I Have Said

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Trinity Sunday, Year C

Jerusalem Baptist Church, (Emmerton) Warsaw VA

John 15:26-16:15

²⁶ When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. ²⁷You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.

16 I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. ²They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. ³And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. ⁴But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them. “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. ⁵But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ ⁶But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts.

⁷Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. ⁸And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: ⁹about sin, because they do not believe in me; ¹⁰about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; ¹¹about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned. ¹²“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. ¹³When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. ¹⁴He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. ¹⁵All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

There’s a rule of thumb worth jotting down when studying scripture:  If a phrase appears three times in close succession, it might be good to sit up and take notice.  In the passage this morning, Jesus does that in the first 6 verses of chapter 16 of the Gospel according to John.  So, we sit up and take notice. 

When we do that, we first pull back from the minutiae, the details of the verses and get a sense of the context from which we have lifted this section and read it.  In John’s telling of the Gospel, virtually the whole second half of the book is dedicated to the last two days of Jesus’ life and public ministry.  This is towards the beginning of that part.  Jesus is speaking to his disciples after having shared supper with them – the last supper, as it were – this whole section is made up of extended discourses by Jesus delivered to his disciples.  In some ways you almost get a sense that he is cramming the last doses of wisdom into them because he knows he will not be with them much longer.  And he says that pretty plainly, repeatedly, even in this brief section – in chapter 16 verses 5, 7 and 10 (read underlined phrases).  It is almost painfully repetitive in retrospect, looking at it and reading it from our perspective – post resurrection – but it underscores the degree to which Jesus sensed the disciples’ resistance to the idea that he, their Rabbi, mentor and Master, should be the victim of a betrayal that would result in his being tried and found guilty of blasphemy and treason and executed by crucifixion.  And yet it is a recurring theme in each of the Gospels to varying degrees, that the disciples didn’t ‘get’ that Jesus had to give himself for them in order to fulfill his purpose for coming to earth.    

Now we move back in a little closer to the text, to see just what it is that Jesus is saying.  In the first instance, he says he’s told them what he has told them to keep them from stumbling. 

Imagine, if you will, an underground grotto, a tunnel, or a cave.  No lights, no lamps, no skylights.  Solid darkness.  Someone has walked through it often enough to be able to navigate the more-or-less finished floors.  More or less means they have only partially been leveled.  There are still some dips, there are still some rocks that were too big to move out of the way whose points still come up through the dirt floor and make for a nasty surprise if you don’t know they are there. 

This person who has the knowledge of what it is like to walk through the cave without the aid of a light offers to tell you how to avoid knocking your head or slamming into a wall or tripping on a rise in the floor… would you want to listen to what he or she has to say?  Common sense would say yes, wouldn’t it?  In some ways this is what Jesus was offering the disciples.  He knew they were going to be facing some of the same experiences that he was getting ready to face in the next few hours, so he tells them what they need to know in order to get through it.  He knows they will be thrown out of their places of worship.  He knows they will most likely be killed.  And he knows WHY it will happen: because of him.  Because of the Good News that God is no respecter of persons, that salvation is offered to all freely, but that it comes at a price. 

Jesus gave his life for ours.

Not coerced, not blackmailed, not negotiated away from him in exchange for our salvation, but freely offered, freely given.  And that brings us to the second and third instances.  Jesus knows that it will seem to the disciples – and all those who will be persecuted for the sake of the Gospel – that in those times when they are facing their darkest moment – even to the point of death – it will FEEL like those forces arrayed against the Gospel message are winning.  And it would seem to make sense, wouldn’t it?  After all, we can’t DO any more once we’re dead, right? 

While they may not have been able to actively engage in the propagation of the Gospel after death, HOW those martyrs of the faith faced death, HOW they dealt with persecution and torture and ridicule DID make all the difference in the world.  It was their witness – their testimony to their faith as they faced those final moments that impressed the very people who were doing the persecuting, the torturing and the killing that eventually began to turn people to the truth of the Gospel. 

And Jesus includes that truth in the very next breath.  He tells the disciples he is going away, but his absence does not mean that they are being abandoned – in fact it means the opposite – in order for them to remain connected to Jesus he is going to have to leave them to allow the Holy Spirit to come to them. 

