Emmerton Messages

The Cost of Kindness

2012-02-12T03:08:00.000-05:00

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Epiphany 6B

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Text: Mark 1:40-45

⁴⁰A leper^* came to him begging him, and kneeling^* he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ ⁴¹Moved with pity,^* Jesus^* stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ ⁴²Immediately the leprosy^* left him, and he was made clean. ⁴³After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, ⁴⁴saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ ⁴⁵But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus^* could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

Have you ever done something nice or kind for someone and later come to regret it? A simple act of mercy, a momentary act of friendship and kindness that turned out to be not so good? It would seem to be the case for what Jesus did in this morning’s passage. Maybe something backfired.

A stranger approaches you and asks for some money. You happen to have some handy, not too much, but enough, and you don’t NEED it, so you give it to him, and what ends up happening is that the person begins to show up every so often, asking for ‘help’ – gas money, money for a bill, money for some food, whatever seems to be the need of the day, and you get caught up in this repeating cycle where you are aware that what is happening, while in one way it’s a good thing, in another way it is not so good for the long-term health of your relationship, OR for the person you are ‘helping’.

At first, this doesn’t seem to be a bad thing that Jesus does. After all, this is kind of Jesus’ THING – to heal people, and in Mark to tell them NOT to tell …

It is a straightforward telling. There don’t seem to be many nuances to explore or unravel. There’s a simple step-by-step progression. The stage is set with the leper coming to Jesus, asking to be healed. Jesus responds – predictably – by healing him. Jesus warns the man to not tell anyone, but to go and show himself to the priest in order to be reinstated into society. Remember, that was the process to be followed. He did the same thing when he healed the ten lepers and only one of them came back to thank him. The local priest had the say on whether or not someone was allowed to remain with the ‘in’ crowd or whether they were to be banished. Imagine the power of a simple yes or no from that man.

If I were to ask you to stop and think for a minute and choose three or four words that would describe Jesus, I would imagine that ‘compassionate’ would probably be at or near the top of the list. In the first verse of the passage I read a few minutes ago, the writer says Jesus was moved with pity – another word for compassion – when the man asked to be healed. But there is a letter next to the word in my Bible that refers me to a brief note at the bottom of the page, and the note says: ‘Other ancient authorities read anger’.

It is worth noting the different wording because what it tells us is that a few – sometimes maybe even more than a few – of the earliest manuscripts that have been found of this passage have the alternate wording in them – manuscripts that are in some instances older than the ones that began to use the ‘accepted’ or current wording.

So it is worth stopping to consider the implications of the alternate version of the verse. What would be going on if the emotion was, in fact, anger, that moved Jesus? How does that change the meaning of the events that are then related in the passage?

We tend to think of anger as something nearly opposite of compassion, don’t we? Compassion is the word, it is the understood emotion, and it is the one that describes so much of Jesus’ character. It DOESN’T seem to make sense that Jesus’ response would even approach anger … but let’s entertain that thought for a moment.

In the movie ‘The Blind Side’ the true story is told of the Tuohys, a well-to-do white southern family who take in a seventeen year-old young black man and how their lives are changed by the experience.

In one scene, Leigh Anne Tuohy is having lunch with three of her friends in what seems to be a country club restaurant and they are joking with her about Michael, the young man. One of them makes a joke about “why don’t you go ahead and make it official and just adopt him?” Leigh Anne’s response is to say that, “He’s almost eighteen, it doesn’t make sense to go through the adoption process at this point.” She answers the joke in full seriousness, letting her friends know just how profoundly the experience has affected her.

Her friends are stunned into silence when they realize this. One of them speaks up and asks her if what she is doing is prompted by some sense of ‘white guilt’, another asks what her father says about it. As it turns out, Leigh Anne’s father was an outspoken racist, he was also dead five years at that point in their lives, something Leigh Anne points out to her friend, asking if she wondered what he was saying before or after rolling over in his grave. Leigh Anne also points out that what makes her comment even worse is that she attended the funeral. She goes on to respond with these words: “I don’t need y’all to approve my choices, but I DO ask that you respect them. You have no idea what this boy has been through, and if this is going to become some running diatribe, I can find an overpriced salad a LOT closer to home.”

Her friends are appropriately ashamed, and they apologize to her. One speaks up and says how much she admires what she is doing in welcoming Michael into her home, that she is changing his life. Leigh Anne’s response is “No, he’s changing mine.”

