At Work In You

 

Sunday, September 28^th, 2008

Proper 21A/ Ordinary 26 A/ Pentecost +20

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Philippians 2:1-13

Theme: Letting God change you

 

 “¹If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, ²make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. ³Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. ⁴Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. ⁵Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, ⁶who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, ⁷but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form,⁸ he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. ⁹ Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,¹¹and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.  ¹²Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; ¹³for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

 

As some of you know, the first part of this week I attended a preaching and worship conference at the Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond.  From Monday evening through Wednesday midday I was able to hear some wonderful speakers and engage in breakout sessions dealing with anything from how to welcome visitors to how to be a missional pastor – that is, one who engages the local church – the local congregation – in mission opportunities in addition to connecting to those established missions efforts that we as part of a denomination have engaged in so well and effectively over the years. 

I was able to reconnect with a few friends from my past, as well as meet new friends.  One, Jim Everette, who is Associate Pastor for Missions at First Baptist Church, Wilmington, NC, I met after the breakout session on being a missional pastor.  In the course of the session, I had mentioned that I had been on the receiving end of that ‘well-organized and prayed for mission effort on the denominational level’ as the son of missionaries.  When Jim and I began to talk afterwards, he asked where I had been an MK.  When I told him that I’d grown up in Chile, his eyes lit up, and he asked me if I knew Clara Huff, a retired missionary to Chile.  Growing up I knew her as Aunt Clara Brincefield.  She lived in Temuco, in southern Chile, and focused on working with the WMU’s in the churches in her area, as well as (I think) teaching in the Baptist School that has been established in Temuco since 1922. 

 

As Jim described everything Aunt Clara was into – Hispanic ministry, outreach, all kinds of activities and mission trips, he basically said that you really can’t keep up with her – which tells me that she hasn’t changed a BIT since I knew her as a child! 

 

There has always been a joy in Aunt Clara, a ready laugh, a joke.  We could always count on her to bring the house down at the Talent Show at the end of our Mission Meetings.  She either had a song, or a skit, or something that ended up with people rolling in the aisles.  Her joy is infectious.  You feel better when you are around her, more alive, more able to DO things and present things in a way that makes it clear that why you are doing them is because of the joy of the Lord in you.    

 

We pick up this morning right where we left off last Sunday.  Paul is continuing in his exhortation to the church at Philippi.  He continues to call them to unity, and he continues to break down what that looks like – what that CAN look like, in a community of believers who are intentional about following the example of Christ.  And it is there, with Christ, that Paul settles, as it were, in describing the ultimate example – but what is interesting about the passage is that in his wording, Paul is being redundant – he is telling the people of the church at Philippi that they already HAVE what he is telling them to GET.  In the English translations, it doesn’t come across quite as obviously, but in the Greek, he is, in fact saying “have this mind in you that you already have because you are in Christ Jesus” – it’s a little clunky, but I hope you get the idea.  Paul is basing his plea to the Philippians on the fact that they ARE indeed IN Christ – and by inference,   that Christ is in THEM.  In fact, that is the whole point Paul is trying to make – that it is because of the fact that we have Christ in us that we are able to now take on Christ’s mind as our own. 

 

But is it an easy task?  Not at all.  Paul describes what Jesus did in the Philippian hymn – called the Kenosis Hymn – from the Greek ekenosen – which we translate as ‘he emptied’ – in speaking of Christ’s emptying himself – of being obedient and lovingly submitting to the will of God the Father and making himself, first, a human, and second, a slave – to the Father’s will – and third, submitting to the death on the cross. 

 

The image the Philippians were presented with was laced with wording by Paul that evoked the need to serve one’s community – in this case – the Christian community in Philippi – as part of one’s duty as a member of the body of Christ primarily – but in a subtle way, Paul colors his language with the language of the civic duty expected of a citizen.  Yes, he is specifically speaking of that being carried out by those who were members of the body of Christ, but he was using words that they, as citizens of a Roman colony, and most likely proud Roman citizens – proud at this point more of their citizenship and the standing it brought than of what being a citizen of the empire meant for them in terms of the allegiance they were expected to uphold. 