And here is where we see the relational heart of the Gospel.   Jesus says he is returning to the Father, and that the advocate – the comforter – the Holy Spirit is coming in his place.  But whereas Jesus was constrained by his very physicality – that he in fact had a body like you and me – it limited his ability to enter into communion with his followers – in other words, just as we cannot know each other’s hearts because we cannot enter into each other’s hearts and read each other’s minds, Jesus, while scripture tells us he COULD tell what a person’s true heart was, he could not necessarily be aware of everything that was going on around the world while in his physical form.  The Holy Spirit has no such constraints.  Jesus could only be in one place at one time.  The Holy Spirit has no such constraint.  Jesus had to rely on what people could hear come out of his mouth in order to communicate to them the will of God.  The Holy Spirit had no such constraint.

To put it in another way, it is the difference between going to hear a speech in a civic center, or watching it, along with the rest of the nation or perhaps the world, on television or listening to it on the radio – everyone tuned to the same station and listening intently. 

There is a reach that the Holy Spirit has that would elude us if we relied solely on what we could hear from an individual or what we could figure out simply from reading scripture. 

Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit is our intercessor – our go-between between God and us – that communicates for us when we don’t have the words to express what our hearts are yearning for – and that at the same time he – the Holy Spirit – serves as the one who communicates God’s life and word to US. 

I have to tell you, I struggle with using the male pronoun because, being Spirit, there is no gender attached to the third person of the Trinity, and yet, in the English language there is no gender-neutral way of referring to a person as anything other than ‘he’ or ‘she’.  Please know that even though I may not employ the gender specific pronoun that does not take away the personhood of the Holy Spirit.  He or She is still as personal as you or I.  The Spirit knows, cares, moves, prompts, challenges, and generally treats us like our best friend would – always calling us to be and to do our best, always expecting the best from us and loving us regardless of whether or not our best is what is given, done, or experienced. 

So on this Trinity Sunday, as we celebrate the continuing presence of the Holy Spirit of God in our lives and in our midst, I would invite you to remember that critical aspect of our faith: that we are not simply following a life-ethic, or the teachings of a prophetic, religious genius who was killed at a relatively young age in a backwater territory of the Roman Empire nearly two thousand years ago.  That we are not simply taking those teachings and stripping them down to the underlying principles in order to make them relevant in today’s culture.

We are, in claiming our faith in Jesus Christ, claiming that we are in relationship – in a living, changing, deepening, broadening GROWING RELATIONSHIP with him.  And THAT overrides everything else. 

A brother whom I deeply respect came up to me earlier this week and told me this: Christianity has nothing to do with philosophy.  It has to do with knowing what God wants us to do and doing it.  I told him I couldn’t agree more.  But I would go a little further in the explanation, beginning with a question:  How do we know what God wants us to do?  Where is our clearest picture – our clearest image of God?

In Jesus Christ. 

So we get to know Jesus, and in that knowing, we get to know God.  And we find out that God wants us to be in relationship with God just as Jesus was in relationship with God, just as the Holy Spirit is in relationship with God. 

And what clicks for us is that God has provided, in the person of Jesus and through his CURRENT absence – a way to BE in relationship with him – THROUGH the Holy Spirit!

So here is where we become more than observers at the party, standing along the sides of the room, leaning against the wall and wondering how it would feel to get out on the floor and dance… because God in Christ through the Holy Spirit is extending a hand to each of us and saying come, let’s dance together!

Let’s pray.

Amazed and Perplexed

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Pentecost C

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Acts 2:1-21

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ²And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.⁵Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹ Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” ¹² All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” ¹³But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”¹⁴But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. ¹⁶No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ¹⁷‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. ¹⁸ Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. ¹⁹And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. ²⁰The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. ²¹Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

The birth of a baby is a wondrous, glorious thing.  Let me get that out first and foremost.  It is the closest we will ever be to actual magic in this lifetime.  The expectations leading up to the event, the countdown, as it were, DURING the birth, and the final, squalling, wriggling outcome was one of the most entrancing experiences of my life.  It was also, objectively speaking, pretty gruesome.  The pushing, the sweating, the blood, the rest of what accompanies a birth … I can understand how some fathers don’t remain conscious through the whole thing, or how some lose the last meal they ate in the middle of it, and how others, as much as they love their wives and are excited about the coming child, have no interest in witnessing that child’s actual entrance into the world. 