There is a degree of anger that can be prompted when compassion is engaged. It is anger that is directed at the conditions that make compassion necessary – it is anger at the idea that selflessly doing something good for someone could be questioned and even criticized as naïve or stupid – senselessly acting in a miniscule way in the face of an overwhelming onslaught of “that’s the way the world IS.” Or even that you are simply not SUPPOSED to interact with ‘certain people’, as the religious leadership was so eager to point out to Jesus.

In this case, I believe I can understand if the original word WAS anger – on Jesus’ part – because he knew that what he was about to do would change the hopes that he had of setting out to bring his message to the people of Galilee. It also explains a little more for me this ‘Messianic Secret’ thing that is so much more present in the Gospel according to Mark – where he performs some miraculous healing or does something that makes it patently obvious that he IS the Messiah, but after doing or saying that thing he tells the people most affected – and convinced – by it to not tell a SOUL about what they’ve seen and heard.

What was the outcome of Jesus’ healing of the leper? The leper goes out and tells EVERYONE he comes in contact with about what has happened to him, and names Jesus, points to him and calls him the Messiah, says he’s the one – in short, he does everything BUT what Jesus told him to do – which was to BE QUIET about being healed. You’ve got to admit, it WAS kind of hard to keep something like that to yourself.

And what was the outcome of THAT – of his not being able to obey Jesus’ stern warning to not tell anyone? “Jesus could not go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and the people came to him from every quarter.”

So Jesus wasn’t able to keep going into the towns, to preach in their synagogues, to proclaim the message of the good news, like he had been up until he met this man.

But you know what is interesting? We’re not even out of the first chapter of the Gospel yet. If there was a derailment in the original plan, it still worked out. The Gospel was still proclaimed, people kept being healed, kept coming to and following Jesus, and the message has continued even to this day to be proclaimed.

Jesus realized really quickly that his ministry was going to consist of interruptions – needy people always clamoring for his attention, crying from the roadside, grasping at his garment hem, lowering a sickbed through the roof, trying to get the healing he can offer them. You can't blame them. These are people in need. But I imagine that living with constant, overwhelming requests for help would be exhausting for anyone, and Jesus had so much to do and so little time. I imagine that if Jesus were angry for a moment, it may have been, in part, at the realization that there would never be just a sermon, just a dinner with friends, just a moment to pray. He was going to have to live with continual interruption.

We live with continual interruptions too, don't we? There is always something coming up, something clamoring for our attention. As those interruptions arise, we struggle to balance them: a stranger whose car needs a jumpstart when we're already late for a committee meeting or a daughter's soccer game. A child who enters our home, filling our hearts with joy even as our lives change forever. A friend weeping in the pews on Sunday because her husband or father or mother or daughter was just diagnosed with cancer. This story of Jesus interrupted on his preaching mission teaches us something about how to handle those interruptions, how to live with the uncertainty of changing schedules and shifting priorities. Jesus may become angry for a moment--it is only natural to feel frustrated or disoriented or, yes, even angered when our hopes and intentions are thrown into chaos. But Jesus does not let that first emotional reaction control his response.

Too often, we get drawn into believing that faithful discipleship means cultivating the correct emotion in our hearts: peaceful contemplation in worship, when truly our minds are roiling with worry; sympathy for a person in need, when truly we are preoccupied with our own concerns; excitement for a mission trip or a life change, when truly we are apprehensive. When Jesus feels anger and then acts with compassion, he reminds us that discipleship can mean loving God and our neighbor with our actions even when we are angry or anxious or distracted. Discipleship can mean responding faithfully to God's surprises and life's curveballs, even when it is hard. And in that endeavor, we are never alone.

The promise of this story is that Christ is always ready to turn toward us. On that Galilee road, with so many limits and demands on his time, with so many consequences for stretching out his hand, Jesus chooses to touch and heal because, to Jesus, each one of God's children matters. Each one of us is a beloved and beautiful child of God. Each one of us is unique and precious. The good news of this story is that you matter to God, and so does everyone else.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

The challenge of this story is to go and do likewise. The challenge is to approach those interruptions and disruptions, those unexpected intrusions and inconvenient crises, those times of uncertainty and change, as moments of opportunity. The challenge is to set aside everything we think we know about God's plan for us, all of our rush and hurry, all of our ideas about who and what is important, and to turn toward our neighbors to bless and heal, to be blessed and healed. Because when we do that, when we take a moment, take a breath, and turn towards each other, we see Jesus, with us on the road.

Let’s pray.

See Heaven Opened

2012-01-15T02:09:00.001-05:00

Sunday January 15 2012

Epiphany 2B

Text: John 1:43-51

⁴³ The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” ⁴⁴Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. ⁴⁵Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” ⁴⁶Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” ⁴⁷When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” ⁴⁸Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” ⁴⁹Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” ⁵⁰Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” ⁵¹And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

John is … different.