 

Paul was calling on these proud Roman Citizens to do what goes completely against the grain of what they had up until then understood to be the duty of a Roman citizen – they were to follow Jesus’ example and empty themselves – to in no way claim the rights and privileges that they were assured as citizens of the empire – to in fact SHUN that privilege – in order to be in fellowship and communion with each other.  It is pretty much a given that the church was made up, as most of the churches that formed early in the expansion of the followers of Christ – of people from all walks of life – Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female.  In ways that we cannot fully comprehend, the body of Christ cut across barriers and boundaries that had been in place for centuries, and in a very real way, shook Roman Society – and the existing structures of the day – to their core. 

 

There is a radical aspect to the call of the Gospel, to the example of Christ, that we are hard pressed to identify with – especially here, especially now, in 21^st century still for the most part accepted-as-the-norm Christian America.  I know there is a general movement in our culture away from the mores and teachings of the faith, but in all honesty, that was to be expected.  I heard a quote from Stanley Hauerwas, professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School, where he said “the world has gone back to being the world.  The church can now go back to being the church.” 

 

We have, for too long, been co-opted by virtue of being ‘accepted.’  You’ve heard me say before, the worst thing that can happen to Christianity is that we gain a position of power in the world.  Jesus could have thrown his weight around as the son of God, but didn’t.  He COULD have rallied the people of Israel and formed an army alongside angels to overthrow the empire that was oppressing them, but he didn’t.  He could have gone straight to the halls of power and shown the men sitting in those seats that he was the incarnate God, capable of miracles and wonders, of creation as well as destruction, but he didn’t. 

 

What he DID do was what they call ‘play against type’ in the acting trade.  He presented himself as the antithesis of who he truly was.  Equal with God, yes, but was born as a baby in a backwater village in a backwater country in a far-flung end of the known world, far from the centers of power and culture.  Remained for the most part obscure, except to the folks in the immediate surrounding area, and only kept a small group of followers close to him throughout a brief, three year period of time during which he itinerantly preached around the country he was born in. 

 

He knew, as the time drew close that he was going to wind up arrested, beaten, and most likely killed by the authorities.  He saw it coming and yet didn’t do anything to stop it.  Didn’t stop preaching the Gospel, didn’t stop facing down injustice, and tyranny, greed and hypocrisy in those who set themselves up as worthy of being emulated – copied – even to the end.  And he never stopped touching lives in the most significant way possible – on a personal, intimate, one-on-one level, not only with his twelve disciples, but also with lawyers, scholars, leaders of the Sanhedrin, and, at the other end of the societal spectrum, Samaritan women and despised tax collectors.       

 

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

 

You’ve heard the illustration of a frog in water – if you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will immediately jump out.  The abruptness of the change alerts the frog to something being wrong, and it takes action to get away from the danger.  But if you place a frog in a pot of room-temperature water, and then put the pot on a low burner, the frog will stay in the pot until it is too late, and it will die. 

 

We live in a culture that has become known for its greed and rampant materialism.    Understand me when I say that even though I believe there is still much that is good and noble and honest and worthy of upholding in our society, it does not take much to unravel that goodness and render it ineffective for the purposes of maintaining a witness for Christ in the world. 

 

So we are called to do that on both an individual and a congregational level.  I will go out on a limb here and say that I don’t believe can go much further beyond that and maintain our effectiveness in our witness.  Perhaps on a state association level, MAYBE, but on a national level we lose our power to influence, to convince, to persuade on an individual basis – which is how Jesus Christ did it.  Yes, we DO belong to entities, as I mentioned a couple of Sundays ago, that go beyond what we do locally, but that does not exempt us from DOING locally what we participate in on a larger scale … oddly enough – even in participating on a large scale as we do with missions funding, what that reverts to is at the other end, a personal, individual one-on-one engagement with people on the ground – through people like Aunt Clara, through people like Alma Hunt, or Lottie Moon, who emptied HERself just as Christ emptied himself.  I know we’re a little early to talk about Lottie, but it speaks to the point being made. 

