“Promise?”

Sunday, December 11th, 2005
Advent 3B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Isaiah 65:17-25

17 For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. 18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. 19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. 20 No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. 21 They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22 They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. 23 They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD-- and their descendants as well. 24 Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. 25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent--its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.

“Promise?”

If you’ve ever had to look into the eyes of a six year-old that you’ve just told you’d do something with and they ask you that haunting, penetrating question, you get the idea of what it is to hope – to await with eager expectation, to dream and yearn with every fiber of your being for something to come true.

“Promise?”

Isaiah was written to a people undone, in captivity, in exile, far from home, wishing every moment of every day that they were somewhere else.

The picture we see in the passage this morning is not unfamiliar to us – it echoes similar passages throughout the Bible that show us a glimpse of what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.

What do we hear of first? Jerusalem as Joy and its people as a delight. Though I’m sure there are moments in which the inhabitants of today’s Jerusalem feel that way about their city, I strongly suspect those moments are all too fleeting. The line one phrase down rings truer to what our experience of Jerusalem has been -- no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. Keep in mind, this passage was written at the very least, nearly 2500 years ago, and yet, it could easily be applied to today’s inhabitants of Jerusalem.

The picture painted by Isaiah is one of a just, peaceful, joy-filled Kingdom that is altogether earth-centered – not a pie-in-the-sky soft-focused harps-playing in the background otherworldly image of something that is out of the grasp of even our most vivid imagination. This is a NEW EARTH. Where there will be no infant mortality, where centenarians will be considered children, where people will enjoy the fruits of their labors THEMSELVES – not be dispossessed of them by ruthless employers. Did you see? People will build houses and live in them themselves – people will plant vineyards and eat their fruit themselves – it is a none-too-subtle statement for all who have people working for them, isn’t it? And it is a promise to those same workers – the ones who DO toil in another’s field, who DO build someone else’s house, who DO plant and tend someone else’s vineyard.

The vision is mortal also in that in the new earth depicted – even though people live far longer lives than we do today, they still die. It is significant to note that detail … it does not seem to be speaking of the heavenly realm so much as a transformed earthly one.

This week, I sat beside a man who lost his sight at the age of 46. He commented on the fact that he believed in Jesus, believed the Bible, and since it says in the Bible that Jesus healed a blind man, HE wants that for himself. He cannot understand why he has had to suffer the traumatic loss of his sight.

I was reminded that though Jesus did heal the blind man, he also did not promise us an easy life here on earth – not YET anyway – that man knows that far better than I do.

In the coming of the Christ child, Brennan Manning says in Shipwrecked at the Stable Door - “God entered our world not with the crushing impact of unbearable glory, but in the way of weakness, vulnerability and need. On a wintry night in an obscure cave, the infant Jesus was a humble naked helpless God who allowed us to get close to him."

Jesus could have transformed the world while he was here. Being God incarnate certainly meant that he had the power, the ability to do it. But he chose not to. Did he choose to not redeem the world in one fell swoop in order to allow us to continue to suffer? The man I sat with said at another point in the conversation that he’s ready for his life to be over. He FEELS like it is over already. His loss is so overwhelming that he can’t yet find anything redemptive in the experience. I won’t stand here and say that he will. He very well may not in his remaining time. I hope that will come to him. I hope I nudged him in that direction, but I can’t say with any certainty that anything I said got through.

Ultimately, we know the true sense of Joy by understanding and perhaps experiencing despair and sorrow. If we did not have the valleys, we would not recognize the mountaintops. It sounds pithy, but it is true.

It is the same with understanding God’s promise of Joy. We cannot truly know that Joy without having been through this life here on earth – in its present condition.

We celebrate Christmas in the only way we can -- with a partial understanding of what that Joy really is, because we are still on THIS side of knowing it fully.

Christ’s promise to us is that we WILL be with him. Just like that 6 year olds’ eyes pleaded with me to spend time with him, we look toward the coming of the Savior both in our lives and in our world –

Let’s pray.

Prepare the Way

Sunday, December 4th, 2005
Advent 2B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Mark 1:1-8

1The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
2 As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,

who will prepare your
way;

3 the voice of one crying
out in the wilderness:“

Prepare the way of the
Lord,make his paths straight,”’
4 John the baptizer appeared in the
wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5
And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem
were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing
their sins. 6 Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around
his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7 He proclaimed, ‘The one who is
more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie
the thong of his sandals. 8 I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize
you with the Holy Spirit.’

I am a recovering news junkie. It dates back to when I was a night clerk my last year in college. CNN was relatively new then, and I couldn’t get enough of it. Weeknights I was usually the only one in the lobby of the dorm, so I would flip back and forth between MTV and VH1 and CNN Headline news. I had to do something to stay awake, and when reading my assignments stopped working, I would turn up the TV and see what had been happening in the world.

Nowadays I get most of my news from the radio, or online, depending on where I happen to be driving. National Public Radio is my drug of choice, but I usually try to tune in to the EIB network to hear what the take is from that end.

This week I had the opportunity to watch some news on television, something my schedule doesn’t always lend itself to anymore. The footage and the stories are truly disheartening.

So it is with a heavy heart that I come to the second Sunday of Advent, when we’ve focused on peace, we’ve heard a reading on peace, we’ve lit the candle, and we’ve prayed for it. And though we may to some degree be experiencing peace in our respective lives, it is perhaps the most elusive of gifts, for we do not see it in the greater world around us. Not by a long shot. Even the local news is anything but peaceful. We hear of arsons, and shootings, and wrecks, and attempted escapes, even in this relatively quiet corner of the world.

The image in today’s passage – at the very beginning of the Gospel according to Mark, is of John proclaiming the coming of the Messiah, the promised one, and in that proclamation, there is a foreshadowing of the turmoil to come. We’ve read the passages, John didn’t have just a few followers, he had CROWDS following him – coming to him for baptism – for the forgiveness of sins.

Do you remember what it was like to be confronted with your own fallen-ness, your own brokenness? Coming to grips with one’s sinfulness is not a soothing experience. For me, it usually involves pain and sorrow beyond words – and even anger – at the realization that, as much as I try to let Christ govern my life, his is not always the voice that commands, that prevails.

So Jesus DID come to proclaim the ‘favorable year of the LORD,’ but he did not promise us peace on this earth, in this life.

We may catch glimpses of it, dim reflections … as Paul says, “through a glass, dimly.” Can you think of any? I had the opportunity to witness one of those moments yesterday morning, when baby Alejandro first came back from the nursery to be with his mother and father. There is something eternal and transcendent in the sight of a new family forming, something that speaks so strongly of hope, and a hope in the future, that even when conditions are anything but in their favor, the first response is to smile and thank God for the miracle of life.

But then life HAPPENS. And we have all seen and know that life is anything BUT peaceful. Even in the pursuit of peace, there is danger.
Last weekend, and in the days since, there have been several abductions in Iraq. In one, a British citizen, two Canadians, and a U.S. citizen were abducted. Night before last the reports started coming out that the group responsible for the abduction stated that the men would all be killed unless Iraqi detainees are not released by this coming Thursday.

We’ve grown … what? Somewhat immune (is that the word?) to the reports, haven’t we, that this many soldiers and that many civilians were killed in a car-bombing in Baghdad, that so many Iraqi police trainees were slaughtered … how is it that such devastating, heart-rending news is summarized in a two or three sentence note trimmed to fit the timeslot, and we go on with our lives.

The four men are members of Christian Peacemaker Teams, a program born out of the Brethren, Quaker and Mennonite Churches in the United States and Canada. Denominations that have from their beginnings taken to heart Jesus’ beatitude in the Sermon on the Mount – ‘blessed are the Peacemakers, for they will be called children of God’ – and their pursuit of peace may end up costing these men their lives. It has yet to be seen.

I fully realize that there are radically differing views on the war in Iraq and on the reasons for the war – a fact that is drilled into me by my choice of radio listening, if nothing else. I am at a loss when it comes to trying to find some resolution to the situation. I’m not that smart.

But I do know one thing.

Christ calls us to follow him, to be like him. And though his call does initially cause distress, it ultimately results in peace. And so I pray for peace – spiritual as well as emotional and physical – military and political. His promise IS for peace, ultimately.

It is one of his given names – the Prince of Peace. But this Prince of Peace has told us in his own words –

34 ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
35 For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
36 and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
(Matthew 10)

Jesus knows to whom he is speaking. He knows the human heart. He knows the passions of the human spirit, and he understood that what he was bringing into the world would first strain and even tear the fabric of our existence, for we live in a world that is NOT as it should be, it is NOT as it was originally intended, neither the physical world nor the spiritual and emotional one.

