Where There is Forgiveness

Sunday, November 19th, 2006
Proper 28 B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Hebrews 10:11-25

11And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. 12But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, “he sat down at the right hand of God,” 13and since then has been waiting “until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.” 14For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. 15And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying, 16“This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds,” 17he also adds, “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.” 18Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. 19Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, 20by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), 21and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. 24And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, 25not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

How can we communicate what it feels like to carry the weight of sin on our shoulders? What can we say, what image can we portray that will express in words that are understandable to those to whom we are speaking that will crystallize the feeling of walking around with … a millstone around our necks?

I could read to you from the letter that Ted Haggard, former pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, as well as former President of the National Association of Evangelicals, as he stepped down as both in the wake of the scandal that broke in the news a couple of weeks ago… the letter is heart rending. In part, he says “I am a deceiver and a liar. There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life.” When I first read that sentence, it brought to mind another, found in the 51st Psalm: “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone have I sinned”

What have we been seeing over the last few weeks in our study of Hebrews? What prompted the constant repetition of the sacrifices and offerings practiced by the people of Israel, in trying to maintain their relationship to God? It was an awareness that there is something in the human spirit that longs for cleansing, for restoration, for … forgiveness.

The question might be asked, forgiveness from what? And it is a valid question, if one has no sense of one’s own brokenness, one’s own selfishness, one’s own … failure to BE who God intended one to BE. In short, if I have no sense of wrongness about what I am doing or who I am or how I live out my life, it is terribly difficult if not impossible to UNDERSTAND that there is even a need FOR that cleansing, that restoration, that forgiveness. We cannot live in the awareness of grace unless we have ourselves experienced the forgiveness of God – we cannot understand grace – nor can we share it – unless we have had the experience of receiving it firsthand.

And how do we come to the place where we recognize that need? I would propose to you that, while it CAN happen through … shall we call it a … directive approach? Someone stands up, sometimes from a pulpit, sometimes from somewhere else, in the case of Reverend Haggard, a television studio, and calls a spade a spade. Either way can be effective. But I think the most effective truth teller is one’s own voice, one’s own spirit.

And you know what? As Baptists, we believe that. We believe that the Holy Spirit nudges our own spirits, and makes us realize – or at least BEGIN to realize – all that needs to change in us. And that nudging becomes a chorus, and the chorus plays continually, and we finally realize that, however good a person we thought we were … well, it’s no good. Not that we aren’t good, but that goodness is … self-defined, inadequate for the purpose of giving us a sense of purity … later in his letter, Reverend Haggard says something very interesting, he says, “The public person I was wasn't a lie; it was just incomplete. When I stopped communicating about my problems, the darkness increased and finally dominated me.”

What we are faced with is an awareness of wrongness, of brokenness, of a disconnect, in this case, between the public and the private person. And what is so heartbreaking is that this man felt so much shame at what he did that he closed it up inside and stopped looking for help in coming to terms with it, or overcoming it, or facing it and settling in his mind what it meant for him as a follower of Christ and as the leader of a congregation and in that self-imposed exile he lost himself.

The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that even for this prodigal son, there is an expectant father, anxiously waiting his return.

In 1980, after I graduated from high school, we were living in Hermitage, TN, outside of Nashville. We attended my Aunt Lala’s church, Hermitage Hills Baptist, and one of the parent youth leaders … Gene Johnson … I remember one Bible Study, I THINK it was a Wednesday night, he stood up and said something that has stayed with me; he said he NEEDED to come to Church on Wednesday nights to make it through the rest of the week. I think what struck me most was the sincerity with which he said it. He really meant it. He truly felt it. It caught my attention, but it also made me start to think about what it might BE that he GOT from church on Wednesday nights that made him look forward to going … and what WAS it about the evening that helped him through the rest of the week.

We find the answer here in the last couple of verses of the passage this morning. The New Revised Standard Version doesn’t do the term justice, at the beginning of verse 24, where it says ‘And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds,’ The thought would more accurately be translated ‘Let us RIVAL one another’. Let’s have a show of hands: how many would, off the top of your heads, and in no specific context, consider yourselves to be competitive?

