With Joy

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Advent 3C

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Warsaw, VA

Isaiah 12

¹“You will say in that day: I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, and you comforted me. ²Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation. ³With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

⁴And you will say in that day: Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted. ⁵Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. ⁶Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

Where is the joy?

Isaiah is a compiled book. That means it is made up of the writings of Isaiah, certainly, but of others who wrote in the spirit of Isaiah, or with the same message and theme as Isaiah. The earliest sections of the book seem to have been written beginning around the year 740 BCE and over the next 40 years. The exile to Babylon began nearly a century later, in 605 BCE, and lasted for approximately 70 years – until the year 536 BCE. Scholars have divided what we now have as Isaiah into two – and actually three separate groups of writings. Chapters 1-39 were written before the Babylonian Exile, and chapters 40-55 were written during the Babylonian Exile. Chapters 56-66 were written after the return from exile, when the remnants of the people of Israel are back in their homeland, beginning to rebuild the Temple and rediscover their covenantal relationship with God.

Where is the joy?

As our passage this morning comes from the 12^th chapter, it is written to the Kingdom of Judah at a time when their existence seems to be especially tenuous. Though it was still at least a century off, their conquest loomed large in the awareness of the national psyche. They lived in the shadow of the power of the Assyrian Empire. The Northern Kingdom, of Israel, the ten tribes other than Benjamin and Judah, had been or was in the process of being overtaken and absorbed by the Assyrian Empire, and the prospects for the Kingdom of Judah didn’t seem to be much better.

Where is the joy?

That uncertainty is something that we have all shared – maybe not on a national level as they were then, but certainly on a personal level – when faced with the loss of a job, or health, or the death of a loved one. As Audrey West, Associate Professor of New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago says, “it is no small thing to stare the menace in the face and say, ‘I will trust, and I will not be afraid.’”

Where is the joy?

These six short verses actually break down into two hymns – two songs – sung first by an individual and second by a group. In the Hebrew, the ‘you’ is in the singular form, along with all the pronouns in the first 3 verses. Then, beginning in verse 4, the ‘you’ is in the plural – in other words, this second section of the chapter is written as though for a choir or a congregation to sing.

And what they are singing isn’t just any old song of thanksgiving; it is deeply resonant with their history. The middle section of verse 2 is a quote from another hymn of thanksgiving sung at an earlier time of deliverance by God of the people of Israel – it is found in Exodus 15 verse 2. At that time, the thanksgiving was after being delivered from Pharaoh and his chariots after having crossed the Red Sea.

This is the first time in the book of Isaiah that the word ‘salvation’ is used. Because it is derived from a verbal root meaning “to be wide, spacious,” it connotes the idea of deliverance from all that would stand in the way of one’s peace and prosperity. There is an element of word play, a subtle reference to the writer, in the triple repetition of the word in verses 2 and 3, since the very name ‘Isaiah’ means, “the Lord is salvation.”

The second song begins with the same words as the first “And you will say in that day,” … ‘that day’ is a statement of hope in and of itself. It is a reference to the end of an era – when the Messiah will come. "That day" is a day of judgment and salvation, a day that calls God's people forward, beckoning us to live into its reality in the present moment, no matter the circumstances.

Here the people of Israel, the people of Judah, were facing what for them was TOTAL uncertainty about what their future held – as a nation, as individuals. It was normal for conquering armies to sack and to pillage and to kill. In fact, it’s not unusual to find even in the Old Testament to find where the Israelites themselves were ordered to go in and kill everyone. That would have been fresh on their minds.

If the power of the first song is that it is a lone voice singing out against fear in the face of overwhelming odds and certain loss or defeat, the power of the second song is that it is a whole congregation lifting their voices in praise and thanksgiving in the face of those same odds, calling others to do the same – and proclaim the greatness of God to the nations, which would seem to be counterintuitive, in light of the fact that Israel is crumbling, and Judah is facing obliteration, they are singing the praise of their God despite that fact.

It would seem to point to something else going on here. That even though the image brought out in the congregational song – that of a mighty warrior, able to deliver his people in battle, on the face of it, it seems to be a case of … you know how sometimes you are filling out a form and you come to a question that does not apply to you and you put in the space “N/A” (Not Applicable? … It seems like it might be that … but what they are singing of is patently opposite the worldly vision they are living through and are facing the prospect of CONTINUING to live through for the foreseeable future.

The people of Israel and Judah, and by extension – we – are still singing because of the radical redefinition of what a mighty warrior is supposed to DO. It means that we do not let our hope, our peace, our joy, depend on anything – ANYTHING but the promise that we have in God’s salvation and God’s faithfulness, love and God’s grace.

