March 26, 2006 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Answering the Why

Dana Ferguson
Executive Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 107:1–3, 17–22
John 3:14–21

In a broken and fearful world
the Spirit gives us courage
to pray without ceasing,
to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior,
to unmask idolatries in Church and culture,
to hear the voices of peoples long silenced,
and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.
In gratitude to God, empowered by the Spirit,
we strive to serve Christ in our daily tasks
and to live holy and joyful lives,
even as we watch for God’s new heaven and new earth,
praying, “Come, Lord Jesus!”

from the Brief Statement of Faith (PCUSA)

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The questions of why. We people of faith are great at them. Why does a bad thing happen to someone we care about? Why is the wonderful parent sick? Why can’t I find a job? And then the even more important questions: Why is the expressway always at a standstill when I’m late? Why is the line I get in at the grocery store always the slowest? Why does it always snow on opening day in Chicago? And particularly for me today—Why does the printer always malfunction when it’s my turn to preach? It’s true. My colleagues will vouch!

The problem isn’t asking questions. It’s what we humans are inclined to do, and it’s part of our searching to understand and know God. The problem is when we get caught up in the big questions of why or our own little petty whys and miss the most important why. Here it is: Why this—God so loved the world that God gave the only Son. Why that? Why would God do that? Why would God sacrifice the only Son? Now there’s a why question. Why in the world does God love us? Not the reverse—not “Why doesn’t God conform to our idea of what God should be or do?” But this: “Why does God so love the world? Why does God so love me?”

Best I can tell, there isn’t much logic to it. Why does God love this reluctant-to-be-extravagantly-generous, reluctant-to-be-forgiving, reluctant-to-trust, quick-to-judge, quick-to-harbor-resentments, quick-to-find-excuses, quick-to-covet-power-and-control humanity? It seems God loves the world in spite of the world. Not only does God love the world but loves the world so lavishly that he gave the only begotten Son. The answer is that we worship a God more loving than our logic can figure—so loving that he would sacrifice in the form of the only Son that we might have life eternal and life abundant. The real question then becomes how do we respond?

On Fat Tuesday, my eight-year-old boys had the breakfast treat of king cake shipped right from New Orleans by their aunt. We talked about why we were having cake for breakfast. Much to my surprise, they knew it was Fat Tuesday and Lent was coming. They could actually articulate a few valid facts about the season. But not all was right on target. “How long is Lent?” I asked. “Three days,” replied Daniel confidently. “Three days,” I said. “Really?” “Really,” said Daniel. I decided not to correct in that moment but to allow them to continue with their conversation. They had moved on to talking about what they would give up for Lent. No idea how this came to them. Sadly enough, not conversation they’ve heard from Mom and Dad. As they discussed the possibilities, I wondered if I should let them know how long Lent actually is! I was tempted not to but told them anyway. Daniel settled on giving up candy. Taylor on limiting his GameCube activities.

Admirable, I thought. But that can be the trap of Lent. Admirable is OK, but it misses the point if it doesn’t lead us to something bigger. The bigger is the answer, God’s answer to us, God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. Our Lenten disciplines fall short if the only thing they allow us to do is to focus on our shortcomings and sinfulness and not focus on the answer, to focus on the love of God unleashed in this world in Jesus Christ and our response to it.

Well-known preacher Fred Craddock tells this story:

I was in graduate school at Vanderbilt. I had left the family and children in the little parish I served and moved into a little room to prepare for those terrible comprehensive exams. It’s make-it-or-break-it time; they can kill you. I would go every night about 11:30 or 12:00 to a little all-night diner—no tables, just little stools, and have a grilled cheese and a cup of coffee to take a break from my studies. It was the same every night; the fellow behind the counter at the grill knew when I walked in to prepare a grilled cheese and a cup of coffee. He’d give me a refill, sometimes come again and give me another refill. I joined the men of the night sitting there hovering over coffee, still thinking about my own possible questions abut the New Testament oral exams.

Then I noticed a man who was there when I went in but had not been waited on. I had been waited on, had a refill, and so had the others. Then finally the man behind the counter went to the man at the end of the counter and said, “What do you want?” He was an old, gray-haired, black man. Whatever the man said, the fellow went to the grill, scooped up a little dark patty off the back of the grill, and put it on a piece of bread without condiment and without a napkin. The cook handed it to the man, who gave him some money, and then went out the side door by the garbage can and out on the street. He sat on the curb with the eighteen-wheelers of the night with the salt and pepper from the street to season his sandwich.

I didn’t say anything. I did not reprimand, protest, or witness to the cook. I did not go out and sit beside the man on the curb, on the edge. I didn’t do anything. I was thinking about the questions coming up on the New Testament. And I left the little place, went up the hill back to my room to resume my studies, and off in the distance I heard a cock crow. (Craddock Stories)

We define Lent as a time of penitence, a time of repentance. But in order to be repent, we must first spend some time listening to our lives and to the life of Christ. We often refer to the weeks preceding Easter as the Lenten journey. Journey: it implies something. It implies that we end different than we begin. That’s the point of all of our Lenten disciplines: to reshape us, to bring us to new realizations and realities, to make us different people than when we began. First we must embrace the answer of God to this world, embrace the gift of Jesus Christ and recognize the love represented in it. That’s the first part of the journey. Next is asking the question of how that love is being reflected or deflected by our own lives—to hearing the moments when the cock crows or when God’s love is claimed in our lives.

