Celebrating the life of Janet Ruth Warner Yancey

We’re used to hearing certain scriptures in certain settings.  If you’ve attended many weddings, it’s not unusual to hear what has come to be known as “The Love Chapter” read at some point in the ceremony.  It just seems to be fitting to include it as a … a primer of sorts, for the couple who are entering into their marriage vows … And for those in attendance who may have already made that commitment to each other, it serves as a reminder … a model for the relationship that may over time lose it’s focus. 

It is NOT, in my experience, a passage that is commonly brought out in a funeral service.  The 23^rd Psalm, definitely.  John 14, of course.  But 1^st Corinthians 13? 

When Bill asked me to draw from that particular text, it only caught me off guard for a second.  I realized that what better text to summarize the life of a woman who lived her life by it? 

I would invite you to listen to these familiar words and in your minds, compare them to the life that Janet lived:  

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. ⁹For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; ¹⁰but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. ¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. ¹²For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

The Gospels are peppered with Jesus’ parables that are trying to explain – to give an image of what the love of God is like when it comes to how God chases after us.  The parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, the treasure that is found in the field, they all give us a picture of a God who will go to incredible lengths to seek us out – to gather us in, to wrap arms around us so that we will FINALLY begin to understand just how much we are loved. 

The parable of the Good Samaritan is a multilayered story.  On the top layer, Jesus is telling the young lawyer who was trying to test him exactly who his neighbor was – and he did it by placing the man himself as the victim in the story, and his ‘true’ neighbor a man from the tribe that the lawyer would have otherwise despised as a matter of course, just as a part of his daily routine.  On another layer, just below, Jesus is telling this know-it-all lawyer as well as anyone else who will listen to not be too surprised when you are faced with the love of God and it comes from the place – or the person – you least expected.  God is good – really good – at surprising us in profound, perspective-altering ways.

From what I knew of Janet, and from what has been reiterated to me over these last couple of years as the family has wrestled with watching her health deteriorate and her body rebel against her spirit, it is safe, I think, to say that she got it.  She understood that part of the Gospel that spoke of a sacrificial, self-giving love, that put others first, that reached out to the stranger and the friend alike and offered a helping hand, and a kind, beautiful smile that communicated that love and that acceptance in a way that few words could. 

On those occasions when we were able to visit, there was never a time when she didn’t envelope me in the warmth of her smile and a hug – whether physical or emotional, it felt just as true and as genuine and as caring. 

Sometimes, to jog us out of the routine, I like to read a familiar passage from the version of scriptures entitled ‘The Message’ – a paraphrase by Eugene Petersen.  What Petersen has done is that he has done a ‘thought for thought’ translation of the Scriptures – He stepped back from the traditional ‘word for word’ translation that is the norm when it comes to Biblical Variations, and has aimed to try to make reading the texts FEEL like what it would have felt like to the folks who first read these stories and letters.  Hear again the 13^th chapter of 1^st Corinthians:

1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. 3-7If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

   Love never gives up.

   Love cares more for others than for self.

   Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.

   Love doesn't strut,

   Doesn't have a swelled head,

   Doesn't force itself on others,

   Isn't always "me first,"

   Doesn't fly off the handle,

   Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,

   Doesn't revel when others grovel,

   Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

   Puts up with anything,

   Trusts God always,

   Always looks for the best,

   Never looks back,

   But keeps going to the end.

8-10Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

11When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

12We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

13But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

I love the way Petersen puts that next to the last phrase:  Love extravagantly. 

Loving extravagantly is something that was best exemplified in Christ, but which we are sometimes given a glimpse of at odd moments as we move through life.  There are certain people who shine brightly with that exemplary love.  Janet was one of those people.

We are all early into a new journey today that began on Sunday morning.  We are stepping into this new reality that is life, on this plane of existence, without her physical presence among us.  While we may be deeply relieved to know that she is no longer suffering, that absence is going to hurt, and it is going to leave an empty space in our lives that will take a long time to heal – if ever.  Some of us will never fully recover – and we’re not supposed to.  We’re not supposed to go back to being how we were before, because life will never be what it was before, when she was with us. 

What we will begin to realize is that, in having shared our lives together, she left some of herself with each of us.  In some cases, it will be a look, a gesture or an expression.  In other cases, it will be a word, a conversation, a deftly spoken word that conveyed just how much we meant to her, and the knowledge that we were loved by her made it just a little bit clearer to us how much God loves us.

