Dwelling Richly

Sunday, December 31st, 2006
First of Christmas
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Colossians 3:12-17

12 As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 13Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. 16Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. 17And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Dear, Beloved, Sweetie, Sugarplum.

Have you ever stopped to think how the way someone is addressed sets the tone for the whole conversation? If you were to receive a letter, and the opening word was one of those (Dear, Beloved, Sweetie, Sugarplum), you would usually more or less know what to expect in the body of the letter. It is, I think, what we find more often than not comforting when we open scripture. While there are significant passages that get … shall we say … a little hard-nosed, if you take the general tone of scripture, especially the New Testament, you find that it is in many ways a love story. And it is the story of the love of God for humankind.

In his letter to the church at Colossae, Paul does set the tone by his greeting;

“To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae”

If you are familiar with the New Testament, it may slip right past you as an example of a pretty much standard greeting at the beginning of the epistle.

Imagine, though, what it would mean to you to be a person who just recently heard the story of Jesus, and only in the last few weeks decided to become a follower of Christ.

You have no point of reference for what it means to BE a ‘good Christian’, you struggle to figure out how following Jesus is going to affect how you live your daily life, you get together with a small group of fellow believers who are in the same situation you are in … there are four or five people in the group who have been Christ-followers longer than pretty much everyone else. The one person who first brought the news of Jesus to the city, who helped start the group, moved on to another city three months ago, and left that first small group of converts to lead the rest of you. There’s a definite tie-in with the local Jewish Synagogue, but you are no more familiar with THEM and THEIR scriptures and rituals than you are with the local temple to Aphrodite. You’ve just never really gotten into “religion” – ANY of them.

That was what attracted you to this Jesus in the first place, he wasn’t about “standards and practices” – what words to say when, what incense to burn on what day, what prayer to recite at which hour, but about actually being in a RELATIONSHIP with God – the picture you got when you first heard the story was of what you never had – a loving, caring, giving father. And you wanted to be with him and be like him and be IN him all at the same time.

*****

Something was going on with the church at Colossae, on that much scholars agree, and somewhat as well on the nature of what it was – there were what seemed to be practitioners of a type of Jewish mystic tradition that fell back on ritual and merged it with some of the early ideas that said that in order to be a TRUE follower of Jesus you had to UNDERSTAND certain things in a CERTAIN WAY – it later developed into Gnosticism, we’ve mentioned it before, but in short it was a type of faith that was at it’s core EX-clusionary rather than IN-clusionary. It defined itself by who was part of the ‘in’ crowd, rather than opening its doors to the whole of humanity, as Jesus did in extending his arms on the Cross at Calvary.

The short of it is, there were folks who had moved into the group – the church – at Colossae, and were proclaiming that ‘special’ brand of knowledge that was required to be true followers, and people were becoming confused, some were dropping back or dropping out, some were swallowing the new stuff hook, line and sinker.

The fact of the matter is it is not only the ‘Newbies’ who are susceptible to misunderstandings, to confusion about what it means to be a Christ-follower. How many times have we heard someone share in their testimony that it wasn’t until they were an adult – after a lifetime of going to church – that something clicked – something got through – to make them realize just how important that RELATIONSHIP was, rather than the practice of going to church on Sundays, Wednesdays, and the occasional Tuesday or Thursday, like a good committee member or even a deacon? Can we each think of people whom we’ve known who simply attended church out of habit, because it was the acceptable thing to do, not because there was a true desire to or even an interest in seeking a deeper relationship with God in Christ?

In missions terminology, we speak of ‘Cultural Christianity’ – that is, bearing the name ‘Christian’ because the Christian church – whatever the local predominant denomination might be – has been so identified with BEING from a region, or country, or state, or area, that to be called a Christian has become identified more with one’s nationality or heritage, and is NOT a way of describing one’s faith pilgrimage. Most often I grew up hearing it in relation to the countries identified with the Roman Catholic tradition in Latin America, and I witnessed the hollowness of Cultural Christianity on at least a weekly basis, if not a daily basis.