Simply stated, we live in a world in which peace is absent.

So we pray for peace, we work for peace, we seek peace in much the same way that we seek and pray for and work for the Kingdom of Heaven: in the expectation of its fulfillment, not in the reality of its full presence.

So our concentration on peace this day is with a yearning and a hope that it will one day BE – not only in our hearts, but in the greater work of creation around us.

And how are we to prepare the way for the Prince of Peace?

By nurturing, encouraging, strengthening the peace in our own lives that he has already planted there, by sharing that peace, by living OUT that peace, by living IN that peace in relationship with each other. We are, after all, the representation of God’s glory on earth.

How true to that glory are we being?

Let’s pray.

Watching and Waiting

Sunday, November 27th, 2005
Advent B1
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Micah 5:2

But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.

Do you realize that there’s a lot we hold in common with the first-century inhabitants of Bethlehem?

We (at times more noticeably than at others) share the burden of living in the expectation of what is yet to come – what has yet to be. We, like our counterparts then, live with the longing of a time of fulfillment, of rejoicing, of celebrating the coming of the Messiah.

To be sure, we have a degree of comfort in our waiting the likes of which the residents of Bethlehem could not even dream about. Air Conditioning, Heating, indoor plumbing, transportation and mobility in general as well as communication capabilities that would stun them into silence, to say nothing of the ease with which we go about feeding ourselves, all these and even the clothes we wear would be so far out of even the wildest imagination of those early … watchers and waiters that it is almost like comparing apples and oranges.

That is not the only thing we share with our counterparts of the early years of the first century of the Common Era.

We also share the burden of oppression – though it takes a less obvious form than a despot named Herod, or occupying armies of soldiers with spears and swords. The oppression we live under is more pervasive, more insidious, than they were.

I don’t believe in taking on a victim mentality, but there are certain aspects of living in this day and age that can be as degrading, as nullifying as the prospect of death was then. We face the prospect of being relegated to irrelevance just as quickly and with just as little thought.

As I have noted before, one of the deepest-seated needs of the human heart is to have made a difference – to be of significance – maybe not in a grand way, we are not all called or gifted in such a way as to make that a probability, but in a local, more personal, and in that sense, a more immediate way.

I remember watching a documentary once, it was entitled ‘the heart of hatred’, and it dealt with racism in contemporary France. The producers took a mixed group of individuals – from Algiers and other former Franco-African colonies, and put them together with a cross section of Frenchmen of European origin, and over the course of 3 or 4 days had them talk through, in several sessions, talk out their fears and anxieties and attitudes towards each other.

At one point, one of the senior native Frenchmen in the group, who had been outspokenly pro-integration of the disparate communities, on hearing a comment from one of the other, less open-minded men in the group which gave an indication that he was coming around to a more inclusive attitude burst into tears. When asked why he was crying, his response was ‘if I’ve made any difference, any difference at all, in the heart of that man that might result in a change of attitude and a reconciliation between the races, I would consider this time to not have been wasted.’

To be honest, in watching the documentary, it seemed a response that was not entirely proportional to the event. It didn’t seem to be that big a deal to me. Though part of it might have been due to the fact that the documentary was in French, with Spanish subtitles … so there’s a real probability that some of the emotional impact was lost in translation. Be that as it may, we come back to the fact that there is a longing in human nature to … have made an impact, in however small a way, on the society in which we live.

I heard a wonderful saying on NPR yesterday. It was a saying by an unnamed rabbi, which was “always carry two notes with you – one in each pocket – on one have written the message ‘today, the world was made JUST for you.’ On the other, have written the message, ‘you are an insignificant speck of dust in a meaningless world.’”

Somewhere between the two is where we live our lives. But we are under the oppression of a world that says ‘what is of most value is what you can lay your hands on, and whoever has the most wins.’ That can be oppressive in the extreme. One of our more socially conscious Christian Magazines has for the last several years promoted the day after thanksgiving as the ‘buy nothing day’ – in order to make a statement about how we will not bow to the rampant materialism that is taking over the season of Advent.

So it really can be sneaky – after all, you’re giving a gift TO someone you love OUT of love. And yet, in that giving, there are ways in which we can easily lose sight of why the season was celebrated to begin with.

So we find ourselves watching and waiting. Waiting for what comes next, for the coming of the Messiah. How easy, it seems in retrospect, they missed it the first time around. “They” were expecting someone else … “they” were expecting a political and military champion … “they” were expecting this or that …

When in truth, God surprised us all by sending a baby … one of THE MOST defenseless creatures we can ever imagine – to become the savior of us all.

So we watch and wait and pray for God to surprise us again – to catch us in the act of being his disciples, his lovers, his followers.

Let’s pray.

The Gospel, in Spades

Sunday, November 20th, 2005
Christ the King Sunday
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 25:31-46

31 ‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” 37 Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” 40 And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” 41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” 44 Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” 45 Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’

There are memories in each of our minds that mark for us a specific time and place. Some of those memories are associated with a smell, or a sound, or a voice, or a song.

Even now, as some of you have heard me comment, the smell of fresh cilantro can put me back in the open air weekly market that came through our neighborhood in Santiago as I was growing up.

This passage has some of that effect on me today. Though it doesn’t necessarily tie in to an exact date and time, it does tie in to an extended period of time in my life – my first two years of college, when I was introduced to the music of Keith Green.

He was an amazing musician, and a charismatic speaker. He began his ministry in the mid 70’s and officially started Last Days Ministries in 1977. He was killed in a small plane crash in July of 1982, along with two of his children. Keith Green only lived to be twenty-eight years old.

What I believe … and what I came to believe was deeply impacted by the words of Keith’s songs. There was a line that kept running through what he wrote and said – “no compromise” – no compromise in what it means to follow Christ, in what it means to give yourself wholly and completely to Christ. Keith was all or nothing. And he wouldn’t back down from that.

It came as a shock to me last night as I read once again that he was only twenty-eight when he was killed. When someone young dies it always seems to be harder to understand, harder to take in, harder to accept than when someone who has most of their life behind them passes away.

Looking back, it’s hard to think of myself as now being 14 years older than he was when he died. It seems he did so much in the short time he had here on earth.

One thing that Keith demonstrated, at least to an impressionable 19 year-old college sophomore- was a brutal honesty. He met the hard issues head on. At least that’s how I remember it. Over the next few years I stopped keeping up with Last Days Ministries, and have realized that where I have ended up is somewhat different from where I began my spiritual pilgrimage, and I realize it is probably not where I will stay. I fully expect to continue to grow and change as God continues to teach me and mold me – as long as I am teachable and moldable.

I’d like to jump to the end of the passage – actually, to the end of each of the two sections in the passage, for our starting point this morning: the question that we hear from both groups – the ones on the right as well as the left – and please understand, this is not a reference to any sort of political spectrum, it is purely a division for clarity’s sake.

From the first group – those called the sheep – the question is posed in a positive frame – “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” Compare that to the way the later group – the goats – phrased their question: “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?”

In describing the scene, Jesus poses the two groups facing the King – the continuing reference to God, just as we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks – and again we are faced with an outcome that calls for judgment.

Why is Jesus doing that? If he came to bring the Good News of a loving God, willing to do everything for humanity, why is he speaking of eternal punishment?

Last night was opening night for the Westmoreland Players’ production of ‘A Christmas Carol’, by Charles Dickens. With Leslie accompanying and Caleb onstage, we HAD to go see it, of course. It was ‘pay what you can’ night, so we reserved a group of seats and took and met some of our Hispanic brothers and sisters there.

Most of us are familiar with the story. Ebenezer Scrooge goes to bed on Christmas Eve, and the ghost of Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s former business partner, shows up wrapped in chains, and warns Scrooge of what he is about to experience – the haunting of three spirits – the Ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. When Scrooge asks what all the chains are, Marley wails that they are the chains he himself forged during his life on earth – each link formed by an opportunity spurned or missed or avoided to do good – to tend to a care, a need, a relationship. And he condemned himself to bear the fruit of his efforts here on earth in the afterlife. So in a sense, he made his own hell.

Whether one consigns oneself to hell or whether it is done by God, the path by which the destination is reached is the same.

Jesus is warning the Marleys and Scrooges of his day of just where they are heading if they do not dig deep and drink the water of life that the Gospel offers. We are called, challenged, exhorted, entreated to find in the living out of Christ’s message and life in us the life that he offers to all who would listen and obey.