Sunday morning Janet stepped into a newness of life that we can only imagine here and now.  And the newness of life that WE are stepping into is not what we may have wanted, but it is what we have been handed.  Janet faced her mortality with grace and with courage.  She was handed this experience and responded in a way that really was a continuation of the life she lived.  She never stopped loving and she never stopped caring.  But it became her turn to be on the receiving end of that love and that care that she had based her life on giving rather than receiving.  As Bill and Katie and the rest of the family surrounded her with that love and care, they were taking on the responsibility that we are each tasked with if we call ourselves followers of Christ – to trust steadily, to hope unswervingly, and to love extravagantly. 

Let’s pray. 

Your Lives In Him

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Ordinary 17C

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Colossians 2:6-19

⁶As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, ⁷rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. ⁸See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. ⁹For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, ¹⁰and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. ¹¹In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; ¹²when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

¹³And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, ¹⁴erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.

¹⁶Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths. ¹⁷These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. ¹⁸Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking, ¹⁹and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God.

Most of you have heard me tell my testimony – of how the night before my tenth birthday, in the context of a summer youth camp meeting at Natchez Trace State Park in western Tennessee, with the Rev. John Wood, pastor of First Baptist Church, Paducah, Kentucky preaching, I decided to ask Jesus to come into my heart and begin to be Lord of my life. 

Though I have distinct images that have remained clear in my head in the years since, and a few snatches of conversation following the event, I couldn’t tell you what text he preached on, or if it was on some particular point of theology… really, I can’t even try to discover that memory.  There have been too many events in my life since then that have crowded out that tidbit of information. 

For those of us in this room who experienced our conversion as children, can anyone recall with exactitude those details?  I think it would be a different story if we were to ask those who came to Christ as adults or teenagers, but again, depending on the time that has passed, or events that have occurred since, our capacity to recall exactly what was going through our minds might be … compromised. 

I DO remember thinking ‘this is what I’m SUPPOSED to do.  This is how it happens… and I remember at the beginning wondering if there was going to be any rush of emotion.  I don’t remember there being any tears on my part, though there may have been some… I remember having something of a smile on my face after the invitation hymn had concluded.  

To be completely frank, I didn’t FEEL radically different.  I didn’t FEEL as different as I EXPECTED to feel.  And it has taken me some time to come to terms with that. 

There is a strand within Baptist history – it is called the ‘Sandy Creek’ tradition, that puts an emphasis on the emotion that faith elicits in you, that draws a sense of confirmation from the fact that something makes you cry, and therefore THAT must be an indicator of it’s truthfulness, of it’s validity.  And that tradition is widespread, if not universally present not just within Baptist churches, but many other denominations as well. 

There’s another strand, called the ‘Charleston tradition’, that puts an emphasis on a less emotional, a more subdued, cerebral, and reasoned approach both to the understanding of faith as well as the practice of it.  To some degree or another, both strands are present within our churches, and within us, whether we realize it or not. 

Paul’s first appeal in the passage this morning is to reconnect with that initial experience – whatever it was that first ‘grabbed’ you about the gospel – about the message of Christ; whether it was the sacrifice, or the love, or the call to redemption and to building the Kingdom of God.  “Rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”  He’s saying keep going in that same sense of … TRUST.

Ultimately, that first step involves trusting.  Trusting that something is true even though we may be less than totally convinced.  Trusting that what has been promised is real, even though we don’t have anything that would PROVE that it is that we could touch, or feel, or put our hands on.  Trusting that the story that has woven itself into our lives is one of hope and faith and love and is one that WILL make a difference, not just in our own lives, but in the lives of people who surround us. 

Our wiring, our innate desires, our very curiosity, compels us to go deeper, to think and ponder and explore as fully as we are able what the implications of the Gospel are in our lives. And it was no different for Paul and the folks of Colossae.  It is hard for us to take something at face value.   We are always looking for – waiting for – the rest of the story.  We want to know what the back-story is, what lead up to a particular decision, what influenced a certain statement or choice made that has impacted the lives of multitudes.

