The Lord Needs It

Sunday, November 21st, 2004
25th after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church
Luke 19:29-38

29 When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, 30 saying, "Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' just say this, 'The Lord needs it.' “32 So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" 34 They said, "The Lord needs it." 35 Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36 As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. 37 As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, 38 saying "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!"

Here it comes.

We’re sliding right into it, just like we do every year. We’re moving into the holiday season. The one where everything becomes a blur, and there’s too much to do, too much to eat, too much to buy, too much to plan, too many parties to go to, too many rehearsals to attend, and way way way too much to think about to actually STOP and THINK.

So here’s my proposal. Set aside an hour a week over the next six weeks to stop and think. If that hour happens to begin around 11 on Sunday mornings, so be it. I hope we can work together on the proposal.

We’ve been in Luke for the last couple of months. Next Sunday will be the first of the church year, and we’ll switch over to the Gospel of Matthew. For now, we’re still in Luke.

As would necessarily be the case, the readings have been leading up to this point in the gospel account – the conclusion of the story, or perhaps it might best be called the culmination of the story. We find Jesus preparing the disciples for the entry into Jerusalem. He has just come from Bethany, home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, and is stepping into what HE understands to be the end game of his life here on earth.

While it is crucial to incorporate the Easter events into our faith walk, into our understanding of how God has worked in history and continues to work in our lives, for everything there is, as we find in the third chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes, a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.

We are approaching the time of year when we celebrate the coming of the Christ Child, a time that we generally characterize as full of joy, hope, peace, and love. That is, of course, as it should be. The seasons of our lives are reflected in the seasons of the year.

We cannot, however, enter into a full-blown celebration of the birth of Christ without recognizing, without acknowledging the shadowside of the Christmas story. When we read of Herod’s order to kill all the boys less than two years of age in Bethlehem, we can readily identify the brokenness of the world …breaking into what we would like to consider the happiest occasion of all.

Similar sorrow has been inflicted in our memory with the downing of Pan American flight 103 over Scotland on December 21st, 1988, or just last year, where landslides in the Philippines killed hundreds almost exactly 15 years later. Can any of us say whether or not we remember that coming across the news? There have been any number of disasters that have struck on or around Christmas, some far away and some very, very close to home. They have all tinged our celebrations with a sense that, while there is much to celebrate, there is likewise much to mourn.

How many of us have our own personal stories of events that conspired to do away with any joy to be felt in the middle of the yuletide season?

One of the reasons we have elected to hold a grief recognition service in the midst of the holidays is specifically for that reason. Events that are out of our control occur in the lives of those both inside and outside of our family of faith that make the approaching holidays anything but jovial. There is precious little to celebrate when one is so overwhelmed with grief that simply getting out of bed is a milestone to be reached and passed.

So we find ourselves at the triumphal entry. A passage that, just like the birth passage, begins with a foretelling, and ends with praises being sung to God not by a choir of angels, but of disciples and other, one would hope, in the crowd, who lifted their voices together to sing “Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!" Does that sound familiar? We could almost call them bookends to Jesus’ life.

Briefly this morning, I’d like us to stop on the foretelling. That part where Jesus tells the disciples to go into town, and find the colt that has never been ridden, that is tied up, and untie him, and bring it to him.

In an aside that makes the story that much more memorable, Jesus tells the disciples, “if anyone asks you why you’re untying the colt, just tell them ‘the Lord needs it’. So the disciples head off to town, and guess what happens? Exactly what Jesus told them would happen. Down to someone asking why they were untying the colt. It seems a little odd, coming from a 21st century reading of the text, that the writer of Luke notes nothing other than the almost word-for-word correspondence between what was foretold and what was said. I can imagine that the conversation may have gone for a little longer than that which is recorded in the Gospel, and I can just as easily imagine that there was more than just the one question asked, and the one answer given.

It’s kind of that way with us, isn’t it? We’d like to tell every detail of an encounter, but we don’t always have the time, or the energy, to describe in minute detail exactly what happened, and how someone looked, or what they wore, said, or did. We more often than not boil a story down to the most relevant details, or try to, anyway. J

So the writer sticks to the most relevant message: “The Lord needs it”. It is brief, to the point, and specific.

The question though, changes for us:

What is it that we have tied up?

Can we look at our lives and identify things we are keeping from the Lord and his use?

There’s an issue here that I’ll touch on briefly: Does the Lord really actually “NEED” anything from us? We believe in an omnipotent God – an all-powerful God who acts in history and through the majesty of nature … what would God need of us? The short and simple answer is: nothing. The longer and more accurate answer is: everything. God can indeed do as God pleases. God has chosen to allow us the freedom to choose to follow, to engage, to enter into relationship with God. So in a sense, the Lord does need each of us, and of each of us, our all.