The harrowing visit from the last Ghost – the Ghost of Christmas Future – is most harrowing because of the way it brings to light just how ALONE Ebenezer is. The conversations that revolve around his death are mostly comments on the lack of anyone else in his life and his circle of concern other than himself.

And that is the antithesis – the opposite – of what the Gospel teaches us. God sent his Son in order to tell us we are not alone. We are NOT here to focus on our own individual needs and wants. We are here to care for each other. You’ve heard it before from me – we are here to BE community to each other – to BE family. To BE Christ’s presence himself.

And what is made plain in the parable today is that Christ is not only in the acting, but in the receiving as well. When we act as Christ would, then we receive Christ that much deeper into our lives. When we allow Christ deeper into our lives, we are transformed, and it is in the transformation that we become the people God wants us to be.

“Be doers of the word, not hearers only”, James tells us. The Gospel is not simply a set of ideas, of principles by which to guide our lives, the Gospel is action, the Gospel is actively living out what those ideas mean – without the action, the ideas are worthless.

What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means that we are called to action, we are called to duty, to engage the community in which we live, and the world of which we are a part, to take the Gospel TO them. We can’t come here Sunday after Sunday and simply expect people to find their way here. We’ve had some exposure to a church without walls through our involvement in the Hispanic Ministry of the Association. The idea of taking the Gospel OUT is fully in line with what Christ commissioned us to do – to GO.

So, as we close this church year, let’s proclaim Christ as King, and look at the beginning of a new year as one full of opportunities by which we can take the message OUT, rather than keep it in.

Let’s pray.

Trips, Talents, and Returns

Sunday, November 13th, 2005
Pentecost + 26
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 25:14-30

14 ‘For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; 15 to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. 16 The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. 17 In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. 18 But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. 19 After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. 20 Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, “Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.” 21 His master said to him, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.” 22 And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, “Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.” 23 His master said to him, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.” 24 Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.” 26 But his master replied, “You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. 28 So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. 29 For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. 30 As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

A talent was worth more than fifteen years wages of a laborer.

That is the single bit of information that has consistently, apart from the central lesson of the parable, been drilled into me over the last 35 years of reading and hearing this passage mentioned in studies and sermons.

What I didn’t realize is that this very passage is where we get the term ‘talent’ as used today – in the sense of a skill or ability – or a gift.

Jesus is in the middle of what is sometimes called his “eschatological discourse” – that is, a discussion about the end times – due to his repeated references at the end of each parable to a judgment or a sentence carried out on the orders of the Master.

Remember, Matthew was writing to an early church that was struggling with the reality that they had witnessed the death, burial and resurrection and ascension of Jesus, along with his great commission and promise to return. They had also witnessed the life and ministry and the martyrdom (in most cases) of the disciples, and THEY were suffering persecution, and JESUS HAD NOT COME BACK YET.

So the writer of the Gospel is writing to encourage and strengthen them in their resolve to continue in the faith, to hope in spite of their circumstances, to continue to live each day as though Jesus was coming back in the next minute, or hour, or day.

So in the passage this morning we hear Jesus continuing in the same vein as last week – to let his followers know that he would be gone for a while, but to stand firm, because he WAS coming. Here, it is somewhat more explicit, IF you read closely, but in some ways it seems to get lost in the events of the story – at least for US it does.

Have you ever been part of a conversation that is terribly important to you? One in which you are waiting, holding your breath, listening to hear that one phrase or that one word that will make all the difference? I think that may have been what was going on in both the writer’s mind and in the listener’s ears with this parable. And to us it gets lost in the context. The opening phrase of verse 19: After a long time.

Of course, that’s not the focus of the parable, but for people who are living with the uncertainty of their conviction --- people who were literally risking their lives by adhering to the basic tenets of their faith in Christ, it was a critically important element of the story. The words are coming from Jesus’ own mouth. And he’s telling his followers he’s going to be gone for a while. Earlier, he’s already said that no one knows the day or the hour. So that doesn’t change. It is Jesus telling his followers there and then and here and now to be patient, to be steadfast, to hold firm to what they believe.

But, just as we saw last week, and the week before that, his is not a call to passivity, to a status quo approach to the world around us while we await his return. It is, rather, a call to action, to faithfulness in view of faithlessness. It is a call to be salt and light, to be different, to be contrary, and to be surprising.

This past Wednesday Leslie and I drove up to Woodbridge for the Pastor’s Conference before the BGAV meeting that began on Thursday. We decided to stop by the conference center first, and register, before heading off to find the Church that was hosting the meeting on Wednesday. As we walked up to the building, Leslie and I were talking about the events of this past Sunday evening. As thrilled as we are about Leslie’s ordination, we are acutely aware of the fact that not everyone, even folks we continue to consider beloved friends, not everyone is in agreement with the action that Jerusalem took in ordaining her. So we quietly decided between ourselves that we wouldn’t make a big deal about the ordination. As you heard Leslie say, it is a simple step of obedience in a lifetime of discipleship and a desire to serve the Lord – wherever he leads.

No sooner had the words come out of our mouths than we walked through the doors of Hylton Chapel and there was John Upton, General Secretary of the BGAV. We started to say hello, and almost the first words out of his mouth to Leslie were, “CONGRATULATIONS REVEREND! I HEARD IT WAS A WONDERFUL ORDINATION SERVICE! WE ARE SO PROUD OF YOU!” So much for not making a big deal about it. We were surprised by the joy and the grace with which the news was received.

What we were reminded of last Sunday evening, and in truth, last July, at the business meeting when the church voted, AND at the ordination council in September, is that the unused opportunity is lost. The parable is not about the money. That is why the term ‘talent’ has come to mean what it means today. It is about the gift. Or Gifts, rather, that God gives us.

And it is about faithfulness.

In the first century, trusted slaves, even though they were slaves, were put in charge of property and businesses belonging to the master/owner. Setting aside for a moment the master/slave issue, coming from a twentieth century perspective, the trusted slave recognized that HIS or HER welfare depended on the welfare of his or her MASTER, and that they were just as much beneficiaries of ably dealing with that welfare as the master was. This would have been something that was patently obvious to the folks listening to Jesus’ telling of the parable.

We get a skewed view of the dynamics if we apply twentieth-century sensibilities to a first-century parable. The driving thought behind the parable is not the gaining of wealth; it is the trust between the master and servant – the relationship between the two.

What we find different in the last servant is mistrust of the master, and a dishonesty in dealing with the realities of the responsibilities entrusted by the master to the servant in his absence.

That is something we can all wrap our brains around as twenty-first-century followers of Jesus Christ. All of our gifts and opportunities come from God. However we break it down, ultimately, what we believe requires that we acknowledge God as the giver of all good and perfect gifts. There is no distinction between the praise given to the servant who received five talents and the one who received the two talents. It makes no difference to God how many gifts we receive individually. If we remain faithful to God in the use of them, in the exercise of them, in the living out of them, we are maintaining that relationship of trust in him by doing so.

The shadowside of the parable is apparent in what happens to the servant who was entrusted with one talent. It’s not so much that he received ONLY the one talent, it is more what he DID … or DIDN’T do with the one talent, that is the sticking point of the parable and the Gospel lesson today. God has entrusted us – fallible human beings that we are, flawed, selfish, petty, ambivalent, at times cowardly and at other times courageous, God has entrusted US with the duty of ushering in the Kingdom here on earth until his return.

So we have this talent, this gift within us – the Holy Spirit—that is prompting us to take the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ into all the world … and the question for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton is this:

What have we done, what are we doing, and what are we going to do with that trust that has been placed in us by our Master?

Can we approach the master with the almost childlike “Look! See what I did!?” tone of the first two servants, or is our response going to be the sullen, mistrusting tone of the third servant, trying to lay blame where none is due but on himself?

Do you realize it all comes down to a question of the individual?

We are called to live and live OUT our faith in community, and as a body we serve each other and encourage each other in our daily pilgrimage, but when it comes right down to it, the question is asked of each of us.

What will your answer be?

Let’s pray.

Keep Awake

Sunday, November 6th, 2005
Pentecost + 25
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 25:1-13

1‘Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3 When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; 4 but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. 5 As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. 6 But at midnight there was a shout, “Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.” 7 Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. 8 The foolish said to the wise, “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” 9 But the wise replied, “No! There will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.” 10 And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. 11 Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, “Lord, lord, open to us.” 12 But he replied, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.” 13 Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

It was 10:15 on Thursday night, and I heard a plaintive voice quietly calling from the bedroom across the hall.

“Daddy? … Daddy?”

“Yes, Hannah? … Why are you still awake?”