Earlier this morning we sang a hymn in our opening assembly – a traditional German Christmas Carol – How Great Our Joy – the words refer to the usual imagery of Christmas –

While by the sheep we watched at night / Glad tidings brought an angel bright.

There shall be born, so He did say /
in Bethlehem a Child today.

There shall the Child lie in a stall / this Child who shall redeem us all.

This gift of God we’ll cherish well
/ that ever joy our hearts shall fill.

The refrain – the chorus – is what I love about this hymn, and it’s designed, I think, to be sung antiphonally, men and women, or one section and then another:

How great our joy! (Great our joy!)


Joy, joy, joy! (Joy, joy, joy!)


Praise we the Lord in heaven on high! 


(Praise we the Lord in heaven on high!)

To find it in us, to sing with Joy, to live in Joy, when we are living through times that would seem to drain all that joy from us, is of God. It is the Spirit calling out, calling out to us and from us and saying “just wait, there’s hope, there’s peace to come, there is rest to come! God’s salvation is at hand, God’s love does not fail!

Let’s pray.

“Loving God, your word speaks of peace that passes understanding, and we thank you for that and we pray for that, and have, at times, experienced that.

But we are surprised by joy that passes understanding. Even in the midst of our darkest times, you fill us, you touch us with the certainty that you are with us, and in that presence we find joy.

Go with us now, even as we know you have been with us, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Into The Way of Peace

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Advent 2C

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Warsaw, VA

Luke 1:68-79

⁶⁸“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. ⁶⁹He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David, ⁷⁰as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, ⁷¹that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. ⁷²Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, ⁷³the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us ⁷⁴that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, ⁷⁵in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. ⁷⁶And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, ⁷⁷to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. ⁷⁸By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, ⁷⁹to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Matthew Hensley, a member of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Virginia’s Coordinating Council traveled to South Africa recently on a mission trip with a group from Haymarket Baptist Church, and he came back with this reflection:

Reverend Colin Jooste was arrested from the pulpit of the Zion Congregational Church in King William Town, South Africa in 1985. The charge: treason. The cause: organizing groups of Christians and concerned citizens in a feeding scheme that would provide people in the local black township with necessary food.

Colin did not organize this initiative from the comforts of privileged South Africa. He and his congregation also lived behind fences, in a township categorized as “coloured.” Their coming and going was monitored and their ability to work was limited to what the government considered acceptable for their “race.”

The old apartheid system of South Africa is too convoluted and detailed to easily describe. Suffice it to say it was an arbitrary and elaborate system that rested power in the hands of a privileged few while pitting the majority against one another by placing them in different categories of race and ability. Those categorized as “coloured” were given a few more “privileges” than the black South Africans creating a divide between the two contrived groups. So instead of the oppressed majority rising up together against the oppressor, the system of apartheid pitted coloured against black.

So Colin stood in his congregation’s pulpit each week and exposed the evils of apartheid while preaching the hope found in the life of Jesus Christ and in his gospel message. In Jesus’ worldview, the weak, the marginalized, and the poor were the privileged. And in God’s coming kingdom, the playing field would become level and all people would stand as equals with one another as they do before almighty God. Under apartheid, what was playing out before his congregation was far from such a kingdom.

Colin believed that God calls people to reflect God’s coming kingdom – to provide a tangible example of what such a kingdom will be when God returns to reign over creation. To sit back and watch their brothers and sisters suffer from starvation and disease when they could help was not taking such a call to be light in a dark world seriously.

So Colin, with the help of pastors in the black townships, began to collect food and money to send to the people on the other side of town, kept in their own area. This initiative, which began in King William Town, started to take hold in other areas of South Africa. Many black townships began to receive aid from coloured townships – the oppressed caring for the even more oppressed.

But if one aspect of apartheid was to separate and pit the races against one another, then surely what Colin had started was meant to undermine the government. And so he was arrested from his pulpit one Sunday and taken to a nearby prison where he was kept with other political prisoners where they were beaten and mistreated. The memory of a young girl’s cry held in a cell down the hall from his still haunts him.

Colin, luckily, was released after six months due to his work with the World Council of Churches and given 24 hours to leave the country. He and his family were sponsored to come to the United States where they lived for seven years. While in the US, he never stopped working, even though churches wanted to provide for his families needs while in exile. He worked as a carpenter and painter, spoke to many churches, and later served as a professor, after studying at Yale University.

But his home country and extended family were enough reason to not stay permanently in the United States. His whole family returned to South Africa in 1992 when the apartheid government fell.

Colin now works for the new South African government. He remained a pastor in a local congregation until recently. His family now lives in a part of King William Town that less than twenty years ago was meant for whites only. Many days, on his way to work, he drives past the prison where he was held. The experience is still painful.