We’ve established a tradition in our family, that at some point during each person’s birthday, their birth story is told… with Hannah, we talk about how we had Chinese food a few days before, because someone told us that eating Chinese food would trigger the contractions, or how Leslie and Angela went walking around the mall for several hours in the hopes that the exertion would trigger the contractions.  We end up talking about how we stayed up playing cards on the bed in the soon-to-be baby room as we timed the contractions, wondering if this was finally IT the night before she was born.  We include the details that right after she came out, as the doctor was placing her on Leslie’s tummy, she flung her arm out and splashed Leslie in the face with … stuff … and that Leslie was surprised at the saltiness… little things that stick in our memories.

Today we celebrate the birth of … us, the church, the body of Christ on earth.  And we have the good fortune of not having to rely on our fading memories of the event, or on the verbal variations that can happen in oral tradition.  We have a record of the event right here, right in front of us. 

And that birth, just like our own, or that of our children or grandchildren or nieces and nephews, was full of wonder and miracles.  The sound of a rushing wind, tongues as of fire above peoples’ heads, and then folks with no formal training or perhaps even exposure to a language beginning to speak it fluently enough to draw the attention of those who had spoken those languages all their lives.   

It was also full of the not-so-pretty stuff.  The disagreements, the disputes over the validity of claims that the Gospel was for Gentiles AS GENTILES – not necessarily first converted to Judaism, or the persecution that those first followers of Christ would suffer all came together to make for a less-than-idyllic entrance of a newborn faith into the world. 

And just as WE mark the first smile, the first coo, the first word, the first rollover, the first step, it bears noting and remembering those early days of the church – as Christ’s body began to find it’s legs, flex it’s arms, reach out it’s hands to the marginalized and those without a voice in the first century Roman Empire. 

So why was it such an amazing thing?  Why, if the people of God had the word of God for all those centuries, did this new thing have to happen and begin to turn everything upside down, including those who had been entrusted with the preservation of that word of God that had been handed down to them from the time of Moses forward? 

Simply put, they had forgotten that the served a living God – an active God, a God who was interested and cared about how they felt, how they acted, how they lived, and what moved them.  A God who wanted to be in relationship with them. 

Here’s the thing about relationships.  They can be … messy, sometimes unpredictable, sometimes incredibly comforting, and more often than not, surprising.  It is no different when we enter into relationship with God through Jesus Christ.  Just when we think we have him pegged, and know what he is going to do next, God brings to our attention something so radically different that was so far off our radar screen as to make it incomprehensible to us at first glance … and it is only in retrospect that we realize what was happening and understand it … perhaps in greater or lesser part, on rare occasion fully. 

When you are in relationship with someone, those relationships that most energize you are the ones that are constantly evolving, constantly growing, constantly changing.  It’s the same person you always knew, but as you get to know each other more and more, the fullness of that relationship and the richness and depth of it is something that you come to look forward to rather than dread. 

It is that way in our growing relationship with God.  Each day brings a new experience, a new insight, a new lesson.  And I do believe that with each measure of growth that WE experience, God takes utter delight in us, even as we delight in our own children.

So we tell our birth story, and we remember where we were, and we see where we have come, and we are both relieved and challenged.  Relieved to be able to look back and know that God has been with us, has guided, taught, directed, begun to form us into the image of his likeness in the person of Jesus.  But just as firmly, we are challenged, because we see how far we have to go, we are aware of our shortcomings, our faults, our petty squabbling, our infighting, and we realize that, if we are to be called Christ’s body, then we must exercise to keep in shape – those who have been gifted with leadership, to lead, with teaching, to teach, with prophecy, to prophesy.  And the list goes on and on. 

Will we answer the challenge?       

Let’s pray.

That They May All Be One

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Easter 7C

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

John 17:20-26

²⁰"I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, ²¹that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²²The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, ²³I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

²⁴Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. ²⁵“Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. ²⁶I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

How do you define unity? 

Looking up some definitions, I came up with the following:

1. The state of being one; oneness.

2. A whole or totality as combining all its parts into one.

3. The state or fact of being united or combined into one, as of the parts of a whole; unification.

4. Absence of diversity; unvaried or uniform character.

5. Oneness of mind, feeling, etc., as among a number of persons; concord, harmony, or agreement.

6. (In literature and art) A relation of all the parts or elements of a work constituting a harmonious whole and producing a single general effect.

Did any of those definitions resonate more or less with your idea of what unity means? 

