Question: Authority?
Sunday, May 29th, 2005
Pentecost 2
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 7:21-29
There’s a white strip of plasticized paper on the rear left bumper of the little black Mazda 323 that is parked here in the back parking lot. By the time we moved here, the words on it were already faded away to nothing. The bumper sticker, when I first bought it and put it on, was a SLIGHT reflection of what I was dealing with at the time I bought it.
I purchased it during my last semester on campus at Southern Seminary. Though I lived on campus, I was not attending classes. I spent my time working, for the most part, and contemplating whether or not to start back to classes, and the further into that spring I got, the more I realized I would NOT be going back to classes. So everything was up in the air. My 5 year-plan to be back on the foreign mission field after serving as a journeyman was not quite working out as I had … planned it. I was faced with the prospect of really not knowing WHAT was coming next, much less where I would end up being in the next two years.
The words that have faded out were just two: ‘Question Authority’.
I had been an observer, over the previous ten years, and especially over the most recent three years, of the fracturing of the Southern Baptist Convention. The leadership that had gained control of the convention in 1978 was much more focused, much more intent on the concept of Pastoral Authority than Baptists had historically been up until then, where the hallmark had been the priesthood of the believer, and I was, frankly, skeptical, to put it mildly. Southern was still a place that allowed and even encouraged the free expression of dissent back then, and my bumper sticker was hardly radical. There were others that were a lot more … explicit in their views expressed.
I remember expecting to be questioned, if not challenged, about having it on my car, and being prepared to tell whomever it was that “it was either that or the bumper sticker that said “‘Stuff’ Happens”, so I went with this”. The thought process behind the calm exterior was at times fairly contrary, though it never got to an ‘in your face’ level, except on rare occasion, and with just a few close friends.
It struck me as odd that it wasn’t until six or seven years later that I was finally asked about what was up with the bumper sticker by some friends at our church in Virginia Beach. By then, I suppose I’d mellowed somewhat, so that first answer didn’t pop out, but the kernel of truth that made me put the bumper sticker on to begin with was still there. I explained that it was a call to be wary of accepting unquestioned authority, of blindly following someone or something because of a few key words or phrases, or ‘hot button’ topics chosen for their emotional appeal. It wasn’t, in my case, a blanket call to anarchism – the LACK of ANY authoritative structure – but a call to REASONED acceptance of authority, with a clear understanding by both parties that the authority came … what’s the phrase, “by consent of the governed” – something very fundamental in both our nation’s history and our history as Baptists.
In our text this morning, we find Jesus teaching about what it means to be true followers of his – true lovers of God and it can be a scary scenario. Think of it. Prophesying, casting out demons, doing deeds of power – in the name of God – and having it all come down to this – hearing him say “I never knew you – go away from me you evildoers.” The question then becomes “if not that, then what DOES it mean to be your disciples?” in our study on Wednesday nights, we’ve read of how Peter and James and John performed miracles in Jesus’ name, and just this past week we read of how Stephen did the same thing. So what is the difference? How can we tell?
The fact of the matter is, we can’t. We can’t tell genuine Christ followers from fake ones. There may be hints, there may be clues, but in all honesty, aside from outright confessions, there’s no way we can know what ultimately motivates someone to either really become or pretend to become a follower of Christ. There’s no way to know what’s going on inside someone else’s skin, inside their head, inside their HEART.
Here’s the word of … grace, yes, but the word of CAUTION as well:
We are not called to do that.
We are ultimately responsible solely for our own response to God’s call on our life. Yes, we are called to bear witness, we are called to live out our lives as Christ lives and the Holy Spirit acts through us, but as far as motivation goes, we are only answerable to God for what moved US to follow HIM.
We read a couple of weeks ago at the end of the 4th chapter of Acts of how Barnabas, sold some property that he owned and gave the proceeds over to the disciples to be distributed as needed among the followers of Jesus. In the very next sentence, at the beginning of the 5th chapter of Acts, we read of a man named Ananias and his wife Sapphira, who decided to do something similar.
Similar yes, but not the same.
They DID sell their property. They DID bring the proceeds to the community. But they kept some of the money for themselves and presented the donation as being the full price paid for the property. They did something good; they did something noble, helpful, and even selfless. But in the process, they lost sight of where the act needed to come from. They were looking for more than the simple gratitude of a needy group of people. They were looking for the recognition, the applause, and the adulation that can come when people do big things for good causes. And that was their fatal mistake. That was their house on the sand. When confronted with what they’d done, each of them died where they stood. Whether out of guilt or shame or some other element is not detailed, but the fact that they performed the act of charity and twisted it into something blasphemous was enough to stop them in their tracks when faced with the truth – in front of the very people they were trying to impress. THAT is what Jesus was condemning in the passage.
