Meditation on Hope

Sunday, November 30, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
First Sunday of Advent (Hope)
Jeremiah 29:5-14

5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. 8 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, 9 for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the Lord. 10 For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon's seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. 11 For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. 12 Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. 13 When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, 14 I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

The scene is just a two or three years after the beginning of the Babylonian exile. Around 3,000 Jews have been forcibly removed from Jerusalem, among them, priests, prophets, and, significantly here, false prophets.

These false prophets were predicting an early fall of Babylon, and a speedy return of the Jews to Jerusalem. What they were offering was false HOPE to the exiled community. Jeremiah is telling them to not be taken in by those who are telling them what they want to hear.

The exiles had not, apparently, even considered building their own houses in Babylon, but they DID enjoy freedoms that would not normally be associated with a group exiled into slavery. The deported included a specifically targeted group: craftsmen and artisans. Nebuchadnezzar had shipped them off to Babylon to help beautify it. These were the people that Jeremiah was writing to.

Jeremiah knew that there was a reason for the exile. God was disciplining God’s Children. The false prophets, in creating a sense of impending release from their …punishment, as it were, were nullifying the effect of that discipline.

In his letter, Jeremiah is saying that the Lord’s ultimate purpose for his people is blessing.

Let’s reread verse 11:

11 For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.

Those last words are literally “an end and a hope”. Another way to say: A Hopeful Future.

Today we are celebrating the Sunday of Hope. We are looking forward to, eagerly awaiting, the coming of the Christ Child. In the Gospel of Luke, we have a beautiful scene where the young pregnant Mary visits her older cousin, Elizabeth. When she entered Elizabeth’s house and greeted her, the child in Elizabeth’s womb leaped, and Elizabeth was filled with God’s Spirit.

Do you remember the first time you felt your child move in your womb? Or the first time your hand on your wife’s belly felt your child move? A holy time.

This is such a time. We are not here because of a false hope, we are here because of the REAL hope we find in the coming of Christ, that miraculous, incredible, indescribable moment when God chose to take on Human form and join us – God with us – Emmanuel.

Jeremiah’s encouragement is to live life as unto God. Do not dwell on the dark side of our circumstances, do not build your hopes on unrealistic expectations of … winning the lottery, or waking up one morning and everything being ‘just the way you imagined it would be’, but on the fact that our hope is NOT based on our circumstances, but on the certainty of God’s love and care for us. And that love and care has nowhere been more clearly defined than through the person of Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray.

(hymn # 65) Joy to the World

Benediction:

“And now may God, Creator of light, and trees, and flowers, Grant us peace. As we have decorated this place of worship, may we also live lives of worship, decorated with God’s forever things: forever love, forever life, forever living, forever growing, forever green! In the name of God’s love and light. Amen!”

Reaping Bounty

Wednesday, November 26th, 2003
Community Thanksgiving Service
Totuskey Baptist Church, Haynesville VA
2 Corinthians 9:6-15

The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 7 Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work. 9 As it is written,
"He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor;
his righteousness endures forever."
10 He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; 12 for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God. 13 Through the testing of this ministry you glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the gospel of Christ and by the generosity of your sharing with them and with all others, 14 while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God that he has given you. 15 Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

Why are we here?

It’s Wednesday evening and normally, some of us would be in prayer meeting or Bible Study at our respective churches, but we find ourselves, gathered with friends and neighbors mostly, but perhaps some strangers here and there, for a community thanksgiving service of worship.

The last meeting of the Richmond County Ministerial Association was 18 days ago, and it was the very first meeting I’d had a chance to attend. As it worked out, we ended up meeting at Jerusalem Baptist in Emmerton, the church where I serve. I was informed that ‘the new kid on the block’ usually gets to preach, so here I am, something of a stranger among you, but welcoming of the opportunity to be here.

We moved here from Virginia Beach in June, and there, too, our church, Thalia Lynn Baptist Church, each year participated in a Community Thanksgiving Service, with the neighboring United Methodist and a Presbyterian churches.

The key word there as well as here tonight is ‘Community’. Though it is understood that there are congregations represented here that ‘do church’ differently, we are all here with a single purpose: this is a service of Thanksgiving, and we unite our voices and our hearts in thanks to the one we all call “Lord”. There may be differences in the structure of our respective church hierarchies; there may be differences in how the individual bodies govern themselves. There are differences in how we view scripture, or how we apply it to our lives, or how we sing on Sunday morning, or how we pray, but we can rest in the unity of the one who calls us to service, and obedience, and to love.