I find Colin’s story compelling on a number of levels – on a personal level, his courage in speaking the truth of the Gospel of Christ into the presence of human suffering – especially suffering caused by other humans – calls me to a more courageous stand of my own. His efforts to provide for the basic needs of his neighbors despite an officially sanctioned systematized injustice that made it at best difficult and at worst nearly impossible to carry out calls me to do more, be more, SPEAK more about what Jesus had to say about those injustices that existed in first-century Palestine and that still haunt us today.

As for our passage this morning, we are walking through the approach – the advent – of the coming of the Christ child.

Just to recap – Zechariah, Mary’s cousin Elizabeth’s husband, who was a member of the priestly order of Abijah, was most likely well into his seventies when the angel Gabriel appeared to him as he was performing his priestly duties, and announced that he and Elizabeth, who had up until that time not been able to have children, were going to be parents of a little boy. Gabriel didn’t stop there, but went on to tell Zechariah something of what his son would do after he grew up – that he would be great in the sight of the Lord, that he would turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God, parents to their children, the disobedient to the wisdom of righteousness, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord … all in all quite an earful for a man who had led a long and faithful life serving God and his fellow Israelites in the temple.

The twist to the story is that Gabriel also told Zechariah that for the next nine months more or less he would be without a voice. He would not be able to speak a word through the whole of Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Can you imagine the degree of frustration that would cause? I know what a hurdle it was to be able to communicate with Irene Hinson as well as Helen Coates when neither one of them were able to speak clearly during their illnesses.

Ask yourself: what must it have been like for Zechariah to be unable to speak for those nearly forty weeks? What insight do you think he may have drawn during that time? When you are required to be silent, you are better able to enter into ‘observer’ mode in relation to the world around you.

This past week I had the opportunity to sit in Domestic Relations Court with one of our Hispanic friends, and while we waited for her hearing to begin, we sat through another case, which involved two women who had gotten into an altercation – one behind the wheel of a car and the other standing outside the car and being struck by it – all apparently over the fact that the woman in the car, who was coming to the house to see the father of the baby she is expecting, believed the woman outside the car was in a romantic relationship with that same man. The questioning and the back and forth in the courtroom was both sad and intriguing. Sad, because it was obvious that the lack of conscience of someone had brought these two women to that courtroom dealing with a situation and potential penalties and fines and even jail time for what one had done to the other. Intriguing in that the person without the conscience seemed to be completely absent from the proceedings: the man over which the one woman struck the other.

Greg Boyd, Pastor at Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, summarizes what Christ’s call to his followers is when it comes to being in conflict: simply put, if they have flesh, they are not our true enemy. God’s radical, revolutionary, transformative love is one that calls us to pray for our enemies, lay down our lives for them, to serve our neighbors, our relatives, a stranger on the street; it doesn’t matter what they’ve done, or what they look like or smell like or are wearing, we are to love them unconditionally and live peace into our shared existence. Jesus told his disciples over and over again that our fight is with the princes and rulers of the air – the spirit realm… it is those same spirits that would cause us to turn against each other, that insinuate themselves into our egos and our consciences and inflate our pride and convince us that our reputations are more important than maintaining a relationship with someone who is supposed to be our brother or our sister – who also calls Jesus Lord.

Our passage this morning is, in the liturgical tradition, referred to as the ‘Benedictus’ – it refers to the first word of this song “Blessed” – that Zechariah sings when he regains his voice after the birth of his son John.

John took his task seriously. He carried it out until the day he was executed.

So did Colin Jooste.

So have countless others through the centuries.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

This evening we will remember the life of one who gave HER life in that same task – Lottie Moon served her Lord by serving the people of China for over 30 years… just like reverend Jooste in South Africa, she organized food drives and solicited funds to help in that effort to feed the people in her region during a famine, and even more than that, she gave of her own stores, her own food, to the point that she was so weakened that she ended up succumbing to disease – actually starving to death for the sake of making the Gospel real to the people God had called her to serve.

May we be found so faithful.

Let’s pray.

Birth Pangs

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Ordinary 33B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Warsaw, VA

Mark 13:1-8

Theme: The in breaking of the Kingdom of God

¹As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” ²Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

³When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, ⁴“Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” ⁵Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. ⁶Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. ⁷When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. ⁸For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”

As a college junior, the college group choir from First Baptist in Bowling Green, Kentucky undertook a mission trip to Chicago. It was my first – and to date only - visit to that city. I had grown up in an urban setting – in a city of four and a half million people, but it was one that had relatively few skyscrapers.