 

We are, as a church, as members of THIS church, as members of the body of Christ meeting here and now, called by Christ to follow his example, to adopt his mind and make it our own – in giving of ourselves no matter where we are, no matter who we are with.  And to do it in such a radical, against-the-grain way, that the radical selflessness of the Gospel of Christ will change that part of the world that we happen to be living in and touching right here, right now.  And we do it through letting God work through us.   

 

¹²Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; ¹³for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

 

Think about that.  It is God who is at work in us.  God!  who came to earth in the person of Jesus, who created the universe, who raised Jesus from the dead, who knows us down to the very core of our beings – God is at work in us – and working out our salvation with fear and trembling is part of what that … partnership involves.  God is enabling us to will and to work for his good pleasure.   Let’s pray. 

In A Manner Worthy

 

Sunday, September 21^st, 2008

Proper 20A/ Ordinary 25 A/ Pentecost +19

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Philippians 1:21-30

Theme: Owning the life of Christ – and living it

 

 “²¹For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. ²²If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. ²³I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; ²⁴but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. ²⁵Since I am convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, ²⁶so that I may share abundantly in your boasting in Christ Jesus when I come to you again. ²⁷Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel, ²⁸and are in no way intimidated by your opponents. For them this is evidence of their destruction, but of your salvation. And this is God’s doing. ²⁹For he has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well— ³⁰since you are having the same struggle that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.”

 

It would seem to be a contradiction, on the face of it. 

 

We believe a Gospel of salvation by grace – a salvation which we can DO nothing to obtain, but which all we have to do is ask for – confessing and believing, first that God was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s self, and that Christ’s dying on the cross was for us – each of us, all who have been and all who are to come. 

 

We also believe that upon receiving that salvation, our lives are SUPPOSED to start to change.  There are those who believe that it is possible to attain near-perfection in the conduct of our daily living – in our Christ-likeness.  I happen to believe that it is a moment-by-moment variant as to how well we’re doing in the Christ-likeness department.  I DO believe that our salvation – and how it reflects in our daily living – is a process more than an event. 

 

Yes, there IS a moment in our lives, whether we remember it or not, where we became aware of the love of God, through a mother or father, a grandmother or grandfather, a Sunday School teacher, or a Pastor … but more than that, we became aware that God loves US – as individuals – that God cares for us and wants to be in relationship WITH us.

 

That realization can be overwhelming.  That is why it is, in many cases, a signal event in our memory.  For me, it was, as I’ve shared before, on the eve of my tenth birthday at a camp in west Tennessee.  For Leslie, it was when she was eight, under the preaching of Junie Foster at Thalia Lynn Baptist Church in Virginia Beach.  Incidentally, on that same Sunday, Donald, Leslie’s dad, at the age of 43 or 44, walked to the front of the sanctuary and asked to be baptized and to become a member of Thalia Lynn at the same time as Leslie.  He has stated that his real growth as a Christian began from that point on, even though he believed and was baptized in a sister tradition at the age of twelve. 

 

I imagine if we went around the room, many of us could name the place and time when we came to that same place in our faith walk.  It doesn’t HAVE to be that way, of course.  Many people I know came to that realization gradually, over the course of many weeks or months … or even years.  It was in looking back over their pilgrimage that they recognized the call of God on their lives – drawing them nearer and nearer to God’s self.  Even for those of us who DID make our decision public at an early age, in retrospect we can see evidence of God’s presence and guiding and molding when we look back on our experiences and who God put in our lives as we grew. 

 

So we have this offer of the free gift of salvation on the table – literally remembered, when we celebrate communion – and it is ours to take up or reject.  If we choose to take it up, it is a most precious gift – THE most precious that we could ever receive in our lives – because it IS the gift of life.  But in the receiving of the gift, we then become Disciples of Christ – that is, students, apprentices, learners.  And what we learn from our master is that, having received the gift of salvation carries a responsibility with it.  That having gained our lives by giving them over to God, we now understand Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Mark (chapter 8) when he said “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel,^* will save it.”  To put it another way, even though this is presented as a win-lose situation, the rules that would normally be understood to apply DON’T.  Yes, we DO lose our SO-called lives when we turn them over to the Lord, but in doing that, we discover that what we held dear, or as important, or meaningful is either put in correct perspective as secondary, or made all that much MORE precious through the eyes of faith.  What would SEEM to the world to be a win-lose proposition is in reality a win-win one. 