The Gospel of John, I mean, not … any given John that you may have in your life, however accurate the statement might be in applying it to HIM.

It is something we were reminded of on Christmas, as we read the nativity story as related in the fourth Gospel. Remember the nativity without a star, or shepherds, or a manger, or sheep, or an angelic chorus or wise men coming from the east.

John focused instead on WHO Christ was, not on HOW he showed up.

And he does something different in relating the story of how Jesus’ ministry began. In the synoptic Gospels – the other three – Jesus goes looking for his disciples, and he finds them fishing and calls them away from their day jobs in order to follow him.

In John, the first disciples are brought to him – and they are brought to him through having been disciples of John the Baptist. In the verses immediately prior to today’s passage, beginning in verse 35, we have John standing with two of his disciples, and as Jesus walks by, John exclaims, “Look, here is the lamb of God!” and that is enough for the two, they step out and follow Christ.

I wonder how it must have felt for John to see the … completion of his task begin. He had been preaching and proclaiming for an indeterminate amount of time in the wilderness. Long enough to have worn out any clothing that he went INTO the wilderness with, and long enough to have adjusted his diet to what was most readily available as well. But to have that day come when he could stop talking about the Messiah and start pointing him out to people – right there! – it was enough to trigger the response from these two disciples that he had probably been hoping for all along – to step away from him and step towards Jesus.

If we stop and think, we could probably come up with more than a few John the Baptist stand-ins in our lives as well. I’ve shared with you about Hermana Elena de Alarcon – Sister Helena – who was my Sunday School teacher as a pre-teen, who took her responsibility to instruct the children of Third Baptist church in Santiago with a dedication and a faithfulness that made an impression even then on children who were so easily distracted by the least little thing. I remember her comparing the white snow of the Andes Mountains that looked down over Santiago in the winter with the spotlessness of our souls when God looks at us and sees Jesus standing in for us. It made an impression.

I could relate multiple stories of people in my life who pointed me in the direction of Jesus, who in one way or another declared to me ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ but I know that we all have someone like that in our past – and perhaps in our present – whom we hold with an esteem and a love that we can’t quite put into words, but who are so dear to our hearts that when we think of them we don’t think of them in isolation, but we think of them standing next to the one to whom they pointed us. Jesus is standing right beside them, smiling.

So the text today is actually a telling of the second stage in Jesus’ gathering disciples. Andrew has begun to follow Jesus, and he went and found his brother Peter and brought him along, and now we are back to a scene that is a little more in line with the gathering of disciples that happens in the other gospel narratives. Phillip is called, and he then goes and hunts down Nathanael and tells HIM about Jesus, he does his own impersonation of John right there. It is interesting to note that in each telling of the disciples’ selection, there is no exact duplication. Either the way they are called, or the order in which they are called, or their NAMES don’t match up. Some have attempted to harmonize the different storylines, but it is, I think, healthier to leave them as they are – mismatched and highlighting different aspects of the story.

For John, it was important to point out that, even for Peter, who ended up being the leader of the disciples and the early church, there was someone there before him, someone who stepped in at the right place and the right time and brought him together with Jesus.

And that is the first lesson we can learn from Andrew. There is someone out there, maybe even our brother or our closest friend, who needs to be brought together with Jesus. And notice that Andrew didn’t spend a lot of time arguing and convincing Peter that this Jesus was the one they were all expecting; all he said was ‘come and see.’

It may sound odd coming from a preacher, but when it comes down to it, while words ARE important, actions DO indeed speak louder than words. That is as true in my life as it is in anyone else’s. Pay attention to words. Pay MORE attention to how they are followed through on.

John had been preaching about the Messiah, but when the Messiah showed up, he knew when to get off the stage. He knew it wasn’t about him. And so did Andrew. That is the second lesson we can learn from him this morning. Andrew didn’t pull rank when it came to taking his place among the disciples. We don’t really hear anything else about him after this. He becomes one of the twelve, and lets that be that. It speaks to a humbleness that may have taken some settling into (after all, we do have that episode where the disciples are arguing about who would be sitting at Jesus’ right hand later in his ministry), but which ultimately won out.

Finally, we come to Jesus’ interaction with Nathanael. Straight up, from the beginning of the encounter, we know there are some idiosyncratic – some unique – forms of communication going on. ‘An Israelite in whom there is no deceit’; ‘Sitting under the fig tree’; and ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man’ are not phrases that can be easily explained or understood. Sometimes scripture is just like that. You come across a saying or a phrase that probably made perfect sense to the person who wrote it and the people who heard it read to them, but to us, nearly two thousand years later, the cultural references have been lost to the mists of time and we can surmise a possible meaning, but are for the most part guessing as to the full significance of a statement.

