Filled

Sunday, July 31st, 2005
Pentecost +11
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 14:13-21

13 Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. 15When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.’ 16Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’ 17They replied, ‘We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.’ 18And he said, ‘Bring them here to me.’ 19Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. 21And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

You may remember my sharing with you about my Cousin Eric’s sudden death in 1991 a couple of years ago. I remember lying on the couch at my friends’ house, reeling from the news, trying to imagine what my Aunt, Uncle, and other cousins were going through. I remember wondering what it would feel like if it were ME getting word that MY younger brother had died. Eric had developed ulcerative colitis over the previous two years or so, and while we knew it was serious, we did not realize just HOW serious. Jimmy, Becky, and I were living in Louisville at the time, Eric and Aunt Lala and Unlce Ray were living just outside Nashville, and though we saw them on occasion, we had not seen them in several months at that point.

The Elliotts, Aunt Lala, Uncle Ray, and their kids, were in many ways the family we had grown closest to over the years. At one time or another, three if not four of us Park children had lived with Aunt Lala on a temporary or even not-so-temporary basis. It was with them that I stayed after graduating from college, for the few weeks between that and the time I flew to Richmond to enter Journeyman training in 1985 before heading off to Spain.

Christmases during college were here and there each year, but whenever we wound up at the Elliotts’, at least for me, there was more a sense of home there than in most other places, as much as I loved the rest of my extended family.

So I can only imagine what it must have been like for Jesus to hear of his cousin John’s not just death, but murder. We only get a brief glimpse of the grieving Jesus in the beginning verse of today’s passage: 13 Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. I know when I heard of my cousin’s death, I mostly wanted to be with family, to cry with my brother, to hug my aunt. But since I was away from them all, I just lay stunned on the couch. Eloise, my friend whom I happened to be visiting with when the call came in, was there, and VERY present, but I needed to be alone with my thoughts and memories for at least a while, to begin the process of adjusting to what it was going to be like from then on out without Eric around.

I suspect that might have been what Jesus had in mind, when he “withdrew to a deserted place by himself.” The problem is he did not get a lot of time to BE by himself when he got there.

This was not long after the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, and he was the hottest thing going in prophetic voices in first century Palestine. Word was getting out about the way he taught, the way he spoke, the way he was turning the establishment on its head (always a good thing if you are working from outside the beltway, or outside the temple, as it were), and people were flocking to see him. When people flock, they leave precious little time to ones’ self. There’s a chance that the folks who followed Jesus to the deserted place hadn’t heard about John’s death, but it seems unlikely, in view of the fact that John was, in his own right, a fairly popular prophet, even though he spent his time ‘crying out in the wilderness’. The likelier scenario is that they heard, they knew of the connection, and they wanted to see how Jesus was going to respond.

What they got was Jesus being more concerned for their welfare than for his own. To those of us who have grown to know Jesus over time, it is not surprising in the least to hear that. After all, we know the end of the story. We know that this sacrifice, though significant, deserves no more than the passing mention at the beginning of the passage, and does not need revisiting in later verses. It pales in comparison to the greater sacrifice Jesus made at the end of his earthly ministry and the culmination of his time here on earth among us – FOR us.

The belief that Jesus performed miracles is a basic tenet of most of our faiths. Jesus performed two types of miracles: healing miracles and nature miracles. The first are miracles in which he healed a person of an illness, or raised them from the dead, or cast out a demon or a legion of demons. The second are those miracles that affected not so much PEOPLE directly as they did some aspect of nature. A sudden storm on the Sea of Galilee, a fig tree that did not have any fruit on it, or in this case, we have a huge crowd of people with no food to eat. The aspect of nature is a single meal brought to him that consisted of five loaves of bread and two fish, over which Jesus performed the acts of taking, blessing, breaking, and giving … and giving … and giving. And the miracle of the feeding of five thousand men, and probably as many as ten to fifteen thousand women and children in addition TO those men, took place.