I think what Paul is trying to say is that there is a point at which we come up against the sufficiency of Christ. There is nothing wrong with following that desire, that curiosity, that urge to dig, to go deeper, and it’s not to say that we should STOP digging, STOP thinking and STOP asking the tough questions, but that even as we continue to do all that, we need to … rest in the knowledge that there is nothing we can do to add or subtract from what Christ has done.  In his coming, in his teaching, in his living and in his dying and rising from the grave, Jesus Christ provided for our living – for our continued life in him.  

In verse 13, “God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us, with its legal demands.  He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.”   There is a profound truth in that verse that we struggle with.  We are constantly monitoring our actions, our motivations … there is still something in us that believes that we can undo the gracious gift of God when in fact, there is nothing that can.  As Paul asks in his letter to the church at Rome – “What can separate us from the love of God?”   The answer to the question is, of course, nothing.  He is reiterating the point here, I believe. 

He’s dealing with the same stuff that seems to crop up so often for him … and for us.  We hear the gospel, we receive the gospel, we revel in its simplicity, in its accessibility, and in it’s universality.   Then it gets complicated.  We start to wonder what we need to do to maintain the ‘good standing’ … surely there must be some requirement, some standard, some threshold that would keep some in and others out? 

What Paul seems to be saying here is that, “No, what God has done in Christ is enough for all of us.  Sinners all, fallen all; broken all.”  In Paul’s day it was those who said that you had to follow certain traditions, rules, and observances. 

Hmmm … in our day, it doesn’t seem to have changed much, does it? 

It is a radical notion, don’t you think?  To chuck the whole concept that to be an acceptable follower of Jesus you need to meet certain criteria, certain standards, of behavior, of dress, of manner, of spirit. 

Wait.  If it DOESN’T mean that, then what are we left with? 

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

We’re left with people who are walking together, arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, reaching out to those around them who also need a helping hand, a leg up, someone who can help ease the journey just enough… who can step in at that critical point and BE Jesus to them – both to bless and to call.  To bless by extending grace where grace may not have been present before, and to call out of a life that denied that same extension of Grace and bids it be shared.  

We gather each Sunday as a fellowship of believers, as the body of Christ as we understand it and spend this time with each other, in the hopes and the expectation that from this gathering we will gain new insight, new understanding, into what it means to follow Jesus.  Something that is said or sung or prayed will trigger a response, and that response will blossom into a beautiful, flowering truth that will carry us through an experience that we may not even know is heading our way. 

While there is a traditional, mostly unspoken expectation of what coming here means for the rest of your life during the week, we know ourselves to be ‘frail children of dust’, who are sometimes strong, and sometimes not so much, but who are always reaching for the mark. 

May our joined faithfulness provide the strength we all need to move forward in the light of God.

Let’s pray.

You Who Were Once

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Ordinary 16C

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Colossians 1:15-29

¹⁵He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; ¹⁶for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. ¹⁹For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ²⁰and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. ²¹And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, ²²he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him— ²³provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel. ²⁴I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. ²⁵I became its servant according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, ²⁶the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. ²⁷To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. ²⁸It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. ²⁹For this I toil and struggle with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me.

What do you do while you brush your teeth?  I mean, do you ‘multitask’?  Do you try to do something else, like put your shirt on, or shoes, or do you straighten something in the bathroom or wipe the sink while you’re brushing?  Maybe you just wander around the house, or watch television, or listen to the radio…

I think most of you know the bathrooms upstairs over at the parsonage both have windows that face out over the old cemetery.  Most mornings I just turn and look out the window and look at the markers that are there, or watch the traffic coming down route 3.  Yesterday morning, as I was brushing and looking out the window, a movement in the lower right corner of the upper pane of the window caught my eye.  I focused in on it and it was a spider, just your basic, tiny brown spider with a small body and long legs, seemingly suspended in midair, moving it’s two … or maybe four front legs in these more or less repeating patterns.  Occasionally one of its back legs would seem to stretch out and then … go back.  I drew a little closer and moved so that there was something other than grass in the background when looking at it, and I was finally able to make out what I knew was there but hadn’t been able to see until then – it’s web. 

There are some spiders, those huge, yellow and black ones that are this big that show up in the late summer or fall that can whip out a web in what seems to be just a few minutes that stretch all across God’s green earth – the ones that you have to duck around or under when you walk under the pear tree – the ones whose web sticks to you and feels like it might, if circumstances were right, slow you down a bit.  When you get a look at their webs  - especially the ones they build covering a window FRAME – they are things of beauty.  They are symmetrical, intricately woven, spaced just so, and the spiders sit in the very center of them.  It all looks so nice and CLEAN and NEAT. 