I think I’ve shared with you the struggle involved in growing up as the son of missionaries in Chile, and having to come back to the States periodically – ultimately for good – once I graduated from High School – what made coming back to the States so difficult for me, first as a teenager, and then for college, was that I found Cultural Christianity to be AS present within our own Baptist tradition as anywhere else, and coming from a lifetime of being literally supported – affirmed, cared for, taken care of – by an agency of the Southern Baptist Convention, it was at best eye-opening, at worst completely disillusioning – to the point of turning me off to the whole idea of church – to see evidence of Christianity being NOT about faith, but about social standing or expectations.

I’ve come to the point in my own personal pilgrimage where I am able to understand and to a point affirm the need to recognize secular holidays and days of remembrance within the context of worship. That’s not to say that I am comfortable with it, but I understand that as a church we are called to bear witness to truth and righteousness in whatever context they appear, and that, I consider to be part of why we follow the civic calendar of the United States of America. If we were a congregation in another country of the world, we would to some degree probably celebrate and/or acknowledge, for example, our independence day, if there were such a date, or the date of the official organization of the nation of which we were citizens.

But what are we – Jerusalem Baptist Church, in Emmerton Virginia – really and truly ‘about’? What is it that is at the core of our being? What has kept us here for one hundred and seventy-five years? What has kept us GOING for this long?

Very simply, it has been the Spirit of the living God.

Do we look today as we looked one hundred and seventy-five years ago? Not at all. As we sing in worship, do we SOUND today as we did a hundred and seventy-five years ago? Probably not at all. We will have opportunities to sing again some of those long-forgotten hymns in the coming months. Do we ACT today as we did a hundred and seventy-five years ago? I would suspect that, though in the way we TREAT each other it is not that different, the way we interact, the way we speak to each other, would sound about as foreign to Elder Braxton as if he had hopped on a ship and traveled across the big pond to a far distant land.

So what has been the uniting thread through the years?

It has, I TRUST, been the love of Christ, being shared, being spilled over, being made EVIDENT in our actions, words, and manner.

There is another Missions term I’d like to share with you this morning. The word is ‘unchurched.’ It is a term used to describe someone who has had little or no exposure to matters of faith in the context of a local body of believers – someone who may have been taken to church as a young child but who probably cannot remember the last time they were inside a church building for anything other than a funeral or a wedding.

Did you know that, for all of the richness of the history that has been accumulated for what was first Royal Oaks and later became Jerusalem Baptist Church, even having been here for one hundred and seventy-five years, we are surrounded by people who can’t remember the last time they were in church? There are people within 10 miles of this building who know they are surrounded by probably a dozen churches but are really not interested in stepping into any of them. Some of them don’t bother coming up with a reason. Others have very good reasons for not wanting to step inside. It usually involves someone who DOES step inside one of these buildings on a regular basis, but you wouldn’t know it from the way they live their lives the rest of the week, perhaps even for the rest of the afternoon.

Paul is telling us, showing us how it works. How we are to treat each OTHER, and everyone else. There HAS to be something here that will draw people back, if we’ve been that faithful witness for seventeen and a half decades, there’s no reason we can’t be an even STRONGER witness to the love of Christ in the NEXT seventeen and a half decades.

(Reread passage in its entirety)

Look around at each other. There are people here that you know and love. There are people here you’ve gotten to know over the years, or months, in some cases. But the key word is ‘know’.

How many people are here that you’ve known only a short while? Do they outnumber the ones you’ve known for at least a decade or more?

Dearly beloved of Christ, brothers and sisters; if we come to church to only be with people we know, if we only make worship something familiar to US, something WE are comfortable with, that speaks to US because we’ve been around it all our lives, there will be very little that will be attractive or UNDERSTANDABLE to someone who has never been in a worship service or who has had a terrible experience with a supposed Christ-follower.

It’s not a popularity contest. It’s not about pandering to the masses. It’s about being genuine. It’s about being real, being honest, being open, and being vulnerable in the presence of God with each other. That’s an uncomfortable position to be in for ANYONE. Unless that vulnerability takes place in an atmosphere of acceptance and trust that precludes – that LITERALLY ELIMINATES the possibility of that trust being violated or betrayed.