There are, obviously, differing definitions of the term.  Would we apply different expectations of what we would expect unity to mean depending on what we were talking about? 

If we were talking about food, for example, say, milk.  I would expect the definition that would apply to milk to be something like number 4.  I want my milk to be ALL milk.  I don’t want any more water in it than is found naturally in milk, I certainly don’t want any fuel oil or chemical substance mixed in with it.  I would welcome the “absence of diversity” as a part of the definition of the unity of what I would pour into my glass or my cereal in the morning. 

If I were talking about my clothing, I could live with quite a bit of diversity in the components of my clothing.  Though I prefer 100% cotton, Polyester-cotton blends for dress shirts, or pants, or other items of clothing are economical, still feel natural, and can save a ton of time in terms of ironing.

But we’re not going to be talking about unity of food or clothing this morning, are we?  We’re talking about the unity in the sense of faith, of belief, of purpose as it relates to our understanding of being part of the body of Christ on the earth.  Which is, to put it mildly, a horse of a different color.

There’s some clarification that needs to happen before we even begin to approach an attempt to answer the question now as it relates to faith.  We need to decide if we are talking about unity at the beginning of the process or unity at the end – as a conclusion to or as a result of the process.  If you want to phrase it this way, do we want many to become indistinguishable in their faith or are we looking for a unity in spite of the ‘many-ness’ at the point of origin?

There are some who understand this as a black and white issue.  Unity means … unity.  Means uniformity, means compliance and agreement in all matters, with no dissent, no variation, no wandering from the normative definition of the subject matter.  That is a valid understanding of the issue.  It has to be because it is part of the definition of the word, and thus must be allowed to be part of the understanding of what it means to be one within the body of Christ.  It is simple without being simplistic.  It is understanding that there is a greater good to be found in the ‘no diversity’ view of the body of Christ because you know what to expect, you know what is understood when you are using all the terms and phrases that a common language provides – the language of faith – and therefore there is value in subsuming – in making yourself subject – even though you may in the beginning be in DISagreement with a given position you willingly surrender that initial disagreement in favor of maintaining that ‘no diversity’ understanding of ‘unity’ of the greater body. 

But, as you can imagine, there is another view, a different understanding of the issue.  And it has to do with where we place the ‘unity’.  If we place the unity at the end, as a result of the process, then the expectation – and the only allowed outcome – would be a unity of understanding, a ‘diversity-free’ understanding of faith. 

But if we were to place the unity at the beginning, then we have to modify our understanding of what the word was intended to mean.          

It might be helpful to explore a little bit about the language of Jesus’ prayer.         

Brian Stoffregen in his Bible Study resources website puts it this way:

I want to look more closely at the phrase in v. 23, which the NRSV translates "that they may be completely one."

The verb teleioo is usually used in reference to Jesus "completing" or "finishing" the work God has given him to do (4:34; 5:36; 17:40). A related word teleo is the last word Jesus utters from the cross in John, "It has been finished!" (19:30).

Literally, teleioo means "to make teleios' -- that is, "to make perfect, to make complete, to make whole (i.e., unblemished)."

Teleioo in our verse is a perfect passive subjunctive: "so that they might have been made perfect, might have been made complete, might have reached perfection." (see 1 John 2:5; 4:12, 17, 18 where the perfect passive is used -- which may be translated as a present).

The passive in our verse indicates that it is God who is perfecting us ("into" our one-ness). The perfect indicates that it is something that has been accomplished in the past and its effects are still with us, but the subjunctive indicates that it is a wish that it "might" or "may" happen -- often pointing to a future event.

Questions related to this are: "Are we to wait for God to perfect our unity?" or "Has our unity already been perfected by God and God is waiting for us to realize it?" What are the roles God plays in creating our unity? What are the roles we need to play in creating (or actualizing) that unity?

Those questions are what I’d like to explore with you briefly this morning. 

Are we to wait for God to perfect our unity?  Insofar as we understand that unity in a limited sense, and express it in a limited sense, the answer is yes, we have no choice but to wait for God to perfect it.  Paul expressed it well in his letter to the church at Corinth when he said ‘now we see through a glass, darkly, but then we shall see face to face’.  That applies here as well. 