October and November are, in most churches, the time during which we focus on stewardship. It is budget setting time at Jerusalem, and we are in the (hopefully) finals steps of completing that process. As a first-time Pastor, Please understand this in the spirit in which it is said: I’m REALLY glad Jerusalem isn’t any bigger than it is. I absolutely cannot imagine dealing with the budget of a church that is any larger than we are.

In our text, Paul is dealing with giving issues as well. He’s just finished telling the folks in Corinth about the folks in Macedonia, and how generously THEY have been in their collection of offerings to send to the church in Jerusalem. Here’s the catch: the giving of the Macedonian churches was triggered by the reports of the Corinthian Church’s willingness and enthusiasm for giving, not their actual giving. He is now coming back to the Corinthians and saying “here are some of the PEOPLE who GAVE the money based on what I told them about YOU, now it’s YOUR turn. The commentary I glanced through regarding this passage says
The Corinthian enthusiasm for participating in the collection (cf. 8:10-11) served as an example worthy of emulation by the Macedonians for their own contribution (9:2). Now, however, because the Macedonians had now successfully completed what they had enthusiastically begun under the stimulus of the Corinthian example (8:1-5), their exemplary action formed a basis for Paul's appeal to the Corinthians to complete their contribution (8:6, 10-11). (Zondervan NIV Commentary on Corinthians)

Any way you look at it, Paul is playing the two churches against each other. Paul was not above using creative persuasion to elicit a desired response. Read Philemon sometime.

What is Paul saying? “Each of you must give as you have made up your mind. Not reluctantly or under compulsion.” Let’s put that into context for being here tonight.

Each of you must be here because you CHOSE to be here, hopefully not reluctantly or under compulsion. Each of you hopefully came with a thankful heart because you truly ARE thankful, not JUST because you ALWAYS come to the service, or because you “wanted to see what this new preacher has to say”.

As chapter 9 begins, Paul summarizes: ‘the point is this, you reap what you sow’. We live surrounded by farms. I don’t have to go into any further details about what that means. It is self-evident. Besides, being a city boy for the most part, I’d be afraid I’d call a ‘driller’ a ‘combine’ or something equally silly if I went too far into the illustration. Just as an aside, up until this past Sunday, I couldn’t have told you the difference between the two to save my life, though now, if I look long and hard, I THINK I could point out one or two differences, thanks to Cliff Mullin, the deacon chair at Jerusalem, for gently pointing that out to me.

The collections that were taken up in Macedonia and Corinth were to assist the church in Jerusalem continue its ministry and witness. As a church universal, we have always been about helping the poor, the needy, widows and orphans.

This past September 18th, I was introduced to what community means here on the Northern Neck. I have never experienced it as I did then, and since. I have occasionally caught glimpses of it elsewhere, and clung to those times when I HAD seen it, but the way Richmond County pulled together over the weeks following Isabel’s visit, simply overwhelmed me, in the BEST sense of the word.

Let’s go back to my original question: Why are we here? Where does our sense of community come from? Is it ONLY geography? Why were men and women willing to get out and clear trees and cut and haul and clear yards and roads? Why are we willing to donate food and clothing, why are we willing to give of our time and energy to volunteer, to help others, to serve meals, to visit?

What is each of those activities an example of? They are each a way of expressing to another person our love for them.

Love must be at the heart of everything we do. In his earlier letter to the Corinthians, Paul has something to say about that – read chapter 13 when you have a chance, but basically what Paul is saying is this: you can do all the good in the world, or even OUT of it, but if it is not fueled by love, it’s nothing.

So the question is answered: Why are we here: to give thanks to God for God’s love for US. Why do we carry on this ministry? We love, because God first loved us.

We are reaping the bounty of God’s love every day. Each breath we take, each morning we wake, each time we rest, each hug we get or give, each friend we make, each moment we are allowed to share in the breaking in of the Kingdom of God, we are celebrating the good and perfect harvest in which God has engaged us.

The offering tonight is to replenish the RCMA’s Emergency Relief Fund, please give generously.

In All Things

Sunday, November 23rd, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Psalm 69:30-36

30 I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving. 31 This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs. 32 Let the oppressed see it and be glad; you who seek God, let your hearts revive. 33 For the Lord hears the needy, and does not despise his own that are in bonds. 34 Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moves in them. 35 For God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah; and his servants shall live there and possess it; 36 the children of his servants shall inherit it, and those who love his name shall live in it.

