Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
I Corinthians 15:50-58
50 What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.53 For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." 55 "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58 Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
“If you’re shipping international, you have to call FedEx.”
It’s a commercial I’ve only seen once, but it did its job: it stuck in my head. If you’ve not seen it, the basic premise is this: you have one great idea in your life, and you spend the REST of your life reliving that single event.
The opening scene is some sort of business meeting, where the discussion topic is how to transport ‘the product’ internationally. The camera is set on a medium close up of the main character in the commercial, a somewhat geeky, skinny man with reddish hair, who finds it in himself to speak up and say the tag line: ‘if you’re shipping international, you HAVE to call FedEx.’ There’s a pause as the comment sinks in, and the room doesn’t exactly explode in pandemonium, but the sense is “of COURSE, that’s the answer we’ve been looking for all along!”
The funny part of the commercial is what follows. There are 3 or 4 ‘clips’ from the life of this man as the years progress, and in each one he’s recounting the initial event. In one scene, he’s sitting at a bar with some other men – it’s unclear if they are friends or just happen to be ‘within range’. In the next scene, he’s riding in a golf cart, and telling the man who is driving the cart about the same meeting. The last scene is at the man’s funeral, and the man who is giving the eulogy is saying “and how can we forget the time that he said …’
Let’s pull out a couple of words from the text: ALWAYS EXCELLING.
Always. It denotes a continuing action. The Greek is perisseuvonte" (Perisseúontes). It can otherwise be translated this way: Give Yourselves Fully (to the work of the Lord).
These last two weeks have been full ones. There’ve been conferences to attend both of the last two weekends. Youth functions, an Encuentro, there have been visits to make and errands to run. There’ve been books to read and papers to write, meetings to attend, and conversations to have. And there’s been a family to take care of. They have both been unusually heavy in terms of activities related to the Hispanic work. I had to make several trips to the Oyster and bait plant in White Stone and to the Free Health Clinic in Kilmarnock.
There’s a nighttime routine we go through with the kids at bedtime. Leslie or I will go into their bedrooms and help them into bed, or tuck them in. The routine is this: sometimes earlier in the process, sometimes later, when we first broach the subject of going to sleep, Judson will usually be the first to ask “can you sleep with me?” it used to stop at that, but lately it has become “can you sleep with me and can you sleep with me first?” “Sleep with me” in this context means you turn on the lullaby CD, and lay down on top of the covers for one, two or more songs, depending on what negotiation has taken place or what time it is or if you fall asleep within the first few measures of the song. On Hannah’s bed it’s easier, because there’s no bunk bed to crouch under. With Judson sleeping on the bottom bed of a bunk bed, it’s a little harder. There’s a crouching and turning and bending that has to happen in kind of a horizontal windmill move, where you lean forward, then bring your legs up onto the bed, then swing the upper part of the body back over to the left before settling onto the edge of the mattress.
This past Monday or Tuesday night, Judson had asked me to sleep with him. I don’t always. If I say ‘not tonight’ both Hannah and Judson just say ‘OK’ and go on, only rarely reiterating the request. This time I agreed. It had been, for some reason, a hard day between me and Judson. One of those days when I felt like I’d been anything BUT a good daddy. I agreed partly because of that and because it is SLOWLY starting to sink into my thick skull that in those situations, bedtime snuggles and quiet conversations can be a source of reconciliation and grace. That night, Judson was quiet for a little while (Hannah is usually the one to ask questions or talk about her day), and then he took my hand and held it up and looked at it. I remember doing the same thing with my father’s hands as a boy. At first I thought he was just going to look at it up close for a minute or two and then put it down. He didn’t. He took his right hand and closed it in a loose fist and turned it to where my hand was cupping his, and then he lowered both to his chest. After a pause, he brought up his left hand and moved it in next to his right hand, so that both his hands were nested in mine. He turned his face to me, gave me a quick smile, and then settled in and closed his eyes to go to sleep. A few minutes later, the song ended. I stayed a little longer, then he turned and I said “Goodnight, I love you”, gave him a kiss, got up and walked out of the room. Getting up is always a lot easier for me than getting down, I just drop off the side of the bed, into a crouch and stand up. That night, I wouldn’t have minded being the one to fall asleep first.
Paul, in the text, is defending the belief in the resurrection. If you’re keeping track, I touched on this same section of Corinthians back in September, right before Isabel paid us a visit. The first 7 verses of our passage this morning are the conclusion of his argument.
“Flesh and Blood versus the Kingdom, perishable versus imperishable, mystery … we will be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet … the perishable body must put on imperishability, the mortal body must put on immortality … Where O death is your victory? Where is your sting?”
It is a hymn. Paul is coming to the point, and his language takes on an eloquence that is perfectly matched to the subject at hand. After all this talk of mystery, of the perishable and imperishable, of the victory we have over sin and death in Christ, he comes out with the application: "Now, my brothers and sisters, in the light of these sublime truths, be steadfast in doing the Lord's work, knowing that he will reward you at his coming."
The point is this: doing the Lord’s work is not something you come up with once, and then recount for the rest of your life. Doing the Lord’s work is a lifetime commitment. It is a lifetime of learning, of figuring out just exactly what it means to be a follower of Christ.
Maria Teresa Palmer, a friend from Southern Seminary who is now pastor of a small Hispanic church in Raleigh NC, led a conference yesterday morning on the role of the pastor in not only Hispanic congregations, but congregations in general. A point she made almost in passing was that we, as followers of Christ, are to be about the business of reconciliation. If “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to God’s self,” then what better way to demonstrate … to flesh out … to LIVE out the reality of Christ in our lives than to be agents of reconciliation?
What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?
It means this: it means taking on a task that is more often than not difficult at best, and nearly impossible, at worst, at least in human terms. Being about reconciliation means looking life square in the face, understanding that we live in a broken world that is characterized by broken relationships, broken spirits, broken hearts, broken dreams, broken EVERYTHING, and STILL reaching out, across the breaks, across the hurtful and hateful words that have spilled out of our mouths or into our ears and cannot be recalled or blocked out, across the bruises that we have inflicted or sustained, reaching out to each other in forgiveness and in love and embracing each other as brothers and sisters, children of God, in desperate need of healing, of a re-connection with God, which we must find in how we care for and about each other.
It means picking up stakes and moving thousands of miles away, to work on providing aid and clean water to a people devastated by years of tyranny, and a brutal war – waged both against them and for them. It might even mean losing your life in the process.
It means sharing meals. It means visiting the sick and the lonely. It means inviting a stranger into a conversation with a friend. It means going out of your way. It means NOT being part of the ongoing disengagement we find rampant in our society, where neighbors don’t know neighbors, and brothers don’t speak to brothers, where mothers and fathers live just a few blocks away but could just as well live a few STATES away. It is by our connections that we figure out what it means to live in community. It is in the strength of those bonds that we find that shared community is our greatest source of strength. It is where we find that community means family.
It is where we learn to hold each other by the hand, sometimes resting our hands inside the hand of our father, and sometimes letting his hand rest on us.
Let’s pray.
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