That was different in Chicago. Towards the end of our stay there, we got to do some sightseeing, including visiting the John Hancock Center. I don’t remember what the issue was regarding the Sears Roebuck Tower, but for some reason we didn’t go there. I remember craning my neck to try to get a look at the length and height and size of the buildings around me as we climbed out of the church van in the downtown area that day. We rode the elevator up to the observation floor of the building… it was inside, not outside, as some other buildings have, but it had this one thing, where the platform on which we were standing didn’t go all the way to the exterior wall of the building, but stopped about eighteen or twenty inches from the glass. The challenge was to lean over the rail and press your forehead against the glass and look down the 95 stories to ground level. I tried. I managed, but it was unsettling to say the least.

While I was at home in the concentration of people we found in Chicago, I had not had a lot of experience in spending time in skyscrapers, and I was awestruck by them. Their sheer size was enough to boggle the mind.

I think that may have been some of what was going on with the disciples as they approached and entered the temple in Jerusalem. The construction of the temple was actually still in progress at the time they were there, so not only were they seeing a portion of the building complex already completed, but they were also able to view the massiveness of the undertaking necessary to build it: the manpower, the resources, the investment of time and energy and money needed must have been more than any of them had ever been exposed to before then. After all, the construction of the temple had been going on for nearly 50 years by this time, since the year 20 BCE by Herod the Great, and would continue for another twenty or so years more. This third temple was completed in the year 63 of the Common Era, and destroyed a short 7 years later, after the Jewish uprising.

The stones used to build the temple were indeed large – somewhere around 35 feet long by 18 feet wide, by 12 feet high, certainly some smaller, and probably some even bigger. Any way you cut them, those are big pieces of rock. Even though they were probably seeing some of those stones being moved into place as they spoke, it would be difficult at best for them to imagine what they were seeing built as being destroyed.

Jesus seems almost dismissive of the object of their awe. Some would say that he knew in clear terms exactly what fate awaited the temple and the city of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans within the next three decades. Another way of looking at it is that, Jesus, in simply human terms, was aware of the unrest that was brewing in Palestine, knew the history of the Maccabeean revolt of 167 BCE and the resulting destruction of the temple THEN… so it would stand to reason that to some degree, the writing was on the wall if things continued the way they were going, as in fact, they did. So his saying to them “it’s all gonna crumble” was to a degree stating the obvious. They would have SEEN cities or towns, certainly buildings that had been destroyed in one or another battle or war in the course of their travels. The Romans would likely have made it a point to have their actions in punishing insurgent Kingdoms or cities, nations throughout their empire known to potentially troublesome hotspots… Palestine being one of them.

Some while later, the disciples and Jesus have retreated to the Mount of Olives, across from Jerusalem, where they can view the city as a whole, and where it probably seems even more permanent to them. Jesus’ statement would have piqued the curiosity of his disciples, since they probably could no more imagine the temples’ destruction than we could, on September 10^th, 2001, imagine the scope and speed of the destruction of the World Trade Center.

So they ask him the question – When is it going to happen, and how will we KNOW it is coming?

That’s them. And that is us. Always wanting to be in the know, in the loop. The saying ‘knowledge is power’ seems to be ingrained in us to such a degree that we are constantly scrambling to find out what is going on, to uncover the truth about something or other, to understand the motivation behind an action … it is what fuels our nearly insatiable appetite for news, for information, for knowledge … not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but it DOES have it’s dark side. Gossip springs to mind as a ‘dark side’ kind of knowledge – that serves primarily to tear someone down and feed an unhealthy appetite for emotionally-charged experiences when our own lives seem tepid and boring by comparison.

Friday night I went to see a movie: 2012. It is one of those ‘end of the world as we know it but through the heroic actions of the … well … HERO of the story, he is able to save his family from ultimate destruction.’ In this case, he along with the governments of the most powerful countries in the world, along with the wealth of that rarified strata of society that can afford to pay BILLION (with a B) Euros per seat to get their family on board one of several massive arks that the Chinese were able to build in the Himalayas away from the prying eyes of the world.

I’ve been following the lead up to the release of the film, watching the History Channel, and the number of programs that come on about the prophecies of Nostradamus, or the mysteries of the Mayan calendar, or any number of other end-of-the-world prophecies ABOUND. There is a fascination with it that speaks to a morbid fascination with the possibility of disasters or events that could lead to the extinction of the human race… from the text, even though the question may have initially been intended on a very local level, it could also be interpreted as a curiosity about the eventual end of the world.

Christ’s reply to the disciples is simple: you’re always going to hear about wars and rumors of wars, there is ALWAYS going to be terror and terrifying events that WILL occur. The world is not what it was intended to be. What I am about is breaking in the Kingdom of god as God intended it to be here on earth. Think of it this way: these painful experiences that are happening are just like the pains of childbirth.

And that was when this kind of clicked for me.

I remember as we began to count down the months and then weeks and then days to when Hannah was born. We were a little – sometimes a lot – anxious about what the future held for us … what kind of parents we would be, what kind of child SHE would be. We didn’t know exactly when she would come, but we knew KIND of when that would be… we were scared, yes, but we were also terribly excited at the prospect of having a daughter in our lives, and wondered how much she would change our lives.

