Now As Our Service Begins

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

August 13, 2017

Now As Our Service Begins

John 13:34-35

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

It’s a great title for a sermon, don’t you think?

Short, punchy, to the point.

You read the words in the worship bulletin

even before the service begins

and you know right where the preacher will head

once he takes his place behind the pulpit.

        

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

Don’t the very words make you feel uncomfortable,

a little warmer,

especially your feet,

as though heat was radiating from the floor?

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

is not the subtitle of my sermon.

It is the title of a famous sermon

preached in the year 1741 by Jonathan Edwards,

the Puritan theologian and preacher.

Let’s imagine for a moment,

on this beautiful Sunday morning,

that we ourselves are in Edwards’ church in Connecticut

more than 270 years ago,

about to hear what we assume will be

the very model of “fire and brimstone”,

Edwards about to hurl lightning bolts from his pulpit,

fury rising in his voice with every sentence,

he himself the last bulwark,

between the sea of sinners sitting before him

and the wrath of an angry and vengeful God

enthroned in Heaven above.

        

The irony is that, in spite of the title,

the crux of Edward’s message preached

all those years ago,

was that God is a God of grace and goodness,

a God who sent his Son that we would know mercy,

that we would know love.

Now, we – none of us – can deny we are sinners.

We are, by definition.

How many times have you heard me say

that sin is anything,

anything,

that causes us to turn from God?

We sin in ways both small and large,

in the things we say and do

and the things we fail to say and do.

Edwards was not wrong in using the term

to describe himself and his congregation.

Sinners we may be,

but we are not in the hands of an angry God.

We might well be in the hands of

a disappointed God;

but angry, no.

Too many preachers over the centuries

have tried to paint God as an angry God,

a vengeful God,

the God we often call, quite mistakenly,

the God of the Old Testament,

a God with his finger always ready to press

the “smite” button on his holy computer keyboard.

But God sent Jesus

to wash away that mistaken notion.

God sent Jesus to reveal to us a God of love,

a God of grace, of mercy, of forgiveness.

Think about Jesus’ lesson for us

in the parable of the prodigal son.

The central message of that extraordinary parable

is that we can never descend

into such abject sinfulness,

never stray so far from God,

that God will not be waiting for us to return to him,

God’s arms open wide in welcome,

no words of criticism or judgment on God’s lips,

no punishment meted out first,

with forgiveness saved for later.                                                      

No — our Father in heaven

is filled with joy in our presence,

the lost lamb returned to the fold.

                          

God doesn’t want to smite us,

God wants to forgive us.

God isn’t filled with wrath;

God is filled with love.

Love is at the very core of Jesus’ message,

Jesus’ teachings.

His words to us in our text—

what could be clearer, simpler:

“I give you a new commandment,

that you love one another.

Just as I have loved you,

you also should love one another.

By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples:

if you have love for one another.”

(John 13:34-35)

Jesus loves us,

and we in turn should love one another

to show the world we are Christ’s disciples.

What’s complicated about that message?

Why do we find it so hard to understand,

so hard to live?

Jesus puts it another way;

“‘You shall love the Lord your God

with all your heart,

and with all your soul,

and with all your mind.’

This is the greatest and first commandment.

And a second is like it:

‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

On these two commandments

hang all the law and the prophets.”

(Matthew 22:37)

Do you remember our text from last week?

Again, the words of our Lord Jesus Christ:

“If you love those who love you,

what credit is that to you?

If you do good to those who do good to you,

what credit is that to you?

Even sinners do the same.

…Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’

and not do what I tell you?”

(Luke 6:32ff)

Jesus’ message is not complicated.

        

It is hard, though, to put in practice,

there’s no denying that.

Who among us would find it easy to love

the hate-filled bigots who poisoned

the sylvan beauty of Thomas Jefferson’s university

and the streets of Charlottesville

with their toxic racism,

and, as one astute observer put it,

“the pagan intensity of [their] idol worship.”

(Cunningham in The New Yorker)

Where we trip ourselves up

is when we misinterpret the Bible,

and use the Bible for our own purposes,

making of scripture something it is not,

As the Reverend William Sloane Coffin

once wryly put it,

“Too many Christians use the Bible

as a drunk does a lamppost:

for support rather than illumination.”

Racists have never been hesitant to wave their Bibles

and carry their crosses as signs of their

supposed supremacy.

We are to interpret the written word

through the lens that is the Living Word,

which means if our interpretation

is not grounded in grace and love,

mercy and compassion,

then we’d better go back and try it again.

Jesus showed us just how to do this

in the lesson of the adulterous woman,

a lesson I’ve shared many times

throughout my career.

In those few sentences

in the 8^th chapter of John’s gospel,

we have a perfect example

of how to read the Bible,

of how to interpret the Bible.