This week at our staff meeting, the director of our Social Service Center, David Murad, shared with us an important moment in the life of this church. If you have come through the Chestnut Street doors during lunch time on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, you’ve happened upon one of the busy times of our weekly lives. It’s the time when the Social Service Center bag lunch program is in full swing. It’s a popular program, and guests of the Center wait patiently in line in the Chestnut Street lobby. Recently, on a cold day, a member of the Center for Older Adults was leaving at lunch time. It was indeed a windy day in the Windy City. Nearing the door, she recognized David, who was administering the lunch program, and asked if he could walk her to the bus stop. Unfortunately it wasn’t the right moment. Hungry guests were waiting patiently, and David’s focus was getting them lunch. One of the guests stepped out of the long line he’d been waiting in for some time and volunteered to accompany her. Down the street they went arm in arm.

I wondered if that had been a Lenten moment. Had that walk made them different from when they began it? An elderly woman had come looking for security and safety in a familiar face. A hungry man had come looking for a meal. She was met by a stranger—maybe someone who looked different or talked different or lived different, maybe someone whom she wouldn’t have first expected to bring her security and safety. He had come expecting to receive and yet gave. Was this a road he traveled everyday or a new one for him? Did she learn something new about her own assumptions of others and where reassurance might reside? Did either of them leave the short walk to the bus stop different from when they began?

That’s the question for us in the days of Lent. Do we leave different from when we first began. As we walk the roads of reflection and discipline, do we open ourselves to hear the cock crow in the distant or to feel the loving arms of God around us in ways that won’t allow us to continue on as we are? Do we ask the questions that allow us to really examine the response of our lives to Christ?

In Christ, light came into this world—light that illumines the darkness, light that allows for new beginnings in our lives, light that roots out evil, light that gives us hope for tomorrow and courage for today. Our obligation, then, is to open our lives in ways so that same light shines in us and through us to this broken and needy world.

Some years ago, the mother of one of my former college classmates sent me an article that had been printed in the Cincinnati Enquirer. Her other daughter, Jenny, was the author. Jenny wrote about a secret her great grandmother, Gigi, shared with her—a secret, I learned after having mentioned this during Lent some time ago, that many of you, too, shared with family. “She picked up my hand at dinner one night when I was seven-years-old,” she wrote.

We held hands for a moment and, squeezing mine three times, she turned to me and said, “Sometimes this is how Bapa and I show we love one another. One of us squeezes the other’s hand three short times.” Squeeze-squeeze-squeeze, Gigi demonstrated, clasping my hands. She confided, “This means: ‘I Love You.’ To secretly tell someone you love them, just pick up their hand wherever you are and squeeze it three times. They will squeeze back, and that means they love you too.” At that young age, I didn’t understand the importance of what Gigi had taught me. Only later in life would I realize the significance it would have for me and the one who also knew its secret.

Jenny continues,

The relationship between my sister Bitsy and me was often tumultuous. In our teens and early twenties, our sisterhood was damaged by competitiveness and criticism, jealousy and judgment. When I saw other sisters sharing secrets and hugs, I felt bitter that we traded jabs and silence instead. I wondered if someday we would break through the wall between us. Old habits die hard; it seemed doubtful. I even wondered at times if we loved one another.

At age thirty-one, Bitsy was diagnosed with brain cancer. Three hard years of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy followed.

As her disease progressed, “not only was the tumor limiting her lifetime, but stealing her ability to express her thoughts. It caused Bitsy’s words to appear in broken shapes when writing and in odd fragments when speaking. The words she wished to say to us were tortuously trapped inside her and caused all of us—mostly herself—utter frustration.”

Jenny then writes about one of her visits with Bitsy as Bitsy neared the end of her life.
She was piecing words together, but they came out jumbled, and I couldn’t understand what she was saying. She reached over and took my hand.

Bitsy and I rarely offered each other more than a perfunctory hug or kiss. So I was surprised at the tenderness she showed as she wrapped her fingers around mine. I didn’t know what to do except let her hold them. To bridge the awkward silence, I tried to finish her sentences, but then it hit me that I should just keep quiet. She looked at me with sleepy eyes and murmured: “I . . . something . . . for you.” Bewildered, I looked around her bedroom and thought, “There is nothing in here for Bitsy to give me.” But she held my hand tight. A small smile crossed her lips as she pressed my hand three times. I paused, puzzled, in the stillness of the moment. She squeezed again—three squeezes. Three distinct squeezes!

Like a thunderbolt it struck me: she was silently signaling her love for me. I squeezed her hand back three times to return the gift. Our encounter lasted less than a minute, yet in that whisper of grace, I understood that love transcends pain and hurt.

God so loved the world that [God] gave the only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. God signals God’s love for us in the life of Jesus Christ. The question is how will we allow the God who loves us so much to sacrifice the only Son to invade and rule our living. This oh-so-familiar passage is touted over and over again on bumper stickers and sports arena placards. How is it that it gets paraded in our living? How is it that our lives will signal to others the love of God in this broken world?

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul,
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
to bear the heavy cross for my soul, for my soul.
What wondrous love is this.

Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

All to God’s glory and honor and praise. Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church