But this spider that I saw yesterday morning, it’s web was … well … a mess… it seemed to be that it was just trying to get that one corner of the window pane stretched across with web strings so it would hopefully just CATCH something.  There didn’t seem to be a lot of attention to detail or esthetics.  But to watch the spider in the window as it worked on the web, it was being as careful as any other spider I’ve watched.  It knew what it needed to do, and didn’t stop to compare it’s web to another spider’s.    

But ultimately, it served the same purpose as the no less meticulously woven webs that the other spiders put up: to catch food.  The application may be different; the end result is the same.   

Paul usually spends some time at the beginning of his letters giving some words of greeting and/or encouragement, or in some cases gives an abbreviated version of what he is getting ready to explain in more detail in the rest of his letter. 

In the case of his letter to the Colossians, his opening is setting the tone for the rest of the letter. He seems to be reminding the Colossians of the depth and breadth and height of who Jesus is in these verses. 

Paul is otherwise very down to earth in what he teaches the way of following Jesus to be.  His is a very “nuts and bolts” approach to faith.  It’s not just about what you believe, it’s about how that belief translates into your everyday life.  How you treat your neighbors, your family, your slaves, and your enemies.  How your inner motivation – the feeling you have in your heart – reflects on the actions you engage in from the skin out.  It’s about continuity between your spirit and your body: a consistency that is born of the Holy Spirit guiding and directing you.

Here, he stops for a while on what you believe, and he gets a little carried away.  Not that that’s a bad thing. 

We have this beautiful paean – this hymn – a psalm – to who Jesus is.  The image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, the one in whom all things in heaven and on earth were created … I can go on – the head of the body – the church – and the one through whom God made peace with the world … through his shed blood on the cross…

It is an awe-filled description, a beautiful depiction of Jesus Christ as the Savior and Redeemer of the world, as the essence of God made human. 

Then he gets to what we’ve numbered verse 21 and he makes it personal. Up until that point, he has been talking in cosmic terms – humanity, the cosmos, Earth, all creation.  In verse 21 Paul brings it down to the personal level.  You who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him – provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven.   

In other words, what we believe matters. 

Yes, of course what we DO matters as well, but it has to be born out of what we believe.  Our belief has to have SOME effect – ideally a radically transformative effect – on what we DO – with our lives, with our words, with our best efforts.  The two do not exist in isolation from each other. 

Paul goes on to extol the wonders of this “doing born of being” – this action prompted by belief.  The fact that he drew a connection between the two was somewhat radical in first century Roman-dominated and Greek-influenced society.  In many cases, the idea that how one believed in esoterica – the insubstantial realm of philosophy and ideas – would actually influence or make a difference in how one LIVED was tenuous at best, laughable at worst. 

And that can sometimes still be the case today.  We live in a world that looks askance at folks who let what they believe – their worldview, their faith, their relationship to God – influence how they respond in the actual, physical world – it seems to be somewhat anachronistic – out of place – in our day and time - and yet it is the reality in which we move. 

What does it mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton? 

It means that we take a look at ourselves to see if we do, in fact, allow our beliefs to influence our actions.  To the extent that they do, we are working on two levels of existence – the physical kingdom of God here on earth, and the spiritual one we are building within. We may feel more like the tiny spider in the bathroom window, spinning a haphazard, disorganized, not-too-pretty web, much more than we feel like the big, bold, slick spider with the amazingly intricate web on the porch floor-to-ceiling window, but we are just as sure of what we are doing and where we are going to end up – if you’ll pardon the specific details of the analogy … sustained and nourished by that web.  It is, for the most part, invisible, but it stretches to surprising lengths, and occasionally, just sometimes, if we catch it in the right light, we can catch a glimpse of it.  

Let’s pray.

     

The One Who Showed Mercy

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Pentecost 7C

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Luke 10:25-37

²⁵Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” ²⁶He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” ²⁷He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” ²⁸And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” ²⁹But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” ³⁰Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. ³¹Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. ³²So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. ³³But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. ³⁴He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. ³⁵The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ ³⁶Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” ³⁷He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

There are people in the world that we each admire.  Some of us admire athletes, for their skill, their discipline and their strength.  Others of us admire world leaders – for THEIR particular skill, for their dignity, their intelligence and their leadership.  Still others admire celebrities – for their talent and their charisma. 