To put it mildly, this is a significant event, in not only the ministry of Jesus, but it BECAME a signal event in the life of the early church. It is the only miracle that appears in all four gospels (Mark 6, Luke 9, and John 6). There are variations, of course, in the retelling of the story, but the central story remains. Jesus took what was a clearly inadequate meal and turned it into something that satisfied thousand of people.

There is the view that the miracle was actually one where the generosity displayed by the little boy prompted people to pull out their own lunches and share it with those who had less or no food of their own. I will allow that to be a possibility, but a distant one at best. The fact that each gospel tells the story essentially in the same way lends credence to the fact that how we read it is how it happened. We are a people of faith. We believe in miracles, whether they can be explained by highly unlikely natural phenomena or not, we believe in a God of miracles, a God who led people out of Egypt, across the sea, through the desert, against seemingly unbeatable enemies, and against pretty much all odds, established the people of Israel as the people of God.

There’s a continuity to understanding God through the miracles that keeps things together for us. Miracles broaden the picture of what might be. Of what God can do. We read of the miracle on the Sea of Galilee and hope is born in us that God will calm our inner storms and struggles. We read about the fig tree and Hope that God will treat our weakness and character flaws in a similar way, or that we will at least be able to overcome them and move on in a some way like that. We read of the healing of the sick, and find hope in the promise that we will one day be free of this earthly shell.

Here’s a thought: Jesus performed the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand in direct response to the news of his cousin’s death. In his grieving, in his sorrow for the loss of his beloved brother, his response was not anger at Herod, but compassion for the people who were in front of him. Note the almost passing comment in verse 14 – he had compassion on them and cured the sick.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Christ’s response to death is to affirm life. Christ’s response to the injustice of the arbitrary taking of an innocent life is to better the lives of those who are afflicted – with illness, with disease, with hunger. The folks who were standing in front of him were there because they’d heard about John’s death and they wanted to see what Christ would do.

Jerusalem finds itself in a similar place. We are confronted by a world that is watching – our local community—the people we run into each and every day; our neighbors across the street or next door, folks we run into at the ball field, or at Wal-Mart, and though it may be an unspoken question, it is nonetheless a question that is present: What are you, Jerusalem, going to do in the face of … what? How many things can we list here? Neglected children, left on the side of the road. The sudden death of Boy Scout leaders while pitching a tent. Drug trafficking, not in some far off South American country, but right down the road here.

Are we filled? Are we truly filled with the spirit of God to the point that we can focus on THEIR needs, and not our own? Can we trust God in that way? We say, and read, and sing about God taking care of us, but does the way we live our lives continue that lesson? Does it speak of a seemingly reckless reliance on the grace and bounty of God to do as God promised, or are we saying one thing with our mouths and another with our lives and wallets?

Can people look at Jerusalem and say that we are living as Christ taught? If we were to ask the question, can we live with the answer?

My hope is that yes. My sense is that, if asked, most people would say that yes, MOST of the time, we are, after all, fallible. We are not yet perfected. My suggestion is that we venture into the question, and respond to the answer we receive as Christ did.

Let’s pray.

Dreams and Realities

Sunday, July 24th, 2005
Pentecost + 10
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
1 Kings 3:5-12

5 At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, "Ask what I should give you." 6And Solomon said, "You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you; and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne today. 7And now, O LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. 8And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. 9Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?" 10It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. 11God said to him, "Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, 12I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you.

We were walking down the middle of the street. We could, since it was late at night, and there were no cars coming or going. The weather was mild, considering that it was the fall of 1985 in Oviedo, Asturias, Spain.

The Cantabrian Mountains rise around the city, run along about 300 miles of the north coast of the country, an extension of the Pyrenees, the mountains that separate France and Spain, and block most of the moisture-laden weather systems coming off the North Atlantic from crossing down into the heart of the country, which made for a very DRY central plain (contrary to the song from My Fair Lady), and a very WET northern hill country. So a light drizzle was almost a permanent fixture over the course of the year that I lived there.