 

Paul was near the end of his life when he was writing to the Philippian church.  He wrote it during the two years he was in Rome waiting to present his case before Nero, who was emperor at the time.  I suspect that on some level, he was aware that his earthly life could end at any time.  He could almost see, can almost taste the glory to come.  And yet, he was struggling with still wanting to be here on earth, present with his brothers and sisters, sharing with them in their journeys, in their growing faith, in their sharing of the Gospel or letting go and going on.  And he ends up choosing to stay – to be with them, to continue to lose his life by giving it away.  The way he puts it: “I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith”                    

 

So what does that progress and joy in faith mean?  Paul actually describes it pretty specifically: “standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel” That is nice and simple, isn’t it?  It means being unified and working together.  So living our lives in a manner worthy of Christ means doing that, period. End of sentence.

 

But … you see??  It doesn’t JUST end there.  To take those two phrases and apply them to our lives implies letting them infuse ALL of our lives – how we talk, how we treat each other, how we treat strangers, how we carry ourselves in the world.  At its core, at its heart, living a life of faith is not coasting along for however long after one receives salvation.  Living a life of faith has everything to do with engaging in a life FULL of action – full of learning and loving and giving, sharing and holding … we speak of serving a risen Lord, but we run the risk of serving a building if we lose sight of the fact that the church is what Cliff showed us last Sunday – and what most of us probably learned as preschoolers – here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors, and see all the people.  The Church is not the bricks and mortar, it’s not the pews and carpeting, it’s not the painting over the baptistery, or the beautiful cross stitch of the Lord’s Prayer that is standing in the hall through these two doors to my right.  WE are the church.  I understand how over the years we’ve telegraphed the phrase ‘the church that meets in the building located at the corner of Mulberry Road and History Land Highway in Warsaw, and now we just say ‘Jerusalem Baptist Church’.  But there is a real danger in losing the connection with the central truth of our faith that says that the body of Christ is not built on blocks and girders, but on the hearts and shoulders of men and women who stood together in one spirit, and worked side by side with one mind for the faith of the Gospel.

 

Lets pray. 

God Has Welcomed

 

Sunday, September 14^th, 2008

Proper 19A/ Ordinary 24 A/ Pentecost +18

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Romans 14:1-12

Theme: Extending God’s welcome through our Service

 

 “¹Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. ²Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. ³Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. ⁴Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. ⁵Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. ⁶Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God. ⁷We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. ⁸If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. ⁹For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. ¹⁰Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. ¹¹For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.” ¹²So then, each of us will be accountable to God.”

 

To whom does Jerusalem Baptist church belong? 

 

I realize the deed or deeds for the land on which this building and the parsonage and the cemetery sit are registered in the name of the church.  And as an assembly of believers, we constitute the temporal, or earthly owners of this building.  And that is more for the purposes of the county commissioner than anything else. 

 

What I’m asking is, to whom do we, the membership of Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton, in Warsaw, Richmond County, Virginia, BELONG? 

 

In Baptist “polity”, that is, “the way Baptists do things”, we speak of local church autonomy.  Autonomy is a slightly fancy word that means ‘independence’.  Oddly enough, on the spectrum of types of Baptists that exist, we are not generally considered ‘independent.’  THAT term was appropriated by our sister Baptist churches who associate even LESS with each other than we do.  We ARE, historically and by tradition, autonomous in the sense that we govern ourselves.  No one outside our congregation has a say in how we choose to do things.  There is no earthly authority that can pick up the phone, call here to the office and say “you need to do thus and such”. 