It’s not too different for pastors.  We, too, have folks that we admire for the way they craft a message, or their energy, their delivery, their cadence, intonation or the creativity with which they communicate the central idea in a sermon while making it at the same time challenging and accessible.  It can sometimes get to the point of attempting to emulate that particular preacher that you admire so much.  We freely quote from them, or borrow their words.  I confess that I have done that on more than one occasion. What’s the saying?  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?

As a norm, we have come to expect what is called ‘expository preaching’ – that is to say, a sermon that takes a passage and “exposes” the details in it – we get a background in language, or what the original wording meant; we get a background in history, or the what was happening either in Jesus’ time when he was literally speaking the parable or some approximation of what was going on at the time of the writing of the gospel passage within the community to which it was written in the latter half of the first century. 

We may also have been exposed to ‘storytelling preaching’ which takes you into the story – invites you to close your eyes and put yourself into the scene that is described – or not – in the passage; to see the lawyer approach Jesus, his robe and coat of noticeably better quality than most of the folks that are probably surrounding you – either in the temple or in a synagogue, and we get to listen in on their conversation, we get to watch Jesus’ facial expressions, his steady gaze, as he watches the man present his questions.  We feel the heat of the sun on our shoulders, we hear the bleating of sheep on the hillside on the other side of the wall of the town, we hear the braying of a donkey as it passes by, loaded with goods for market, and we smell the dust mixed in with the smell of the smoke from the fires that are cooking food in the different houses that line the streets around us. 

With the passage this morning – I should say the parable – I’d like to try something different.  I think for the most part, looking around the room, most of us have heard at least a few messages preached about the Good Samaritan.  We are already familiar with the context into which Jesus is telling the story, namely, that the ‘Faithful Hebrews’ of Judea did not consider those God fearers of Samaria – a region to the immediate north of them – between them and Galilee – to be part of Israel.  They were considered unclean for having mingled with the local population, though originally a part of the twelve tribes, they parted company a long time ago, and their parting was not an amicable event.  They didn’t speak to each other, look at each other, or fraternize with each other.  In fact, Judeans, if they needed to travel to Galilee, went dozens of miles out of their way, adding days to their journey, just to avoid traveling through Samaria.  There was no love lost between them.

In the parable, Jesus, in answering the question put to him by the lawyer, asking who he should consider his neighbor to BE, has a member of each of the most highly regarded – the most widely admired, if you will – tribes walk right past a man who has been assaulted, robbed, and left for dead.  They had other, more important things to do than to help a man that they weren’t sure was even alive, much less worth spending time on.  And the one person who DOES stop and help – in an extraordinarily generous manner – is a Samaritan.  To the lawyer, this would have been an affront to his accepted perception of the world.  His worldview would have been challenged to the point of being turned on its head.  A Samaritan would have done no such thing. 

And yet, at the end of the parable, Jesus asks the man, “Who was a neighbor to the man who had been attacked and left for dead?”  And the lawyer, with all his knowledge of proper Hebrew practice, and his awareness of the law and all it’s implications, with all his prepackaged assumptions, came to the correct conclusion:  “the one who showed mercy.” 

Parables have a purpose in Jesus’ ministry.  They were designed to elicit a response from the people who heard them – but not just any response.  They were first crafted to highlight a particular point that has to do with what the Kingdom of God looks like, but they were also told in such a way as to get most of the people who heard them to sit up and take notice – to begin to question some assumptions they had that were not – for whatever reason – in keeping with the Spirit of God or the vision of the Kingdom of God. 

The fact that the person who showed mercy in the parable – the one the lawyer HAD to acknowledge as being the ‘true neighbor’ – was the person he would have been the LEAST inclined to give the time of day to in his everyday life hopefully shifted his thinking pattern just enough to be able to question what other assumptions he had that might be keeping him from seeing – and participating in – the Kingdom of God breaking in and out all around him – most particularly right in front of him in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus told the story, and the man walked away, and the people around them who had heard the parable probably thought to themselves or turned to each other and started to talk … “what did he mean by that?” 