“I wanted to stay awake so that when Momma and Judson get home I can ask her to sleep with me.” When any of the kids ask one of us to sleep with them, it usually involves laying down next to them for the duration of one or two songs playing on their lullaby CD’s.

I would’ve liked for Hannah to have gone to sleep an hour and a half earlier, but it is an utterly lost cause.

There is the school of thought that declares that your behavior is determined by genetics; your parents, and their parents, and THEIR parents … ad infinitum. You’ve heard the saying ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree?’ This is where it comes from.

The other school of thought proposes that your behavior is determined by your environment. What you DO you do in reaction or in response to what is going on around you; it is not necessarily something that is predetermined by your great-great-grandmother catching your great-great-grandfather’s eye at an 1832 barn-raising.

So for Hannah, when it comes to going to sleep at night, she is caught both ways. Genetically, she is duplicating what BOTH Leslie and I did as children – sneaking around, staying up late, FINDING the flimsiest excuse to walk into the living room or den to ask our parents the most innocuous question JUST so we could SEE WHAT WAS going on. Leslie and I BOTH lived in fear of MISSING something.

It has never occurred to me until now to ask our parents if they did the same thing as children. Chances are, if not they themselves, I suspect my Aunts or our Uncles MORE than compensated in some way. So the genetics would still come into play, as a latent gene.

As for environment … well, I suppose it could be considered that simply the fact that there are other people in the house who are awake when SHE is supposed to be sleeping is enough of an environmental factor to trigger whatever that gene is that we gave her.

There are those of us who eagerly remain awake, waiting for the next thing, and those of us who gladly sink into the dream world, and rest in preparation for the day that is to come.

In the text, we read of 10 virgins, Jesus says that five of the virgins went to meet the bridegroom with only the oil in their lamps. The other five came not only with the oil in their lamps, but an additional flask of oil as a backup, in case they had to wait an unexpectedly long time.

Guess what?

They had to wait an unexpectedly long time.

The first five thus end up being called foolish, and the second five are called wise for their foresight.

ALL of them dozed off and fell asleep while they waited for the bridegroom to appear.

ALL of them, both the foolish and the wise, fall asleep.

But it wasn’t the falling asleep that ended up being the problem. The problem ended up being the lack of oil in the lamps. THAT ended up causing the foolish five to leave the place where they were to find the oil they needed to relight their lamps, and they missed the opportunity to enter with the bridegroom.

In first century Palestine, young couples wouldn't go away for a week-long honeymoon; instead, they would stay at their home and would have a sort of "open house" for their friends. Everyone treated the couple as royalty; the week following their wedding ceremony was undoubtedly the best week of their lives.

Before the wedding, the maidens or virgins kept the bride company outside of the groom's house as she waited for him to arrive. They'd bring lamps to use while they waited because they were not allowed in the streets at night without light. Because the groom could come at any time, even at night, they had to stay and wait.

No one knew exactly when he'd arrive. They didn't print invitations and invite people to come at a precise time for the wedding, it happened whenever the bridegroom came. It could be today, it could be tomorrow or it could be next week.

When the bridegroom approached, a messenger would go out into the streets and declare, "Behold, the bridegroom is coming" then the maidens would accompany the bride into the house for the wedding ceremony and the week-long celebration to follow. (Barclay 354)
There was a small window of opportunity to walk through the door into the house. Once the wedding began, no one else was admitted.

In other words, it wasn't possible to be too early, but it was possible to be too late. You couldn't just walk in and find a seat in the back, when the door was shut, it was shut and it wouldn't be opened again.

So when Jesus told this parable, His listeners had a cultural point of reference that made it come alive to them. They immediately got his point about the importance of preparation.

The Gospel of Matthew might have been written down as much as 50 years after the resurrection of Christ, the church was struggling with the extended time interval between the first coming and the second coming of Christ. Perhaps some were losing hope.

Some suggest that Matthew uses this parable to remind the church that the end will come and it will come suddenly, but it may not necessarily come soon.

The main question for the first readers of the Gospel and for us today in this scripture is: "What do we do while we're waiting?"

Keeping watch, standing guard, being prepared; they are all watchwords for doing what we are supposed to be doing in the preparation of AND in preparation for the coming of the Kingdom of God.

The analogy is pretty stark. The coming bridegroom is Christ himself, the Messiah. What we do while we’re waiting for him to show up is being answered FOR us in the parable: Do we show up and wait prepared, or unprepared for what comes next? How do we, as Christians, prepare for the inbreaking Kingdom of God? What is it we’re called to do ‘in the meantime?’

Jesus, in this passage and the rest of the chapter, is bringing things to their conclusion. The allusion we find just before the conclusion of the parable, “Lord, Lord, open to us” and the bridegroom’s “I do not know you” reply is not a reference to preparedness, but to … judgment, and justice. Jesus is communicating to his followers that he is not going to be with them much longer, and that they are in for a wait. And yet, in the absence, there is hope.

As we approach the Advent season, during which we remember the waiting of the people of Israel for the Messiah, We are here presented with an image of what will be involved in our waiting for the RETURN of that same Messiah into OUR future.

Our wait now becomes an echo of theirs. But we do not wait complacently. We do not wait in stillness. We wait in eager anticipation, we wait by fulfilling his commands, following his examples, as we spoke on Wednesday; the most powerful testimony to the movement of God in the world is each of our individual lives. We wait by engaging the world through living lives that reflect the character of Christ – and not only the character, but the PRESENCE of Christ in our lives. If we are to talk of weapons that can vanquish an enemy, let’s talk about the weapons of love, forgiveness, service, truthfulness, and grace. They are a formidable array with which to confront the enemies of hatred, bitterness, egoism, superficiality and malice.


What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means this: if we are to choose how we live our lives, may our choices always reflect those of Christ Jesus himself. If we are to practice what we read and know of Christ in our hearts, let it first be reflected among us as the body of Christ. If we cannot see each other as Jesus sees us, and we more or less like each other, how can we hope to see the world, with which we might have less in common, as Jesus sees IT?

Have we run out of oil, and don’t have a flask from which to refill our lamp? Jesus said ‘I am the light of the world’. Can we reach out and claim that light again and again and pass it on as we find the world knocking at our door? Are we going to recognize the bridegroom when he comes? Will we be ready when he comes? Will we be about the business of the Kingdom of God when he comes, or … not?

Let’s pray.

Do As I Say …

Sunday, October 30th, 2005
Pentecost + 24
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 23:1-12

1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 ‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; 3 therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. 4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. 5 They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. 6 They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, 7 and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. 8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. 9 And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father--the one in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

To open the Bible and to read it with a humble heart and an open mind is to invite scandal into your life.

Half the time, you draw comfort from what you are reading. Passages flow into you that reassure and sooth, that give you courage and encourage you and give you something to smile about or something to ponder, something to enrich your life, but that’s only half the time. You read it, and you hear God saying ‘from where you’re sitting it may not look like it, but someday, if you continue to do the right thing, someday it WILL be rewarded, and justice will flow down, but there’s still the other half of the time.’

The rest of the time, if you are honest with yourself, you find yourself on the short end of the stick. You are more likely to identify with or be identified as the one in the story who DIDN’T GET it to begin with, the one who isn’t shown in the best light in the parable, the one who God is speaking against – who Jesus is speaking AGAINST. It’s not necessarily a reflection of what your sense of self-esteem is doing at the moment, it is more a matter of realizing that for all your good and potentially good qualities, there are most definitely some qualities in you that deserve the withering blast that Jesus levels in today’s passage.

One of the most common excuses given for why someone doesn’t go to church is that ‘church is full of hypocrites’. I suspect most all of us have heard it at some point in our lives, perhaps even thought it ourselves. I remember distinctly being so fed up with my perception of what the membership consisted of in the big Baptist church in my college town in Kentucky that I very nearly stopped going altogether, and contemplated going in one of two directions: withdrawing from the faith community altogether, or heading out on my own, me and my roommates, just doing our own thing, being as true to the Gospel as we could be. And although it can be an either-or proposition, in some ways it ends up being both things. In my endeavor to go deeper, to understand more what it means to be a follower of Christ, to be as zealous, as honest as I could be about faith, it caused me to do what I mentioned the Pharisees did themselves. You withdraw from community, you withdraw from fellowship, and so you’re left with this “thing” that you are trying to bring back together.

I looked up the origin, the etymology of the word “Hypocrite” last night. It is a transliteration of the Greek word hypokrites, which means "actor on the stage, pretender." So I was encouraged to know that at the tender age of 7, Caleb is a bona-fide, card-carrying hypocrite. As Leslie mentioned earlier, he is in the Westmoreland Players’ production of ‘A Christmas Carol’. So he is, by definition, a hypocrite. He is pretending to be a schoolboy, the son of a coal miner, and the personification of ‘ignorance’. Others in the play are being hypocrites pretending to be Bob Cratchitt, Tiny Tim, Ebenezer Scrooge, and any number of other characters.

