It was two years after VE day,

two years after VJ day.

and the world was trying to rebuild,

trying to recover from

more than five years of war,

so much destruction,

so much devastation,

more than 60 million dead…

60 million…dead.

The world was trying to learn

how to live in peace.

The phrases “Cold War”

and “Iron Curtain”

would both come into

our vocabulary that year

as the United States and the Soviet Union,

found themselves no longer allies,

found themselves in competition for power,

dominance in the world.

But neither wanted war.

No one wanted to see the horror of

Hiroshima or Nagasaki,

even as both countries worked furiously

to assemble an arsenal of nuclear,

as well as conventional weapons.

The baby-faced young man in that picture

never saw war in his two years of service.

He sailed the seas,

swabbed decks,

and then one day his service was over

and he returned to his civilian life,

where he would go on to learn a trade,

get married,

have a family,

enjoy success,

live out his years in peace,

and then finally rest from his labors.

This is a weekend dedicated to remembering,

remembering those who served,

and especially those who died while serving.

It’s been 75 years since Pearl Harbor,

71 years since VE and VJ days.

Those who fought in World War II

are all but gone now;

Men and women who live only in our memories.

There have been other wars since, of course:

Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan.

Men and women in uniform died in those wars

and they too are remembered.

We remember with parades.

We remember with dignified ceremonies

at cemeteries.

We remember with wreathes and flowers.

We remember with stories at picnics.

And as we remember,

we hear the words of our Lord who said,

“No one has great love than this,

to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

(John 15:13)

But even as we remember

those who gave their lives,

honoring them for their service,

their sacrifice,

we as children of God,

as disciples of Jesus Christ,

are called to remember

that war is not what God wants for us.

We are called to remember

that the life our Lord calls us to

is one of peace,

one of reconciliation,

one that calls us to

an almost impossible standard:

feed our enemy

and quench his thirst;

love our enemy.

We are called to remember

the hope God has for us,

the future God has planned for us

which God told us of

through the prophet Isaiah:

In days to come

the mountain of the Lord’s house

shall be established as

the highest of the mountains,

and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.

Many peoples shall come and say,

“Come, let us go up to

the mountain of the Lord,

to the house of the God of Jacob;

that he may teach us his ways

and that we may walk in his paths.
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,

and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

He shall judge between the nations,

and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war any more.

(Isaiah 2:1-4)

We are called to remember

that God’s future for us

is one in which we finally learn

to live in peace,

we no longer go to war,

we no longer even learn war;

we turn our weapons into tools,

tools not to kill or destroy,

but to build, to feed.

We come here to this place,

this church, this sanctuary, to remember,

remember God’s Word

remember through God’s words –

Words of peace,

words of love,

words that turn us away from judgment

divisiveness,

words that turn us from fear of the stranger,

the alien, the different, the enemy.

As God has spoken through the prophet:

For as the rain and the snow

come down from heaven,

and do not return there

until they have watered the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

so shall my word be

that goes out from my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

For you shall go out in joy,

and be led back in peace;

We are called to remember

what our text teaches us

that God’s house is to be

a house of prayer for all people,

all peoples,

a place of peace,

a place where peace blossoms through God’s word,

and then spreads out

through you and me to all the world.

Seventy five years ago the nation of Japan

launched a brutal attack

on a place called Pearl Harbor,

cold-blooded, calculated, ruthless,

an attack on a Sabbath morning.

We branded that nation our enemy as a result,

and we went to war against that nation,

against that nation’s peoples.

For almost 4 years we fought them

and they fought us,

furiously,

each determined to vanquish the other.

And then one morning one of our airplanes

one of our largest bombers,

flying high above the city of Hiroshima

dropped a bomb

the likes of which the world had never seen.

And 100,000 lives vanished.

How remarkable then

that the leader of our nation

and the leader of their nation

could together lead a ceremony of remembrance

in that rebuilt city,

as they did this past week,

a ceremony that remembered not only

the Japanese men, women, and children who died,

but those of other nationalities,

including Americans

held there as prisoners of war.