Has our unity already been perfected by God through Jesus Christ, and God is waiting for us to realize it?  The answer to that is also yes.  The whole movement of the Kingdom of God on earth is a ‘now and not yet’ movement.  We live in a place where we experience both the imperfect here and now, but we also experience the hope of the ‘not yet-ness’ of the Gospel, and on blessed occasion are able to catch a glimpse of that coming Kingdom. 

What role has God played in creating our unity? God as the creator and being a part of the Trinity has already engaged in the most necessary part of that creation – in and through the person of the Holy Spirit. 

Does God continue to PLAY a role in creating our unity?  We would need to pose the question to ourselves.  If we take the presence of God to be a fact, and the work of the Holy Spirit to be a fact as well, then I think we have to admit that God’s role through the Holy Spirit is a continuing and very active role in creating our unity. 

So here’s the rub.  We’ve had all this talk about unity in the body of Christ – the Church.  But we can look around us – even within our own association – at very recent events that scream DISunity, that highlight the discord that can be apparent even in the smallest groups of believers.  We can search back into our own individual histories and remember events in the life of our churches – those we’ve been a part of in the past or even this very church, and with very little if any effort recall an instance where the spirit was anything BUT one of unity.  We can go back in history and recall events on a State, Regional, National or even international level that resulted in what was generally regarded as a prime example of DISunity, that may have even resulted in wars or decades of struggle and bloodshed.  Events that resonate even across the centuries as glaring examples of an almost complete ABSENCE of unity.

My question is this:  in thinking of those instances, what was the starting point, the presumption of understanding, when it came to the unity aspect?  Was it a rallying cry that the unity be achieved in the aftermath?  That the purpose of the conflict was the gaining of conformity and non-deviation in understanding or in purpose?

We have to ask that question because the first will strive to eliminate differing understandings, the second will allow and even welcome them. 

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

As Baptists, we have historically been a people who understand and accept that there will be differences of opinion and interpretation in matters of faith and practice.  It doesn’t mean that we always celebrate them, and it certainly doesn’t mean that those differences don’t lead to conflict and even pain and sorrow, and deep division within the body.  Our present national condition as a denomination reflects just such a conflict’s aftermath.  We have two state bodies that relate to the national body, we have two national bodies that to a large degree were born of the different definitions of the word “unity”, and we have an international body of Baptists that has also had to struggle with what definition will apply to all the member bodies from nations around the world as they relate to each other. 

I would urge us all to heed the Apostle Paul’s words to the Roman church, (12:18) “if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” and focus on the unity from which we are all born, whatever denomination, or stripe WITHIN a denomination we belong to – that of the Lordship of Christ.  

Hear these words of Paul to the Colossian church (3:12-15) (ESV): 

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, ¹³ bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. ¹⁴ And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. ¹⁵ And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.  

The church is no stranger to conflict and discord and differences of understandings.  That goes without saying.  I would venture to say that the majority of us have at some point in our lives been on either the sending or the receiving end of some of that disagreement and discord and conflict. 

I truly believe that if we were to accept the fact that there will, in fact BE disagreements and differing understandings TO BEGIN WITH, and if we are prepared to deal with them in a respectful, honest manner, never losing sight of the fact that even despite those differences the main purpose for ALL of those involved is the extension of the Kingdom of God, there might actually be a noticeable change in the perception that the world has about us.  And our effectiveness as witnesses to the presence and the action of God in the world would increase immeasurably.

May we be found so faithful.

Let’s pray.

My Peace I Give To You

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Easter 6C

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

John 14:23-29

²³Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. ²⁴Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.

²⁵”I have said these things to you while I am still with you. ²⁶But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. ²⁷Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

²⁸You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. ²⁹And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.

As we draw closer to the celebration of the birth of the Church – Pentecost – we are going to do a little bit of hopping around in the scriptures.  Last week’s passage had us following Peter to defend his vision from God to reach out to the Gentiles to the folks in the Jerusalem church who thought that to be a Christian meant that you first had to become a Jewish believer and all that THAT entailed, in order to follow Christ.  Peter’s defense convinced them – at least momentarily – of the fact that the Gospel was for everyone and everyone was to be received INTO the Gospel – regardless of whether or not they were a follower of the Hebrew Law. 

Today, we are traveling back in time to the conversation Jesus had with his disciples during their final meal together.   Jesus in John is as plain and open as he can be about what is going to happen to him and why he is going to go through the things that he went through.  That is the single most obvious difference between John and the other three gospels.  The short term for it is that it is full of ‘I am’ statements from Jesus.  “I am the resurrection and the life”, “I am the bread of Life”, things like that are strewn throughout the Gospel, very unlike the secret Messiah we find in Mark. 