Within a couple of months of arriving in Oviedo, I had signed up for Guitar classes and photography classes. Neither took a great amount of coaxing to get me interested, since I had wanted to learn guitar for at least the last 3 years, watching two of my roommates in college play and sing, and my father had given me the present of a 35 mm camera just before I left for training.

I figured, what better place to learn to play guitar than Spain, the BIRTHPLACE of the guitar? As things turned out, the man who ended up being my teacher was an American jazz guitarist from Philadelphia, named Michael Weiss, who was living in Oviedo and teaching English in a local private institute.

The photography class I signed up for was taught by a man who’d been born in Cuba, but had moved to Spain as a young teenager in the mid-to-early seventies. The class was made up of a mix of folks, some college students, some young adults who were just interested in getting a little more out of their cameras, and Lisa Hale and me. Lisa was the middle daughter of the missionary family I was working alongside. She encouraged me to take the class because SHE wouldn’t be able to take it by herself, since it would be letting out late at night, and she would have had to walk home by herself. If I joined the class, I could walk her home afterwards and her parents would be assured that she would be safe.

The mission church we were trying to grow had been planning a fall evangelistic campaign, to be led by one of the most dynamic speakers I have ever heard, Roberto Velert, who was at the time Pastor one of the larger churches in Barcelona. The last Sunday night before the campaign was to begin, we had a prayer meeting, specifically to pray for the campaign. Later that night, at my apartment, I asked God to give me specific opportunities to invite people to the campaign in a natural, unforced way.

I may have mentioned this about Spain at some point in the past, but at the time, the atmosphere in Spain – the religious atmosphere, if you want to call it that, was still very much in reaction to having spent decades under the rule of the dictator Francisco Franco being forced to abide the combined rule of the Catholic Church and the VERY Catholic – some would say even MORE Catholic – Spanish Government. When Franco died in 1976, and King Phillip began to move the country towards a much more open and pluralistic society, one of the first things to go was the artificially imposed allegiance to the Catholic Church, and with it most if not all receptivity to organized religion. When we spoke of an evangelistic campaign, it could not be couched in very religious terms. We made no apologies for having a faith-oriented purpose, but we chose terminology that would still accurately describe the nature of the meetings while still explaining what we were doing in a way that might appeal to people who would shut out anything that smacked of religion. We were very much about introducing people to the person of Christ first and foremost.

The campaign was scheduled to begin midweek, and the photography class met on Monday nights, so we would still be able to attend that class. If I remember correctly, it met from 9 or 10 at night until almost midnight. At that hour, there is a kind of bond that forms among people who might be trying to keep each other awake as much as trying to learn something about photography. At the conclusion of the class several of us headed off together, either walking to the same general area to our apartments, or just to accompany the rest of the group.

As we were walking along, Daniel, one of the guys whom I’d met in the class, struck up a conversation with me. More often than not, conversations with new acquaintances turned fairly quickly to the question of what I, as a citizen of the United States, was doing in Spain. It gave me any number of opportunities to explain why I was there, as well as providing a natural lead-in to invite whomever I was speaking with to whatever meeting I thought would be appropriate for them to come to. As Daniel and I talked, we walked along for several blocks. I explained that I was there working as a teacher for Lisa and her sister, as well as working with the little Baptist Mission that met a few more blocks away. He shared that he came from a non-practicing Jewish family (which in itself was something a little rare to find in Spain), and that he’d had some interest in protestant churches, but had never had the opportunity to be in one. I quietly told him that he’d be more than welcome to join us at our church whenever he wanted, and one or two of the others in the group chimed into the conversation to ask other similar questions about what differences there were between Protestants and Catholics. In responding to those questions we finally got to where I had to turn down my street, and after wrapping up the conversation I wished everyone a good night – and completely blanked on the fact that just two days from then we’d be holding conferences in a downtown meeting hall to introduce folks to what Baptists believed and practiced.

It is an oversight which to this day still causes me no small degree of regret and sorrow. The opportunity never again presented itself. Daniel didn’t continue the class.