Philippians 4:4-9

4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5 Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6 Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9 Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

When Leslie and I first started taking classes at the Leland Center last year, our tuition the first semester was covered through a scholarship provided by the school. As the end of the semester approached, we began to wonder how we would be able to return, since there was no mention of the scholarship carrying through to the spring semester. At the end of November, Leslie received a call from Ken Palmer, a member of our church who is in charge of directing the fundraising efforts for the Leland Center’s Hampton Roads Campus. He was excited because he wanted to share with us that someone, a person who chose to remain anonymous, had donated funds specifically to cover our tuition for the Spring Semester, and beyond, as long as we were in school. To this day, that person remains unknown to us. Though we’ve speculated about who that person MIGHT be, we have no idea who he or she actually is.

We almost met in the late spring, if memory serves, at the dinner Thalia Lynn hosted for the Leland Center on the Southside of Hampton Roads, but it never actually happened, or at least we were not introduced to the person as “the one who helped us in that way.” It has been, to be honest, one of the more frustrating experiences I’ve been through.

There’s not so much a sense of obligation to express our gratitude to the person, though that emotion is definitely there, but it is more an as-yet unfulfilled desire to sit and share with them what their generosity has made in our lives – what it did to us as people seeking how to follow God’s direction in our lives. That giving was a catalyst for everything we’re doing today. We are, of course, profoundly grateful, to whoever it is. But it is intensely frustrating to not be able to look someone face to face and tell them how much what they’ve done has meant to you.

It would seem an easy topic to write on; thankfulness. But as I sat at my desk over the last couple of days, the trouble was how to narrow the focus of the issue to bring it into a manageable form.

Sitting there last night, I realized, there’s no need to narrow it down. In fact, we would probably do well to EXPAND the scope of the word!

We’re engaged this week in the observation of the Thanksgiving Holiday. A couple of years ago, I watched the various thanksgiving episodes a few TV shows, and they necessarily diluted … no, maybe that’s not the right word, they reduced the theme of the day to the lowest common denominator: it’s not about the object of our thankfulness as much as it is about the simple attitude of being thankful.

While I do object to that absence, I also believe we need to give credit where credit is due. Being thankful is a virtue, and a hallmark of a moral society. In other words, being thankful sets us apart culturally. It reflects thoughtfulness, an intentional response to a kindness that has been given, or shared. It should be encouraged in any setting; it is of value in its own right.

We send notes to say thank you. Just in the last week, we’ve received 4 or 5 thank you cards for different things we as a church have done. It says as much about the person receiving the gift as it does about the person doing the giving.

Where we, as followers of Christ, differ from the generic thankfulness espoused by the general culture, is that there is an object to our attitude.

The Psalmist is not being thankful in general for having been delivered from his enemies. Paul is not encouraging the members of the church at Philippi to express a general attitude of thanksgiving as a way of filling a silence they may encounter during a meal.

In each case, there is someone to whom each is or should be grateful TO.

The Old Testament practice was, as you know, to offer sacrifices to God as a way of saying thanks. The sacrifices ranged anywhere from a dove, as we read mentioned in the New Testament, to an Ox or a Bull, as the passage mentions.

We need to remember the most famous almost-sacrifice mentioned in the Old Testament – Abraham sacrificing Isaac. The Psalmist is keying in on the same lesson that Abraham learned – a thankful, obedient heart is more valuable to God than any physical sacrifice made.

The passage from Paul’s letter to the Philippians echoes that same thought - rejoice in the Lord … one of the most natural expressions of rejoicing is in song. When we lift our voices in songs of thanksgiving, Paul is pointing out that the Lord is near. God inhabits our praise, our Thanksgiving.

What is the lesson of the Gospel for Jerusalem Church in all this?

It is this: through Christ’s sacrifice, we can now approach the throne of God Almighty – Jehova Jireh, as Soozin mentioned earlier in the service – “God who sees to it” – God who provides. In the act of thanksgiving there is communion. We are not giving thanks in a diffused, undirected way. We are giving thanks to ‘The Author and finisher of our faith’ – to the alpha and omega – to the one who has healed us.

There’s a miracle that always stands out in my mind – Jesus’ healing of the 10 lepers. The story goes something like this: Jesus is walking along the road, and a group of ten lepers call to him – they call because they cannot approach him – they had to maintain a prescribed distance from everyone who was not infected with the disease. Jesus heals them all, and they run off to tell everyone they know about it. Can anyone tell me what is unique about that healing? How many of the men return to say thanks? One.

Are we as diligent? Are we thanking God for 10 percent of our lives? Do we only thank God for the good we experience?

Paul says ‘in everything, with prayer and thanksgiving …’ we read elsewhere in his letters what that meant for Paul. Prison, torture, being shipwrecked, stoned, beaten, chased out of cities and synagogues all across the known world.