 

We DO, by choice, freely agree to associate with several other churches in the local geographic area – known as the Rappahannock Baptist Association, as well as nearly fifteen hundred other churches across Virginia (and I think, a couple of North Carolina and Georgia congregations) through the Baptist General Association of Virginia.  On a national level, we associate with two organizations:  the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.  Beyond them, on an international scope, we relate to the Baptist World Alliance.  All that having been said, it needs to be reiterated that all those associations are by choice, decided on as a congregation, specific to us here.  True to Baptist tradition, we could, if we wanted to, withdraw from any or all of those associations and go with a whole DIFFERENT set of partners or none at all.  We have that freedom and we have that option, while still remaining as Baptist as we are today. 

 

But getting back to the nitty-gritty, local level: how we conduct ourselves here, as a family of faith, is what is going to make a difference, an impact on our local community, our friends, our relatives, our acquaintances.  THAT is what people will comment on when they speak of Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), not that we belong to the RBA or the BGAV, or the SBC or the CBF or the BWA.  (We have nearly as many acronyms in Baptist life as the military does!)  For all those associations I’ve named, there is some formal process whereby we BECAME associated with the organization in question.  With reference to nearly all of them, we have to have decided at some point to cooperatively enter into a supporting role with the other churches of that association – we have to be sending contributions every so often to help that organization carry out the tasks it has taken on.  Whether that task be to support US in our endeavor to carry out the spreading of the Gospel or whether through our giving WE support THAT organization’s task of spreading the Gospel. 

 

While we can measure our support of an effort through how much we DO contribute to it, when it comes down to membership, we have to meet certain requirements.  And that is where what we do as a Church relating to other churches and associations needs to differ significantly from what we do as a Church relating to our community. 

 

The church in Rome that Paul was writing to was struggling with an internal tension that is VERY familiar to any congregation.  There were some folks who had become Christ followers years if not decades earlier than the time of the writing of the letter, and there were those who had just become follower of Christ a few weeks or months earlier, perhaps by witnessing the way those mature Christians handled themselves through the times of persecution that they had just lived through.  The Tension arose from differences within the family of faith as to what constituted something to be ALLOWED and something to be REJECTED as a mark of the faith they all professed.  Some stopped eating meat for fear of eating something that may have been sacrificed to an idol before being taken to market.  Some felt that it was necessary to strictly observe the Sabbath, coming from the Hebrew tradition most likely, they felt that making that statement was a way to distinctively honor God.  Not everyone felt that way on either of those counts, and it made for some disagreements – people probably calling each other less than uplifting names. 

 

A faith community is a dynamic, a CHANGING thing, a relational thing.  To look at the list of positions and officers that we just voted on three weeks ago – apart from the names – is to see an organization that has directors, and teachers, and assistants and assistant teachers, and a whole SLEW of committees … and if you read through the list and just stop at the headings, I think we could come off as an overly organized, compartmentalized bureaucracy.  For a congregation of around 50 active or attending members, it would seem to be overkill. 

 

But if you left off the titles, the committee names, and just listed the names of the people included, you get a very different picture.  First of all, you get a picture of families, of people who belong to each other, who aren’t just here because they fulfill a particular role or carry out a particular function, we get a picture of people who come because they love to be with their family members, with their brothers and sisters.  As a family of faith made UP of families, we have seen, as any family does, changes in the makeup of our larger family.  We have had members of the family die, and others be born.  We have had family members suffer from illnesses that have kept them away, and we’ve seen others recover their health and reintegrate into the active life of the church.  We have also had family members suffer broken relationships whose pain reaches deep into our larger body.  We don’t, as a rule, refer to each other by our title.  I don’t call Jean ‘Madame Choir Director’, or to Cliff as ‘Mr. Chairman of Deacons.’  I call them by their names, because that is how brothers and sisters call each other.  I suppose we could come up with nicknames for each other, if need be.  Who knows, some of us may already HAVE nicknames and just not know about them! 

 

My point is this:  though we do have roles within the family, we are not defined solely by those roles.  We are – though imperfect – people whose lives are made up of any number of interests and skills and talents, and gifts that God has given us.  As such, we each bring something to the table, we each bring our specially colored thread to the tapestry that God is making of this family. 