Today’s passage has Solomon as a young boy – scholars say between the ages of 12 and 14 – talking to God in a dream. As we read, in the dream God asks him what he would like – what he would have God give him – as he becomes the King of Israel. In response, Solomon asks for wisdom to govern the people. God’s response is positive, so much so that he grants Solomon the wishes he DIDN’T make – if we read on in verses 13 & 14, God grants him riches and honor all his life, and, conditionally, if he will walk in God’s ways, God would lengthen his life.

I need to say, the portrayal of God as a wish-grantor makes me REAL uneasy. In saying that, though, I realize that I am reacting to a surface reading of the text, and need to move past it to what the text is saying to us today. So here it is: a couple of questions:

What of significance have you asked God for lately? I remember several years ago watching the wife of a televangelist ask the audience to pray to God for her eyes, because the makeup she was caking on was irritating them. That’s NOT what I’m talking about. Yes, we read about God watching over the sparrow, and providing for it, and we also read that we should ask whatever we wish of the Lord and he will grant it … but let’s take a cue from what Solomon asked for. Listen to God’s response again:

"Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, 12I now do according to your word. …”

He didn’t ask selfishly. He asked for the greater good in mind, not his own glorification or enrichment. In that prayer there are echoes of what we will later find coming from the mouth of Jesus, when he asks for God’s will, not his own, to be done.

I love to listen to my children pray at mealtimes. They always thank God for the beautiful day and then they usually go on to thank God for what they have enjoyed so far or are anticipating enjoying – ‘thank you that we are going to get to go see a movie, or go swimming, or that we get to play video games…’ you get the picture. It is when we move away from mealtime and ask them to pray for other things - situations where someone is ill, or afraid, or going THROUGH something – that that the jewels really come out. There is, of course, some mimicry of what they’ve heard us pray at one time or another, but apart from that, the heart and the purity with which they ask is a lesson in the making for me just about every time.

Most of us are familiar with the saying ‘Be careful what you ask for … you might get it!’ As a warning for those who ask without thinking of the ACTUAL consequences of receiving that for which they ask. As with most sayings, there’s a kernel of wisdom being conveyed in it: it’s an entreaty to be intentional about what our goals are, and what our motives might be.

So let’s go with a hypothetical situation: suppose you are dreaming, and in that dream, God is asking you to name something – anything – and God will give it to you. What is your first, your gut response? Think about it. I thought about running down a list of possibilities, but I think by now most of us have run through a list on our own. Take an honest look at what came to mind. How many of those things you found yourself listing are centered on the Kingdom of God, and how many are centered on the Kingdom of Man?

Hear me say this: there is no shame in responding from a human perspective. We ARE human, and that is probably going to be reflected in those items near or at the top of that list – however long or short it might be. So how far down the list is the kingdom? This is not an exercise in goading you into thinking the ‘right’ thing. It’s not intended to make you feel guilty if the first things that came to mind had more to do with you than they did with God.
What we need to understand and be reminded of is that God has already given us our heart’s deepest desire in the person of Jesus. Whether we realize it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, the gnawing emptiness can only be filled by the presence of Christ in our lives.

God spoke to Solomon in a dream. We have many other instances throughout the scriptures of God speaking through dreams – Joseph, Peter, Paul – it’s not an unfamiliar story, but are we willing to apply that story – that dream – to our reality? Are we willing to let God speak to us and give us dreams in which He shows us … what we are capable of IF WE ARE WILLING to submit to HIS will?

Does that prospect frighten you? Are you deterred by the fact that you are advanced in years? Scripture is full of instances of new careers starting late in life. Read the story of Moses and find out how old HE was when God called him to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt. At the other extreme, are you dissuaded by the fact that you might be YOUNG in years? Look at the story of a young boy named David. And even the story we’re studying right here today. Are you challenged by some disability? Again, Moses was terrified of speaking … especially in public, and Paul prayed three times for that figurative thorn in his side to be removed from his side – and it wasn’t. The point is, God honors willing hearts.