People ask me how things are going here for me. They want to know about both the pastorate and the Hispanic ministry.

I tell them, truthfully, that it is going really, really well.

It’s not easy. There are challenges, and there have been some difficult events and situations, but I am no less thankful for them than I am for the others. I know that through ALL my experiences here, with you, I am learning more and more about who God wants me to be.

I’d like to open this time up to congregational sharing. Helen did this in the Sunday school assembly time, but I won’t call on anyone. If you have something you’d like to share for which you are thankful for, please share it with us.

--

Let’s pray.

Foundations

Sunday, November 16th, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Mark 13:1-8

1 As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!" 2 Then Jesus asked him, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down." 3 When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, 4 "Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?"5 Then Jesus began to say to them, "Beware that no one leads you astray. 6 Many will come in my name and say, "I am he!' and they will lead many astray. 7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. 8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

“Kenny, can you hear me?”

My brother, Jimmy, was on the other end of the line. I had just flown down the day before to Ft. Worth, TX, to accompany a former Journeyman friend, Phil Brown, and his youth group on a mission trip to the Rio Grande Valley. I’d flown in a few days early and was visiting another friend, Eloise Parks, before heading out on that trip, and Jimmy had called the afternoon after I arrived.

The connection was not very clear, and I didn’t understand what he said when he first told me why he’d called. I asked him again,

“Eric is dead”

Eric was Aunt Lala’s youngest son. He fell right between Jimmy and me in age. He’d been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, and had been fighting the ravages of the disease for over a year.

He was engaged to be married. He was learning to fly, and wanted to become a pilot. He was planning on moving to Australia. His whole life was ahead of him, and that June day in 1991, it all stopped.

I flew out the following day for a two-day turnaround trip to attend the funeral. My cousin Kim met me as I walked into their house. All we could do was hug and cry. The next two days were a blur. The church was packed with about 500 people. Afterwards, I flew back to Ft. Worth and went on the mission trip with the youth of Rheta Baptist Church.

But it simply didn’t make sense.

This past Tuesday morning, when I got to Riverside Tappahannock Hospital for my chaplaincy rotation, the morning had progressed fairly quietly. Though I’ve been called in on a couple of emergencies, for the most part I’ve not seen the hospital in anything other than a ‘normal’ mode. I stopped in to see Charlotte right around 11, and she greeted me with her usual smile, but her energy wasn’t there. She still reached up to return my hug, but once that was done she settled back into a quietness that I’d noticed the day before as well. After visiting with her for a few minutes, I went on about the day’s duties, driving up to the History Land Nursery worksite on Rt. 17 for a lunchtime visit, and then coming back through Warsaw and stopping in at the Health Care Center to visit Miss Annie and George Schools.

When I got home, it was probably about 3PM. About a half hour to 45 minutes later I was paged by the hospital. I wasn’t able to call immediately, and got another page about 2 or 3 minutes later. When I got through to the switchboard, the receptionist told me that they wanted me in the ICU, and put me through.

“There’s a family here that wants you to come. They have a family member that has expired, the family of Charlotte Lewis.”

I didn’t think I’d heard her correctly, and after taking in a breath, I asked if she had said that Charlotte Lewis had expired. When she said yes, I told her “she’s a member at Jerusalem, I’m her Pastor, I’ll be right there.”

Though the initial shock at the news of both of these deaths was similar, the dynamics surrounding the event were different in most ways, except one critical way.

Eric was as active as his illness would allow him to be at Hermitage Hills Baptist Church. He’d made a profession of faith several years earlier, and to know Eric was to know that he was a follower of Christ.

Charlotte was as active here as she could be. The last few years had seen her abilities diminish, but her zeal for being here and singing with us and joining in worship was untouched. Her life has been an example of living and being the presence of Christ to so SO many throughout the Northern Neck through the years, not just family.

In Eric’s case, if I had been aware of the severity of his illness I may not have been caught so off-guard at the news of his death. I may have been more aware of the risks involved, and how his treatment was going. As it was, though I knew he was not in good health, I had no idea how life-threatening his disease was.

Though on some level I’ve come to accept the fact that he is gone, there is still, an element of tragedy, of something having happened that should not have happened surrounding his death.

With Charlotte, the tide turns the other way for a couple of reasons. First, it is somewhat easier to accept death when the loved one is advanced in years. Especially in the case of someone who has lived such a life as to have our response be sorrow, of course, but a deeper sense of … appropriateness in the passing. Though there is grief, there is an appreciation in spite of the pain for what she has gone on TO.

