Excel in Everything

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

Pentecost 4B

Text: 2 Corinthians 8:7-15

Theme: Giving as a mark of being a Christian

7 Now as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you—so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking. 8 I do not say this as a command, but I am testing the genuineness of your love against the earnestness of others. 9 For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. 10 And in this matter I am giving my advice: it is appropriate for you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire to do something— 11 now finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means. 12 For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has—not according to what one does not have. 13 I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between 14 your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. 15 As it is written, “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.”

What makes us Christ followers?

What makes us Christian?

At what point do we count ourselves as members of the body of Christ on earth? Or does that happen before we ourselves can count?

As baptists, we believe that, in order to become a Christian, one must make a conscious choice - an intentional decision to surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ - and that cannot happen until one is able to reason out - on whatever level one is capable of - the consequences of sin and the place of Christ in our lives. And if that place is to be Lord of our lives, we generally choose to follow Christ’s example and are baptized by immersion. But where does that belief come from? Where does that specific understanding of the way faith comes about and is expressed come from?

Over the next few weeks I’d like to take us on a journey of discovery ... or maybe re-covery into what it is that marks baptists as distinct from other denominations and traditions. I want to make clear that, while I AM firmly a baptist, and proud of my heritage and have come in some ways BACK to that heritage from a point of being ready to leave it, I am not going to wave the baptist banner and tell everyone that would care to listen that the CLOSEST thing to the New Testament Church are these baptists sitting at the corner of Mulberry Road and History Land Highway in Warsaw, Virginia. We are all flawed human beings; you, me, our baptist forbearers, the current and former leadership of our convention and agencies, as well as all the professors in our seminaries - past AND present. So to state unequivocally that we are the only ones that have it right is arrogance that borders on sinful pride. This approach will be one of simply putting forth what marks us and how we are different. Paul calls us to convince and win each other over by speaking clearly and passionately about Jesus, not by coercion or intimidation - I would add, not by fear mongering or belittling other faith traditions as less than they are.

I live and practice my faith through the baptist tradition because my identity in Christ has best and most fully been informed by my upbringing as a baptist. I will freely admit that there are things about our denomination that I struggle with, even disagree with on a pretty fundamental level, but one of the things that I love - REALLY love about being a baptist is knowing that I don’t have to agree lock stock and barrel with ... ANYONE or anyTHING in order to be a baptist, because that happens to be one of the hallmarks of baptist identity; we are neither a hierarchical nor a creedal denomination. We don’t have to agree to a specific understanding of a given series of issues in order to call each other brother and sister, and we answer only to God for those beliefs and those understandings. As a member of a local congregation, there is an element of accountability that enters into how we choose to join in fellowship, but that is a separate issue from our foundational, or core beliefs.

Over the last few years I’ve heard on a fairly regular basis “it’s all the same, we’re all serving the same God.” Let me say at the outset that ... I agree. On some level, all our traditions that have come to be known as denominations within the Christian faith ARE the same in that they are attempts by well-meaning humans to understand and interpret, or put into action how they understand the coming of God in Christ to the world. And we DO all serve the same God. If you are talking about denominational traditions within - or under - the larger umbrella of the Christian faith -- in other words, any given group of people who believe That God was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s self, then we DO all serve the same God.

I will also point out at the outset that how we understand God varies considerably - even within the Christian faith, from Roman Catholic to Eastern Orthodox to United Church of Christ to 40-Gallon Baptists, though we speak of the same God, the very reason we ARE in different denominations is precisely BECAUSE of how differently we view and understand God.

Now, here’s the kicker: that understanding even varies within the various denominations ... and I would venture to say, even within this local congregation. I EVEN feel comfortable saying that our understanding of God varies within each of us as individuals, depending on where we are in life.