Our nation will be observing Memorial Day tomorrow. By definition, we will be remembering and honoring – appropriately so – the men and women of our armed forces who, following their orders from the chain of command, from those authorities above them, ended up surrendering their lives in the process of bowing to that authority.
We are not honoring the orders, what we are honoring is that giving. The selflessness shown in stepping into harm’s way for the sake of others. Sometimes, those ‘others’ were right next to them. On our bulletin board right through this door to my left are pictures of the D-Day memorial in Bedford, Virginia. Bedford sent 35 men in that single battle, out of a total of 21 who died that day, 19 were killed in the first 15 minutes of action. Those men hardly had time to even get off the transports, maybe they didn’t even reach the beaches. and probably had even less of an opportunity to make any headway against the defending forces at Normandy. And yet, they are honored. Not for what they accomplished, but for what they gave.
So what does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton? It is like that for us as followers of Christ as well. I was looking through the Sunday school register from 1948 that is downstairs in the history section last night. I turned to the back of the book, where the totals were listed. The numbers were not that dramatically different from the numbers we see today; slightly higher, but not significantly so. Offerings were not that much different either. Some would see that as a bad thing. Especially those who would preach that bigger is better. There is, of course, truth in the fact that in order to survive, a church must grow. I am not saying that I want us to stay just as we are now. I don’t think any of us want that. I would HOPE not, anyway.
But what we DO want is growth in truth, growth in trust, growth in fellowship, and growth in LOVE.
We have before us a monumental task in the fullest sense of the word. To honor those who’ve given their lives so that we could be HERE. Those who have given of their time and energy, who’ve followed that prompting, that still small voice, that breath of fire of the Holy Spirit telling them to invest their lives in this community of faith – not for what THEY will get out of it, but for what we, and our children, and their children, will get from it – a chance, an opportunity, the possibility to somewhere, someday have an encounter with the living, loving God who has the authority to call them into being, but who calls them by name and waits for the answer.
Let’s pray.
Sunday, May 29th, 2005
Pentecost 2
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 7:21-29
21 ‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. 22On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?” 23Then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.” 24 ‘Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. 25The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. 26And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell--and great was its fall!’ 28Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, 29for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.
There’s a white strip of plasticized paper on the rear left bumper of the little black Mazda 323 that is parked here in the back parking lot. By the time we moved here, the words on it were already faded away to nothing. The bumper sticker, when I first bought it and put it on, was a SLIGHT reflection of what I was dealing with at the time I bought it.
I purchased it during my last semester on campus at Southern Seminary. Though I lived on campus, I was not attending classes. I spent my time working, for the most part, and contemplating whether or not to start back to classes, and the further into that spring I got, the more I realized I would NOT be going back to classes. So everything was up in the air. My 5 year-plan to be back on the foreign mission field after serving as a journeyman was not quite working out as I had … planned it. I was faced with the prospect of really not knowing WHAT was coming next, much less where I would end up being in the next two years.
The words that have faded out were just two: ‘Question Authority’.
I had been an observer, over the previous ten years, and especially over the most recent three years, of the fracturing of the Southern Baptist Convention. The leadership that had gained control of the convention in 1978 was much more focused, much more intent on the concept of Pastoral Authority than Baptists had historically been up until then, where the hallmark had been the priesthood of the believer, and I was, frankly, skeptical, to put it mildly. Southern was still a place that allowed and even encouraged the free expression of dissent back then, and my bumper sticker was hardly radical. There were others that were a lot more … explicit in their views expressed.
I remember expecting to be questioned, if not challenged, about having it on my car, and being prepared to tell whomever it was that “it was either that or the bumper sticker that said “‘Stuff’ Happens”, so I went with this”. The thought process behind the calm exterior was at times fairly contrary, though it never got to an ‘in your face’ level, except on rare occasion, and with just a few close friends.
It struck me as odd that it wasn’t until six or seven years later that I was finally asked about what was up with the bumper sticker by some friends at our church in Virginia Beach. By then, I suppose I’d mellowed somewhat, so that first answer didn’t pop out, but the kernel of truth that made me put the bumper sticker on to begin with was still there. I explained that it was a call to be wary of accepting unquestioned authority, of blindly following someone or something because of a few key words or phrases, or ‘hot button’ topics chosen for their emotional appeal. It wasn’t, in my case, a blanket call to anarchism – the LACK of ANY authoritative structure – but a call to REASONED acceptance of authority, with a clear understanding by both parties that the authority came … what’s the phrase, “by consent of the governed” – something very fundamental in both our nation’s history and our history as Baptists.