Still, with both, there is a sense of unsettledness. I remember when I first met Leslie’s cousin John was at Kenneth Maccubbin’s funeral – Leslie’s paternal grandfather. One of the first things he said to me was that “death is the most unnatural thing in the world”. That comment has stuck with me ever since. Both events – the death of a young man and an elderly woman, expected to differing degrees, but still unpredictable in their abruptness.

In our text, Mark has just told the story of the widow’s mite, and Jesus has made the point that it is what you give from your heart that makes the difference in what you put in the plate. The very next scene, Jesus and the disciples are leaving the temple, and one of them turns to him and says ‘Look, Rabbi, at this glorious Temple! Look what we have for worship.” He was taking pride in what Jerusalem had to offer by way of glorifying God. Jesus didn’t take long to cut him down to size. “Not one of these stones will be left standing.”

The disciples spent most of their time with Jesus in a state of confusion, and this time it was no different. What was Jesus talking about? They walked all the way to the Mount of Olives before someone asked the question: What is the sign? How will we know?

Like all of us, they wanted a sign; they wanted to know ahead of time so they could be prepared for the end of the world. The Temple had stood for hundreds of years; they could SEE the symbol of their faith. So what sign that the end time had come would they see?

Jesus wanted the disciples to see his truth, so he warned them about false prophets who would seek to lead them away from his true path. Beware of those who tell you with absolute assurance that they have the final, exact truth about God’s plan. There will always be gurus setting themselves up as saviors who would rescue us from our fears about what’s going on in our world. The problem with gurus is that you don’t have to have any faith of your own. All you do is what they tell you.

Then Jesus described what is known as the end-time happenings. There will be wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes and famines. Those are supposed to be the signs of the end of the world as we know it.

The only catch to this list of apocalyptic signs is that they have always been happening. There is not an age in the history of the world in which there were not wars, earthquakes, and famines. So it is really hard to see one particular sequence of events as the true sign of the end of the world. Many have tried and predicted, but so far they have all been wrong. We just can’t know when the end time will be because we don’t control the magma boiling under shifting tectonic plates and erupting earthquakes. We don’t control old historical grudges when they erupt into war. We don’t control weather conditions that create drought and famine in Africa. Personally, I just don’t think any of us are going to get out o the responsibility of continuing to live our witness for the whole of our lives.

That means we are always living in the meantime. We are living in the meantime between the birth of Jesus as Messiah and the return of Christ in glory. And we want signs, too. We want certainty, and leaders who will tell us exactly what is going to happen so we can feel secure. We want somebody to be in charge, so life won’t feel so unsettled.

Hebrews 10:22 says, “let us approach (God) with a true heart” What is a true heart? It means we are supposed to be honest with God. We’ve all heard prayers of people who are speaking to those around them rather than to God. It is a temptation I have to struggle with every time I as a Pastor am asked to pray. A true heart takes us to God with all the mess-ups and mistakes we have made. Our hearts are cleansed by confession. Our bodies are washed in baptism. So we can be honest with God because we know we have been forgiven. We have the assurance of faith that we won’t be condemned by God, because through Christ’s sacrifice, we have been forgiven. Our hearts are pure before God. This is the foundation of our faith.

We heard earlier, in our responsive reading, the verse from Luke:

If you work the words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who dug deep and laid the foundation of his house on bedrock. When the river burst its banks and crashed against the house, nothing could shake it; it was built to last. (Luke 6:48, The Message)


So what are these words Jesus mentions?

“Come, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest”

“Come, take up your cross and follow me”

Jesus points to himself.

There is no assurance in anything else. Not in Buildings, the Temple at Jerusalem was utterly destroyed less than 40 years after Jesus told his disciples no stone would be left atop another.

There’s no assurance in status or wealth, in the parable of the rich young ruler, after accumulating all that wealth, the man dies in his sleep.

There’s no assurance in health or youth. Eric was an athletic young man when his disease caught him.

There is no assurance anywhere but in our faith in Jesus.

What does this mean for Jerusalem?

We’re in the process of setting a budget for next year. The realities are a little daunting, with projected expenditures outpacing projected giving.

We know that the foundation for this church is not in the fact that the cornerstones were well-laid, though that does play a part. We know that the foundation of this church is more than that – it comes from legacies of faith lived out by those who’ve gone before. The cloud of witnesses I spoke of last Sunday has been increased in the last week. It is from their witness that we draw strength. It is by their example that our faith is upheld. It is through their reliance on the providence of God that we can approach the throne of the almighty with pure hearts.

Let’s pray.