We’re used to hearing about competition in sports, of course, notably HERE between, oh, Virginia Tech and UVA, or the Redskins and the Cowboys. There is also a competition we witness daily in our society, the competition to own the biggest house, the nicest car, the coolest gadget; it’s called ‘keeping up with the Jones’… and it preys on our weakness for the next new thing, the latest fashion, or the most expensive toys. In the best of circumstances, it can be frivolous, in the worst, it can be idolatrous.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Can you imagine an all-out competition, a rivalry in which we pledged all our spiritual, physical, and material resources to see who could do the most good works for one another? It is that drawing together for a common purpose that spurs us on to better, deeper, more meaningful relationships, higher goals, purer motives, and it all comes from being together, from being family, from being community for and to each other. But not JUST being together. Hanging out with people – even people you love – isn’t in and of itself a recipe for enhancing our spiritual awareness.

There needs to be a studied awareness of the purpose for the gathering. Last night was a prime example of that being put into practice. We began the meal with a time of thanksgiving in prayer, and for me, at least, it set the tone for the evening. Looking around the tables at you who were there made me aware of how grateful I am for your presence in my and Leslie’s and the kid’s lives. How much you mean to me not simply as your pastor, but as your brother in Christ, as a fellow pilgrim. You know as well as I do that I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I am comfortable with both wrestling with questions as well as leaving some unanswerable questions … unanswered. That sometimes makes for silences where we would LIKE to hear words, but we are learning to come to grips with the silences as well.

A couple of weeks ago we went through some of the things we as a body of believers are engaged in doing that are moving us forward into this inbreaking Kingdom of God we talk about … through different things we do, we let our community know we are here and God is there. Can we, beginning today, think of ways in which we can indiscriminately shower each other with God’s love as a body of believers, and do that in such a way that … in the BEST sense of the word, we become … addicted to getting together, being in the care of one another, sharing our lives, our joys and our sorrows with each other, not out of a sense of obligation or duty or tradition, let those be a PART of our motivation, but because we truly, deeply CARE for each other?

If we get a handle on how to do that, and do it well and consistently, I truly believe we would fulfill the paradigm, we would complete the model of being known as a body of Christ, not for how nice our sanctuary is, or how many people are here on a given Sunday, or even on how much we do in the community, not that any of that is necessarily bad, but it would be so much BETTER if we were know as a body of Christ – as a church – for how much we LOVE – each other, and the rest of the world. How we show that and live that would be a natural outgrowth of that love in action.

Can we rise to the challenge?

I have full confidence that we can. Let’s make it our mission to outdo each other in love and good deeds, and keep pushing each other on to that goal by gathering, whether for a meal or for prayer or for Bible study, the purpose of those meetings is twofold: and it is the unspoken purpose that is the primary one: we may BE praying together, we may BE studying together, we may BE sharing a meal together, but in that activity, we are ultimately encouraging each other, building each other up, strengthening each other’s faith, and spurring each other on to love and good deeds.

Let’s pray.

Lord we hear your command to love one another
And we know ourselves to not always be loveable.
So help us extend grace, to share your love, from a true heart,
Recognizing that we have all received grace
Through Jesus Christ our Lord
Amen

Eagerly Waiting

Sunday, November 12th, 2006
Proper 27 B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Hebrews 9:24-28

24For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one, but he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25Nor was it to offer himself again and again, as the high priest enters the Holy Place year after year with blood that is not his own; 26for then he would have had to suffer again and again since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment, 28so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

I went to visit Aunt Patsy while I was in Virginia Beach this week. I surprised her, I think. She was moved into an assisted living and nursing center few days ago, it happened to be behind the hospital in which Hannah was born, in Chesapeake. Driving down Battlefield Boulevard brought back some memories of a night a little over 11 years ago when Leslie and I drove that same route as a couple and drove back home a couple of days later as a family.