Jerusalem church did something historic this past Wednesday. We voted to endorse a candidate for ordination to the Gospel Ministry. Over the years, Jerusalem has done that many times. The distinct aspect of this last action is that the candidate in question was a woman.

Jerusalem is taking hold of those dreams. We are not stepping out into this because it is more common today that it has perhaps been in years past, but because we bear witness to the Biblical story and to what we have experienced in our own lives of God blessing both men and women for ministry.

So we ask God to raise leaders out from among us, and God has done that. God has granted our wish. We have responded to God’s faithfulness to us.

What we do with this opportunity will speak through the years to come to OUR faithfulness to GOD, and our willingness to live out those dreams he gives us in the face of realities that are crying for a savior, to live out God’s own dreams for the world he loved so much that he sent his own son to die for it.

Let’s pray.

The Kingdom is Like …

Sunday, July 17th, 2005
Proper 11a, Pentecost +9
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 13:24-43

24 He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; 25but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. 26So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 27And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?” 28He answered, “An enemy has done this.” The slaves said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” 29But he replied, “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 30Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’ 31He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’ 33He told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’34Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. 35This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet: ‘I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.’ 36Then he left the rowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, ‘Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.’ 37He answered, ‘The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; 38the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, 39and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. 40Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, 42and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!

I love to read the parables. I love to think about them and turn them around in my head and view them from different angles and try to get at the core of them … except when they don’t seem to have one … or when the explanation that Jesus gives the disciples afterwards is a little too … thorny for my taste.

Parables have a way of illuminating for us what the Kingdom might look like, but they have an equally persistent way of unsettling us. That was the whole point, as near as I can tell, of why Jesus USED parables to begin with; for BOTH purposes.

Illumination is generally considered a good thing. There are times, I suppose, when what we discover to be the truth is not what we expected, and it turns into an unpleasant experience for a time. Perhaps on occasion that is what results in our becoming unsettled.

Spending twelve days in Chimalhuacan, Mexico, gave me a glimpse of the kingdom that I was hoping for, but couldn’t have prepared myself for, if that makes any sense.

In some ways it snuck up on me. Yes, I was in on the seminal conversation – the conversation that started the ball rolling that ended up in the trip happening, and yes, I followed the progress of the preparations, but there were other things going on all along. There were messages to preach, people to visit, errands to run, appointments to keep, and before I knew it, I had to pack my suitcases to get ready to go to Mexico. And it really felt like I dropped everything and went. Operative word being: DROPPED.

The kids had just finished school, Leslie was going to be staying here, Homecoming was fast approaching, Vacation Bible School had to be planned, meetings needed to be attended, and calls and emails returned, reports had to be made … whatever … it was just a mountain of stuff that had either not get done, or be put on hold … or entrusted to the care of others.

So we flew out of Richmond an hour and a half late, but still caught our connecting flight from Atlanta, and arrived in Mexico a little tired, but on time.

We stepped out of the car in front of the Manzano family home and into an experience that, to be honest, I am still in the process of processing.

I knew that before anything else, even before unpacking and eating, I wanted to walk down to Romualda’s house to greet her and let her know we were there and that the work was scheduled to begin the next morning.

And it was in that first greeting that Romualda set the tone for the rest of the two weeks we were there: welcoming grace and abundant gratitude. She was happy, of course, to see us. She said she couldn’t really believe we were there and that what was happening was really happening.

We stayed just a few minutes, to be truthful, probably a rudely short visit, but a lot can be excused if you’re a giant gringo who’s just flown a couple of thousand miles to be there. That fact came in handy a lot while we were there.

That night, late, the rest of the crew arrived from Tlaxcala, two hours away. Everyone was exhausted, so most of us were sound asleep within minutes of having greeted each other. Seeing the guys’ smiling faces and hearing their hearty hellos was pure joy.