Such A Cloud

Sunday, November 9th, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Hebrews 11, 12:1-2

12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I last walked through the cemetery. I’ve wandered the headstones several times since I’ve been here, sometimes alone, sometimes with one of the boys or Hannah, sometimes early in the morning and other times in the middle of the afternoon or early in the evening.

Each time, I’m struck to a point of reverence. The lives that were lived, sometimes long and full, sometimes all too brief, call me into a reflection on what I would want to leave as a legacy.

Last Sunday was the day after all saint’s day. I neglected to mention it then, but I think it worked out well, since tomorrow we will be observing Veteran’s Day. How can we speak of the two together?
You need to know up front that I am not in favor of the pulpit being used to promote what has come to be known as “American Civil Religion”, that is, the pulpit and the church become an extension of and an echo to what is said or decreed in Washington, just up the road a ways. That is not what we as Christians, or as Baptists, for that matter, are called to do. Much the opposite, in fact, is the case. We are to stand for “Christ, savior of the world”, and work towards that. In fact, work towards Christ, Savior of (your name here), Jerusalem Baptist Church, Warsaw, and Richmond County as our immediate response to “Christ, Savior of the world”. That is what our role is: to “think globally, act locally.” More often than not, that will mean standing in opposition. Generally to what the world would have us believe, but occasionally, in opposition to what we would see coming out of our Government. There is, in truth, a correlation to us in our government’s approach.

What we will most often find coming out of our nation’s capital is ‘Washington, the savior of the United States’. I don’t mean that as a criticism, that is what the role of the Government is: to guard, promote, and sustain the United States of America. The guiding principle is and should be ‘Our National Interest’. It is safe to say that there are a multiplicity of opinions in the room right now as to what those interests are, or should be, or should go back to being. That is what living in a democracy is all about.

While we may live in a nation that has been heavily influenced, to put it mildly, by the Judeo-Christian tradition, it would be just as accurate to say that it has also been influenced by forces of materialism, hedonism, and, to use a biblical term: idolatry. I would not say that we live in a Christian Nation. Christianity is a personal, intimate, life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ, it is not an attribute acquired simply by virtue of having been born here. You can say you’re a citizen of the United States, you can say you’re a Virginian, you can say you’re a ‘from-here’, ‘come-here’, or in my case, ‘called-here’, but neither you nor I are Christian by birth.

What we dedicated ourselves to last Sunday was to nurture Mary Alyce and Mac Bronner in such a way that they will someday come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior, we didn’t ‘make them’ Christians. That will be something they will be working out, in the words of Paul, ‘with fear and trembling’ on their own one day. In a very meaningful way, we committed ourselves to making an impact on their lives for Christ.
Any time we reflect on those who’ve had an impact on us, we inevitably begin to speak of the generations that came before. In the 11th chapter of Hebrews, the writer is doing just that.
The Book of Hebrews was written in a time of great uncertainty for the church. The Christians of that day had lived through a time of terrible persecution. But with the reign of a more tolerant emperor, they enjoyed a time of relative peace and prosperity.

However a new emperor had come to power, an emperor who was hostile to the faith. Some of the members of the church were questioning their faith in God. They weren’t certain that they could hold on. So the writer of Hebrews wrote a sermon to help these fearful Christians maintain their strength as they faced a difficult and uncertain future.
This writer could have taken the direct approach, chastising the community for their unfaithfulness and browbeating them into spiritual shape. Instead, he reminded them of their history. He called the people to faith by reminding them of the stories of the fathers (and mothers) of faith, the ancestors that had kept faith in God alive throughout the ages. He told them the stories of Noah, and Abraham, and Sarah, and Joseph, and Moses, and Rahab, and many “little people,” whose names were unknown but whose perseverance ranked them among the great forbears of faith.

What we find ourselves doing when we review chapter 11 is that we begin to remember those who dedicated themselves to OUR formation.

Emma Key, my maternal grandmother, who made such an incredible impact on our lives by traveling to Chile to visit with us on the field, to try to understand what it meant for us to call Chile ‘home’.
Roscoe and Nell Park, my paternal grandparents, who exemplified for me what it meant to be a ‘rope holder’. In mountain climbing, or maybe it’s rappelling, (hunter?) there are rope-holders and risk-takers, and while my parents made the commitment and took the risk of traveling 8,000 miles from home, my grandparents made the commitment and became the rope-holders, securing and anchoring us all through times of uncertainty and sometimes danger.

Uncle Bill Carter, who took pride in keeping the seminary running smoothly, even with 40-odd MKs running amuck for two weeks during Mission Meetings.
Aunt Mary Jo Geiger, who exemplified the gentle spiritedness that gets so much more done with honey than with vinegar.