Interesting, isn’t it, when you use a word in its original sense rather than it’s acquired sense? It seems that the word’s original meaning quickly became applicable to not only those who exercised a craft onstage, but to those who exercised a similar craft on their own stage, in life.

The critical difference between the hypocrites we call actors and the hypocrites for whom we have NOT changed the name is another actor’s term: motivation. With an actor, it is an understood tenet of the agreement between audience and actor that it is UNDERSTOOD that the actor is PLAYING a part. It is generally NOT the case that the actor is trying to actually BE the character he or she is representing onstage IN REAL LIFE. But the term STUCK for those who practice the craft in their daily life.

What I find myself asking each time I come to this passage and the rest of the chapter, is ‘what side of the conversation am I on? Is Jesus talking TO me or ABOUT me? Am I, right now, one of the Pharisees, or one of the poor souls Jesus says the Pharisees are loading down with all the unnecessary baggage?’ And I’ve felt like both.

It’s a process that has taken on a different dynamic since I’ve been in full-time ministry.

Used to be, since I wasn’t standing here on Sunday mornings, it was much easier to sit back and put my hands behind my head and say ‘He’s not talking about ME. I’m not even in the same ballpark with those guys. I’m not pretending to be something I’m not.”

But the question always comes back, regardless of whether I’m up here or sitting down there. Am I TRULY NOT trying to be something I’m not? It was and continues to be a nagging question. If there is a key piece to the puzzle of what it means to live as a follower of Jesus Christ, it is to be genuine, to be AUTHENTIC: to be true to God, to be true to Jesus, and to be true to yourself and to your brothers and sisters in Christ. And that can be terribly hard sometimes.

Especially in a culture such as ours, and by that I don’t mean the American culture, I mean the southern, protestant, white, Anglo-Saxon BAPTIST culture, where there are heavily traditional expectations of what a pastor should say in any given situation, what a Pastor should do and how a pastor should speak. Those expectations are, to be fair, changing. There is a move away from the slick-haired, Bible-waiving, stentorian-voiced preacher, with a ready joke, and an outgoing-to-the-point-of-being-overbearing personality, and a move towards allowing Pastors to be people too; to have real problems and weaknesses, deep struggles and hardships that are seemingly as hard to get through and over for THEM as for anyone else.

And it is none too soon for the change, if you ask me. But even for me, even welcoming the change, it carries with it an element of risk, of radicalism apart from the obvious. It is actually what drew me that final step into the ministry. I’d known pastors who were from both camps – those who never let you see their true selves, and those who did nothing other than that; those who would take the Sunday Sermon to hit you up ‘side the head with a two-by-four and those who took the Sunday morning time to walk with you through a passage or thought in the Bible. To illustrate how the passage fits into the greater Gospel message of Grace & forgiveness.

Jesus looks at our hearts. We’ve seen it time and time again. He’s said it time and time again.

The phylacteries that are mentioned, I’m sure you’ve studied in the past, were and are in some traditions of present-day Judaism, little leather boxes that carry inside them a couple of passages from the old testament, written on velum – on sheepskin – Exodus 13:9 and Deuteronomy 6:8-9 they are strapped to the forehead and the left arm, the fringes were blue twisted tassels worn on the four corners of the outer garment, both served as reminders of the place that God’s word should have in our lives. If that were all they had remained, Jesus wouldn’t have had a problem with them in the least.

It was what they had become that he had a problem with. The phylacteries had slowly grown in size, as had the fringes in length, so that anyone could see them from across the room, or across the square. They stopped being for the individual and started being for show. They started getting bigger and bigger, and of course, size matters, so if it is bigger, then that MUST mean that you are holier, or more righteous. How does that translate into how we live out our faith today? If we have a bigger building, a taller steeple, a bigger organ, a bigger screen, would that make us better Christians? I think not.

Jesus is going for what is of meaning, what is of essence, in following him. Jesus doesn’t want anything for show. He’s looking for honesty, whatever that honesty entails. The verse of that song came up, and I couldn’t get through it, what was it? ‘Women of faith, sing from broken hearts?’ (Stand and sing to broken hearts) – That’s where it is! It could’ve gone a lot smoother up to this point. Thankfully, we still have power. I could have skipped a slide, I could have moved the slide a little slower at one point, but that’s not what makes our worship. Our worship comes from here, from our hearts. That is what Jesus has always wanted. That is what we bring. That is what he longs for.

So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means that we need to be constantly checking ourselves. We need to be constantly … going back to the actor analogy, we need to be checking what our motivation is. Where are we living? Are we on a stage acting, or are we down in the meat of life, in the daily existence, are we learning how to live, how to apply, how to be Jesus in daily life, or are we just pretending? It’s not an answer I can give you. It’s an answer we each give ourselves.

So the invitation this morning is to check. To find out why we’re doing this, why we’re here this morning? Are we here in obedience and worship, or are we here because if we weren’t, people would talk about us? Are we here because WE need to see who’s here, to check on THEM? Can we find strength, can we find comfort? Can we find family, here? MY answer for MYself is a solid ‘yes!’ I hope it is for all of us.

Let’s pray.

Hang the Law and the Prophets!


Sunday, October 23rd, 2005
Pentecost + 23
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 22:34-46

34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” 41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: 42 “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,
44 ‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand,
until I put
your enemies under your feet”’?
45 If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” 46 No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Have you ever been witness to or been involved in a paradigm shift?

There’s another term that might be more familiar to you; a sea change.

There are several that have occurred over the last 40 to 60 years: the way and frequency with which we travel for pleasure. Used to be, pleasure travel was reserved for the wealthy. In the last 4 or 5 decades it has become commonplace for anyone with an automobile or the means to purchase an airline ticket to travel just about anywhere they want.

The way we communicate has probably seen one of the most drastic changes. It has evolved in our lifetime, from mailed letters and expensive shortwave radio equipment to phone calls to faxes and emails to instant or text messaging on your cell phones. If you have one particular company, you can now use your phone as a walkie-talkie throughout the United States, Canada, and several South American countries. The part in our congregational benediction about the world now being “too dangerous for anything but truth” is becoming truer and truer. In the middle of campaign season, I think it is great that there’s a website, factcheck.org, which dedicates itself to the sole purpose of confirming or correcting what politicians say in the course of interviews, speeches, and campaigns. It keeps people on their toes. I wonder if there’s one for preachers. J

Jesus came to Jerusalem to check the facts that the Sadducees and Pharisees had been dishing out for hundreds years. And, to put it mildly, they didn’t like it.

As we’ve seen happen over the last few weeks, the religious leaders are at it yet again. Trying to trap Jesus and discredit him – undercut the authority with which he had been preaching and teaching for the previous three years. So they send out a lawyer – the person described in the text as a lawyer would today be known as a religious scholar – also called a scribe, and a member of the Pharisaic sect.

Let’s digress for a minute. This passage – The Greatest Command, is found in all three of the synoptic Gospels – here in Matthew, Mark, which I quoted from last week, and Luke. There are slight differences in the wording in each of them, The Gospel according to Mark – 12:28 and following – presents the exchange in an almost-conciliatory way – first Jesus states the commandments, then the scribe repeats them back to him, affirming what Jesus said, then Jesus says to the man ‘you are not far from the Kingdom of God”. Not exactly the same emphasis that Matthew places on the exchange, though they do both end with the same ‘no one dared ask any more questions.’

The Gospel according to Luke has the passage in an entirely different place in the ministry of Jesus. We find it in Chapter 10, beginning in verse 25. The intent is still the same, to test Jesus, but the question is posed differently. The question is ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus’ answer is to ask the scribe to quote to HIM what he finds in the Law that is required to inherit eternal life. The scribe quotes the passages from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 as a single piece. Jesus affirms the response, but the conversation keeps going, in response to the second commands’ ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ the scribe asks Jesus to define for him who his neighbor is.

I know we’ve spoken about how the term ‘Christian’ was originally a pejorative term – a term meant to actually make fun of those who followed Jesus Christ, and accepted him as their Lord. Did you know that the Pharisees received their name the same way? The term ‘Pharisee’ means ‘Separatist’. As they became a movement of their own within the Jewish faith, their purpose was to maintain their holiness and righteousness, but in order to do that they had to pull away, to withdraw, and to separate from those who were ritually unclean, in order to establish an order that maintained its ritual cleanliness – and they did it zealously.