The next morning we started early …

And the kingdom of Heaven is like …

A group of friends who leave their homes and drive almost three hours away to gladly, willingly build a building for a woman they don’t know, and do it without pay.

And the kingdom of Heaven is like …

The host and hostess of the group welcoming them into their home and giving up their bedroom and their children’s bedrooms so that the men who are there to do the work have a place to sleep.

And the kingdom of Heaven is like …

A woman who has so little she can hardly take care of her family, and yet finds the wherewithal to at least prepare a pitcher of refreshing fruit juice at least twice a day for the men as they work in the heat and the dust.

And the kingdom of Heaven is like …

A woman who spends the days preparing meals for the men as they work, ensuring that there is enough for everyone, and fretting about having meals that are nutritious and hearty, tasty and … varied, to not say interesting.

And the Kingdom of Heaven is like …

Spending 12 hours a day lifting bricks and mixing concrete with a shovel and carting dirt and rocks and sand in a wheelbarrow and putting together all the reinforcing structure by hand, piece by piece, and the work is TIRING, to be sure, but it is not exhausting, it doesn’t drain you, because what is coming out of you is not from you … and you realize that the effort that is going into the work is motivated in one way or another out of love. Not just love through YOU, but love through all the people back home. And it IS a directed love – love with a purpose, but it is also a diffused love – love that doesn’t necessarily have anywhere to go – except OUT. It is love responding to the opportunity, and it is love pushing through, stretching the fabric of this world thin, and letting the light from the Kingdom shine through.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like …

The laughing and joking and ribbing and earnest conversations that surrounded the worksite. The way in which the team treated each other, with respect and a gentility that spoke of the esteem in which each other was held, as well as an awareness of the spiritual aspect of the work being done. What we were involved in could not have happened apart from the Holy Spirit – from the prompting of the initial conversation through the raising of the funds, through the combination of circumstances that resulted in the makeup of the team that went to do the work, the fact of the presence of the Spirit was inescapable. And it permeated every day of our stay.

And the Kingdom of Heaven is like … coming home, and hugging and kissing and greeting, and being WELCOMED.

And the Kingdom of Heaven is like … riding in your car and having the whole family begin to sing along with the music on the radio … and it’s a hymn.

And the Kingdom of Heaven is like … walking into a committee meeting and everyone is smiling and laughing and getting along …

And the Kingdom of Heaven is like a group of adults who get together in the name of their kids and make a meal and deliver it … to NINETY SIX people … just because.

Their investment, the preparing and packing and buying and making and serving and taking are all a reflection of the Kingdom, of the fountain of love that flows and flows … even though they might be tired, doing it is a reward in itself. The give and take, the joking, the bantering, the laughter, is all exactly the same thing I saw in Chimalhuacan.

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

It means that we can really, truly FIND the Kingdom of Heaven if we look for it … but also – and more importantly, if we live it. Jesus told us that the Kingdom was HERE (motion to self) WITHIN US.

Let’s stop thinking of the Kingdom as being PURELY something distant and unattainable, something reserved for the life hereafter, and start living in it, recognizing that yes, we live in a broken world, where children are given incorrect medications and it scars them for life, and yes, husbands die unexpectedly, and yes, people live and die in hunger, and disaffected, angry people blow themselves and others up on a daily basis, but the only way that is going to change is one person at a time.

That’s a nice thought, and true, but what does it LOOK like?

Well, that is actually where it stops being nice all the time, and begins to look like work. Did you know that the Gospel can be hard work? And it can get messy.

When we were in Chimalhuacan, I took a queue from the guys and set aside one set of clothes and designated them ‘work clothes’, and changed into them in the morning before heading out, and changed out of them each evening after getting cleaned up. The shirt and pants ended up with some pretty nasty stains – from used motor oil that I used to paint the forms with so the cement wouldn’t stick to them, and torn in a couple of places where there hadn’t been tears before, and basically have become work-ONLY clothes now. If you see me wearing them you’ll know I’m doing something that can be pretty grungy.