So that is our question this morning:  What did he mean by that?  By turning the assumption that “no good could come from Samaria” on it’s head for the law-abiding lawyer and the people within hearing distance. 

For us, the question is, is there someone I should show mercy TO, or is there someone from whom I’ve been denying mercy to be shown to ME? 

You see, with the parables, at first glance we can assume that we are one character, when in reality on deeper reflection we realize we are someone else in the story.   While we would LIKE to think of ourselves as the Samaritan, many times we end up being the Priest or the Levite without even realizing it, because it comes so naturally to us.

We can even miss the point that we sometimes are the man who was robbed – the person left for dead by the side of the road, so beat up by what life has thrown at us that we truly are simply the recipients of grace – and it really doesn’t matter who it comes from, because ultimately it comes from the same source.

 And that source is what we celebrate when we gather at the table and share the wine and the bread.

So whether you are a Priest, a Levite, a Samaritan or someone who has been bludgeoned and traumatized by what life has brought you this week, know that you are welcome at this table, you are an honored guest, known by name and invited to share in the unmerited grace of a God who is FULL of surprises.

(Communion)

           

Let’s pray.                

Lifesongs

100707

On being a Woman of God

Proverbs 31:10-31

At the celebration of the life of Myrtle Parr Davis

¹⁰A capable wife who can find?
She is far more precious than jewels.
¹¹The heart of her husband trusts in her,
and he will have no lack of gain.
¹²She does him good, and not harm,
all the days of her life.
¹³She seeks wool and flax,
and works with willing hands.
¹⁴She is like the ships of the merchant,
she brings her food from far away.
¹⁵She rises while it is still night
and provides food for her household
and tasks for her servant-girls.
¹⁶She considers a field and buys it;
with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard.
¹⁷She girds herself with strength,
and makes her arms strong.
¹⁸She perceives that her merchandise is profitable.
Her lamp does not go out at night.
¹⁹She puts her hands to the distaff,
and her hands hold the spindle.
²⁰She opens her hand to the poor,
and reaches out her hands to the needy.
²¹She is not afraid for her household when it snows,
for all her household are clothed in crimson.
²²She makes herself coverings;
her clothing is fine linen and purple.
²³Her husband is known in the city gates,
taking his seat among the elders of the land.
²⁴She makes linen garments and sells them;
she supplies the merchant with sashes.
²⁵Strength and dignity are her clothing,
and she laughs at the time to come.
²⁶She opens her mouth with wisdom,
and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
²⁷She looks well to the ways of her household,
and does not eat the bread of idleness.
²⁸Her children rise up and call her happy (blessed);
her husband too, and he praises her:
²⁹“Many women have done excellently,
but you surpass them all.”
³⁰Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
³¹Give her a share in the fruit of her hands,
and let her works praise her in the city gates.

In the seven years that I’ve been blessed to be a part of this greater community of faith, I’ve had the honor of officiating or participating in many funerals for women who, in principle, fit this description that we find in the last chapter of Proverbs.  There have not been as many women who have fit the description in BOTH principle and FACT.

From what I’ve known and heard of Myrtle over the years, she exemplified both.

Some of you in this sanctuary have had the privilege of knowing Myrtle all your life: siblings, cousins, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. 

Others of us have only known her for a season.  While it is no less significant, we may have only had the chance to see one, final thread of the beautiful tapestry that was her life as it was put in place. 

As a pastor, as a fellow believer, and as a simple follower of Christ these times, these events have been the most humbling to me.  To watch as family and friends gather to bid farewell and celebrate the life of a loved one on their passing provides some of the most profound insight into what it means to live a life of faithfulness to Christ.  I don’t mean that I’VE had the profound insight, I mean that those moments have made clear to me the reality that we preach our own funerals by the way we live our lives.  We set the tone for how family will enter the visitation time, how they will greet each other and how they will approach the casket.  We set the tone for what the time of gathering will be like. 