I had a wonderful visit with Aunt Patsy. I had to wear gloves and a protective mask, since she is fighting a lung infection of some kind, but she caught me up on her family, and I told her about how things are going here at Jerusalem and with the Hispanic Ministry.

The conversation began there, but it wandered on to other subjects, and the week’s events being what they were, she asked me how I felt about the outcome of the elections. I shared with her that I was pleased with the results, but when she gave me this LOOK, I had to explain that, coming from the experience that I come from, my pleasure at the outcome of elections is not necessarily with regards to the specifics of who got elected to what position, but more with the fact that there has been another peaceful transition of power. I hope we never lose sight of how precious that is, given the situation of the world today.

I remember being a lot more invested in the outcomes of elections. It didn’t last too long, thankfully. Not that I don’t CARE who gets elected. I care very much. I’m still a citizen, and there are still issues that I believe deeply in. But I found I can lose perspective if I focus solely on what the powers of this world are doing or not doing in response to my vote. All I found I needed to do to quell that depth of investment was to remind myself that salvation – not just my own, but everyone else’s – did not and does not depend on who got elected to the Congress, or the Senate, or in those years when it happens, who the new President is. It is okay to recognize civil and secular holidays, because they are a part of the society in which we live and work, but we should never, EVER, as members of the body of Christ, forget that there is truly only one holiday that bears celebrating, and that is Easter. That is the reason we are here, that is the ONLY reason we are STILL here, after two thousand years, or after a hundred and seventy four years. Our salvation rests in the Lord Jesus Christ. And there is ONE term that has no limits.

So, on to the text:

Over the last few weeks we’ve been walking through the message to the Hebrews. It is written to a group of believers who have been suffering persecution for their faith in Christ. The letter is devoted to comparing and contrasting the supremacy of Jesus Christ as their (and our) high priest and sacrifice over and against that role being carried out by one of the Levitical high priests of Israel – those who fulfilled that role by virtue of having been born into the tribe of Levi.

This morning we are again presented with a restatement of what Christ has done for us. The reference to Jesus having passed through a sanctuary NOT made by human hands but rather, heaven itself, is not just the writer saying ‘my high priest is better than your high priest!’ it is a statement of faith. It is not, I think, intended as a taunt to those who would relinquish their faith and return to the drudgery of the repetitive ritual of prayer and sacrifice and offering in order to maintain one’s justification before God, but it is intended as a word of encouragement, of hope, of exclamation, reminding them (and us) of the ultimate nature of Christ’s purpose and accomplishment on earth. The Gospels are full of the teachings of Jesus – the synoptics – Mark, Matthew and Luke, are primarily made up of Jesus’ teachings. The Gospel of John goes in a different direction. John is a gospel of belief, of witness, of encouragement, yes, but it is more fully given to the task of explaining who Jesus WAS rather than what he TAUGHT – though there is some of THAT as well. The epistles delve into two areas of the Christian life – belief and practice. Paul focuses for the most part on practice – what it means to LIVE the life of a follower of Christ, though he DOES dedicate most of the epistle to the church at Rome to belief. The rest of the letters and writings we find in the New Testament focus on articles of faith and encouragement of believers.

One thing that I was more aware of in the meetings and worship services over the three days I was at the State Association meeting this week was of the role of encouragement – of believers, of leaders, of laypeople. The preaching was exemplary, full of wit and humor and insight. I would invite anyone who can to join us next year as we meet in the Convention Center in Richmond next November 13th and 14th to come along. Attending some of the meetings can be, in all honesty, boring. But it is in the ‘in-between’ times that the true wealth of the Baptist General Association of Virginia is seen and experienced. The hugs and handshakes and sharing that goes on does more to build the body of Christ CALLED the BGAV than anything else. The shared worship experiences only enhance and strengthen it.

Ultimately, I believe that is what the writer of the letter to the Hebrews was going for as well. He or she knew what they were going through – they may not have been sharing in it at the moment, but had experienced it personally enough to know what to expect both in terms of what might be coming in their direction and what they would be dealing with in the aftermath of the events. There is a strength that can be gained from shared experiences that cannot be communicated in any other way.