Just as the term ‘Baptist’ was originally a way to make fun of those who practiced immersion baptism, so were the terms ‘Pharisee’ and ‘Christian’.

Jesus answered the scribe’s question about who his neighbor was with the parable of the Good Samaritan.

The name Pharisees called themselves was another word: ‘Haberim’.

Would anyone care to venture a guess as to what that word means?

It means ‘Neighbors.’

Imagine calling yourself a ‘neighbor’, and asking a question with a very specific, very restricted set of people in mind, and having the very term you use to define yourself turned inside out like that … would YOU be able to come up with another question for Jesus?

What is intended in each passage is the whole self given to God and to others. Mechanical precision was not a goal important to biblical writers.

****
The Pharisees had quantified the Law of Moses into 613 commandments: 365 prohibitions (DON’T do this) and 248 positive (DO do this) commandments. Though they allowed for an occasional summary statement in one or a few commandments here and there, Pharisees held firmly to the principle that each commandment was as important as the others, the ‘light’ commandments being just as important as the ‘heavy’ ones, hence, the strictures to follow each and every law to the letter.

Jesus redirects them to the spirit of the Law: Love. Jesus makes love not only the great commandment, but also the essence and fulfillment of the law and the prophets – our Old Testament. The earlier version of the Revised Standard Bible translated the word ‘Krematai’ as ‘depend’, and it DOES apply. It DOES get the point across.

But the word, literally translated, is what the later, New Revised Standard has; ‘hang.’ It paints a more vivid picture. The image is of two hinges, and a door. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Hang the law and the prophets on that, and you’ve opened the door to everything it is that God expects of and can do through you.

The expectation is not lightened when we interpret the law through Love. It is heightened and deepened. It is a heavier demand, much more so than legalism. Love both liberates and binds. It freely gives and yet requires the whole of oneself for God, neighbor, and oneself. Jesus didn’t come to do away with the law, but to fulfill it, and it is in this passage that we see what that fulfillment involves. Jesus began a sea change in how people perceived God. It is a paradigm shift that continues to this day.

We are still caught in a mindset that we have to please God in order to attain salvation, that we have to DO something to make ourselves better than we were, somehow make ourselves acceptable to God, when in truth, Jesus is the only way we can be that.

The Gospel doesn’t end there. It doesn’t stop at ‘Love God.’ It continues through ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

We are called to love God, of course. That is a given. But how that love is expressed is critical to how we truly believe what we say we believe. How we live out what our faith IS.

What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means that we should constantly be reevaluating what the term ‘neighbor’ means to us. Have we settled into thinking of ourselves only as ‘Haberim’?

Do we, consciously or subconsciously, stratify our community, divide people into categories, those who are okay to help, those who are not, those who are worth spending time with, and those who are not, those whom we would greet readily if we saw them on the street or in the store, and those we’d not go out of our way to greet?

It’s an easy trap to fall into. We are wired that way. There are always going to be people that we feel less comfortable around, people who suck away our energy, people who don’t seem to respond the way we’d like them to. But a paradigm shift means that the basis for how you view the world shifts, so everything shifts. Jesus is calling us to not only think outside the box, but to think outside ourselves. To see the world through God’s eyes, to hear the world through God’s ears, to hold the world in God’s own heart, and make his heart our own.

That is what makes the expectation heavier. That is what makes the task one that we cannot do as individuals, but must do as community. We must come together in purpose and in spirit.

And that spirit, that unity, can only come through the law of Love.

Let’s pray.

To Each His Own

Sunday, October 16th, 2005
Pentecost + 22
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 22:15-22

15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. 16So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, ‘Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. 17Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?’ 18But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, ‘Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19Show me the coin used for the tax.’ And they brought him a denarius. 20Then he said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’ 21They answered, ‘The emperor’s.’ Then he said to them, ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ 22When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

What belongs to God and what belongs to … the world? At heart, that is the question in this passage.

We are again picking up right where we left off last week. As we’ve seen over the past few weeks, Jesus is in Jerusalem with his disciples during the Passover that preceded his crucifixion, and as we move through the week, we’ve seen the tensions escalate between Jesus and his followers and the religious and political leaders of the nation.

Over the years, I’ve heard many sermons preached on the text, and the single bit of information that stands out time after time is the mastery of Jesus’ response to a question that was intended to entrap him.

The tax in question was a ‘head tax’, what we would recognize as a poll tax – one which every male over the age of fourteen and every female over the age of twelve had to pay using the coin in question – a special silver denarius minted for just that purpose, until they were 65. The coin bore the likeness and name of the reigning Caesar, which in and of itself violated the law and conscience of the Jewish people against idolatry.

In fact, it was this very tax that caused a revolt in Palestine when Jesus was barely a toddler. The question was not a general interest, “just asking because we’re curious” kind of question. The feelings that generated the revolt three decades earlier, and which would play a significant part in prompting the revolt, uprising and war that would ultimately result in the destruction of Jerusalem a little more than three decades later were still very much present.

The Jews were under occupation by a foreign power. To make matters worse, the foreign power was polytheistic. In other words, the rulers and oppressors of the Jews, who were monotheistic – worshipped one God and did not allow for the existence of multiple gods – were reminded every day of their subjugation to a government that not only allowed for the existence of a single God, but in fact encouraged the worship of a multitude of gods, to the point that the very emperor of Rome was worshipped as a god himself. The issue at hand was this: to be a good Jew, you needed to find a way on some level to express your disagreement, your righteousness, as it were, in the face of that polytheism by either refusing to pay this tax using a coin that proclaimed Caesar to be a deity, or to do it under duress.

The rub comes into today’s scene with the presence of the ‘Herodians’, or followers of Herod the great and his descendants, into the crowd that is listening to the exchange. The Herods were dependent on the Romans for their position as Kings over the years, so they naturally supported the tax about which Jesus was asked. The trick of the question was that, if Jesus had answered that the tax should be paid, he would have failed the test of the Pharisees, who believed it to break Jewish law, and was a blatant and sometimes painful reminder of the subjugation they lived under.

If Jesus had answered that the taxes should not be paid, he might have gained a temporary measure of respect from his enemies, the Pharisees and Sadducees, but would have given the Herodians and the Romans ample reason to arrest, imprison, and torture and probably kill him immediately, since he would be advocating the stopping of paying taxes to Rome, which was considered treason, which was, of course, punishable by death.

So in responding the way he did, Jesus did again what he does best. He put things in perspective not only for those who were listening to him then, but to us hearing his words again for the umpteenth time here this morning.

His response could be read as almost dismissive. Imagine him shrugging and saying “If the coin belongs to Caesar, let him have it. So what? It’s only money.”

It’s the second part of his answer that I think bears dwelling on this morning. Give “to God the things that are God’s”.

If I were to ask the question “what belongs to God?” In this context, in the middle of a sermon during a worship service in a Baptist church in rural Virginia, I suspect that everyone answered that question immediately in their minds with a single word: ‘Everything’. It is the expected answer, the correct, the church answer to the question. The answer seems clear in our minds when we think about it here.

The issue becomes somewhat less than clear when we leave this place. It is not surprising. We are surrounded by a society that rates success and achievement in direct proportion to the acquiring of material possessions. Therefore you are a successful business if your business grows and gains more and more clients each year. Your church is a successful church if you grow bigger and bigger each year. YOU are a success if you get a new car every couple of years, and move through progressively larger houses throughout your life.

Being successful in the context of our society is no sin in and of itself. There’s nothing wrong with a business ‘booming’. There’s nothing wrong with a church gaining new members. There’s nothing wrong with being able to afford a new car every couple of years. Technology is improving day by day, and in order to be good stewards of the earth’s resources, we would probably do well to step up to more efficient transportation. What IS at risk is the possibility of that becoming the focus of our existence. That all we occupy our minds with is the mindless accumulation of wealth in order to meet the expectations of a society that is not exactly focused on the higher truths of existence. What TRULY makes us valuable? What do WE truly VALUE? What is, in fact, lasting? Is it our possessions, or is it our relationships with each other?

So what does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Brandon Harcum and I are going through a series of studies for his Cub Scout badge focusing on God and Family. This morning’s lesson was talking about foundations, and brought out the foundational passage in Deuteronomy 6:4-5, for the people of Israel, the “Shema” – “Hear Oh Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might.” And the New Testament passage in Mark 12:29-31, where Jesus repeats the Shema, and then expands on it in two ways – by engaging our minds, and by equating the love of neighbor with the love of God.