Life is hard. Hard enough. There HAS to be a place where we can come and know that we are safe. Whatever they’re dealing with, whatever happened last night, whatever happened last week, whatever we’re facing this afternoon or this evening or tomorrow. This is what Paul meant when he said ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly’ – if we make Jerusalem such a place, if we can make our discomfort secondary to the needs of those who’ve never experienced an extended, loving caring, committed family, we will look even LESS like the Royal Oaks family of the 1830’s, but we will still be recognizable as the most important thing we are – the body of Christ.

My invitation to you as 2006 comes to an end is to think about the people you know. Think of the ones who might not be involved in a church in the area. If they ARE, affirm them, encourage them to continue to be involved there. But if someone you know does NOT go anywhere, invite them to come to Jerusalem. The CHALLENGE for us all is to make this a place to which they will want to RETURN.

Let’s pray.

On Love

Sunday, December 24th, 2006
Advent 4C
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Romans 8:38, 39

38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

How often have we actually stopped and thought about exactly what it was that took place – on an eternal scale – one night in a tiny hamlet in the Judean countryside somewhere around two thousand years ago?

On the face of it, it was a non-event. A young, anonymous woman had a baby boy accompanied by her fiancée – a man who was not yet her husband, who had initially planned on releasing her from their engagement quietly when he found out she was expecting, but who, somewhat mysteriously, changed his mind a short while later.

It might have been only slightly unusual that the delivery took place in a stable, but realistically speaking, the conditions in general – even for a well-prepared-for birth, were probably only marginally better, in terms of hygiene and exposure of the newborn to potentially fatal diseases and parasites.

The most notable aspect of the event was that it took place in the middle of a census. There’s a pretty good chance that, with all the other people who had been forced to report to their hometown in order to be counted, this may not have been the only birth that night.

What was one more baby boy?

It is, as we have said over these last few weeks of advent, one of the most important stories of our faith – this coming of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, this search for a room in a town overflowing with people. The image of the young couple, resting on the hay, with Jesus lying in a manger, surrounded by a bunch of farm animals is indelibly imprinted on our mind’s eyes. Then we have the shepherds, out in the fields, watching their flocks.

One of the true blessings of living away from large metropolitan areas is the night sky. Several nights this week have afforded us the opportunity to catch a glimpse of what the night sky might have looked like to the shepherds that night. There was no ‘light noise’ drowning out the glitter and glimmer and twinkling of the thousands and millions of stars in the sky that night. I read an apt phrase earlier this week, where the Milky Way was described as a dusting of stars across the sky. If you look at it … well, you can tell why it was called the milky way, because it DOES resemble a river of milk across the sky – but in the absence of drops falling on our faces, a drier analogy might be appropriate – to see a trail of dust across the sky – to not be able to distinguish anything more than the fact that there are literally millions of points of light that seem more like dust than enormous balls of burning gas billions of miles away … I find it PERFECTLY understandable to picture the shepherds laying on their backs on the hillside above Bethlehem, gazing at those same stars in wonder AND wondering about how the universe came together.

The 136th Psalm says it well. Just a part:

1O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,*
2O give thanks to the God of gods,*
3O give thanks to the Lord of lords,*;
4who alone does great wonders,*;
5who by understanding made the heavens,*;
6who spread out the earth on the waters,*;
7who made the great lights,*;
8the sun to rule over the day,*;
9the moon and stars to rule over the night,*;

Those were just a part of the first nine verses. What is beautiful about the 136th Psalm is that it is a hymn. There is a recurring refrain after each of the phrases I just read. You might recognize the first line of the Psalm as the beginning of one of the choruses we sing sometimes in our non-traditional services. The refrain is:

For his steadfast love endures forever.

The song is “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love endures forever” … what does it say that in this Psalm, the recurring theme – the recurring refrain—what the song always comes back to – is God’s steadfast love? Think of it, everything that God has done – from creation through redemption, through salvation, has been motivated by God’s love.

The other notable event that night was one that the shepherds got to tell about. There were angels and a heavenly chorus and a wall of sound that Phil Specter could only DREAM about when THIS choir belted out

“Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

The problem was shepherds weren’t exactly considered to be pillars of the community in first century Palestine.

It’s interesting that some pretty important characters in the Bible were shepherds: Abraham, Moses, David.