I was listening to a message by the pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Ft. Worth, Texas. He went through a list of people he missed – people who’ve passed away over the last couple of years. He mentioned several, perhaps 10, members of the church who’ve ‘moved to heaven.’ Among them was Bill Hendricks, one of my professors at Southern, and a person I considered a friend. I first met him and his wife Barbara while serving in Spain. Brett Younger, the pastor, was talking about what he missed about the people he was naming, and it struck a chord in me, it resonated with the feelings I have for Charlotte Lewis, for Mary Jane & Earl Headley, for Margaret and William Franklin, for Irene Hinson, for Pearl Boyle and Hazel Pierson, for Dahlia Perritt, for so many others over the last three plus years … there is something that ultimately they each held in common. At some point in our visiting, they expressed an anticipation of heaven. They each shared somehow that they were eagerly waiting for that encounter. They were ready for it, even looking forward to it.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

None of us here today knows when that time of encounter will come for us, but I trust, I HOPE the feeling is echoed with those who’ve gone on before. In the sense of preparedness, I would hope that we are ALL at the point in our lives that we can GLADLY say ‘come quick Lord Jesus.’ And honestly mean it. Whether quick in the sense of meeting him here or US meeting him THERE is not important – it’s the fact of the MEETING that is important. It is for us to join the host of people around the world who are eagerly waiting for that coming, that meeting, that glad reunion.

Let’s pray.


May the Lord Christ go before you—to prepare your way; Christ beside you, be companion to you, everywhere you go; Christ beneath you, strengthen and uphold you – when you fall—or fail; Christ behind you, finish and complete what you must leave undone; Christ within you, give you faith and courage, love and hope; But mostly -- Christ above you, bless and keep you, now and evermore! Amen!

For This Reason

Sunday, November 5th, 2006
Proper 26 B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Hebrews 9:11-15

11But when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), 12he entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. 13For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified, 14how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!
15For this reason he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, because a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant.

I read something startling while preparing for the message for today. The commentator for Hebrews whom I am reading said that in the sacrifices performed in the Hebrew ritual by the high priest, there was no sense of magic, or transcendence … no aura of mysticism surrounding the killing of sheep and goats or bulls and cows, or pigeons, and the collecting of their blood for the offerings that were then delivered by the high priest.

I realized that I tend to associate unrealistic … images, effects, maybe, I’m not certain what the word would be that would fit here, but the idea is that I ascribe more to an event when I am not familiar with it – when it is far out of my standard mode of life – when it is either set far apart from me in distance and/or in time – than when it is something I are familiar with and see as an everyday occurrence.

The business of offering sacrifices was, in the Hebrew religion, a daily occurrence. A Religious Ritual, yes, but still, a part of a daily routine – something the priests who managed the temple got up and did every day. I imagine they had something like a rotating schedule for who was in charge of keeping the fires going, who was responsible for carting away the burned bodies of the animals, who escorted people in and out, and that they had lunch breaks just like any other daily routine.

It is difficult for me to think of that practice as a routine. First, because it carries the weight of reestablishing the relationship with God, and second, because I can’t easily imagine something like those things going on and not having SOME sense OF the transcendent – some sense of the presence of God in what you were doing.

Granted, I’ve only been serving as a full-time minister for a little over three years, and there are things that have come to be a part of a routine, mostly things like meetings, but the practices surrounding our worship have never lost their impact for me. I think that is as much a statement about how we DO worship as it is about how we can individually approach worship.
…

So we have these practices, these rituals that were set down hundreds of years before the time in which the people who are first hearing this letter read to them were living. Some, if not all of them, were either aware of, or intimately familiar with, the rituals – they either observed or participated directly in them in order to cleanse themselves from their sins and be ‘right with God’, once again.

But they have become boring … ineffective, humdrum. They seemingly cleanse the body of the person offering them, but they don’t do a lot for the spirit – for the soul. They know on an intellectual level that they have met the requirement dictated by the law, and there is SOME consolation in that, but there is not a LOT of consolation in it.