What are the clothes we put on to do the work of the Gospel? We’ve got a list of them in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. The difference is these clothes aren’t something you take off. Well, to be honest, sometimes we find ourselves having forgotten to display them or exercise them, but the heart of the Gospel is the heart of God: God’s son, Jesus. When you accept Christ you accept the gospel, and you begin to learn how to wear these clothes. Just like any new item of clothing, there’s a period when you’re getting used to how that particular item of clothing feels. It’s the same with Christ. You get used to his presence, his prompting; you become familiar with his voice.

But the Gospel isn’t just a set of beliefs, a set of ideas. It’s the active part of our life. Hopefully, it’s the driving force in our lives.

So how does something that speaks to the life hereafter also speak to life here and now? Through embodiment: by making our lives a living example of the life of Christ. There’s a term you may have heard me use before: incarnational witness. It is that same incarnation we refer to when we speak of Jesus being God incarnate – literally: God in flesh. When we take on the life of Christ we become Jesus incarnate.

And what did Jesus do while he was on earth? Ate with sinners and tax collectors, spoke to Samaritans, healed lepers (and in the healing, touched them, a big no-no of the day), confronted power with truth, and faced down the forces that would impose the injustices of the world as it is with the justice of the world that is to come, and is in the process of becoming. It wasn’t a task for the weak at heart, but it took those who were weak at heart and transformed them into … the body of Christ: the Church. And as the Church it is for us to live in the present with the hope of the future.

God calls us individually, but doesn’t KEEP us as individuals. The Church (read: Jerusalem) is to be what living in the Kingdom is all about. We are called to live in that hope, and we continue the work of the Gospel when we dwell with him, and in him, and in community.

Let’s pray.

Listen!


Sunday, July 10th, 2005
Pentecost +8, (Ordinary 15)
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. 2Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. 3And he told them many things in parables, saying: ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. 5Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. 6But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. 7Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. 8Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 9Let anyone with ears listen!’ … 18‘Hear then the parable of the sower. 19When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. 20As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; 21yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. 22As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. 23But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.’

“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty. Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!”

We were sitting at KT’s Restaurant in Louisville last Saturday evening, after the celebration of Momma and Daddy’s 50th anniversary, with my nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, my sisters and brothers in law, and Claude, my former housemate.

Hannah was regaling us with several jokes she’s learned over the last few months, and the folks sitting at the table were just eating it up. But that punch line just didn’t make sense.

The celebration earlier that afternoon had gone splendidly. There were over 75 people who came to congratulate my parents on the occasion, and there were people there who covered the entire 50 year span of their marriage so far. My sister Lolly and Tomy Janes, another MK who is working with her part time, had put together a computer slide show with music to accompany it, and it had been a big hit. The food was delicious, the company was excellent, and the overall celebration had just infused us with a sense of how much we had to be grateful for, and how many blessings we had been the recipients of, to let anything sour the remainder of the day.

But Leslie and I looked at each other quizzically, trying to figure out what was funny about what a canary says as it walks down a dark alley “here, kitty, kitty, kitty”. We laughed, but mostly at the silliness of the punch line, not so much at what made it funny. We couldn’t figure that one out.

The disciples, it seems, were always having trouble figuring out what Jesus was trying to tell them. Time after time, we find that comforting word that translates perfectly from Aramaic to Greek or Latin, German, and English coming from their mouths: huh?

Jesus does them (and us) a favor by going on to explain this one. The breakdown is fairly straightforward, the hard soil of the path, rocky soil, soil chocked by thorns, and good soil. But it bears noting that he seemed to be hoping that his listeners would actually do what he asked them to at the very beginning of the parable: Listen! In longer form, we hear Jesus say: let anyone with ears listen!

Jesus calls us to not just listen to the words that we find in scripture, but more, to listen to the SPIRIT that inspired them. To listen to the whisper of God’s voice, that insistent, persistent, ever-patient voice that calls us by name and invites us to join the conversation, to join the chorus, to add the individual distinctiveness of each of our voices and to blend into the song – whether in harmony or in dissonance – the song is made all the richer by the adding of new and different voices.