We are, throughout our lives as we grow as Christians, learning what it means to follow Christ, what it means to be obedient, what it means to put our faith into action. Jesus is telling us in Matthew that all we have belongs to God, and we are giving BACK to God what belongs to God, not that we are giving God something that belongs to us FIRST. That is, our hearts, our minds, and as Paul calls them, our bodies as living sacrifices. God HAS given us that, and calls us to freely, willingly return them to God’s service. Jesus is telling us in his restatement of the Shema that the only way to live out the love for God that we have is through living out that love in our relationships here on earth, with each other. Not just those who are in this room now, but with everyone we come in contact. Jesus expands the definition of family to include the family of humanity. He did not qualify his definition of neighbor. The words of the hymn are exactly right: “We are called to be God’s people, showing by our lives his grace” not only his Grace in OUR OWN lives, but through us INTO the lives of everyone around us. We are simply and profoundly called to be Christ’s presence in the world today.

Let’s pray.

Everyone You Find


Sunday, October 9th, 2005
Pentecost + 21
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 22:1-14

Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: 2 ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. 4 Again he sent other slaves, saying, “Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.” 5 But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. 8 Then he said to his slaves, “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. 9 Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” 10 Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. 11 ‘But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, 12 and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.’

Last night, we ate supper with a friend of ours and her family. We’ve been trying to get together for almost a month, but schedules had not permitted, and although we had everything worked out last week to get together, towards the middle of the week we realized that our friends Doug and Lea and their daughter Karen were fast running out of time available to visit with friends and family before flying out today to return to Hungary, so I sent our friend an email asking if it would be possible to postpone our dinner until last night. Her response was quick and easy. There was no problem. Having explained the reason for the request, she fully understood, and would have done the same thing had she been in our situation. It was an understanding among equals that there was no intention to show disrespect or belittle the person making the invitation; it was simply a matter of time constraints and encroaching separation. Our dinner last night was as enjoyable as it might have been earlier, with no repercussions from having postponed it twice before it actually took place.

The parable Jesus presents us with today does involve an invitation to a banquet, but the similarities stop there.

The invitation is offered, in the story, by a King. And the folks receiving the invitation reject it for a number of reasons. Remember, Jesus is facing down the Pharisees and Sadducees in Jerusalem in his last week of mortal life on earth, and following the previous two passages we’ve gone over the last two weeks, this one in some ways is a culmination of a progression of indictments that Jesus is leveling at the leaders of the religious establishment of his day.

As we move through these passages towards the end of the Gospel according to Matthew, we are faced with Jesus telling everyone around him what is about to happen to him and trying to describe to them how God is going to respond. Always in human terms, familiar terms, regular day-to-day images, but with outcomes or events being described that strain the imagination. The depth of the depravity, the coldness and arrogance and defiance described is one that just cannot seem to BE real. It can’t POSSIBLY exist, can it?

The sad truth is that it does and always has, since nearly the beginning, existed within the human spirit. It is one of the aspects of having a free will that makes for horror stories of atrocities committed in the name of race, religion, ethnicity, class, age, sex, and any number of other distinguishing factors. And the scary truth is that we find it not ONLY in a society that generally ignores the fact that there is a God who loves all of humanity and longs to be in relationship with all of us, but that we also find it hidden away – and sometimes not so hidden – within our own psyches, within our own hearts. settled in and making a home for itself as though everything it believes is normal, understood, and obvious, and not totally contrary to the teaching of the gospel.

There’s something wrenching in reading of the offer to attend a wedding banquet. The offer comes from not just anyone, but from a KING. It is understood that the party will not be a run-of-the-mill one. Royalty are expected to have more, do more, and be more… They can do, be and have because they are ROYALTY, by virtue of their position they have access to so much more than a regular person would have.

This would’ve been an obvious understanding to the hearers of the parable in the temple that day. They lived in a society where the King lived a life so far removed from the daily, desperate struggle of the men and women in the streets that they were practically a different species.

One of the professors at Southern, a New Testament Scholar who has since passed away, was in the process of writing a book about a singular aspect of the parables of Jesus. That is, the fact that in most all of Jesus’ parables, there is a predictability to the story that draws the listener into the story, but at a certain point, something happens in the story, either a character is introduced, or an action is taken, or a response is given, that causes that listener to rear back and go “WHAT??!!” … or more accurately, “HUH??!!” in reply.

That happens in this parable. Note that this one is different from the last few parables we’ve been studying over the last couple of weeks. Those didn’t have “the kingdom is like” at the front of them, remember? Jesus was presenting situations that were antithetical – completely opposed – to what the Kingdom was supposed to be like. Here, AFTER having gone through those, he comes back and introduces this parable with the familiar formula: “the kingdom of heaven may be compared to …”

The wrenching comes in at the same point where the listeners would have reared back with the shocked look on their faces: in verse 5, we read that in response to the King’s second attempt to invite the people to his wedding feast, “they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them.”

They are not exactly up on Emily Post’s book of etiquette, are they? To reject a King’s invitation is to not only be rude, but it is an affront to the King’s authority. Jesus has been dwelling on that theme for the last three weeks, since that was the issue that the religious establishment was challenging him on.

It was becoming increasingly obvious to both the regular people as well as the temple leadership that was listening to him that the characters in the parables that were either mistreating or outright killing those sent from or by the king – whether in this passage or in the previous passages we’ve read – were the folks who more than anyone else considered themselves deserving of a place in the Kingdom of God. After all, they were the best of the best, the purest of the pure, and the most obedient of all.

Jesus’ whole thrust with them was to try to make them realize that it wasn’t about what you looked like or said on the outside – it was who and what you were like on the inside that TRULY determined what your relationship to God would be.

So we have Jesus declaring that those invited to the wedding feast are turning the invitation away. On a larger scale, Jesus isn’t talking only of the temple leadership; he is speaking of the people of Israel. They have been tested and found wanting. Their response to Jesus himself has been mixed at best. Though there are those who have committed themselves to him, there are more who have pitted themselves against him – not JUST the temple leadership, but the population as a whole. From history – and we’ve seen this to some degree in our studies on Wednesday nights through the book of Acts – there was almost from the beginning of the church a growing tension between the Hellenist and Judaist branches, if you will, of the emerging Christian faith – those who came from a Gentile background and those who came from a Jewish one. We also know from history that the same people who welcomed Jesus at the beginning of this week during which he told these parables with shouts of ‘blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’, ended the week with shouts of ‘give us Barabbas!’

Calling and election (or chosen, in the words of verse 14) … roots in God’s grace, not in a person’s merit. The wedding hall will be filled, whether or not those most privileged respond. The picture is one of a generous grace that opens and spills beyond the accepted bounds of society and seeks to include EVERYONE YOU MEET in the invitation. It is both a blessing and warning. It is a blessing to the newly invited, since they would have otherwise had no chance, perhaps, of BEING invited, had those first invitees accepted the invitation, and a warning to the originally invited – to be aware that the invitation does not last forever.

We find a parable within a parable in verses 11-14.

A man is found at the party not wearing a wedding robe. At first reading, it would seem somewhat arbitrary for the King to have this man bound and gagged and tossed out just because he’s not wearing appropriate dress. The truth goes deeper than simple clothing.

The Wedding robe referred to was probably not so much a particular piece of clothing, but it had more to do with the condition of the clothes being worn. God’s free gift of salvation is often pictured as ‘garments of salvation’, or ‘a robe of righteousness’ (Isaiah 61:10) In rabbinical interpretation of Ecclesiastes 9:8, “let your garments be always white,” the robe stands for repentance. In Revelation, a white robe is symbolic of purity or repentance (3:4, 5, 18; 19:8). So here, the wedding robe may symbolize God’s gift of salvation, or specifically, repentance and righteousness. Salvation is offered to Tax collectors, prostitutes, and Gentiles, but it is not indulgence. It is gift and demand.

When asked to explain what right he had to enter (not HOW he got in) without the garment, the man was speechless. Presumably he had no excuse. The point may be that his defiance of authority was greater even than that of those first invited who spurned the invitation. They defied the King’s authority by refusing to attend the feast. This man defied that authority in a more arrogant way, by trying to attend on his own terms.

God is inviting us, yes, and always. And we are free to accept or reject that invitation. The issue is that when we accept it, the invitation is on God’s terms, not ours. Yes, Jesus meets us where we are, but he doesn’t leave us there. His call on our lives is to a life of commitment, of service, of love, of giving, of sacrifice, of care, and of reconciliation.

And that is what the invitation is this morning. To the table that represents Christ’s own sacrifice in our place. It is for all who would come. But it comes with a price. That price is your life for Christ, as was Christ’s life for yours.