You recall the story:

a woman was caught in adultery,

which back in Jesus’ time was a crime,

a crime punishable by death;

Scripture said so, not once, but twice,

in two different places.

The woman was guilty,

she never denied it.

And the punishment was clear from the scripture:

death, death by stoning.

Jesus knew his scripture,

so he should have been the first to pick up a stone,

the first to say,

“Scripture demands that this woman die for her crime,

for she has broken the law of Holy Scripture,

I will throw the first stone

and I call all those who live by the Word of God

to pick up stones and throw them,

throw them at this sinner until she is dead,

just as scripture demands.”

But of course, that’s not what Jesus did.

We remember his words, don’t we:

“Let anyone among you

who is without sin

be the first to throw a stone at her.”

(John 8:7)

Jesus shows us how we are called to live:

by grace, with grace.

Jesus showed us that even when we sin,

God isn’t interested in vengeance or punishment;

God is not wrathful.

What God wants from us is repentance,

What God wants from us is that we turn and learn,

learn and turn.

“Has no one condemned you?”  

Jesus asked the adulterous woman.

When she responded that no one had,

Jesus said to her,

“Neither do I condemn you.

Go your way,

and from now on do not sin again.”

Turn,

and learn.

We come to church to honor the Sabbath,

to sing our praises to God,

to pray,

to be nourished at our Lord’s Table,

and to learn.

We come to learn about God,

to learn that God is a God of goodness,

a God of grace,

a God of love;

a God we can, and often do, disappoint,

but a God who still offers us endless new beginnings.

You may recall me telling you of how

the pastor at the Brick Presbyterian Church

in New York City,

the church where I was ordained,

began his benediction each Sunday with the words,

“Now as our service begins.”

The first couple of times

I heard him say those words,

they always sounded out of place,

coming as they did,

at the end of the worship service.

But I realized that he was right in what he said:

“now as our service begins”.

Our worship service was about to end,

and that meant that

we were about to go back out into the world,

the worshiping community at Brick

about to spill out the doors

back onto the frenetic streets of Manhattan.

He was reminding us to go out as disciples of Christ,

go out in grace and love,

living grace and love as we served the Lord;

and that by our love,

even on the mean streets of New York,

others would know we were disciples of Christ.

The ugliness of the events in Charlottesville,

the age-old threat of war,

remind us how hard our work is

when we leave this place and go back out

to face all the challenges before us,

in our homes, our community,

the world around us.

Still, in a few minutes we will leave,

go out the door,

go back out into the world,

our worship service at an end,

our service as disciples about to begin again.

And, when we go, we are called to go

with the words of our Lord with us,

leading us, guiding us:

“I give you a new commandment,

that you love one another.

Just as I have loved you,

you also should love one another.

By this, everyone will know

that you are my disciples:

if you have love for one another.”

To God be the glory.

AMEN  

Note: This is Dr. Ferguson's final sermon preached at 

the Manassas Presbyterian Church prior to 

his retirement as the pastor of the church. 

As It Should Be

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

August 6, 2017

As It Should Be

Matthew 14:13-21

Now when Jesus heard this,

he withdrew from there in a boat

to a deserted place by himself.

But when the crowds heard it,

they followed him on foot from the towns.

When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd;

and he had compassion for them

and cured their sick.

When it was evening,

the disciples came to him and said,

“This is a deserted place,

and the hour is now late;

send the crowds away

so that they may go into the villages

and buy food for themselves.”

Jesus said to them, “They need not go away;

you give them something to eat.”

They replied, “We have nothing here

but five loaves and two fish.”

And he said, “Bring them here to me.”

Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass.

Taking the five loaves and the two fish,

he looked up to heaven,

and blessed and broke the loaves,

and gave them to the disciples,

and the disciples gave them to the crowds.

And all ate and were filled;

and they took up what was left over

of the broken pieces,

twelve baskets full.

And those who ate were about five thousand men,

besides women and children.

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

The feeding of the 5,000 –

a story that appears in all four gospels;

surely it is one of our favorites stories.

It is a simple story:

thousands of people gathered to hear Jesus,

to learn from him

and to be healed by him.

The day is drawing to a close,

darkness about to descend;

Jesus and the crowds are in a deserted area,

wilderness, to use the Old Testament term.

All those people,

tired and hungry after a long day,

and yet among them, apparently,

just five loaves and two fish,

hardly enough to feed Jesus and his disciples,

much less 5000.

The disciples, concerned for the people,

and, sure of the solution

to the problem before them,

said to Jesus,

“Send the crowd away,

so that they may go into

the surrounding villages and countryside…

to get provisions.”