Sometimes we miss the invitation in the hustle and bustle of our lives.

Last night we ran over to Wal-Mart to pick up a couple of things we’d forgotten earlier, and as is usually the case on Saturday nights, we ran into several people we knew, both Hispanic and Anglo.

Two families stand out. The first, a Hispanic family, we’d not seen in several weeks, so to see them to begin with was a joy, and we greeted each other with hugs, kisses, and handshakes. In the space of a few minutes of visiting, most of the pleasantries were done with, catching up with how everyone’s work was going, and how the children were enjoying being out of school. As the conversation turned and seemed to be wrapping up, we began to say goodbye, we mentioned that we’d already run into most of the children in a different part of the store. We asked after the oldest daughter. The wife then told us that she had moved out of their house and moved in with her boyfriend. The news was simply stated, with a smile that was a little disorienting to see. So we asked how they felt about that. It was then that they shared with us in short, poignant phrases, their anguish at the situation.

The other couple, an Anglo family whom I’d gotten to know in the last year, struck up a pleasant enough conversation, but within the first couple of minutes I learned of their having left the church they’d called home for several years and had moved to another. That’s not that unusual, I’ll grant you, but it was in the telling that I noticed that even though they were moving on from the event, there was a shrugging, a turn of the head, something to indicate that it wasn’t exactly an experience they’d want to live through again anytime soon.

So it is with God’s invitation to us. We might miss it for all the distractions, for all the rocks and thorns, for all our hardened attitudes. Just like the sower, God comes and sows seeds in the soil of our lives. Soil is receptive, it has all the necessary qualities for life to flourish, but cannot create the lush growth out of nothing. Soil cannot will a watermelon or a zucchini. It can only do its marvelous work when it receives the seed.

What is it that makes our lives rocky soil, hard soil or soil choked by thorns, or good soil? Are there rocks in our lives that stubbornly refuse to allow the spirit of God to take root in us? That keeps us from opening up and taking in and nurturing … and GROWING that spirit within? Are we too intractable in our ways, are we so set on THIS being the way church is done that we miss the opportunity to be church in a different way, in a way that might be uncomfortable for us? Are we so thorny in our thinking that ‘this HAS to be the way it is, or I’ll not have any part of it’ that we miss that first short word from the Lord: “Listen!”?

The work of the church is to nurture the seeds God plants within, to water them with compassion and encouragement, to teach them in the way that leads to life. Perhaps that is why the root word for human is "hummus." We come from soil, "from dust we have come and to dust we shall return." If we are willing to bear the seeds of God, we shall also bear the hundredfold harvest.

Part of that hundredfold harvest is found in sharing, in community, in rejoicing together and in weeping together. Just as those two families invited us into their lives in their sharing with us last night, so God invites us into God’s own life by inviting us to listen, and not only to listen, but to act.

It is after all, sometimes critically important to listen.

A few minutes after she first asked the riddle, Hannah came back to the table, and gave us the full version. For lack of 3 words, a joke was lost: what does a five hundred pound canary say as it walks down a dark alley?

“Here kitty, kitty, kitty.”

I am not, of course, a five hundred pound canary, but the invitation does come to each of us:

Invitation to the Table

Come to this table,
not because you must
but because you may;

come not to testify that you are righteous,

but that you sincerely love our Lord Jesus Christ,

and desire to be his true disciples;

come, not because you are strong,

but because you are weak;

not because you have any claim on heaven's rewards,

but because in your frailty and sinyou are in constant need of heaven's mercy and help.

Come not because you are fulfilled,

but because in your emptiness you stand in need of God’s grace and assurance.

Come not to express an opinion,

but to seek the presence of God.

Come, sisters and brothers, to this table to partake and share.

It is spread for you and me that we may again know that God has come to us,

shared our common lot,

and invited us to join the people of God’s reign.

(Communion)