Speaking of those who died,

the leader of our nation said,

“Their souls speak to us.

They ask us to look inward,

to take stock of who we are

and what we might become….”

All those who have died in war

speak to us with that same message,

asking us to look inward,

to see what we might become

what we might become

that we might create a future

in which no one will ever again die in war.

Who are we?

We are disciples of Jesus Christ,

which means we are to become

men and women of peace,

men and women who hear the Word

of hope and love

and take that word out joyfully

and bring it back in peace.

When we take stock of ourselves

we see clearly that we have the ability to kill,

destroy,

maim,

burn,

turn God’s entire creation into ash and cinder.

                 

But we also have the ability to love,

to forgive,

to welcome,

to embrace,

to share.

We are a people who once saw

the British as our enemy;

who once saw the Germans as our enemy;

who once saw the Japanese as our enemy;

And now we live in peace with them,

looking on them all as friends.

We even live in relative peace

with the people of Russia,

people many of us were taught to fear and hate

when we were growing up.

There will likely come a time

when those we call our enemies today

will too become our friends.

It starts here in this

God’s house of prayer,

a house of prayer

and welcome

and peace

for all people,

all people,

all people,

All the people coming in

and going out in joy,

coming in and going out

in peace.

And “the mountains and the hills before you

shall burst into song,

and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;

instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;
and it shall be to the Lord a memorial,

for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

AMEN

A Wonderful World

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

May 15, 2016

Pentecost & Confirmation Sunday

A Wonderful World

Genesis 11:1-9

Now the whole earth had one language

and the same words.

And as they migrated from the east,

they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar

and settled there.

And they said to one another,

“Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.”

And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.

Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city,

and a tower with its top in the heavens,

and let us make a name for ourselves;

otherwise we shall be scattered abroad

upon the face of the whole earth.”

The Lord came down to see the city and the tower,

which mortals had built.

And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people,

and they have all one language;

and this is only the beginning of what they will do;

nothing that they propose to do

will now be impossible for them.

Come, let us go down,

and confuse their language there,

so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”

So the Lord scattered them abroad from there

over the face of all the earth,

and they left off building the city.

Therefore it was called Babel,

because there the Lord confused

the language of all the earth;

and from there the Lord scattered them abroad

over the face of all the earth.

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

Forty seven years ago –

that sounds like such long time.

Not so far back that dinosaurs roamed the earth,

but far enough back

that telephones were wired into walls

and had rotary dials;

and if you wanted to call a number

outside of your area code,

you called long distance,

which, of course, you almost never did

because it was expensive.  

The closest thing to a home computer

was called a slide rule,

which had about as much cachet

as a plastic pocket protector.

Ties and suitcoat lapels were thin;

shoes were sensible;

cars were big;

television, boxy, bulky and richly veneered,

was just emerging from primordial black and white

into a wonderful world of color.

1969 was the year in which I was confirmed,

confirmed at the church

I had grown up in in Buffalo.

Our class was big;

I don’t remember precisely,

but I am guessing there were more than

20 in my class –

the church had over a 1000 members back then.

Every Sunday we gathered in the Youth Room,

seated in a semicircle,

facing the three adults who taught the class.

The two most popular girls in the class

sat at one end of the semicircle,

and the two coolest boys

sat at the other end of the semicircle

so the four could make faces at each other,

while the rest of us sat in the middle.

We all struggled not to look bored,

but the fact was, we were –

that’s the one thing I remember about the class:

It was dull.

The curriculum came from the denomination,

and our focus was on preparation

for the examination we would all endure

at the end of the year,

the examination by the Session,

a requirement that still stands

in our Book of Order.

(W-4.2003)

The exam was rather like today’s SOLs

and the teachers had to teach to the test.

I don’t recall my actual Confirmation;

That memory was erased by

my memory of the examination.

It was on a Sunday night at the church.