(Luke 9:12)

Jesus, calm as always,

even in the face of his disciples’ fretting,

surely surprised them,

even confused them, with his response:

“They need not go away;

you give them something to eat.”

All of the disciples must have thought

the same thing after hearing Jesus’ words,

“Are you kidding?

How do you expect us to feed 5,000 people

with five loaves and two fish?”

And, although we know this story

as the “feeding of the 5,000”,

if you listened carefully to Matthew’s final sentence,

you know that there were more than 5,000.

Did you hear it:

there “were about five thousand men,

besides women and children.”

In other words, five thousand men,

plus their wives and children.

So, how many were there to feed:

10,000? 15,000?

Five loaves and two dried, salted fish

to feed them all.

Have you ever seen dried, salted fish?

More prune than plum,

more raisin than grape.

The story then turns Eucharistic,

redolent of what we will do in a few moments:

Jesus taking the bread,

blessing it,

breaking it,

and giving it to the people

through his disciples.

It’s at that moment

we come to the heart of the story,

when we wonder,

wonder what really happened that day,

in that place.

Wonder about the miracle.

And it was a miracle –

of that we should have no doubt.

                 

But was the miracle sharing –

that the people gathered there,

all began to open bundles, bags, satchels,

to share the provisions they had,

such as they had,

a piece of bread here,

a piece of fish there?

Everyone surely reacting at first,

as we all have a tendency to do,

not wanting to share,

thinking only of themselves,

worried that they might not even have enough

for themselves and their families.

But then, getting caught up in the spirit,

the spirit of grace,

the spirit of Christ,

and sharing,

sharing joyfully,

sharing with friend and stranger alike.

If that was Jesus’ plan,

then indeed it was a miracle,

getting 5,000, 10,000, 15,000 people

to sweep aside their concern for themselves,

and open their hearts

as well as their satchels

to one another.

We can also read this story another way,

that the miracle was that God provided—

give us this day our daily bread.

That as Jesus handed each disciple a loaf of bread,

another miraculously appeared,

appeared as if out of thin air,

manna from heaven,

as though the angels of the Lord God

had descended Jacob’s ladder,

each carrying a large basket

filled with heavenly loaves,

Jesus then able to hand out loaf after loaf until,

as Matthew tells us, all were “filled”.

everyone was satisfied, no one was hungry,

all were content.

I’ve always leaned more toward

the first interpretation,

that everyone gathered there shared,

shared what they had with with one another,

that the story of the feeding of the 5,000

was a predecessor to the story of “Stone Soup”,

that story most of us read and loved as children.

I’ve always preferred that reading

because to me

5000, 10,000, 15,000 people sharing—

that’s a miracle!

We can read the story either way, though.

Whichever way we read it,

we have a miracle:

thousands upon thousands gathered peaceably,

listening, learning;

then sharing a meal together,

everyone filled spiritually,

as well as physically,

everyone nourished,

no one left out.

5,000, 10,000, 15,000 people.

And, while the gospels don’t tell us,

it was likely an extremely diverse group:

Jews, Greeks, Romans, Samaritans, Ethiopians

men, women, young, old,

olive-hued, dark-skinned,

fair, ruddy,

different languages, different cultures:

but all together.

And, still there’s more:

Jesus and the crowd weren’t even in Galilee,

their homeland;

they were other side of the sea,

in Gentile territory.

But happily no walls blocked them,

no soldiers told Jesus and his disciples,

“Turn the boat around and go back

where you came from

and take this crowd with you.

You are foreigners and you are not welcome here.”

They gathered peaceably even on foreign soil.

All of this is as it should be.

All this is what God wants for us.

Women and men filled with grace,

living peaceably, sharing,

following their shepherd:

God speaking through the prophet Ezekiel,

“I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep,

and I will make them lie down, ….

I will seek the lost,

and I will bring back the strayed,

and I will bind up the injured,

and I will strengthen the weak.”

(Ezekiel 34:15)

This is what God means when God says to us

that he will give us a future with hope:

that we will learn to live peaceably together,

sharing, feeding,

teaching, healing,

caring for one another.

That we will learn to live by our Lord’s words:

“If you love those who love you,

what credit is that to you?

If you do good to those who do good to you,

what credit is that to you?.

Even sinners do the same.

…Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’

and not do what I tell you?”

(Luke 6:32ff)

I’ve always like the quote,

“I love the theory of the church;

it is the practice that leaves me cold.”

It is a reminder that even within the Body of Christ,

we often fail to get it right,

fail to live as we should,

to do as our Lord teaches us.

Still, we come together,

and, as all those people did so long ago,

we come to listen,

to learn,

to be fed by our Lord,

gathered in community,

all of us together,

all welcome,

peace reigns.

All as it should be.

AMEN