As I sat in the funeral home last night, watching family and friends greet one another and visit and share and laugh and catch up, there were, of course, tears shed, but there seemed to be so much more lightness in the air than darkness.  More joy than sorrow.  Not that the sorrow was suppressed or ignored or anything like that.  What makes a funeral like this for a person like this such a celebratory occasion – I should say SAINT like this – to use the appropriate biblical term – don’t worry about what contemporary imagery and tradition have turned it into – Paul’s reference to followers of Christ as “saints” speaks more to what we carry inside than to how close we come to carrying out our calling of living out the image of Christ 100% of the time – Myrtle came closer than most – what makes these times more a cause for celebration is what Corky told me last night – it is the certainty of knowing that Myrtle is face to face right now, that she is in the presence of the one who loves her and knows her better than any of us in this room this morning, and she is experiencing pure unadulterated joy.  As happy as a time as there may have been in her life – at the birth of her children, at her marriage to Wilson, or any number of other events, the joy that she is experiencing now is so far beyond that momentary flash of brightness as to be dim by comparison.  I would venture to say that Myrtle was as much a saint as St. Francis or Mother Teresa, but by virtue of her allowing the Holy Spirit to guide her life, to inform how she lived and acted and dealt with folks, not by how much she denied herself in order to provide for her family or for other needy people – though she did that too.

Ultimately what this morning is about is taking note.  We are taking note of the passing of a precious daughter of God, a devoted mother, a faithful disciple of Christ, a passionate lover of God, who expressed that love through her love of her family and throughout her community – both her faith community here at Totuskey as well as in Haynesville and across the Northern Neck. 

As we all know, she also expressed that love through song.  She sang in a beautiful Alto voice – even up until just a few weeks or even days ago.  She knew those words to those hymns where it counts – in her heart. 

The beautiful thing about Myrtle’s life is that it reflected her musical voice. 

I’m not a musician, I’ve not been musically trained, but here’s what I mean:

In a hymn, you have the melody line, which is what most of us sing.  Some of us struggle more than others to follow it.  But then there are these parts – these voices that chime in and create a harmony.  They are a complement to the melody that brings out a fuller, richer sound than what the melody can provide by itself.  The Melody doesn’t stop being the ‘lead’ voice, but when a convergence of voices comes together to sing a chord, with a Soprano, an Alto, a Tenor and a Base note all being sung at the same time, the sound can be … enrapturing.  Is that even a word?  Do you know what I mean? 

In our lives, we have those who have provided the melody for us, who have lead us with strong clear notes of direction and purpose and style.  And then there are those who, while still providing for and allowing that melody to be central to our lives, have broadened and deepened our appreciation of the beauty of the melody – who have complemented it and shown by the uniqueness of how THEIR lives have begun to resonate to that same melody how we are all called to harmonize our own lives to the grand melody that God is singing throughout creation. 

Thank you, Myrtle, for the gift of your voice – and every way that you ‘sang’.     

    

For The Good Of All

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Pentecost C6

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Galatians 6:1-18

My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. ²Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. ³For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves. ⁴All must test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbor’s work, will become a cause for pride. ⁵For all must carry their own loads. ⁶Those who are taught the word must share in all good things with their teacher. ⁷Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. ⁸If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. ⁹So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up. ¹⁰So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.

¹¹See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand! ¹²It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that try to compel you to be circumcised—only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. ¹³Even the circumcised do not themselves obey the law, but they want you to be circumcised so that they may boast about your flesh. ¹⁴May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. ¹⁵For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything! ¹⁶As for those who will follow this rule—peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God. ¹⁷From now on, let no one make trouble for me; for I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my body. ¹⁸May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters. Amen

You know, I read scripture passages, and then I watch or hear the news, or read today’s headlines, and it is at the same time comforting and DIScomforting to realize that human nature has remained essentially unchanged for at LEAST the last two thousand years. 

It is comforting because the familiarity of the situations that Paul faced and that Jesus faced means that it’s been done before… we’re not in uncharted territory when it comes to dealing with human emotions, motivations, and failures.

The flip side of that coin is what is DIScomforting.  Namely, we’re STILL DOING and thinking and failing at the same exact things that people were doing and thinking and failing at back when this whole business of being followers of Jesus started. 

We would like to think that we are worlds apart from what those errant Corinthians or Galatians, or any number of later 1^st and early 2^nd century church members were finding to misunderstand or misinterpret, or who took some teaching of Jesus and morphed it in with some cultural understanding they already had and called it ‘Christian’… but in truth, we are so like them that I think if Paul were to drop in on us today he’d spend a little bit of time looking around and then find the nearest brick wall to begin to bang his head against. 