‘An Israelite in whom there is no deceit’ could be Jesus simply stating his assessment of Nathanael’s character. He was, we know, perceptive enough to cut through the surface fluff and uncover the truth that sometimes lay beneath. But it could equally be an instance where Jesus was using humor and making a sarcastic statement. There are other instances where Jesus said things in a joking manner, and this could in fact be one of them. From Nathanael’s response we could understand it two very different ways: a genuine ‘how did you know me?’ or an equally sarcastic retort ‘you have no idea who you are talking about’. ‘Under the fig tree’ might be a way of describing someone who was a philosopher at heart. One who dedicated time to contemplating the world, society, and how things work. In other words, one who sat and thought about STUFF, and may have at some point done that sitting under a fig tree. After all, they were around. Maybe he had a big forehead, or a receding hairline – not that those would actually indicate any inclination one way or another to deep thought. The point is, there could be some contextual communication going on here of which we are missing the full import simply due to the fact that we don’t have the full context at hand. But that is okay. We draw what we can from what we have and trust the Holy Spirit to do the rest.

Finally, we have this ‘angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man’ business. It is straight out of Genesis 28:12 – what we popularly and through the children’s chorus call “Jacob’s ladder”. In the account of Genesis, the ladder is a figurative description of the relationship between God and Humanity through the covenant he is establishing with Israel.

Remember how John is big on WHO Jesus is? Here is where that comes into play. John is telling his listeners through Jesus’ words that he – Jesus – is the new connection between God and humanity.

And here is the word for us today, the ‘what this means for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton’:

As Christ was breaking in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth through his public ministry, we now, today, as his body are tasked with the same responsibility. We are the ones who get to tell someone that if they come and see, they will come to believe; if they watch us in what we do, and we have this unthinkable treasure to take care of – to be ministers of the Word – but just as the Word in John was anything but passive, the Word today is active – actively working through our lives – if we let him; actively reaching out to those around us – if we let him; actively showing what the Kingdom is like, and not just talking about it on Sundays and forgetting about it Monday through Saturdays – if we let him.

For those of you who may have had a chance to visit our Facebook page, you’ve probably noticed that the picture that is there – it is called our ‘profile picture’ – is not a picture of the sanctuary either inside or out, but a picture of a clay jug – a clay jar. It happens to be from last summer’s governor’s school. Caleb was taking a photography class, and he took the picture and then manipulated it in such a way that the only thing that was in color in the image was the jar itself. Everything else was in black and white.

I have always appreciated the image that Paul gave us of holding this treasure in jars of clay – as a way to remind us that, even though what we carry inside is of incalculable worth – we are still frail and fragile human beings – still imperfect, still broken and fallen creatures.

But despite that fact – that we are imperfect beings living in a fallen world – God still works through us. And we can take great comfort in the fact that God does not expect perfection from his children, just obedience and trust.

And it is through that obedience and trust – obedience and trust that we see most perfectly modeled in Jesus – that we will allow others to see heaven opened up – and in the process, maybe even catch a glimpse of it ourselves.

***

Let’s pray.

Seeing Salvation

2011-12-31T18:56:00.000-05:00

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Christmas 1B

Text: Luke 2:22-40

²²When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord ²³(as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), ²⁴and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” ²⁵Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. ²⁶It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. ²⁷Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, ²⁸Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, ²⁹“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; ³⁰for my eyes have seen your salvation, ³¹which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, ³²a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” ³³And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. ³⁴Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed ³⁵so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” ³⁶There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, ³⁷then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. ³⁸At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. ³⁹When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. ⁴⁰The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.

Simeon and Anna.

They were fixtures at the Temple. They’re the ones who knew where those special candles and the decorations were stored from one year to the next, and just as important, HOW they were supposed to be stored. They kept track of that stuff because, for the most part, being in and around the Temple was their LIFE. That is what they’d come to dedicate themselves to.

But they weren’t the only ones. There were the priests, the assistants, the moneychangers, the suppliers, the deputy assistants and THEIR assistants.

They were all there just as often as Simeon, and had structured their lives around Temple worship from the time they were kids. Some had been there longer than Anna, which was saying a LOT, considering how old she was now and how young she was when she lost her husband.

So what was different about Simeon and Anna? How did they key into what was really happening when Joseph and Mary showed up with their newborn baby, and not the others?