All that to say, Jesus is much more … assertive, I guess we could call it, in the Gospel of John.  Here he has just reiterated to the disciples that he is going to leave them, and their response, predictably, has been one of consternation combined with unease, if not outright fear.  If he is leaving, what’s going to happen with all the plans we had for taking back the Kingdom of Judah, of kicking out the Romans, of reestablishing the Davidic Dynasty? 

Jesus’ response is essentially “haven’t you been listening? Remember what I told you – especially remember what I am telling you NOW – so that you will look back on this moment and remember what I said and realize what what I am saying MEANS.” 

And what he spells out for them is a promise of presence through the person of the Holy Spirit. 

Initially, in his response, Jesus describes who his followers are – how they will be recognized, if you will.  And that recognition doesn’t depend on what you are wearing, or whom you know, how much you make or where you live.  It has everything to do with love – with HOW and WHOM you love.  Jesus’ words are piercingly clear:   

“Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. ²⁴Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.

The bond that is established between the believer and the Godhead is no longer dependent on the keeping the Mosaic law; it is based on love.  Jesus makes it clear also that, if there was any doubt as to who this mandate comes from, it is not ‘just’ him – it is from God. 

Beginning in verse 25, John uses the term ‘Paraclete’ to begin to refer to the Holy Spirit.  The word has multiple meanings: while the literal meaning of the related verb (parakaleo) means "to call to one's side" -- usually asking the other for help -- the noun took on a legal meaning as "helper in court". Thus we have translations like "counselor," "advocate," or "one who speaks for another" as well as the (too) general translation of "helper".  If the paraclete is the helper in court, whose helper is he?  Is he ours, or is he Jesus’?  Traditionally, we tend to think of the Holy Spirit as being our helper, and this does seem to be the case in some if not all instances.  But there is some evidence that the Holy Spirit is also helping JESUS communicate with US when we might be particularly stubborn or thick-headed.  In verse 26,    

The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.

In this instance, as well as in the following chapter, the Spirit serves to communicate on behalf of Jesus or in the place of Jesus.  This advocate is one that not only guides us, but he also longs for our continued engagement in the holy dance that is our relationship to God. 

Jesus’ next words are to what were either the spoken or unspoken fears and worries that the disciples had – he gives them his peace.  Think about it.  HIS PEACE.  Jesus has a pretty clear understanding about what is about to happen to him – the arrest, the beating, the torture, and the crucifixion itself… and yet he faces it with equanimity.  He does not shy away from it, he accepts it as necessary for his purpose on Earth to be fulfilled.  And it is that same attitude that he has that he offers to his disciples.  He makes it clear that the peace they are going to receive is not what the world would consider peace, it is not the absence of conflict.  He knows that they are going to be facing some of the same things that he will be facing in the next few hours over the rest of their lives – some longer, some shorter – but that absence of conflict would not be among their experiences. 

“Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”     

At varying times in our lives, these words either land and sink into our psyche or they bounce right off, and we go right on being troubled or being afraid.  Isn’t that the case with most of us?  It seems almost an exercise in futility to read through them again, or find the other passages where the initial and recurring word from God is ‘Do Not Be Afraid!’ 

We COULD spend some time itemizing what it is we are most readily afraid of:  the unknown, change, the stranger, a new direction in life that we are unwilling to allow to disrupt our day-to-day existence … there can be any number of things.  I was looking at some pictures that a friend posted of Antofagasta last night, and one of them was of a beautiful sunset over the ocean – the sun was setting behind a cloud bank that was out to sea some distance from the coast, and I commented to him that I remembered watching those sunsets, and then at night I would have nightmares of the clouds actually being giant tsunamis that were coming to eat away at the beach and then the land and finally our house… I remember many a night waking up in a cold sweat from frantically trying to claw my way up a crumbling sand bank… it is amazing how we can turn the most beautiful things into a source of fear and distrust.      

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton, on Mother’s Day, 2010?

What is it that causes us to worry, to be troubled, to be afraid?  There are significant changes going on in our national life as well as on the international stage – things that have been happening over the last 7 years as well as things that have been building over the last 7 decades if not longer. 