Let’s recap:  Galatians were mostly if not entirely former pagan followers of Jesus, thanks to Paul’s preaching and teaching there.  Paul’s teaching, as he recounts in this letter, centers on Jesus’ sacrifice, and on God’s love expressed through that. His message was to love God, love one another, and share it with everyone around you.  LIVE DIFFERENTLY. Period, end of sentence.

Some time after Paul leaves, folks come and say, “Yes, what Paul told you is true, but that’s not all.  Here’s a list of things that you have to do (Read: circumcision, festival observance, and dietary laws.) in order to REALLY be considered ‘in the loop’.”

This likewise was a way of living differently, but with a much less radical potential.  Yes, it DID mean for some RADICAL changes for those who decided to FOLLOW that route, but it had a tendency to stop there.  The laws, the observances, the diet, that was all good and well, but it served more to distinguish them rather than to … engage people who were not a part of the fellowship. 

We can think of groups that pique our interest, any number of fringe groups, who have odd but to the general public, unappealing practices that are interesting to observe, but which don’t immediately draw us in and make us want to follow suit. 

Paul was telling the Galatians that the message that he brought them – the message of the freedom to be found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ – freedom from bondage of ANY kind – to sin, to expectations, to prejudices, to presuppositions about who could do what or who was responsible for what – all that went out the window when you chose to follow Jesus.  At it’s heart, the Gospel – the Good News – REALLY IS that God loves us.  No matter who we are, what we are, where we are.  No matter if we call ourselves American or Iraqi or Iranian, Senegalese, or Argentinean, Swede or Russian. 

Paul’s point from chapter 3 (verse 28) is to be extended to any given distinction we can come up with.  That idea that we are all one in Christ Jesus is more radical than we can begin to understand. 

   

It is in the unpacking of that idea that we begin to see how human nature really hasn’t changed over the last two millennia.

I’ve shared with you before how much I love to VISIT Lolly, my sister, in Washington DC – and how much I can’t STAND the traffic up there… the reason I love to visit is the diversity that can be found everywhere.  There are people of all races and ethnicities living and working side by side.  There are folks from all over the world who have come and settled in the area, so that makes for a wonderful variety of stores and restaurants to choose from, but it also makes for a microcosm of what our nation looks like as a whole.  

We live in a society that is, in sociological terms, pluralistic.  That means that, as a country, we are made up of more than just one “type” of people, more than one people ‘group’.  If we were to drive into Richmond, or just an hour or two up the road, from Fredericksburg on up to the Washington area, we’d be reminded of this everywhere we look. 

The Gospel’s message is that God’s love is for each and every one of those people – no matter how different, how unlike us they are … there IS, in fact, no more ‘us’ and ‘them’.  That’s the whole point. 

But we insist on finding ways to MAKE an ‘us’ and ‘them’.  We don’t sing like that, or those kinds of songs.  We don’t dress like that for preaching.  That’s not an instrument we use in worship. 

Do you hear it?  The ‘we’ implies that there is a ‘them’ … it doesn’t have to BE about circumcision, or dietary laws.  We can make walls out of just about anything. 

When Paul says in verses 14 and 15:

¹⁴May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. ¹⁵For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!

He was underscoring the fact that the only thing worth standing on as a matter of principle and faith is the cross of Christ. 

When he went on to say in verse 15 that ‘a new creation is everything’ he was telling us that the only way we’re going to break out of the mindset that builds these walls of distinction between us and our fellow human beings WHOEVER THEY MAY BE is to become just that – NEW CREATIONS. 

And the only way to do THAT was through being regenerated – reborn in the image of Christ. 

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church, on this hot Fourth of July Sunday, 2010?

Look around the room.  Are we representative of the plurality in which we live, much less the plurality that is to come when we get to heaven?  Is our worship a celebration of the depth and breadth of God’s love, or is it a place where we can come and feel secure and unchallenged when we are surrounded by people who look just like us? 

I’m not saying that our worship is NOT worship if it’s not the former, but I AM saying that it could be so much more.  I love the way we join on Sundays, don’t get me wrong.  The hymns of faith that taught me to love God and to love others will NEVER be replaced in my heart.  But there is room for more. 

Will we be open to the Spirit’s calling, to the Spirit’s leading to make that room available, and to share it joyfully and lovingly? 

  

Let’s pray.