Yesterday at Brittany and Trevor’s wedding I read 1st Corinthians 13. If you are familiar with that chapter, you know that towards the end of it, Paul writes, “when I was a child, I talked like a child, thought like a child, reasoned like a child, but when I grew up, I put away childish things.” It is that way with how we each come to understand God - as we grow in our faith as well as chronologically.

So we are going to work through those things that make us baptist in light of what the lectionary gives us each week.

In our text this morning, Paul is writing to the folks at Corinth. It is a young congregation and relatively well-off congregation, due primarily to the fact that it is located in the then-booming metropolis of Corinth.

Paul is making his missionary journeys for many reasons. Primarily, of course, to spread the gospel, but also, he is reconnecting with folks that he has met in previous journeys, as well as collecting contributions to bring back to the folks at the church in Jerusalem, to provide for the needs of the poor in their community as well as those in need in the church.

He’s gotten into some hot water with some people thinking that he was profiting from these collections, so he is trying to respond to that accusation as well as to reiterate his appeal - it comes out most clearly at the end of the section we’re reading this morning - in his appeal to fairness - that starts in verse 13 - he speaks of fairness and balance - that crystalizes in his quote in verse 15: that the one who has much does not have too much, nor the one who has little has too little.

The immediate issue has to do not with the amounts collected or not from either the Macedonian congregations or from the Corinthian one, but it has to do with a generosity of spirit.

Paul is not, here, arguing that God has done so much for us and we ought therefore to show our gratitude by our financial gifts ('and they ought to be big!!'). He is not waving the big stick of God's right to be worshipped with money. There is nothing about paying back God's generosity nor about secret rewards for divine investments such as our own personal prosperity in this life or the life beyond.

On the contrary Paul creates problems for translators by using some of his major theological terms, such as grace and fellowship, to describe his undertaking of fundraising. 8:7, for instance, urges the Corinthians to abound 'in grace' (eg. NRSV: 'in this generous undertaking'). For Paul the same grace (divine generosity) which embraces us in our failure and sin also generates action as we become companions of this grace. In other contexts he talks about love as the fruit of the Spirit. Generous financial giving does not belong to another department. It is part of the outworking of compassion, the fruit of the Spirit. The stewardship invitation is not about moral obligations to pay God back or even to express gratitude, but to engage with God in love in the world. That includes acts of love with our whole being (including our financial resources) for others. Elsewhere Paul talks of his collection for the poor among the saints in Judea. It is outwardly focused.

For Paul stewardship is not about cranking up gratitude to God (with lots of moral pressure and shaming), but about living a Christ-shaped life. Notice how he relates his appeal to the very heart of Christian faith: Christ's life (8:9). As those incorporated into the body of Christ, baptised into the river of his influence, we are, of course (it comes so naturally to Paul to think this way!), to see ourselves as living out the life of God we saw in Christ. Christian stewardship is an appeal to love - to join God's loving (William Loader: First thoughts on Year B Epistle Passages from the Lectionary)

So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church? We can see the cooperative nature of our associations - with other churches in our area, in our commonwealth, in our country, and across the world as an outgrowth of this push on Paul and Titus’s part to travel and bring from any and all churches - not just the big and wealthy ones - an expression of THEIR love for those people that they most likely did not even know, and were unlikely to EVER get to know face to face on this earth ... does that ring a bell for us?

We give because God gave first to us.

Let’s pray.

Open Wide

Open Wide

Pentecost 3B

Text: 2 Corinthians 6:1-13

Title: Open Wide

1 As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. 2 For he says, “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.” See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! 3 We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, 4 but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5 beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6 by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, 7 truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; 8 in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; 9 as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; 10 as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

11We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. 12 There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. 13 In return—I speak as to children—open wide your hearts also.”

It is always an adjustment to come off a retreat or a camp or something that has taken you away from the routine of every day to something other than that -- to a different setting, a different schedule, a different ... purpose, even. The adjustment can sometimes be gentle, and at other times, drastic. Having spent this past week with about two hundred teenagers was a baptism by fire in some ways ... in others, it was a breath of fresh air. In still others, it was a reminder of just how treacherous a time adolescence can be.