A few minutes ago I mentioned all the things that we are involved in or are going to be involved in over the next several weeks … TIME, I think, is an easily identifiable … commodity that we can easily keep from the Lord’s use. We can kid ourselves into thinking that time spent here at church is time dedicated to the Lord, and that would be true to a point, but time dedicated to the Lord is not the same as time with the Lord. So be sure to spend time in prayer, in studying his word, in … communing with the Lord, not only during the holiday season, but throughout the year.

The next thing the Lord needs is our effort. Effort and time are both closely related, but I think slightly different. Again, effort expended and dedicated TO the Lord is not the same as effort expended in SEEKING the Lord. The word is to expend effort not only outwardly, but inwardly as well. WORK at the relationship you have with the Lord, just as you would any relationship here on earth. It takes time to get to know someone. Knowing the Lord is no different.

Lastly, we are getting ready to meet to approve our budget for the next year. Does the Lord need our money? Directly: no. Entering into relationship with God through Jesus is a free gift of grace. There is no monetary price tag on that. However, as we read in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, we are the body of Christ, made up of many members, and each member having different gifts. As that body we have decided to congregate and associate here, in this building, on a regular basis. While Christ is the head of this body of believers, and is at the heart of what we do, working as we do in this earthly realm, this … temporal environment, we have made commitments, and have entered into agreements, and have promised to do things in the name of Christ and for his sake that require us to operate on a mundane level – dealing with money both given and spent. So as we approach not only the business meeting in a couple of weeks, ask yourself this question: am I holding back – am I tying up – what the Lord needs of me?

And that becomes the question for Jerusalem Baptist Church for each of us, as we enter the holiday season: What do we have tied up that the Lord needs of us?

Let’s pray.

Gain Your Souls

Sunday, November 14th, 2004
24th after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Luke 21:5-19

5 When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, 6 'As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.' 7 They asked him, 'Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?' 8 And he said, 'Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, "I am he!" and, "The time is near!" Do not go after them. 9 'When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.' 10 Then he said to them, 'Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; 11 there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. 12 'But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. 13 This will give you an opportunity to testify. 14 So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; 15 for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. 16 You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. 17 You will be hated by all because of my name. 18 But not a hair of your head will perish. 19 By your endurance you will gain your souls.

Sometimes, being a Pastor requires you to go from one extreme of the human emotional spectrum to the other within a short period of time.

Last Saturday evening, while there was a wonderful birthday celebration going on inside the firehouse at Callao for Berenice, outside, there was a sad, stumbling fight going on between a man who had drunk himself almost into a stupor and just about anyone who tried to approach him to try to convince him to let them take him home. I went from taking Berenice on a short spin around the dance floor to stepping toward the man as he was kicking at another man who was trying to get him to settle down and go home and sleep it off.

Sunday, we attended the funeral of William B. Graham, in Irvington. He was an exceptional man.

We came home from that to news of Uncle John Parker's passing. It wasn't unexpected. We had just celebrated his 90th birthday, and he never fully recovered from the party. Kenneth, his youngest son, told me that he went home from the party and got back in bed and, except for a couple of instances where he got up and went to the table for a few minutes at a time, he never got back up out of bed.

On Tuesday afternoon, after stopping in to do my chaplaincy rotation at Riverside, I got a call from one of the ER nurses, asking me to come in. They had a bad situation coming in from Mattaponi, and needed a chaplain on standby. I know Leslie shared with you some if not all the details on Wednesday night. For those of you who were not here then, a woman 33 and a half weeks pregnant with her third child and second son had given birth unexpectedly, and the boy wasn't responding.

I arrived at the hospital within 5 minutes of being called, since we were in the parking lot at Wal-Mart when the call came in. When I walked into the ER, the nurse who had called me explained the situation, and asked me to stand in the entryway to the ambulance bay, to stand near the outer door to trigger the motion sensor to keep the door open when the EMT's got there.

As it turned out, the nurse who came through to meet the ambulance and unload the baby stepped up to the doors, triggered them, and reached up and flipped a switch that locked them open. All I did was stand, and hold a pan with a bag with some stuff in it from the house.

The nurse took the baby and immediately began to do CPR on him. He was tiny, and he didn't move.

They wheeled the mother into one of the empty bays and got her settled onto a gurney. My first impression was "she sure is taking this well." There was very little reaction from her. She was not screaming or crying. In fact, more than anything, she struck me as being angry. I stayed with her, introduced myself as one of the chaplains on call. After a few minutes, I went to check on how the baby was doing. There were no signs of life. I went back and stood by the mother. I asked her if there was anyone I could call for her. She gave me a name of a friend of hers to call. I did, but only got an answering machine.

Over the next few minutes, after going back into her, one of the doctors came over to let her know that it didn't look good. After he left I took her hand and just held it. She didn't say anything, but she began to silently cry. She held onto my hand very tightly.