My classmates and I were seated before

the 24 members of the Session; all men.

The girls wore dresses,

and we boys squirmed in coats and ties.

Information had been sprayed on us throughout the year,

like a light dust that clung for a short while

but then eventually wafted away.

We’d been given 50 questions

and told that the elders would ask us each

one question from the 50,

But of course, we were not told which question

we were going to be asked,

so we needed to know the answers to all 50.

Happily, grace abounds in the Reformed church,

and we all passed,

but all in all it

there was little constructive in the process.

In fact, even back then I determined

that if I ever were to teach Confirmation Class,

I would do things very differently.

What we try to do now

is not shoot information nuggets and packets

at our young people.

Instead, we try to encourage them

to think about their faith,

try to encourage them to ask questions,

try to help them understand

that asking questions is not only okay,

it is the key to a vibrant, vital faith.

We ask our students a lot of questions

over the course of the Confirmation year,

but we are not looking for right answers;

we’re looking to the students to think,

think about what they think,

why they say what they say.

Even the best religious education

can be infected with mythology

and bad information.

Where in the Bible does it say that it was an apple

that Adam and Eve ate?

How did we come up with 3 kings,

and where did their names come from?

Why do we think Mary Magdalene was a prostitute?

We want our students

to look at their Confirmation year

as the beginning of a lifetime of questions,

of exploration, of learning,

of a intentional faith,

of growing a deeper faith.

And as they study and learn,

they may find themselves looking at stories, texts,

they thought they knew,

but reading them with fresh eyes,

a fresh perspective,

seeing something new, different

in words they thought they understood.

Our text is a perfect example

of a lesson most of us have heard,

learned, thought we understood:

a story of the great tower

humanity built from pride, arrogance, vanity—

“to make a name for ourselves”

as the text tells us.

We read this as a story of pride and punishment,

God’s pre-Jane Austen novella.

The children who seek to build a tower

that will reach the heavens

to make a name for themselves

will be stopped in their tracks,

the prideful scattered to the winds,

all of them condemned never again

to understand one another       ,

lost in a sea of languages.

But perhaps that’s not what the story is about.

Perhaps the story is more about God’s concern

that humanity was getting too comfortable

in its unity and uniformity,

one people bound by one language;

not “filling the earth”

as God had commanded them.

                                            

So God scatters his children,

not to punish them,

but simply to fufill God’s goal.

And in scattering them

God gave them each their own language,

again not to punish,

but simply because diversity is good,

After all, the lion doesn’t make the same sound

as the camel.

And the first Pentecost reminds us

that language has never been a barrier,

never been an impediment to the Word of the Lord.

The Word of the Lord transcends language.

it is the same whether it is in Hebrew, Greek,

Latin, or any of the languages

that came centuries later,

including English.

It is always the Word of the Lord.

My Confirmation Class was very white,

very waspish, very uniform.

It was not reflective of the world;

it was not even very reflective of Buffalo back then,

which was a mosaic of ethnic neighborhoods.

Our Confirmands will go out into a

wonderfully diverse world,

a world that’s truly global,

a world where they can communicate

just as easily with someone

on the other side of the world

as they can with someone next door.

Our young people will be part of a multicultural world,

a world in which most followers of Jesus Christ

live outside of the United States,

learning the Word of the Lord

in more than a hundred tongues.

God does not want the unity that binds us

to be language, skin color,

ethnicity, a country’s borders;

God wants the unity that binds us

to be all of us looking to God,

living in obedience to God’s will

as “whole earth disciples”.

Our text, read with fresh eyes

tells us the story of wonderful world,

a vast world God created for all God’s children

that is as rich in diversity as it is in beauty.

We can build our towers –

that’s not what troubles God.

It is when we build walls that God grows concerned.

We are tear down walls, remove barriers,

so we can walk with one another,

never pridefully, always humbly,

bound in unity, all of us God’s children.

Then we will make a name for ourselves,

a good name,

a name that will put a smile on God’s face,

a smile that it seems to me would stretch

from earth to the highest heavens.