And here we have more shepherds. The Christmas story talks about shepherds "abiding" in the fields. That means they lived there. They didn't lie around in fields all day and then go home and get cleaned up for bed. They lived outdoors, day and night, with the sheep. And they were required to protect that sheep at all costs...even at the cost of their own lives. The shepherd was expected to confront any wild animal that tried to attack a sheep and fight it off. If a bear or a wolf, or a mountain lion of some kind, got away with a sheep, the shepherd was expected to chase after the animal and try to rescue the sheep. Hmmm … I’m beginning to like the image of the shepherd more and more. And it’s beginning to shed new light on the reason we call Jesus “The Good Shepherd.”

All that, and Shepherds were not allowed to serve as witnesses in a trial. Shepherds and women. Their word was no good. They were at the bottom of the social register, more accurately, they weren’t even ON the social register. And yet, they are precisely whom God chose to be the ones to bring the first news of God’s coming to earth.

You see, even in the coming, in the incarnation, in God’s initial coming to earth to live among us, the Gospel message was already not JUST the words, but the FORM in which it was delivered. God was already showing us that God’s kingdom is not of this world. It would not and does not and WILL not conform to the expectations and rules and presuppositions on which this world builds itself up.

In this world, the more powerful the person, the more it is incumbent on the one who seeks THAT person to do what THEY must in order to gain an audience. In God’s upside-down kingdom, where the first shall be last, and the last shall be first, GOD came to US, WE didn’t go to GOD.

In this world, the more powerful you are, the more beautiful people gather around you.

In God’s world, the lowliest of the low, the weakest, the most marginalized, despised, rejected, unrecognized people are the ones God SPECIFICALLY calls to God’s self.

In our world, it is what we can do for the one in power. In God’s world, it is what God did for US.

In this world, WE are to show OUR love for God first. In God’s world, God showed GOD’S love for US first.

So what Paul wrote to the church in Rome was as true then as it was nearly 60 years earlier. The Shepherd’s message that God had decided, in love, to come to earth and dwell among us, and that there was nothing that was going to get in the way of that, was still true.

The marital status of Mary and Joseph was not going to get in the way. The lack of adequate shelter was not going to get in the way.

The fact that most of the people of Bethlehem, from the innkeepers who turned them away to the regular, run-of-the-mill people who weren’t even aware of what was happening didn’t get in the way.

The fact that later, Herod ordered all boys under the age of two to be killed didn’t get in the way.

Nothing was going to separate us from the love of God, come to earth in the form of that little baby boy named Jesus.

Nothing.

Let’s pray.

On Peace

Sunday, December 10th, 2006
Advent 2C
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Isaiah 9:2, 6; Micah 4:3; Matthew 5:9

Is. 9:2The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined. 6For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Micah 4:3He shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more;

Matthew 5:9“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

In her children’s book “In God’s Name”, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso relates an enchanting story of how we came up with all the names we use for God. The names are born out of our own experiences. For example, “to the lonely child, God is ‘friend’, to the man who tends sheep in the valley, God is ‘Shepherd’, to the artist who carved figures from the earth’s hard stone, God is ‘my rock’, to the farmer whose skin is dark like the rich brown earth from which all things grow, God is ‘source of life’, and to the tired soldier who fought too many wars, God is ‘maker of peace.’” (Jewish Light Publishing, Woodstock, VT, 1994)

It has weighed heavy these last 5 years, to approach this Sunday of each Advent Season, and try to come to terms with the fact that, like it or not, we are a nation at war. Even as we sit here today, there are young men and women donning combat gear and checking their weapons and preparing to move out and patrol an area, or a town, or a neighborhood, and the chance that one or two or three or more of them will not return alive is all too real.

This past Wednesday evening, we attempted to do a brief survey of how many times the word ‘peace’ or some variation thereof appears in the Bible. My NIV concordance listed 102 instances, from Leviticus through the Revelation to John, in other words, even more than last week’s concordance on Hope, with something over 80 instances.

It may seem like just a mathematical exercise, to find out how many times a word or a variation of a word appears in scripture, and it may well be, but it bears noting. It is worth considering what the meaning might be behind the fact that there ARE 102 places in scripture where the word ‘peace’ is used … and in what context.

How often is the word used in the context of speaking of the human-divine relationship – between us and God – and whether or not THAT brings peace? How often is it used in the context of relationships between us as humans, as nations, as tribes?