Our national dialogue has taken on a frantic tone in many instances, and the voices that seem to be heard loudest are those that speak to incite fear and anger and mistrust, that seem to thrive at the prospect of provoking increasingly violent conflict not in the political process, but apparently in our very cities and streets. 

In light of that, what do Jesus’ words to NOT be troubled, to NOT be afraid, mean to us and for us?

This may be a time when we would do well to take Jesus’ words both literally AND figuratively.  Literally insofar as we are being called to face the world with a serene spirit – a calm disposition that would see beyond the hype and the clamor to the need and desire that only Christ can fill in the lives of those who are searching for peace in the earthly sense; and figuratively in the sense that we have been charged with responding as Christ responded – not as the world expected, but as God called.

May we be so faithful.

Let’s pray.

That I Could Hinder God

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Easter 5C

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Acts 11:1-18

“Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. ²So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, ³saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” ⁴Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, ⁵“I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. ⁶As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. ⁷I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ ⁸But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ ⁹But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ ¹⁰This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. ¹¹At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. ¹²The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. ¹³He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; ¹⁴he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ ¹⁵And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. ¹⁶And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ ¹⁷If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” ¹⁸When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”

“I’m never going back into that church again!”  “Those women were talking and they KNEW that I could hear them, and they said I shouldn’t be coming because I was a sinner, living in sin, and should be ashamed of walking into the service as though nothing was wrong.”

The woman sitting across the living room from me wasn’t expressing sorrow or despair at the fact that she’d decided to not go back to ‘that church’, she was more simply stating a fact.  She had already written off the ‘women’ whom she had overheard talking as irrelevant to her life, self-righteous busybodies who seemed to ignore their own faults and failures and instead talk about hers.  She wasn’t, I don’t think, ignoring the fact that her living situation was less than the ideal, nor was she defending it as righteous.  She has had enough church upbringing to know that what she is doing falls short of the moral rules of the church, but that is not enough to make her seriously contemplate changing that same situation. 

The struggle in that situation for me was how to respond.  If I came out in agreement with the women, I would probably come across just as they did, and in addition would have been a terribly rude guest in her home, which she has graciously opened to me and my family on several occasions over the past few months.  If I defended her as being free from fault, I would not have been true to my own convictions about what constitutes an acceptable or less than acceptable relationship in the eyes of the church.  In the end, rowdy children redirected the conversation and kept us from going back to the issue.  The woman has a standing invitation to join us at either of the services we offer.

This issue, this question of what constitutes one as being a follower of Christ – an ACCEPTABLE follower of Christ – has been in question from the earliest days – from the beginnings – of the church.  It was an ongoing debate from the moment Jesus started proclaiming the Gospel – priests and scribes that we read about throughout the Gospel narratives as well as through Paul’s letters and the rest of the New Testament provided an ongoing point of contention with the thrust of the Gospel … it seems to have been a persistent and recurring argument… and if the truth be told, it is one that carries forward even into today.          

We have to face this question – time and again – because it keeps cropping up – time and again.  Even as the established religious structure of the day in first century Palestine believed it had a clear understanding of who was in and who was out, it has been so throughout the centuries SINCE then – the church has taken it upon herself to decide who is in and who is out of the good graces of God.  The problem is, I’m not sure it is or ever was our place to say who was in and who was out.  As much as I would like to point to a scripture where Jesus says “you have that say” … the examples that we have from Jesus himself go against any notion that he came to give us that responsibility as part of his great commission. 

In terms of who is to be the intended recipient of the Gospel, there is very little to bolster the idea that it is intended for ‘good people’ or ‘upstanding citizens’ … we can and have easily fallen into the trap of limiting the message for a select group – those who had stable employment, solid families, the right name, the right background, the right emotional sensibilities, the right … “you fill in the blank” … and for what were very practical reasons. 

As an institution based in a given community, our churches were for centuries the backbone of society.  Our weekly schedules rotated around the duties of the land and the responsibilities with the church.  That is a laudable effort, a worthwhile pursuit.  A necessary part of socializing a community and its members into what can become a cohesive, strong, and enduring entity.

But did we lose something in the process?  Did we lose sight of the expansiveness of the Gospel in our efforts to maintain order and discipline?  Did we stifle the movement of the Spirit in selecting who we allowed to join us in worship and then in fellowship over the years? 