I asked her if she attended church anywhere. She named a church up in King and Queen, but admitted in the same sentence that she didn't go very often. We had a few more quiet exchanges. Then the doctor came in and asked if she wanted to move into the room where the boy was being worked on. She did, and we got a wheelchair for her and wheeled her across the way. She sat and watched quietly as the nurses and Doctors did everything they could to revive her baby. Finally, the doctor asked her if it was okay for them to stop. She nodded that it was.

The nurses wrapped the baby and brought him over to his mother to hold. We wheeled her back into the bay where she was after she first came in. She held him, and just looked at his little face and cried some more.

Her husband came in then. He was a big man, easily 3 times my size. He broke down as soon as he walked around the curtain. After a few minutes of holding his baby boy, he asked if his mother, who was out in the waiting area, could join them. I went and got her, and as soon as she walked into the bay, you could almost see this 300 lb man become a little boy once again, crying and asking his mommy to "make it better".

Wednesday I drove to Lexington for Uncle John's visitation and funeral. Aunt Edith and he had been married for 7 years. They had just celebrated their 84th month-aversary two weeks before he died. Wednesday evening was filled with people who had come to know Uncle John since he'd moved to Lexington about 10 years ago, as well as good visiting time with David and Kenneth, his sons, and four other missionary aunts and uncles in addition to my parents, who had all gathered with everyone else to pay their respects to Uncle John. The funeral was much more a celebration than a time of mourning. There WAS that, of course, it is a part of any funeral. But the service looked back on a 90 year span of life - for the most part dedicated to the service of the Lord, an unwavering commitment to him and a faithful reflection of God's faithfulness in Uncle John's life.

I'm still trying to fit my brain around the week. To be confronted with the two deaths at opposite ends of the spectrum of human life and to try to bring them into some kind of coherent association, if not understanding, is proving to be difficult at best.

Before leaving the family at the hospital on Wednesday, I asked if I could pray with them, and in my prayer I asked God to help us live with the questions, and to be with us in our asking of them.

Jesus was addressing the questions the disciples had for him at the temple that day. They were commenting on the magnificence of the temple, the beauty of the stones and the gifts that were laid out by people coming to offer their sacrifices. There is a quality unique to the human spirit: curiosity, a thirst for knowledge, a desire to understand. In some way, I think if we understand something, an event, if we gain some perspective on it, grasp some of the factors that played into the outcome, we feel we have somehow managed … a kind of control over it. When faced with that proposition, we would quickly dispel it, realizing that understanding does not imply control, but before that, somehow in knowing "why" we find ourselves more inclined to accept a given event.

That is what was happening with the disciples. Jesus tells them the temple will be destroyed so utterly that not a single stone will be left standing on top of another. Their first reaction is "When? And how can we see it coming?" They were confronted with the possibility of an event that wouldn't even fit in their current understanding. They were sitting surrounded by a building that had stood for as long as any of them could remember. They were reeling, trying to find a reference point from which to begin to build their new understanding of the world. So they fell back on knowing as much as they could about the coming events.

I've heard sermons preached on this passage before, as I'm sure most of you have. As near as I can recall, those sermons primarily focused on the correlating of events listed in the passage with events listed on the front page of the newspapers or in the evening news on television. There may be some truth to that, but I don't think it is the message that Jesus intended us to hear. We are so easily distracted by the trees that we forget there is a forest. We are so consumed with predicting, with knowing, with having an inside track on what is going to come, that we lose sight of our reason for being here in the first place.

Jesus tells us 'Yes, there are going to be terrible things happening, things you can't even imagine. You might be betrayed by family, there'll be terrible natural disasters, there will be wars between nations the likes of which you've never seen, and can't begin to comprehend. You'll be taken prisoner for your faith and taken before judges and governors, people who have a say over whether you'll live or die."

So what does he tell us to do? Look at verse 14:

14 So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; 15 for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.

That seems counterintuitive. That's a fancy word for 'It doesn't make sense." If you KNOW these things are going to happen, shouldn't you prepare? SHOULDN'T you get clear in your head what you'll say? What's the saying? The best defense is a good offense?

That's the whole point, Jesus is saying. If you prepare, you'll be relying on yourself to see you through. Where is the faith in that?

You are going to see and go through terrible things, things that shake your faith; things that will make you question your basic foundations. You're going to see a family lose a son before they even have a chance to know him. You're going to lose someone on whom you rely for wisdom, and guidance, and encouragement, and you will realize in that losing that your foundation needs not be on assumptions, and people, but on God.

The firmest foundation on which to build our lives is not made of cement, but of blood. If we work for the kingdom, and don't become distracted by these side issues, if we work to build our relationship with Jesus Christ, our foundations will stand.

Let's pray.