In the discussion Wednesday, we referenced one particular passage: Matthew 10:32-38, in which Christ himself seems to reject his ‘prince of peace’ title from the Isaiah passage we read a few minutes ago: the context is Christ’s sending out the disciples on their first ‘practice run’ for taking the Gospel message to the rest of the world—he is describing what they are to expect, how they are to act, what they are to take with them – actually more like the fact that they are supposed to take NOTHING with them – and as he comes towards the end of the ‘commissioning service’, more or less, he turns to the issue of who will accept the good news and who will reject it, and he speaks these TERRIFYNG words –

32“Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; 33but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven. 34“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 36and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. 37Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10)

That passage has always bothered me. As a younger man, it seemed to be that Jesus was saying that, in order to TRULY be a follower of Christ, you had to be in opposition to your parents, or your family. On some level, there had to be something that made you uncomfortable to be in the company of others.

What I initially mistook for a call to brace for conflict has become for me a call to radical, ultimate allegiance. It is a call to prioritize exactly what we consider to be the most important thing in our life – and to be true to that.

You remember how Jesus responded to the question about paying tribute to Caesar? ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.’

There’s continuity between the two ideas there. What Christ is telling his disciples is to know what and WHO they believe, because there will be a time in each of our lives where our ultimate allegiance will be tested.

The image from Isaiah resonates with all we read in the New Testament about Christ being the light of the world. In that light we find our reconciliation with God – the ultimate answer at the core of the world’s problems. Billy Graham puts it this way: "Our basic problem is not a race problem. Our basic problem is not a poverty problem. Our basic problem is not a war problem. Our basic problem is a heart problem. We need to get the heart changed, the heart transformed."

While I completely agree with Dr. Graham in the assessment of the basic world problem, understanding that the heart of every human being needs to be transformed in order for there to BE peace in the world, however overwhelming and inconceivably vast that responsibility seems, we cannot neglect the fact that we are also called, as we find in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, to be peacemakers. That is one of our many challenges as Christ followers.

We are called to engage the world and address the world’s needs, to fill the emptiness that sucks the joy out of life by introducing TRUE life to people in the person of Jesus. We are to do everything in our power and in our abilities to work out our differences in a manner that would honor the Prince of Peace. And that working out of differences MUST begin within our own communities, our own congregations.

The outgrowth of NOT having peace with God is sin, and sin manifests itself through selfishness, cruelty, compassionlessness, indifference, uncaring, ruthlessness ... there are many other words we can fill in here, but you get the picture.

On a personal level, I think we’ve all seen what that can look like. In our darkest moments, we fit the descriptives pretty well.

On a corporate, societal level, we have also seen what that can look like – ethnic hatred and fighting, societies crumbling under sectarian violence, the subjugation of the weak and powerless by an entrenched power-hungry minority that is not responsive to the needs of the population as a whole. Those phrases can all be summed up in a single word: injustice.

We’ve seen it in the Balkans in the early and mid 90’s, we’ve seen it in South Africa under the Apartheid regime, we saw it in Rwanda and Burundi, also in the mid-90’s, in the genocide between the Hutu and the Tutsi tribes of those central African countries. We hear of it in the massacres that are happening even today in Sudan, in the region of Darfur, in East Africa. That injustice is not limited to the rest of the world. Here in the United States we’ve been guilty of institutionalizing injustice as well, in the form of Jim Crow laws here in the south, thankfully they have been removed from the books, but the quest for equality between the races continues, even today. We still see and hear of crimes motivated by hatred of people who are different almost every day.

The Micah passage is the goal – the image that we long to attain, that golden day when all of humanity will realize that there is no more need for war. Won’t that be a day to remember? Wouldn’t it be amazing if it came in our lifetime?

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means that it really DOES need to start in each of our hearts, but it can’t stop there. We need to be at peace with God individually before we move on to the rest of the world. And “the rest of the world” starts pretty quickly. It begins with an honest assessment of how many relationships there are in each of our lives in which we have done violence to someone else – whether by word or deed, or separation; whether through the act of speaking words in anger and not coming to a reconciliation once the argument was over, or whether by refusing to forgive or ask forgiveness from a brother or a sister when we come to realize that we were wrong or that the relationship is more important than any disagreement we might have between us.