Gordon Turner, Leslie’s grandfather, ‘Grandy’. He never failed to have a sound word of advice, or a clever joke, or a story to tell. To this day, over 4 years after his death, there are still days when Leslie and I will look at each other and say ‘I wish Grandy were here’.
I draw up these memories of loved ones who’ve gone before with a similar sense of reverence as that with which I approached the names on the stones a few dozen yards northwest of here. Though I did not know them, I know they hold the same place in many people’s hearts today, as do the people whose names I just read through.
How are we to take this litany of faith? How do we respond to the richness of our heritage? Do we pass them by? Do we simply shrug and think, “those were other, simpler times, different situations, it wouldn’t apply here?” I think not.

“Don’t you remember?” the writer of Hebrews is asking? “Don’t you remember how God has worked in the past, how God has been faithful throughout the ages?” Don’t you remember when God changed YOUR life?

What does this mean for Jerusalem?

Chapter 11 is all past tense. It is a recounting of history:

4 By faith Abel offered
5 By faith Enoch was taken
7 By faith Noah … respected the warning and built an ark
8 By faith Abraham obeyed
20 By faith Isaac invoked
22 By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention
24 By faith Moses … refused to be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter
31 By faith Rahab … did not perish

Then the tense changes:

12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,

When Leslie and I got married, we had an announced elopement. We called people up and asked them what they were doing on the 18th of July, and if they’d like to come to our wedding. The service was informal, immediately after the Sunday morning worship service. We were supposed to limit it to immediate family and a few close friends. Leslie had … maybe 10 people there. Altogether, there were 47 people at the ceremony.

We drew on this image – the cloud of witnesses, and asked everyone to gather around us – on all sides. It was, to put it mildly, a moving experience.

But that is what is happening here. The cloud of witnesses not only precedes us, but surrounds us as well. This cloud is alive and VERY present.

I won’t go on, except to say this: look around you. Who surrounds you? There are people in our lives who deserve our gratitude above all else, who have shown the way, blazed a trail for us to follow. Reverence is defined in the first instance as ‘A Feeling of Deep Respect, Love, and Awe.”

A verse from one of our hymns:

“O Beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life”

Which country do you love more than self? Is it temporal, or eternal?

I approach the cloud with reverence. They have given of themselves, sometimes to the final measure, and they are our heroes.

Let’s pray.

Who Are You Becoming?

Sunday, November 2nd, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Ephesians 4:25-5:2, 1 Cor 11:1

25So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. 26 Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and do not make room for the devil. 28 Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. 29 Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. 31 Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, 32 and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2 and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Yesterday morning, as I was standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes, Caleb and Judson got a hold of two balloons they’d gotten the night before and decided they were going to draw and write on them. While Caleb was working on his in the living room, I think, Judson chose to work on his right there in the kitchen. After a few minutes of intense, concentrated effort, he held up his balloon and declared “there! My PERFECT name!” (show balloon) (for text only readers: the balloon was yellow and had a couple of unrecognizable streaks on it ... one COULD have been a 'J'...)



We won’t be drawing on balloons today, at least not up here, but we will, hopefully, learn what it means to have a ‘perfect name’.

“Belonging precedes Believing precedes Becoming”

A brief review: two weeks ago, we discussed what it means to belong. Reading back over last week’s summary of the previous week, I think the quickest thing to do is to reread a couple of sentences from one of the paragraphs. For those of you who might not have been here, this is the message before last in a nutshell:

As we invite and welcome people into this fellowship, this family, this small part of the body of Christ, we are initiating the dialogue of faith between that person and God. We are making introductions between that person and Jesus. In that introduction, we are carrying out a dual role: we are both doing the introducing, and being introduced. Because we are Christ’s presence, and in that, we are carrying out the incarnational witness of the Gospel, in other words, through the living of our lives, through our words and actions, we, like Christ, are helping to break in the Kingdom of God.

To summarize last week: the title of the message was “What do you believe?” We didn’t go down a laundry list of items we believed. We are not a creedal people, though if we were to recite or read the Apostle’s Creed today, there would be very little if anything that we WOULD disagree with, I THINK. The question in the title is necessarily rhetorical. One of the central tenets of Baptist Theology, the single item that, as a Christian denomination, Baptists brought to the table, is the concept of Soul Competency. That is, each of us, as individuals, can receive, interpret, and respond to the movement of God in our lives, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. That includes what we each believe. While we can all agree on most things, I KNOW we don’t all agree on everything. That is why I didn’t pull out a laundry list. I thought briefly about changing the title to ‘When do you believe’ because I compared and contrasted Saul’s Damascus Road conversion experience to what may have been Timothy’s gradual, growing-up-in-the-church experience of faith, coming from his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice.