There is an awareness that the sacrifices that have been offered cover and expiate – that is, release – the person making the offering from the guilt of the sin they have committed – inadvertently – and that is a key word – inadvertently – unknowingly, or unintentionally.

You see, the ‘catch’ in the Hebrew ritual sacrifice was that it did not absolve one of the guilt for committing a sin INTENTIONALLY – of knowingly and premeditatedly … robbing someone, or lying with malicious intent – with intent to harm, or doing or saying any number of other things – and they, as well as the guilt associated with the other sins committed, would continually weigh you down with the knowledge that no matter what you do, your body may be acceptable, but it’s going to take a lot more for your spirit to feel acceptable.

That was the draw for the crowds who sought out John the Baptist when he was preaching in the wilderness, and baptizing for the repentance of sins. The people who formed the lines to receive his baptism had already BEEN ritually cleansed – but they were looking for more. And it is that ‘more’ that we find in Christ – that God KNOWS we needed, and continue to need.

There is something at the root of our faith that is at times difficult to reconcile. We speak of a God of love and mercy, and yet, we read of and speak of the sacrifice that was demanded BY GOD for the forgiveness of sins. What is it in God that requires that of us?

I would suggest to you that it had – and has – little to do with appeasing the wrath of God, but on the contrary, it has to do with meeting the self-appointed dictates OF a loving God.

God’s love is a love that does not gloss over, does not ignore the fact of sins of commission or omission, but rather demands a change of heart on our part – it is not a love that lets us continually drag the name of Jesus through the mud without consequences, but expects to see in us a turning away from that darkness that is so present in the world and a turning towards the light of Christ.

And it is through that light, through the life of Christ, that we enter into relationship with God.

That is what the whole POINT of the ritual was about to begin with! God wanting to remain in relationship with humanity, and doing whatever became necessary to do so.

Can you imagine a relationship where everything has become … routine, humdrum, second nature? Where the words and actions are automatic, rather than heartfelt? Where the person whom you love beyond words simply takes you for granted, and hardly spends time with you, doesn’t speak to you unless it is absolutely necessary, and even then, does so glumly, monosyllabically, and can’t seem to get away from you quickly enough?

There’s a part of me that is resistant to making God’s attributes and attitudes and actions human. There is an element of ‘Otherness’ that always needs to be maintained in our minds at least, when thinking and speaking about God, but we have to hold that in some sort of tension with the fact that God did, after all, become flesh and walked among us—became fully human while not losing any of the divine aspects of God’s being. So it is natural for us to want to speak of God in human terms – since God DID become human.

One thing that communicates across that divide – between the human and the divine – is how love responds when it is injured … it is difficult, if not impossible, to overlook the pain caused by someone to whom you feel closest when they do something that hurts you. I think what God was doing in becoming Christ was trying to communicate that to all of humanity – that God wants more than a routine, run-of-the-mill relationship – or LACK of relationship, really, when you think of it, with humanity. God LOVES us, and wants to be with us, show us what we are capable of, how God INTENDED for us to BE, what we can do here in our own life, in our local reality that can have a transcendent impact not only on our lives, but on the lives of everyone around us.

We speak of the blood of Christ not because it is some kind of connection to an ancient ritual, but because it speaks to the cost of what it means to become a Christ follower. Blood symbolizes the ultimate offering – the last offering that can be given – because it symbolizes life.

What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means we honor the reason for which Christ gave his life.

You may have heard the song by David Meece a few years ago “We Are the Reason” – the words are ‘we are the reason that he gave his life, we are the reason that he suffered and died, to a world that was lost he gave all he could give, to show us the reason to live’—

So it is with us here at Jerusalem, as members of a local congregation, a local family of faith, and on another level, as members of a greater family of faith both present and past. This past Wednesday was All Saint’s Day – a day to note and remember – and honor – all those who have gone before us as followers of Christ – can we name them, even some of them? Those who led US to Christ and by their example drew us into the family of faith to which we belong today?

(offer the names)

It is for that reason, to be in relationship with them and with us, that God came to live among us.

Let’s pray.