Our ongoing lesson from Jesus, then and now, as we grew then through our first years of childrearing and as we have expanded our family recently for the time being, has always boiled down to this: trust me. Trust in God’s care for you. Trust in my love for you. Don’t put your trust in earthly temples, in massive fortresses and structures that promise a safety they can’t provide.

What can this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

The early followers of Jesus were well aware that there was not any other person or government or organization that they could put their trust in that would give them the peace that Christ did. Not just because of their own persecution, but just by virtue of living in the times they were living in – there was enough strife and chaos and unpredictability and uncertainty to drive ANYONE crazy. Shifting alliances and political intrigue made for wobbly footing when it came to navigating the halls of government, religious tensions between the Roman occupiers and the largely Jewish early Christian communities as well as the established Jewish leadership created a dynamic that often resulted in bloodshed and persecution. These people knew terror like very few of us have in this day and age.

The early church practice and the ongoing tradition of exchanging the peace of Christ at a point in the worship service was a verbal reminder of that fact – that Christ is our ONLY source of TRUE peace, regardless of what is going on politically, religiously, economically, militarily, emotionally. He is our rest and our comfort.

So as we step out into the days’ events, and the coming week, remember that our primary call from Christ is to be his presence… I know you’ve heard me say it time and time again; to a world at war, we are to bring peace.

So: family of faith at Jerusalem, may the peace of Christ be with you.

Let’s pray.

For The Sake of Appearance

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Ordinary 32B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Warsaw, VA

Mark 12:38-44

³⁸As he taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, ³⁹and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! ⁴⁰They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

⁴¹He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. ⁴²A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. ⁴³Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. ⁴⁴For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

I think if I were to find some sort of biblical basis for it, THIS is where my aversion to being addressed as something other than simply ‘Kenny’ comes from. As your minister, my reluctance to use ‘Reverend’ or ‘Pastor’ in regular conversation is a conscious decision to try to avoid being treated differently simply because of that fact – or for people to behave differently around me because they know who I am or what I do.

Three or four years ago, I happened to be working in the concession stand during a little league game for one of the kids’ teams, and one of the other men told a joke to the rest of the group of men and the one woman who was there that was completely inappropriate and terribly crude. The woman and I had been talking earlier, and she knew I was a Pastor. When the laughing had died down, she looked at the man who told the joke and said ‘I can’t believe you told that in front of the PASTOR here!’ … The look he gave me was somewhere between “well, that’s who I am” and “I wish I hadn’t opened my mouth”. He said something apologetic, and I answered “don’t let my being a Pastor stop you” … it’s not that I enjoyed hearing the joke or watching the woman’s discomfort, but it has to do with not wanting to be shielded from the truth – whether that is someone’s crass behavior when they are NOT at church or hearing something from a lifelong member IN church that is totally opposite to the Gospel.

Last week, we had Jesus talking with a scribe who, at the end of their conversation, Jesus declared to be ‘not far from the Kingdom of God.’ Today, Jesus’ opening words are as we heard, ‘BEWARE of the scribes … [reread 38-40]’ … I wanted to stop on that for a minute and reiterate what is happening here and what was happening there. Jesus was not condemning an entire class of people simply because they happened to belong to that class, but he WAS condemning their BEHAVIOR.

He points out to his disciples that there were scribes – unlike the one he had been speaking to earlier – who were NOT really interested in the deeper matters of faith – those that truly impact and change how we act with each other and with our neighbors – and ultimately, with God. But that were more interested in being recognized, being respected, being the recipients of special treatment because of their position in the religious structure in which they functioned. They were more interested in what they APPEARED to be rather than in what they actually WERE. Jesus spells it out, “⁴⁰They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” And that, in a nutshell, is the beef that got the Pharisees, Sadducees, Priests and Scribes up in arms against him. Jesus called them on their hypocrisy. Called them on their twisting the redemptive power of the love of God in God’s adoption of the people of Israel and of his care for them through the centuries into what it had become – an oppressive, preferential, superficial, power-hungry THING that was about as far from what God had envisioned for them as it could be.

When he said ‘they devour widow’s houses’ he wasn’t speaking in metaphors. The widow who walked up to the treasury jar to drop her two copper coins in WAS giving all she had left, and we can talk about how that, yes, could reflect her faith in God, and we could also talk about how that could on some level represent the coming gift that Christ makes of his life for her, and for his disciples, as well as for those same Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees and Priests, as WELL as for all of us who have come and gone since then – for all the WORLD … and it would all make sense because we’ve heard some version of those interpretations before.

What might be less commonly understood, and less comfortable for us to hear, is the less metaphorical and more actual, practical, factual understanding of what is happening in the scene at the temple.

Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador has been attributed with making the statement: “If I feed a few hungry people I am called a Christian. If I ask why there ARE hungry people, I am called a communist.”

There are some things that Jesus said … some things that he did, that, when taken into consideration within the context in which he said or did them, were politically radical even by today’s standards. We’ve been over some of them in the past – his treatment of women, his interaction as a Jewish man with gentiles, especially Samaritans, his spending time with sinners, prostitutes, and tax-collectors. If you think about it, where did all the injunctions against that kind of behavior come from? The Religious Establishment. Those same men who had organized things to benefit themselves at the expense of the weak, the poor, the unprotected, the have-nots of their society, in this case, a widow – who, still being as faithful to the God of her faith as she knew how, was putting herself at the mercy of an establishment that had over the centuries become an institution that failed to treat her as a human being with dignity and worth, and was essentially merciless.

I read somewhere that the measure of the worth of a gift – of an offering – is not the amount of the offering itself, but rather what is left to the giver AFTER the offering is given.

This is, for us here today, sitting in Jerusalem Baptist Church in Emmerton, a fable of caution. For all intents and purposes, we belong to the Religious Establishment. It is for us to take to heart Jesus’ words as a warning to be more about the actual DOING of good deeds and merciful acts – randomly as well as among ourselves – REGARDLESS of whether or not we get the recognition for them – rather than to be concerned with the maintaining of appearances. Appearances are the least of our worries if what is on the inside is turning to dust.

One last thought, and it is in relation to the interpretation of the widow being a Christ figure, giving all she had left in faithful trust to God. The point in that analogy that causes some tension if you think about it is where we draw the parallels, and come to the point of the two copper coins – mostly worthless – but they are what was given – and the corresponding gift that was given by Jesus was what we would immediately rebel against calling worthless – his LIFE.

The second chapter of Philippians helps us put things into perspective, beginning in verse 5 –

“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, ⁸he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.”

To be something – someONE – to be … well … the creator of the universe, and to make yourself nothing … obedient, meek, silently fulfilling your responsibility, your role … making the necessary redemption possible through your own suffering. That is the model we have to follow. The one that calls us to give our all, to hold nothing back, to give ‘til it hurts.

May we all be so faithful, and so obedient.

Let’s pray.

Who Can Be Saved?

Sunday, October 11th, 2009
Ordinary 28B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Warsaw, VA
Mark 10:17-31

17As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. 19You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’” 20He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” 21Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” 22When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

23Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 26They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” 27Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

28Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” 29Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, 30who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

I need to let you in on what has been weighing on my mind this week. It’s been a week that has seen another devastating storm cause additional flooding and incalculable damage in the Philippines, on the heels of terrible earthquakes that have afflicted folks in Indonesia and Samoa as well as American Samoa and other islands in the South Pacific; but on a closer-to-home level, a friend received word Thursday that her three year old granddaughter died as a result of injuries received in a car accident in Mexico caused by a drunk driver, and I had to deal with a woman and her 10 month old baby daughter last night who were beaten by the baby’s father – the mother to unconsciousness, the baby hit, shaken, and thrown to the floor – the man is now in jail and will most likely be kept there for a long time, hopefully – hopefully – to exorcise his own demons rather than continue to be one for other people in his life.

With all that, to address the problem of evil – why do disasters and events like those happen, why do people DO those things, if God is a God of love as well as an all-powerful God – over and against the question of discussing how Christ viewed human wealth – there is a certain relief in dealing with something that is not so close to the heart after the week that has been. Hopefully we can address that other topic at another, not too-distant time. When we have had a chance to reflect on the events.

Let’s get one thing clear from the beginning:

I would generally not consider myself to be someone who believes the Bible was ever intended to be read and understood one-hundred percent literally. Depending on the text, some things are written as metaphor, some as poetry, some as song lyrics, some as allegory, some as mythology, and some IS intended as an historical record.

Today’s passage is, I believe, an example of the last.

I believe this is the case because this story is, as one scholar framed it, ‘untamable’. It is discomforting, it is demanding, it is uncompromising. It just makes us so uncomfortable that THAT, in and of itself, is enough to convince me that these words DID, in fact, come out of Jesus’ mouth.

It is just as unsettling as the text from Psalm 22 that we read as our responsive reading, because we don’t ever want to think of God as having forsaken US – Jesus on the cross is one thing … but … US?? Never!!

To hear Jesus say, “it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person to enter heaven …” is just as unsettling … because when we think about it – operative word being WE – in this interconnected world where we are aware of exactly what conditions are LIKE in other areas of the world, we cannot get around the fact that in comparison, WE really ARE wealthy in a way that a sizeable portion of the world cannot begin to grasp.

