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.