I got here this morning and it didn’t quite feel right to begin the morning without doing The Revolution shuffle (with motions) - (twirling hands in front, while leaning forward, then to the side, back, and the other side) “Oooooooh --- Ooooooh -- (alternating jabbing motions with hands - first time down and to the side, second time up and to the other side) do you want a revolutin? (hoooo-hoooo)(high-pitched) I said do you want a revolution? (hoooo-hooo)” with two hundred other kids ... would you like to join me? C’mon! Everybody up! :-)

I talked to Lindsey and Hannah about doing that as a call to worship some Sunday ... we might yet ...

David and Colleen Burroughs - you might recognize the name -- Esther Burroughs -- those of you who have been involved in the Women’s Missionary Union over the years ... she was President of the National WMU for several years, I believe, and Coleen is an MK from Africa. I became friends with them while we were in Seminary together in Louisville. Their camps, the program they’ve put together, is unlike anything I experienced as a child going to camp when we were back in the States, because it is a blending of both discipleship and missions opportunities. They go hand in hand, they are one and the same in terms of the purpose of the camps. You have hands-on missions opportunities.

The group I was with went to a park that was next to a low-income housing project in one of the areas of Monroe, NC, which is a town that might be comparable to Tappahannock. (note: on research, it’s not, it’s MUCH bigger), it’s on the outskirts of Charlotte. We did day camps for a couple of hours each afternoon from about 12:30 to about 2:30 with the kids from the neighborhood -- Anglo, African American and Latino. I had a chance to greet and get to know some of the families there.

The role of the chaperones and group leaders is actually to step back and let the kids do the ministry. It’s giving them the opportunity to experience hands-on what it means to be the presence of Christ.

Our theme for the week was drawn from 2nd Corinthians 5:17-20 (read):

17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 20 So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

The theme interpretations, the way that those passages were applied were profoundly moving.

There were four mission teams formed from the teams that were there; one was helping a woman with some needed repairs around her house , including to her wheelchair ramp, and yard cleanup; two, including mine, were day camps at different low income housing areas, and a fourth was doing some work at a rehabilitation center.

The stories we heard from the children who came to our camps were hair raising. Stories of both parents being imprisoned and the daughter is left living with her stepmother; we heard of how, anytime there was a disagreement -- any disagreement -- the stepmother would call the police on her stepdaughter, stories of gunshots in the streets every night, and of the children staying inside because it was simply not safe to be out; stories of adolescent girls selling themselves just to have money to spend -- just heartbreaking stories.

But to watch the campers interact was that breath of fresh air. I don’t think children naturally have a mistrust of a stranger, especially between children, there is an immediate connection - basketball, t-ball, water sports (that was a big one -- and it happened to fall on the most heavily overcast and coolest day of the week). To watch the kids slide and have unbridled fun was encouraging.

The evening worship was moving. The camp pastor is a young man who has just completed his first year at Truett Seminary, which is connected with Baylor University in Texas. He connected with the kids in a way that was ... intimidating.

So why am I telling you all this about camp?

Our group was the smallest group there. There was one other group that had one more camper than we did, but most if not all of the others had anywhere from ten to maybe 50 campers from their youth group there. It got me to thinking about the disparity in terms of numbers. I got to thinking about why there aren’t more kids at Jerusalem, about why there aren’t more of us in worship at Jerusalem. And then I got to this text, and in reading back through 1st and 2nd Corinthians, and remembering what the situation was, I was reminded of what we are called to do as Christians.

Paul was dealing with a church that was being, in some ways split apart. Folks were being ... I don’t want to say distracted ... they were being pulled away by what they called “Super” Apostles.