It’s no less of a challenge to be peacemakers within these walls as it is to be one outside of these walls, but again, there is no room to neglect pursuing peace in either setting.

Our prayer, our goal, our hope to work towards is that Micah image, to beat our swords of bitterness into plowshares of gentleness, that will cultivate the loving relationships through which this body of believers will grow, to turn our spears of gossip and discontent into pruning hooks that will trim off the excess baggage that holds us back, that weighs and drags us down, keeping us from reaching and becoming more and more like Christ to each other, and then to the rest of the world.

Let’s pray.

On Hope

Sunday, December 3rd, 2006
Advent 1C
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Romans 8:18-25

18I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

We begin the new church year with the first Sunday of Advent – today. We’ve just lit the candle of Hope. Next Sunday we’ll light the candle of Peace, then of Joy, then Love, and finally, the Christ candle.

Today we also mark the beginning of the Lottie Moon Week of Prayer for International Missions – with its accompanying offering goal of $150 million dollars from across the Southern Baptist Convention – or World Missions, if we are to include missions programs other than those carried out by the Southern Baptist Convention, such as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Samaritan’s Purse, Heifer International, or the Baptist General Association of Virginia. The fact that we choose to focus for the next few days on the missions program of one agency among many does not place it above the others, it just makes us aware, in a more specific way, of how we can be a part of … the global reach of the gospel.

Paul lived the global reach of the gospel as he traveled throughout Asia Minor and as he wrote to the church in Rome the words we read a few minutes ago.
Wednesday we handed out a list of scriptures verses that contain the word ‘Hope’ or ‘Hopes’, to read and meditate over the last few days, in anticipation of today’s lighting of the candle of Hope [1]. It is a list that spans almost the full length of the Bible, from the book of Job in the Hebrew Scriptures to the first letter of John in the New Testament.

We won’t go through the complete list, but we do choose to focus on the passage in Romans where Paul speaks of the Hope we have in Christ.

We would need to, at some point, ask ourselves what business we have in spending our resources of time and money and energy – which ARE, after all, limited – in facilitating the travel of individuals to people and countries around the world, which in many cases would just as soon not have us around. We’ve been made aware of that fact in the last few years by reports of missionaries being killed while on the field.

Lottie Moon, as we have heard in the past, spent herself – literally – in service to and on mission for the people of China. Rather than care for her own needs, her sense of calling to serve the Chinese people was so strong that she literally starved while she gave away rations to her starving neighbors in Tengchow, Shantung Province, in Northern China when a famine struck. She had advocated an offering to be collected during the week before Christmas among Baptist Churches to support mission work around the world based primarily on her own experience of hardship and struggles to remain and survive where God had called her to go. She passed away on Christmas Eve, 1912, aboard a ship that was docked in Kobe, Japan, in the process of bringing her back to the States for medical treatment.

We have to ask ourselves what it is that would motivate people to give their lives like that, to throw themselves so completely into something that it could ultimately cost them their lives.

It has to do with how one views his or her life to begin with, doesn’t it? If your understanding is that life – this terrestrial life – these seventy or eighty or more years or so that we spend here on earth are all that there IS, there is very little that would move you to the point of pouring yourself out for someone else.

If, however, your view is that this life is NOT all there is, that there is more TO life than just making yourself comfortable while you are here, then it becomes a lot easier to move away from that comfort, that ease, that looking out for number one and to come to a point of realizing that it is, in a very real way, a sense of hope in what lies … beneath, beyond, above, whatever directional word you want to use to describe it … what we can hear and see and taste and feel that truly brings meaning to life.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that life is worthless – it is TOTALLY worth it. It is precisely BECAUSE life is so precious that we go. We are promised full life; Jesus calls it ABUNDANT life – when we live for him. And that is what WE become participants in when we send – prayers, money, and people – even from within our own family, or even ourselves – to share with the world this hope that we find in living for Christ.

What we are charged with is to share the message of Christ – of Hope … Paul says,

‘24For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.’