 

As Christians, we preach Christ crucified.  We teach and sing songs about how Jesus loves the little children, and that Jesus died for the sins of the world.  We sing of a universal savior, of Jesus who made the way for everyone – anyone – who believes in him and follows him to receive salvation – and this is where our role on the front lines of the incoming reign of God is critical – remember Paul’s words at the beginning of the passage – “God has welcomed them.”  

 

While we ARE called to accountability to each other, and we ARE called to live lives of holy devotion to the Lord, and we ARE charged with living lives worthy of the image of Christ, we are NOT charged with being the gatekeepers to the kingdom.  Our responsibility as Christians is to live out, as we’ve said before, Christ’s life into the world, to BE his presence.  But we are not to be about the business of deciding who gets in and who doesn’t.  That is not our call to make. 

 

When we pause after the second hymn each Sunday and extend the Jerusalem hand of welcome, we shine!  People have noted the warmth with which we greet each other and any visitors we have.  It is that same spirit of welcome that reflects God’s welcome!  It is beautiful and open, and joyful.  And if you’ve noticed, it is also a time to, in a few brief words, touch base with each other, or to sincerely ask someone how they are doing if they don’t look like they are doing well.  It can be overwhelming if one isn’t used to that warmth – that offer of a hearty handshake or a hug, it is a direct reflection of the welcome that God extended to each of us through the person of Jesus Christ.

 

(ordination of Janie King)              

 

  

Put On the Lord

 

Sunday, September 7^th, 2008

Proper 18A/ Ordinary 23 A/ Pentecost +17

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Romans 13:8-14

Theme: Living the Life of Jesus

 

 “⁸Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. ⁹The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁰Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

¹¹Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; ¹²the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; ¹³let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. ¹⁴Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

 

I could say that Paul is a master wordsmith, and it would be true.  His touch is such that it translates even from 1^st century Greek to 20^th century English.  There is a resonance in what he says – a profound simplicity that both sums up the truths of the Gospel and evokes its deepest repercussions at the same time. 

 

To hear him take the ten commandments, spell out four of them, and then in a broad, sweeping stroke gather up the other six, along with the six-hundred three other laws spelled out in the Hebrew Scriptures and roll them into the one: “love your neighbor as yourself” … it is a master’s stroke.  But we’ve heard that before, haven’t we? 

 

When the lawyer in Luke 10:25 asked Jesus what he needed to do to obtain salvation, what did Jesus do?  He turned the question back to the man – “what is written in the law?”  The man answered as was to be expected: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind;” but the answer didn’t end there:  the man went on:  “and your neighbor as yourself”. 

 

The words are put in the Lawyer’s mouth to begin with, but in the very next exchange we are made to realize that, though he knew the “correct” answer, the “Sunday school” answer, the ‘expected and memorized’ answers, he had no understanding of the spirit of the law underlying the letter of the law. 

 

Hear this:  it is a right and noble thing to memorize scripture, to commit the words of the Bible to heart, to be able to recall them on a moments’ notice.  There will be times when that knowledge will serve to engage someone in a conversation that could otherwise be derailed by the absence of it. 

 

But know this as well:  if all that is there is head knowledge, in other words, having the ability to point to a particular passage because it deals with a particular subject, and there is no involvement of the heart, that knowledge will do us as much good as it did that first century lawyer who was looking for an easy way to say he had met the requirements for being justified and therefore saved:  that is to say: it did him no good at all. 

 

As Baptists we pride ourselves on our knowledge of scripture.  It is, in fact, one of the principles we stand on:  what we call a “high view” of scripture.  But we sometimes need to be reminded that having a “high view” of scripture doesn’t mean “study it until it oozes out of your pores, read it until you can recite it in your sleep”,  that high esteem in which we hold scripture has to do with our understanding of it as providing us with not only wonderful images and history and stories – all those things I mentioned last week, but that it is one of the central methods through which God communicates with us, alongside the prompting of the Holy Spirit and through being in communion – in fellowship – with the rest of the members of our congregations.  But those other ways that God talks to us, through the Holy Spirit, through being in communion with others in our congregation – those can be so much .. messier, so much LESS cut and dried than being able to point to a word printed in black or red ink on a white page and say “that’s it, that’s the bottom line, that’s the end of the discussion.” 