The Pharisees and Sadducees and Levites had made it their sacred duty over the centuries to guard the purity of the temple, to maintain the separation of the Holy from the unclean, and the result was that … worship became … wrote, became formulaic.  You are guilty of such-and-such a sin, sacrifice such and such an animal or animals and say the required prayers, and you will once again be ‘right with God’.  What was required of you was your time and some effort, originally these were designed to bring you to a point of confession – to a point of contrition and a turning back to God, and a reengaging in the relationship that that entailed, but over the years it became more about the doing instead of the being, so you put IN the time and the effort, but your heart was not engaged.  There was very little relationship to begin with, and it only shriveled as the time went by.  

That is what was so disconcerting to them about Jesus when he came.  He knew the time and effort requirement, he knew it inside and out.  But he never lost his awareness of the other, deeper connection that God was looking for in that worship prescription – he never disengaged his heart.  And the form and the style of worship took their appropriate place in their context: a secondary place.  

Peter was raised a practicing Jew.  It would be similar to me saying, Elmer was raised a practicing Northern Necker.  I know that’s not the right term, but go with me for a minute.  His sense of what should and shouldn’t be has been a part of his environment – ingrained in everything he’s ever been taught, seen, been associated with or heard speak of – since he was BORN. 

Now, imagine someone coming along, someone with an incredible amount of charisma, authority, and presence, and they tell Elmer that, while everything he’s known all his life IS a PART of what should and shouldn’t be, there’s this critical piece missing – so critical that in fact, for his whole life, Elmer has in fact MISSED THE POINT. 

What kind of response do you think that person would receive from Elmer?  Unless he was a particularly resilient and receptive individual, I suspect that Elmer would have a hard time either accepting or adjusting to what this person was saying.   He might, in fact, react negatively or even violently to being confronted with such a radical notion. 

That was in essence the position Simon Peter found himself in when he went to sleep in Joppa.  Even having lived through those times when Jesus either told a parable or actually interacted with someone who didn’t meet the criteria that had been set out by the religious establishment, it took a vision from God AFTER witnessing the resurrection to get Peter to come to understand the import of the message that he’d been given.  And the message in the vision could not have been clearer. 

“What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

And the image is equally clear.  All those animals that had heretofore been off limits were now no longer an issue.  That means, there were no restrictions on what he could eat, whom he could speak to, sit with, eat with, share with, and most significantly, WORSHIP with. 

This was the most radical facet of the Gospel, that it was for all people – Jew and Greek, Slave and Free, Male and Female … there was no distinction made of who was worthy to receive – and follow – the Gospel and who was not.  The message of God’s love was and IS for everyone. 

Ultimately, we owe our very existence to that vision.  If it were not for that vision, and Paul’s subsequent mission work, the body of Christ could have been hindered, could have been repressed, slowed.  I’m not saying the Church would not have eventually broken out and grown as it did, but it may have been a much slower process.  We know by tradition of the persecution of the early church, and it has been made much of in movies and in retellings of those events, but it seems that that earliest conflict within the church, between those who would rather impose some sort of control – some kind of human gatekeeping action on that which cannot be controlled – the Holy Spirit - is not so loudly spoken of.  I wonder if part of that mutedness has to do with the fact that the inclination towards exclusivity resonates so deeply with us, as it has with succeeding generations of believers throughout the ages?

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It simply means this:  This church is not ours.  As much as we are invested in it, as many hours as we put into it, meeting here, organizing, planning, holding services and programs and events, we are simply caretakers, we are conduits, we are INSTRUMENTS to be used by God as God sees fit and necessary to break in his Kingdom however that Kingdom looks. 

It’s a scary thing. We draw comfort in the familiarity of Sunday mornings. We know that we’re going to be together, and that a little bit after eleven O’Clock we’re going to hear the bells chime, we’re going to hear the prelude, we’re going to stand and sing a couple of hymns, we’re going to pray together and read scripture together, and we’re going to hear a choir special – beautifully sung – and then somebody is going to stand up and speak and read scripture.  There is comfort and safety in that routine.  But the Holy Spirit is anything BUT routine.  The Holy Spirit cannot be corralled, cannot be boxed in.  And that is going to cause discomfort, when the Holy Spirit pops over here and over there and (Oh No!) over THERE… God give us courage to welcome wherever the Spirit moves.   

Let’s pray.