So here we are, at the end of the quote.

“Belonging precedes Believing precedes Becoming”

Today we get to ask ourselves the question: Who are YOU becoming? Who are we, each of us as individuals, becoming? And by implication, who are we, Jerusalem Baptist Church, becoming as a congregation?

It’s appropriate to ask this question in light of what took place earlier in the service with Chris and Cindy and Mary Alyce and Mac. As a congregation, we just promised that, “With God’s help, we will so seek to follow Christ ourselves, that Chris and Cindy will be strengthened and confirmed in their resolve and that Mary Alyce and Mac, surrounded by steadfast love, may be nurtured in the faith and strengthened in the way that leads to life.”

Put another way, whom are you allowing to shape you? Whether we like it or not, as parents and as members of the body of Christ, our children, and like them, folks who look to us as an example of Christ followers, whether from inside these walls or outside, are going to be following our example, or deciding if they want to bother with the Gospel based on the example we set.

That is a huge responsibility. In 1st Corinthians, chapter 11, Paul, in light of what was going on with the Corinthian Church, probably with some exasperation, puts it into just a few words:

“Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ”

Who do you see when you look in the mirror? Who has marked you with a seal? Do the eyes of Christ look back at you, or the eyes of the world? Who guides your thoughts? Who controls your actions? Who has made the biggest difference in your life? I confess that the person I see varies from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour.

There’s a song that came out several years ago, by a contemporary Christian trio of singers, Phillips, Craig and Dean, entitled “I Want To Be Just Like You” the refrain (chorus?) goes like this:

Lord I want to be just like You
‘Cause he wants to be just like me
I want to be a holy example
For his innocent eyes to see
Help me be a living Bible, Lord
That my little boy can read
I want to be just like You
‘Cause he wants to be like me

I never get through a hearing of the song without pretty much dissolving into a puddle.

The reason we celebrated with Chris and Cindy and their extended family as well as their own, young, nuclear family, is this: we are in community together. That means we share with each other. Through the living of our lives, through our words and actions, we, like Christ, are helping to break in the Kingdom of God.

As many of you know or have heard us tell, when Lucio and Domingo Perez, who work down at White Stone, back from Mexico and joined us here at Jerusalem for the first time since we first met them in March when we hosted the gathering back in September, Domingo opened his knapsack and pulled out a beautiful blanket. The colors on it are vibrant. It is a thick blanket. It is designed to protect and to warm. We have another piece of fabric that I would have brought with me if it weren’t, like, 14 feet long and a little wrinkled. We used it as a window treatment in Virginia Beach. It is almost gauzelike. If you hold it up to the light, you can practically see right through it. the image might be a little fuzzy, but it is there. Picture if you will, sheers covering a window on a sunny day.

Wynn Lewis, the former rector at Old Donation Episcopal church, in Virginia Beach, the dayschool where Hannah, Caleb and Judson went, loves to talk about ‘thin places’ in the fabric of this world, where we can catch a glimpse of what it will be like in the next world. When we speak of helping break in the Kingdom of God, that is what we mean: we are creating a thin place, where the kingdom of God is not only future, but present as well. The colors of the blanket we are surrounded by today, though beautiful in their fall splendor, pale in comparison to the colors we will someday see, but if we look closely, just like those sheers, the colors of the Kingdom come through.

Let me read again the first two verses of the 5th chapter of Ephesians:

5:1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2 and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

“Belonging precedes Believing precedes Becoming”

The question stands: who are you becoming? Maybe we should now ask who do you WANT to become?

Judson proudly declared, “my perfect name!” yesterday morning.

What is your perfect name? I’d suggest this: your perfect name is the name God gave Christ at his baptism, and has given us all, and the name by which Christ called us and Paul, in imitation of him, called the so many of the people he wrote to over the years:

We have, through belonging and believing, become a part of the body of Christ. As such, we become imitators of Christ, imitators in fact of God, who calls us to live in love, to love the unlovely, to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord Jesus until he comes again.

If you are here and are not yet named beloved, your invitation is to take on the name of Christ by making him Lord of your life.

If you are here and are already called by his name, but are looking for a local community of faith with which to join to grow to know him better, we would welcome you.

If you are here and are already a member, and are still wondering what your name is, know that it is this: “you are my beloved son. You are my beloved daughter.”
“beloved.”


Let’s pray.