You think about Television Evangelists today, you think it is a modern phenomenon; these churches that have stadium-sized auditoriums, and millions of dollars in budgets, and state-of-the-art ... everything, and have tens of thousands of members, and you think it might be a modern thing, and it is really not. There have always been those charismatic -- in the sense that they draw people to them -- speakers who draw crowds, who get people exited and get people to ... connect -- so I don’t want to entirely criticize this -- it’s NOT a criticism -- but for those of us who maybe prefer this smaller, more intimate setting, we struggle with a sense of, “Are we doing it right if we are still this small? Are we being ... faithful?”

Paul is addressing that here. Where he speaks starting in verse three:

We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger;

Does that sound like successful ministry? Not exactly ... and yet ... what portion of scripture remains with us, and from whom? I don’t know that any of the epistles, or any of the gospels are from Apollos ... it makes me wonder ... substance ... the substance of what faith means in terms of living it out, applies whether you belong to a ten-thousand member church or to a church that has less than 300 on the roll and gathers fifty souls on a Sunday. It is a word of encouragement to know that it doesn’t matter -- the size of your faith family -- that what matters is how we individually and as a congregation turn that faith that we believe into practice. And it doesn’t matter whether we send two or whether we send forty children to camp, we are still called to be faithful. And in carrying out that faithfulness, in living that out, we are doing the will of God.

Let’s pray.

God of Grace and God of Glory, you who call all of humanity to you, you who bless the large and the small congregation, we give you thanks that we can know each other, that we can live in each others’ lives, that we can be your presence, in a very concrete, in a very real, in a very palpable way. That your love and your grace and your mercy can be found within each of us. I ask, O God, that you would bless us, that you would dwell in us, that we would let you shine through in everything that we do, Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

If you would like to turn to our hymn of response, it is number 273, “Freely, Freely”

The Open Wide reference in the title of the message is from that last part, where Paul writes

“We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return—I speak as to children—open wide your hearts also.”

The invitation is to not just open wide our hearts to what God wants to do through us, but that we also open wide our hearts to the community around us. WE DO THAT, but it bears repeating. And it bears pointing out that that wideness, that openness is one that we cannot restrict, because God did not restrict it to us.

Let’s stand and sing.

Go Therefore

Trinity Sunday

Text: Matthew 28:16-20

Title: Go Therefore

Theme: “Going” with a ‘posse’ of three

16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.  And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

What is it that defines a person?  Is it something external or internal?  Something objective or subjective?  Something all can agree on or something open to debate?  

To be honest, there are some elements of both wrapped up in what makes us who we are.  To a degree, each person can be - and hopefully IS - self-defined.  We each strive to reach a point of maturity where it is not so much what others think of us that makes us who we are as it is who we know ourselves to BE that gives us our sense of identity.  For a follower of Christ, that identity is wrapped up in how we understand God in Christ to consider us that gives us our core identity.    

There are multiple factors that must be taken into consideration when that sense of identity is being formed; race, family history, place of birth, language, culture, income, education, friendships, work, social networks ... and faith.  

The question I’d like to address here today is, what place does faith play in our sense of identity here, at Jerusalem, as a unique family of faith, working out our salvation with fear and trembling, striving to be Christ’s presence in Emmerton, on the Northern Neck and beyond.

Being a people who have historically been identified as Baptists, we bring into this sense of identity all the history of our faith tradition: our connection to a free church tradition that tells us that each congregation is independent, free to decide for ourselves what to believe and how to practice that belief.  Our belief in soul competency: that each individual soul is capable, through the prompting of the Holy Spirit, to enter into engagement with God and to be transformed directly by the action of God in his or her life, with only Christ as mediator, no one else.  We believe in the inspiration of scripture as the word of God, applicable to every aspect of our lives, to be approached with reverence and honest questioning, to be studied intensely and deeply, and to be open to what God may have for us in different ways through the different seasons of our lives from the same text, never setting those words in stone because the word of God is a living thing, capable of speaking in different ways and times to different people and situations.  