In our text this morning, we find Jesus teaching about what it means to be true followers of his – true lovers of God and it can be a scary scenario. Think of it. Prophesying, casting out demons, doing deeds of power – in the name of God – and having it all come down to this – hearing him say “I never knew you – go away from me you evildoers.” The question then becomes “if not that, then what DOES it mean to be your disciples?” in our study on Wednesday nights, we’ve read of how Peter and James and John performed miracles in Jesus’ name, and just this past week we read of how Stephen did the same thing. So what is the difference? How can we tell?
The fact of the matter is, we can’t. We can’t tell genuine Christ followers from fake ones. There may be hints, there may be clues, but in all honesty, aside from outright confessions, there’s no way we can know what ultimately motivates someone to either really become or pretend to become a follower of Christ. There’s no way to know what’s going on inside someone else’s skin, inside their head, inside their HEART.
Here’s the word of … grace, yes, but the word of CAUTION as well:
We are not called to do that.
We are ultimately responsible solely for our own response to God’s call on our life. Yes, we are called to bear witness, we are called to live out our lives as Christ lives and the Holy Spirit acts through us, but as far as motivation goes, we are only answerable to God for what moved US to follow HIM.
We read a couple of weeks ago at the end of the 4th chapter of Acts of how Barnabas, sold some property that he owned and gave the proceeds over to the disciples to be distributed as needed among the followers of Jesus. In the very next sentence, at the beginning of the 5th chapter of Acts, we read of a man named Ananias and his wife Sapphira, who decided to do something similar.
Similar yes, but not the same.
They DID sell their property. They DID bring the proceeds to the community. But they kept some of the money for themselves and presented the donation as being the full price paid for the property. They did something good; they did something noble, helpful, and even selfless. But in the process, they lost sight of where the act needed to come from. They were looking for more than the simple gratitude of a needy group of people. They were looking for the recognition, the applause, and the adulation that can come when people do big things for good causes. And that was their fatal mistake. That was their house on the sand. When confronted with what they’d done, each of them died where they stood. Whether out of guilt or shame or some other element is not detailed, but the fact that they performed the act of charity and twisted it into something blasphemous was enough to stop them in their tracks when faced with the truth – in front of the very people they were trying to impress. THAT is what Jesus was condemning in the passage.
Our nation will be observing Memorial Day tomorrow. By definition, we will be remembering and honoring – appropriately so – the men and women of our armed forces who, following their orders from the chain of command, from those authorities above them, ended up surrendering their lives in the process of bowing to that authority.
We are not honoring the orders, what we are honoring is that giving. The selflessness shown in stepping into harm’s way for the sake of others. Sometimes, those ‘others’ were right next to them. On our bulletin board right through this door to my left are pictures of the D-Day memorial in Bedford, Virginia. Bedford sent 35 men in that single battle, out of a total of 21 who died that day, 19 were killed in the first 15 minutes of action. Those men hardly had time to even get off the transports, maybe they didn’t even reach the beaches. and probably had even less of an opportunity to make any headway against the defending forces at Normandy. And yet, they are honored. Not for what they accomplished, but for what they gave.
So what does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton? It is like that for us as followers of Christ as well. I was looking through the Sunday school register from 1948 that is downstairs in the history section last night. I turned to the back of the book, where the totals were listed. The numbers were not that dramatically different from the numbers we see today; slightly higher, but not significantly so. Offerings were not that much different either. Some would see that as a bad thing. Especially those who would preach that bigger is better. There is, of course, truth in the fact that in order to survive, a church must grow. I am not saying that I want us to stay just as we are now. I don’t think any of us want that. I would HOPE not, anyway.
But what we DO want is growth in truth, growth in trust, growth in fellowship, and growth in LOVE.
We have before us a monumental task in the fullest sense of the word. To honor those who’ve given their lives so that we could be HERE. Those who have given of their time and energy, who’ve followed that prompting, that still small voice, that breath of fire of the Holy Spirit telling them to invest their lives in this community of faith – not for what THEY will get out of it, but for what we, and our children, and their children, will get from it – a chance, an opportunity, the possibility to somewhere, someday have an encounter with the living, loving God who has the authority to call them into being, but who calls them by name and waits for the answer.
Let’s pray.
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