 

I would suggest to you that it is, in fact, easier to memorize six hundred and thirteen laws and spend your day going over them and checking yourself every few minutes or seconds against that list, and saying to yourself “got it, got it, got it, done.” Than it is to go about your daily living with God whispering “Love me, and love your neighbor as yourself” and letting US figure it out – again, NOT on our own, but IN the study of scripture, IN communion with the Holy Spirit AND in communion with the rest of our church family.  God sent Jesus to all of us – the whole of humanity – and he did not back away from that broad charge – neither should we.

 

A couple of years ago I came across a t-shirt with a message printed on it.  You may have seen me or Leslie wearing it – I liked it so much I bought two of them.  The message is just three words, and they are run together – it says:  relationshipnotreligion.  Just like that – so you have to stop and think about where the word breaks are in order to make it out.  Even at that, there have been several opportunities where people have figured out what the message is, but from the look on their face, they didn’t get what it was talking about – it’s given me opportunities to explain what the message is about.  I guess there is something to be said for bumper stickers on clothes – it’s the same impact as the ones we may put on our cars, but when you are walking past someone or talking to them, you at least have the chance to strike up the conversation when you have time to read the expression on their face.   Loving your neighbor as yourself takes as many forms as WE want it to, as many ways as we can think of, as many ways as we are responsive to God’s prompting us to create. 

 

What about the time we have to do this “loving” in?  Some of us can expect to be around to seize opportunities for a few more years, some of us a few more decades, some of us more, some less.  The truth of the matter is, any one of us could not live to see the sun rise tomorrow.  It’s not that we necessarily waste opportunities we come across, it is that, for the most part, we are hesitant to step into the opportunities that present themselves.  I don’t think we INTENTIONALLY recognize a chance to show God’s love and then consciously turn away from it … I think it is more the case that we fail to recognize a chance when we are faced with it, and only recognize it later, after we’ve left the situation, and tell ourselves “I’ll see that person again”, or “we’ll certainly be able to share with them the next time we see them.”  And that may well be the case.  It may BE a few hours or days later that we again see the same person, engage in a similar conversation, and ARE able to become an expression of God’s love … but what if that ISN’T the case?  What if that person leaves? 

 

Earlier this week, I was checking out at Food Lion in town, and asked about one of the cashiers that I realized I hadn’t seen in a while – what I thought to be a few weeks.  The woman I asked told me that the person I was asking about had transferred to another store a pretty good distance away from here in December of last year.  I was flabbergasted.  I couldn’t believe it had been nearly nine months – if not longer – since I had seen the woman I had asked after. 

 

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

 

Can we understand how fleeting our interactions with others can sometimes be?  Do we realize that in a very real sense, we may only have one brief opportunity to be Christ’s presence to someone we meet or interact with on any given day? 

 

Paul says, “Let us live honorably as in the day”.  That speaks to how we should live our lives:  not doing things that … add to the brokenness of the world, but doing what is good, and noble, and righteous, and just … he doesn’t spell that out, but he does sum it up:  “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ”         

 

Here’s the thing:  putting on the Lord Jesus Christ doesn’t mean putting on a t-shirt that says something catchy like ‘relationshipnotreligion’, or even something profound, like “"A Woman's heart Should Be So Lost in God That A Man Needs to Seek Him In Order to Find Her."  While both of those sayings are pointing in the right direction, they are only a starting point.  They will never be a substitute for the actual living of the life of Christ.  For the total submission that is involved in turning ones self over to the Lordship of Jesus on a daily basis, hourly, even minute-by-minute basis.  Because living the life of Christ is not ONLY an internal life, it is a life lived outside one’s self – outside one’s circle of interest, outside one’s familiar surroundings – whether physical or emotional.  God’s call on our lives is to one of obedience and service – through – and ONLY through – the presence of Christ in our daily living. 

 

Let’s pray.