We also, as a people born of a tradition called specifically Southern Baptist, acknowledge our own history in that we were formed as a denomination due in large part to the defense of slave-owning missionaries.  While we do not disavow our missiological heritage, we have come to an understanding of the abhorrent nature of the institution of slavery and are mindful of the destructive patterns it rooted in us in terms of racism, segregation and profound injustices that were carried out or allowed to be perpetuated simply because that was “the way things are.”  In owning that history, we also renounce any justification of those practices that set man-made barriers between us and fellow believers of different races and cultures simply because we ARE of different races or cultures.  

In his great commission, Christ’s command is for us to go and make disciples, baptize, and teach.  The Great Commission is most informed, best exemplified, by Jesus‘ metaphors found earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 5, verses 13 & 14:  for the Christian life as being one of salt and light.  Being salt and being light is ... just THAT ... a state of BEING.  It is not, strictly speaking, the act of DOING something, though that is not excluded, it is something that has to do more with who we ARE as Christ followers, we are to BE like salt -- seasoning and preserving, we are to BE light:  casting away darkness by simply BEING present.  

We do not all have the skills or stamina to mend broken lives in distant lands, or even in nearby cities and towns, but we ARE as are all followers of Christ, empowered to become like those first followers were - salt and light to the world immediately around them: devoid of a sense of taste that distinguishes right from wrong and sinking in sometimes seemingly ever-increasing darkness.  We see evidence of this lack of a sense of right and wrong at least once a week when the Northern Neck News comes out, and just inside the front page is the listing of reports from the county sheriff’s offices in Richmond County and the surrounding counties on the Neck.  

What does it mean to make someone a disciple of Christ?  For that, we need to look at what the original disciples did and were.  They were Jesus‘ constant companions.  For three years, they spent nearly every waking moment with Jesus, listening to him teach, watching him perform miracles, face down the purveyors of injustice and warped religion of the day, and they heard him interact with God in a way that was unheard of before.  They had front-row seats to the unfolding acts of God in the world as a present and accessible God.  And even with all that, they didn’t quite ‘get it‘ until AFTER the pivotal act of God in history had taken place.  

So if we, as followers of Christ, are supposed to go and make disciples of all nations, then we are even more burdened with the task of being Christ’s presence in the world.  If those first eleven disciples were disciples due in large part to their being exposed to Jesus nearly every waking hour of the day, then our charge is even clearer:  We are to be Christ’s representatives, models, emulators, emissaries, ambassadors every waking moment, and especially in the presence of new or potentially new believers ... not that we are to relax and let our guard down when we are NOT in the presence of those same fledgling believers, or even potential believers, it is simply another reference to the fact that we are not only talking about beliefs and a faith that demand action, but we are talking about a way of life, a state of being, an identity born of the spirit of God that infuses who we are, that redefines us into being children of God above and beyond all else that would lay claim to our allegiance.   

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?  It means that if we are to be seriously about the business of the Kingdom of God, whether that be right outside these doors, in the surrounding community or in one of the surrounding counties or beyond, we have to take to heart one three-letter word in our passage this morning:  ‘all’.  

Both in the sense that our call is to take it to all people -- all nations -- as well as everywhere -- our mandate is not simply geographical, it is universal.  And insofar as it is unrestricted we are to likewise seek to be unrestricted ourselves:  in our outreach, in our welcoming, in our interconnectedness, we are commanded by Jesus to set aside those things that separate us in favor of that which unites:  the Love of God in Christ, calling us to sacrifice, to service, to fellowship, to establish and maintain bonds of love and fraternity that transcend the things that the world considers insurmountable differences.  We are called to unite with our brothers and sisters in worshipping God through that living of our lives that is our true worship - not just that which is limited to an hour or so on a given Sunday morning, but that worship that informs, that marks, that BRANDS the living of our days and that touches the lives of everyone around us.  

Christ’s Great Commission is the ongoing work of the Kingdom that begins in each of our lives and continues throughout our environment -- that touches everything and everyone we know.              

Let’s pray.