He was speaking not only to the people in the church at Rome, but he was speaking to us here today. Our hope is based on something we cannot see. And so we wait for it with patience. As we move through the Advent Season this year, let me invite you to think about what your deepest hope is, and realize that in the midst of that hope, however forlorn it may feel, know that Christ IS coming.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

This evening we will hear from Rob Brown, a young man who served in India during the first half of this year through a program initiated by the Baptist General Association of Virginia. I would encourage you to come and hear what he has to say, not necessarily because it was through Virginia Baptists that he was able to go, that is more or less understood, in being a part of an association of over 1400 congregations that in turn make up a portion of the body of Christ on earth, but more for that last part – that ‘being a portion of the body of Christ on earth’ bit.

As a small rural congregation, and an active, involved, and motivated one, it is sometimes I think easy for us to get so caught up in the immediate needs of those in our immediate vicinity that we deeply care about, but we risk losing sight of our global impact.

Our challenge this morning is to lift our eyes ‘beyond the hills’, as it were, to get the God’s eye view of what God is doing in the WORLD, not JUST in Emmerton, Richmond County, and the Northern Neck.

And to get a feel for what’s going on beyond what we can see. I would invite us to think about those hopes that we have. I’ll share one hope with you that I have. My hope for this coming year is that we can put together a missions team, maybe four or five of us, maybe more, maybe less, and DO something – go somewhere. Maybe go to help in the continuing cleanup work down in the Gulf States, after Katrina, in Mississippi or Louisiana, maybe do something overseas. We’re going to hear about opportunities of service through the BGAV, there are programs available to us, there are partnerships we can engage in, that we can invest ourselves in, and get a clearer picture – a God’s eye view of what God is doing in the world.

When I worked for Bell Atlantic, we had these meetings, and there was a part at the beginning of the meeting that was an open forum – you would “board” ideas – it was a time where anyone could mention anything and it got written down. I’d like to do that with you all, but I’d like to board our hopes. Would anyone like to voice a hope?

(I hope that our congregation will grow in this coming year) Amen. That is my hope too.

Anyone else?

Another hope that I have is that as we begin to celebrate in January and through August if not beyond, will be an affirmation of what it means to have born witness for 175 years, and that that celebration will slingshot for us to move FORWARD – into the future.

Any others?

I know it was short notice, and that’s okay. If you come up with them, we may go back over them this evening. Be thinking…

(I hope that Mommy and Hannah get back safely) Yes, Caleb, I do too.

(That everyone stays healthy) yes, that’s a good one.

Our hopes don’t have to be high and noble, those are good, and welcomed, but they can be simpler hopes - like hopes for health, hopes for safety, hopes for mending relationships, for strengthening relationships, for continued care of each other.

(I hope my son and his wife will have a beautiful baby) Margie hopes that her son and his wife will have a beautiful baby. Remind me, are they expecting? Yes? Yay! When? 5th of July? Wow! It’s early! Let’s keep Patrick and Jaqueline in our prayers.

Any others? Our hopes are sometimes not voiced, but they are there. We are a people of hope. It is what feeds our flame. It is what separates us, it is what differentiates us, it is what moves us and makes us want to be more.

Our invitation/closing hymn is number 390, ‘We Are Called To Be God’s People’. As we sing this, as we read the lyrics, as we internalize the thoughts and the ideas that are in this hymn, be thinking about how we can BE God’s people, tonight, and tomorrow, and the next day. Let’s stand and sing.

As we move from this form of worship into the worship that is our daily living, LISTEN to this benediction:

And now, may the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May God give you grace never to sell yourself short, grace to risk something big for something good, grace to remember that the world is now too dangerous for anything but truth, and too small for anything but love. So may God take your minds and think through them, may God take your lips and speak through them, may God take your hearts, set them on fire, and through YOU give the world HOPE.

Amen.


[1] (Job 13:5, Psalm 25:3, Psalm 33:18, Psalm 42:5, Psalm 62:5, Psalm 130:7, Psalm 146:5, Psalm 147:11, Isaiah 40:31, Jeremiah 29:11, Lamentations 3:21, Romans 5:4, Romans 8:20, Romans 8:24, Romans 8:25, Romans 12:12, Romans 15:4, Romans 15:13, 1Corinthians 13:7, 1 Corinthians 13:13, 1 Corinthians 15:13, Colossians 1:27, Titus 1:2, Hebrews 6:19, Hebrews 10:23, Hebrews 11:1, 1 John 3:3)