(communion, prayer)

Being Church, Doing Church


Sunday, October 2nd, 2005
Pentecost + 20
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 21:33-46

33 ‘Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. 34When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. 35But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. 36Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. 37Finally he sent his son to them, saying, “They will respect my son.” 38But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ 39So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 40Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?’ 41They said to him, ‘He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.’ 42Jesus said to them, ‘Have you never read in the scriptures: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes”? 43Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. 44The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.’ 45When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. 46They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

”If the preacher don’t step on my toes, don’t tell me what I’m doin’ wrong, then I don’t want to hear him. I won’t go back. That’s what I go to church for, to be told what I’m doin’ wrong!” this, from a man just this past week, in a conversation following my being introduced AS ‘the preacher from Jerusalem’.

The comment prompted the thought, “do I do that enough?” quickly followed by, “Do I WANT to do that more?” It goes without saying that there are a multitude of views of what a Minister or Preacher is supposed to do when he or she gets up to preach on Sundays. But I think we can all agree that the primary purpose is to bring God’s word to God’s people. And we find it all, don’t we? We run the gamut, from praise and encouragement to … pretty severe tongue lashings. Today’s passage is a continuation of Jesus giving the Pharisees and Sadducees as severe a tongue lashing as they ever received.

Remember from last week, we’ve jumped ahead into Jesus’ last week in Jerusalem before his crucifixion, and as the week progresses, the confrontations between Jesus and the religious leaders grow more pointed and more heated. Note, there is no ‘the Kingdom is like’ at the beginning of this parable, just as there wasn’t at the beginning of the parable of the two sons in last week’s parable. Jesus isn’t presenting an image of the Kingdom, he is presenting one of the day in which he was speaking, and to this day as well.

Jesus was using everyday language and imagery – terms and characters that ANYONE could understand and identify with – to get his message across. Vineyards were a common sight in first century Palestine. Most everyone knew what was involved in setting up a vineyard, knew that a fence was needed, knew about the pit to be dug, and the tower to be built, and landowners and tenants. That is even familiar to us today. Edward Markquart, a Lutheran Pastor in Des Moines, Washington, summarizes it like this:

The meaning of today’s parable was clear in Jesus’ day: That is, the religious leaders killed God’s prophets in the Old Testament and soon would kill God’s own Son. The kingdom will be taken from those who do not produce good fruit (righteousness, goodness, mercy, gentleness, self-control) and be given to those people who do (the tax collectors and prostitutes we read and heard about in last week’s passage.)

The meaning of this parable is also clear for our lives today. That is, nowadays people often silence the messengers of God, in order that we can live our lives the way we want to, in order to pretend that the vineyard is ours. We want to run OUR vineyard the way WE want to. We human beings often silence God’s messengers, including the voice of his Son, in order to live a lie that it is MY vineyard and that MY vineyard belongs to ME.

As we do so, we often do not produce good fruit or healthy lives of loving service to others. The Lord God says that he/she will find people who live a life of loving service to others and THEY will become God's people.
Pastor Edward F. Markquart, Grace Lutheran Church, Des Moines, Washington 98198

http://www.sermonsfromseattle.com/

How much harder and more pointedly can you step on someone’s toes than to tell them that they will be responsible for God passing their people by if they don’t grasp the concept of true righteousness and a repentant, loving heart, and teaching it and, much, MUCH more importantly, LIVING it?

Today’s message comes from the Gospel of Grace, but it is a heavy word for us if we are on the wrong side of the parable.

So here’s the (hard) word of the Lord for today: each of us, are, have been, or will be on the wrong side of this parable at some point in our lives. That is what it means to have a hard heart. It is what happens when we settle into the idea that we know and understand EVERYTHING about what God is all about, WHERE God is going, and WHAT God is doing. We must learn our lesson from those Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus’ day, and those who would be the modern-day Pharisees and Sadducees, who would tell us that they alone guard and hold the truth of scripture, those who sit and make pronouncements on where God is and where God is not, what God is blessing and what God is not blessing.

Last night we had supper with Doug and Lea and Karen Coppage, who will be returning to Hungary a week from today, to continue working with the deaf population there. In the course of the evening’s conversation, Lea mentioned a joke that she’d been reminded of, and it seems appropriate to mention it here.

The Cowboy and Church

One Sunday morning an old cowboy entered a church just before services were to begin. Although the old man and his clothes were spotlessly clean, he wore jeans, a denim shirt and boots that were very worn and ragged. In his hand he carried a worn out old hat and an equally worn out Bible.

The Church he entered was in a very upscale and exclusive part of the city. It was the largest and most beautiful church the old cowboy had ever seen and the people were all dressed in expensive clothes and accessories.

As the cowboy took a seat, the others moved away from him. No one greeted, spoke to, or welcomed him. They were all appalled at his appearance and did not attempt to hide it. The preacher gave a long sermon about Hellfire and brimstone and a stern lecture on how much money the church needed to do God's work.

As the old cowboy was leaving the church, the preacher approached him and asked the cowboy to do him a favor. "Before you come back in here again, have a talk with God and ask him what He thinks would be appropriate attire for worship." The old cowboy assured the preacher he would.

The next Sunday, the cowboy showed up for the services wearing the same ragged jeans, shirt, boots, and hat. Once again he was completely shunned and ignored.

The preacher approached the man and said, "I thought I asked you to speak to God before you came back to our church." "I did," replied the old cowboy. "If you spoke to God, what did He tell you the proper attire should be for worshiping in here?" asked the preacher.

"Well, sir, God told me that He didn't have a clue what I should wear. He says He's never been in this church!"

It’s funny, isn’t it, unless we feel more like the preacher or the parishioners than the cowboy? If on some level we identified with THEM rather than the outsider, then we have SOME idea of how the Pharisees and Sadducees felt when Jesus started telling these parables and it was clear to everyone present that THEY were the bad guys.

Jesus told THIS parable in the same sitting as he did the ones we heard last week – about the two sons, and the comments about the prostitutes and tax collectors. There was no mincing around. The truth he spoke to the religious leaders facing him then is the same message he has for us all now, here, today.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church in Emmerton?

We are, by virtue of our presence here this morning, religious leaders. Because we choose to be here, we stand in the tradition that has been carried out for centuries and centuries. We mark the week by dedicating at least a portion of this first day to God, and to the public practice of faith. So here is the rest of that message from Jesus: if being a religious leader is defined simply by those two acts – BEING here and going through the ritual – following the order of service in our worship bulletin, and then going home and living the rest of our week as if we’ve done our duty, then someone else is going to get the baton, because although this is an important part of what it means to be a Christian, it means NOTHING unless the faith we speak of, the love and grace and joy and suffering and sharing we sing about or read about or hear about gets demonstrated on the outside.

The title for today’s message, “BEING Church, DOING Church” contains a couple of implied questions. They’re not “either-or” questions. They are “both-and” questions.

As a family of faith, how well are we ‘BEING’ church? This speaks to how we are … ‘internally’. How are we “being” loving to each other, lifting each other up in prayer, recognizing, respecting and honoring the presence of Christ in each other? These are about how WE are individually, in our heart of hearts, growing to be more like Christ.

The next question is now more outward, but it doesn’t start down the road, once we get into town, or across the Rappahannock, it doesn’t start beyond a certain point in either direction up or down route 3, it doesn’t start outside the walls of this building. It starts on the other side of our skin. Some things are admittedly easier to do in a small congregation like ours than they would be in a larger congregation. Let’s recognize those, acknowledge and celebrate them, but at the same time, realize that we are probably more challenged to do those things that make us uncomfortable; the outreach, the speaking kindness to strangers, the open invitation to receive from us what service we can offer. When someone asks why we do this, many times I have stammered something along the lines of ‘Oh, we just want to help’. A church in South Korea, in extending the blessing by offering help and assistance to members of their community, realized they needed to have a more complete answer ready when someone asked them why they were doing these intentional acts of kindness. Here’s how they answer the question:

“I am a disciple of Jesus. I am serving him by serving you, because that’s what HE came to do.”

So how do WE answer the question? Is our Christianity about being a member here, or being a witness outside ourselves? Is our faith a combination of words and motions that are simply part of the routine of being a church member, or is it an expression of what Christ has done in our lives and continues to do on a daily basis in us and through us?

Remember the quote from Frank Stagg last week:

“Radical demand and limitless mercy come together in the teaching and manner of Jesus”

So we are again faced with that radical demand from Jesus: to follow, to serve, to submit and take his yoke. To take his cross and follow him.

How will we answer?

Let’s pray.