And in case you were wondering about that supposed gate in the wall of the city of Jerusalem that was cut into the wall shorter and narrower than the other gates, requiring camels to be put through almost crawling, with no cargo on their backs – please just put that thought away. There never was such a gate. Jesus is using simple hyperbole – an overstatement or exaggeration to get the point across – he’s talking about a REAL camel going through a REAL eye of a needle…

What IF he means us? What IF he means ME?

We can stop a moment and examine the man who runs up to him – the one who is commonly referred to as the ‘rich young ruler’ … he knew what to do … he knew the correct answers – he would fit our definition of someone who is … faithful. He followed the law since childhood, since his youth. But he knew there was MORE to it than just that. On some level, he knew.

Here is a deeply religious person so well-attuned to his practices that he can sense that there is more out there than what he has experienced so far. He asks Jesus about the "more," but his question focuses on what needs to be added. He seeks the limit, or the next step, but discovers instead that eternal life entails the surrender of one's whole self.

You’ve heard – and I pretty sure I’ve preached – that Jesus, being the son of God, knew what was in the man’s heart, and pegged him with the command to go and sell everything he had and give the proceeds to the poor because he knew that THAT was the man’s weakness. That may well have been. But I don’t think that was all that was going on. I think it goes even deeper than that.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve heard Jesus again and again tell his disciples that, in order to follow him, they must give up any pretense they have of obtaining ANY reward in this world – reward, or position, or renown – and make themselves nothing. Serving everyone in order to become his followers. The first shall be last and the last shall be first, remember?

But here Jesus seems to put it in terms that we can all too easily understand. Basically, he’s saying in a loving manner (check verse 21), “put your money where your mouth is”. Jesus is not simply leaving it in the abstract – in the ‘apply it as best you see fit’ way that we can sometimes read into what he says. THIS time he is being WAY too specific for us to even begin to try to interpret it in a way that we can draw comfort from. In the middle of the health care debate that is gripping our country, we get to read that Jesus is telling this wealthy man to redistribute his wealth – to change the very NATURE of his relationship with the poor in a FUNDAMENTAL way – one that would make them equal with him in a way that is antithetical – that is opposite – to how he had always been taught to believe – that wealth was a visible symbol of God’s favor on him … and if we think about it, that understanding and that VIEW of wealth has not changed that much in the past two thousand years. We still, with the occasional exception, regard wealth in the hands of a pious, faithful person as a gift from God.

I’m not saying it ISN’T. I AM saying that we need to examine the text and be open to just what it is that Jesus is trying to tell us here.

I would draw your attention to the fact that he didn’t say it is impossible for a rich person to enter heaven … it is just REALLY difficult.

Remember, Jesus was speaking this story into a context where material wealth was a DIRECT indication of God’s favor. The love of God was expressed most directly in one’s physical wellbeing – health, emotional, monetary. So for Jesus to tell someone who WAS rich that God’s love was NOT shown in that manner – indeed – that that very thing – wealth – would KEEP YOU from experiencing God’s love, was (again) revolutionary. For THAT day and age AS WELL AS this one.

So we still need to wrestle with what he means … and that may be summed up in his own words – what is impossible for man is always possible with God.

Peter’s question comes from his being at a loss – he and the other disciples being at a loss – they had also bought into – in reality they had most likely BREATHED it in – the idea that wealth equals favor, and he’d just heard Jesus put that on it’s head. His question was as much for himself and the disciples as it was for the rich young ruler himself – if HE can’t be saved, then who CAN??

Jesus’ answer again points to the fact that salvation BELONGS TO GOD. It is God’s to grant. Nothing we do or don’t do will affect our standing before him. Save our faith and trust in him. Peter points out that he and the others had already given up everything to follow Jesus. And Jesus responds that … THAT is what he expects.

“There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mothers or fathers or children or fields, – that is our definition of wealth - for my sake and for the sake of the good news, 30who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.”

It’s as much a heads-up as it is a warning. This is what you can expect: persecution. Paul spells it out later. Beating. Imprisonment. Suffering. Hardly adulation or popularity.

Welcome to the life of discipleship. It is not for the faint at heart.

What does this mean for us at Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

You tell me.

We are called to serve. How do we do that? How can we do that better or differently? We are called to minister. How do we do that? How can we do that better or differently? We are called to give up what we have. How have we done that? How can we do that better or differently? We are called to be a community of faith sharing the love of Jesus with the world around us. How have we done that? How can we do that better or differently?

This past week, as Cliff commented at the beginning of the service, we had an opportunity to experience not just a renewal or an added time of reflection each evening, but it gave us reminders that we are part of a greater community – both of faith as well as just being a part of a greater community generally speaking. And insofar as the fellowship that was shared on each of those evenings as well as last Sunday morning and around the tables at the luncheon, and during the musical presentation that afternoon, were reflections of what we can hope the Kingdom looks like, we meet those criteria. We minister, we reach out, we love.