AMEN  

Woven Together

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

May 8, 2016

Woven Together

Acts 16:9-15

During the night Paul had a vision:

there stood a man of Macedonia

pleading with him and saying,

“Come over to Macedonia and help us.”

When he had seen the vision,

we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia,

being convinced that God had called us

to proclaim the good news to them.

We set sail from Troas

and took a straight course to Samothrace,

the following day to Neapolis,

and from there to Philippi,

which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia

and a Roman colony.

We remained in this city for some days.

On the sabbath day we went outside the gate

by the river,

where we supposed there was a place of prayer;

and we sat down and spoke to the women

who had gathered there.

A certain woman named Lydia,

a worshiper of God,

was listening to us;

she was from the city of Thyatira

and a dealer in purple cloth.

The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to

what was said by Paul.

When she and her household were baptized,

she urged us, saying,

“If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord,

come and stay at my home.”

And she prevailed upon us.

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

It really was a scandalous thing to do:

Paul and his colleagues talking with women –

a group of women,

out in the open,

talking with them on the Sabbath.

Paul would later write to the Corinthians:

“As in all the churches of the saints,

women should be silent in the churches.

For they are not permitted to speak,

but should be subordinate,

as the law also says.

If there is anything they desire to know,

let them ask their husbands at home.

For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.”

(1 Corinthians 14:34ff)

That was the way of the world

two thousand years ago,

back in Jesus’ day,

back in Paul’s day.

Paul wrote those words not because he was a sexist,

a misogynist,

as he is sometimes portrayed.

Paul was just a product of his times,

a product of a culture in which women

were most definitely second-class citizens.

Paul lived in a patriarchal society:

men in charge.

So it should come as no surprise

that Paul wrote in his letter

to his young protégé Timothy:

“Let a woman learn in silence with full submission.

I permit no woman to teach

or to have authority over a man;

she is to keep silent.”

(1 Timothy 2:11-12)

And yet, even though Paul lived

in that kind of world,

with those social structures,

there he was, on the Sabbath,

talking with women,

women who were not even Jewish—

Gentile women;

not shooing them away

but talking with them,

teaching them

letting them ask questions,

and, just as important,

treating the women with respect,

dignity, civility,

courtesy.

And so, when Lydia asked to be baptized,

we can picture it, can’t we:

Paul walking her down the bank

and into the river

and there baptizing her,

immersing her in the cool waters,

then helping her up, out of the water,

Lydia washed clean of sin,

born anew,

born afresh in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

And then, when Lydia invited

Paul and his colleagues

to be her guests at her home,

they happily accepted her kind offer of hospitality.

She “prevailed upon them” we are told,

which suggests that Paul and his colleagues

looked upon Lydia and her friends

as equals –

not a group to be dismissed

or to be told

“be quiet; it is shameful for you to speak

in our presence on the Sabbath.”

In this little vignette we have the very foundation

of the church of Jesus Christ in Philippi.

What began with a vision calling Paul to the area,

led to a group of women by the river on the Sabbath,

and from there,

the beginning of the Christian community;

a faith community Paul would later warmly praise,

writing to them:

“I thank my God ever time I remember you,

constantly praying with joy

in every one of my prayers for all of you,

because of your sharing in the gospel

from the first day until now.”

(Philippians 1:3ff)

Paul wrote words about women

that to our ears sound harsh,

yet Paul shows us in his ministry

that he understood the life the gospel calls us to,

a life that calls us look beyond gender, race,

culture, language;

a life that calls us

to look at every person as neighbor,

a life that calls us

to look at every person as a child of God.

The patriarchal culture that Paul was part of

reflected society,

but the gospel of Jesus Christ transcends society,

transcends culture;

In fact it is often countercultural,

which is one of the reasons we often struggle so.

Paul understood this.