The final question I would pose to us all is Jesus’ own question: How would WE respond if WE were the rich young ruler, and Jesus told us to go, sell everything we have and give the proceeds to the poor and come and follow him?

It is not an easy question, because it doesn’t stop. It doesn’t give us a parameter where we can say “good, I’ve done this, I’m done. I’m in. No. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about giving ourselves totally and completely to God.

Pray with me.

Our very nature calls us, O God, makes us want to compartmentalize what it means to serve you. What it means to be a person of faith, practicing in this culture, in this place, at this time in history. And we know that that translates into spending a certain amount of time here at this time and in THIS place each week, and that it also involves other activities during the week. Help us, O God, not to limit your possession of our lives to certain hours, or to certain activities, but that we would be WHOLLY given to you, so that ALL we do, ALL we say, ALL we are, belongs to you.

Through him who gave himself completely for us, even Christ Jesus our Lord.

Bear The Name

Sunday, September 20^th, 2009

Ordinary 26B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Warsaw, VA

Mark 9:38-50

³⁸John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” ³⁹But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. ⁴⁰Whoever is not against us is for us. ⁴¹For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.⁴²“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. ⁴³If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. ⁴⁵And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. ⁴⁷And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, ⁴⁸where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.⁴⁹“For everyone will be salted with fire. ⁵⁰Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

Why did the disciples stick with Jesus?

What was it that compelled them to stay, after hearing him tell them multiple times that following him – staying with him on the path that they were on – would eventually result in their persecution and probably premature deaths?

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks reviewing some episodes in their life as a group where Jesus has been trying to tell them that HE was going to suffer and die, and then telling them that if they REALLY wanted to follow him they were going to have to give up any thought they had for their own safety and comfort and security and give themselves completely to the task of bringing the good news to their neighbors and beyond.

As Mark moves them closer to Jerusalem and Jesus’ coming passion, the teaching Jesus gives them is clearer and clearer. The requirement is: no compromise. All or nothing.

It sounds … intimidating … extreme … off the deep end, doesn’t it?

We’d much rather be moderate … in our actions, in our attitudes, in our practice, and in our … faith? Do we really want to include our faith in htat moderation effect? That broad middle ground can be so much more … inviting … welcoming … comfortable than the extremes.

We’ve seen the outcome of extremism. We are all too familiar with fiery rhetoric and the ranting of madmen that result in the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of lost followers or innocent bystanders.

But we can’t avoid dealing with what Christ tells the disciples and telling us through the Gospel texts: give yourself up and follow me. In ORDER to follow me, you must give your SELF up.

We may have been conditioned to think that that call is all good and well for those who are devoted to full time ministry, or who, like Chris, are committing to spiritual leadership in the church, and that it doesn’t apply to the … rank and file members of the church. After all, we all have lives to live, mouths to feed, business to take care of, we have a life to make for ourselves and for our families…

I like reading familiar passages in different versions of scripture; it helps to see the same old phrases through different lenses, and the one that does that most consistently for me now is Eugene Petersen’s ‘The Message’. Keep in mind, this is a paraphrase of the scriptures – he’s not aiming for word-to-word correspondence to the original languages, he’s trying to help us receive the words of scripture in the same way that those who first heard the words received them – the ideas and concepts are what he is trying to get across – here’s how he puts verses 43 through 48:

“If your hand or your foot gets in God's way, chop it off and throw it away. You're better off maimed or lame and alive than the proud owner of two hands and two feet, godless in a furnace of eternal fire. And if your eye distracts you from God, pull it out and throw it away. You're better off one-eyed and alive than exercising your twenty-twenty vision from inside the fire of hell.”

Can you see what the message is? Jesus isn’t talking about a one-to-one legalistic understanding of losing whatever appendage is involved in the commission of a sin. Just as he did in the Sermon on the Mount, he is going deeper than that – he’s going to where sin originates – to our very hearts.

Because ultimately, that is what God is after: our hearts. God wants us to want to be with God as much as God wants to be with us. We are God’s beloved children, and like any loving parent, God wants to spend time with us, and wants as little to get between us as possible.

So he gives us the example of the total trust, the total commitment that Christ showed in being obedient and trusting God with his life. Literally, completely, totally surrendered to whatever God had for him to do.

And ultimately, it is what we know the disciples did do, and it is what faithful followers of Christ have done through the centuries since he first told the disciples what they would have to do if they wanted to follow him.

And it is what we are acknowledging this morning in the life of Chris Bronner; that he is making the statement to be given to Christ through service to the church.

(ordination to the diaconate of Chris Bronner)

Let’s pray.