So, when Paul wrote his lengthy,

deeply theological letter

to the Christians in Rome,

we should not be at all surprised

that he entrusted the letter

to a woman to deliver it,

a businesswoman named Phoebe,

of whom Paul wrote:

“I commend to you our sister Phoebe,

a deacon of the church

so that you may welcome her in the Lord

as is fitting for the saints,

and help her in whatever she requires from you,

for she has been a benefactor of many

and of myself as well.”

(Romans 16:1-2)

Paul refers to Phoebe as a deacon,

an officer of the church,

a leader in the church.

The Greek is quite clear –

the word is deacon.

But it is fascinating to see how some translations

of the Bible try to modify her role,

minimizing it by calling her

a “servant in the church”,

which is not the same as being an officer.

Other translations call her a deaconess,

as though there was a special category

of deacon for women,

which in Paul’s day there was not.

As the Anglican bishop and

biblical scholar N.T. Wright has observed,

“[Phoebe] was in a position of leadership,

and Paul respected her as such,

and expected the Roman church to do so as well.”

Paul wrote as well of Prisca,

also known as Priscilla,

another woman Paul wasn’t hesitant to recognize

as one who not only worked with him

“in Christ Jesus”,

but who even “risked her neck for his life.”

(Romans 16:3)

Still, Paul was a product of his times,

and his writings show that he got too caught up

in the second creation story,

with Adam first, and then Eve,

bone of Adam’s bone,

flesh of Adam’s flesh.

(Genesis 2:23)

Paul seems to have overlooked

the first creation story;

which says so matter of factly,

“So God created humankind in his image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.

(Genesis 1:27)

The past few months we have seen and heard

an alarming, troubling rise

in both words and actions

that are sexist, misogynist,

racist, bigoted, hate-filled.

                                   

Too often these words and acts

have been sloughed off,

even laughed off,

with comments like,

“we’re just telling it like it is”

or “we won’t be bound by political correctness.”

But such talk, grounded in sexism,

racism, bigotry,

misogyny is more than just adolescent,

more than just ignorant;

For us, as followers of Jesus Christ,

such talk reflects utter and complete faithlessness.

We say in our Brief Statement of Faith,

that God “makes everyone equally in God’s image

male and female,

of every race and people,

to live as one community.”

(A Brief Statement of Faith, 10.3)

Do those words capture our theological convictions?

Our beliefs?

Or are they just empty words we say?

Aren’t they what the Bible teaches us?

How the gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to live?

As followers of Jesus Christ

we are a community woven together by grace,

by love,

by the words of the gospel,

all of us part of God’s communal tapestry.

Sexism, racism,

bigotry, hateful language –

they are stains on the fabric.

Stains you and I are called to remove

before they weaken the fabric.

A few months back, I asked you to think

how different history would have been

had the Wise Men from the East

been turned away at the eastern border of Judea

as foreigners,

not welcome in Bethlehem

or any other part of the country.

Or how different history would have been

had Joseph and Mary been

refused entrance into Egypt,

where they sought refuge from

Herod’s murderous soldiers

intent on killing their newborn son.

                 

On a beautiful morning two thousand years ago,

the sun bright, the sky a vibrant cobalt,

a successful businesswoman named Lydia

went down to the bank of a river in Philippi

with her friends,

and as they sat and talked,

a group of men approached them,

men the women could see as they drew nearer,

were obviously neither Greek nor Roman,

but strangers, foreigners,

swarthy, different.

The men who walked down by the riverbank

that bright day,

were Jews looking for a place to pray,

a place to observe the Sabbath.

Expecting that they might find a few Jewish men

to observe the Sabbath with,

to pray with,

they found only women,

Gentile women.

But the men, the women,

strangers though they were,

from different cultures and different countries,

talked, listened,

learned….together.

                                   

Together they shared the gospel.

Together on the riverbank they shared grace,

Together on the riverbank they shared hospitality.

There on that riverbank

they wove God’s tapestry of community;

There on that riverbank

they wove the tapestry of love

given us by God in Jesus Christ.

                                                              

AMEN