Scripture gives us part of the answer in introducing us to Simeon: The Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die until he held the Messiah in his arms. We find that in verse 26. But if we go back just one phrase, we read this at the end of verse 25: ‘The Holy Spirit rested on him.’ So how does that happen? Does the Holy Spirit just show up one day and say ‘here I am!’ and move in like an unwelcome guest?

Not at all.

To be in a relationship, there must be reciprocity – a mutual exchange. That is, there is something offered and received by both people who are involved in the relationship. If you have ever been involved in a one-way relationship it doesn’t take long to realize that the word relationship doesn’t quite apply when everything flows in one direction and one direction only.

It is no different when we enter into relationship with God. What WE struggle with is to try to identify what it is that we bring to the relationship. After all, we ARE talking about being in a reciprocal relationship with the creator of the universe…talk about figuring out what present to give to the person who has everything … this is kind of the ultimate example.

But that IS the question, isn’t it? What would God want with us, much less FROM us? As soon as we hear that, if we’ve spent any time in Sunday School, the quick and easy answer is right on the tip of our tongues: our hearts, or our lives, our souls. But I think that might actually skip over what is at the heart of the question.

Let me back up a little bit. We think of being in relationship with God in terms of salvation. Or we’ve been trained to think that way: that a relationship with God MEANS being ‘saved’. And to a degree that is correct. But let’s look at this from a slightly different perspective.

We believe salvation is by grace through faith, not by works, to quote scripture, so if salvation is a done deal as soon as we have the faith to declare that Jesus is Lord of our lives, then what does that mean for our relationship with the Lord? In other words, if, as soon as we move in the direction of God and receive the gift of salvation, THAT aspect of our relationship is taken care of, God is saying, essentially, ‘you know all that stuff you worry about doing and being and following in order to gain salvation? The right living, the right thinking, the proper attitude, the right schedule of church attendance, all that stuff, it’s dust in the wind. You HAVE salvation. Here, it’s yours. Free to you. Somewhat costly to me, but that’s just the kind of God I am.

So, now, what are you going to DO about it? How are you going to carry on, in the understanding that what you do has absolutely no bearing on your salvation, on how much I love you or on what I was willing to do for you, because that’s all been taken care of?

If we reframe the question of our relationship with God away from that initial salvific connection into an ongoing, growing, and developing relationship, then we begin to understand that THIS relationship is not that different from other relationships in our lives – of course, this one MATTERS exponentially MORE than other relationships we may have, but it is also one that we express THROUGH ALL the other relationships in our lives. But in the sense that it is one that we have to work at, that we pursue, that we engage, that we … nurture, that we tend to, that we CARE about, it is not so different.

You see, God wants company.

God created us to be in communion with him. Genesis tells us that God walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. Actually, if you read the verse, it’s not exactly such an idyllic picture. That verse, in chapter 3 verse 8, says that Adam and Even heard God walking in the Garden, and they hid themselves, because they knew they had sinned. It is not an image of pre-fall perfect harmony, but of a post-fall seeking – on the part of God – for his creation – even then, however you want to interpret the beginning of Genesis, the image we have is of a God who is already, as soon as that separation happens, working to reestablish the relationship with us.

And that is the story that is found throughout scripture. Time after time after time, we turn away from God, or turn away from who God intends us to be, and are either distracted by other shiny but ultimately worthless ‘treasures’, and God is always coming after us, sending food in the night, prophets to declare his jealous love, sending angels to announce his purpose into our lives, and, eventually, coming and living with us.

So how we ‘see’ salvation changes depending on how we view our relationship with God. If we think of that relationship in formulaic terms – sort of like a math equation – A plus B = C; where A is God and B is us and C is salvation and that’s IT, then it is a very bare-bones, shallow image of salvation, isn’t it?

If, however, we think of our relationship with God as one that is as involved, as interesting, as demanding as our relationship to our dearest and closest friend, then we begin to get the picture of who God has been throughout history – you’ve heard me say it before, God is about relationships – God is a relational God – that is how God communicates, that’s how God operates.

Will you join me in entering into that relationship more deeply and fully this year?

Let’s pray.

Announcements and Blessings

2011-12-11T01:57:00.001-05:00

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Advent 3B

Text: Luke 1:39-56

³⁹In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, ⁴⁰where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit ⁴²and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. ⁴³And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? ⁴⁴For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. ⁴⁵And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” ⁴⁶And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, ⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, ⁴⁸for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; ⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. ⁵⁰His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. ⁵¹He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. ⁵²He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; ⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. ⁵⁴He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, ⁵⁵according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” ⁵⁶And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.

My knowledge of Mary growing up was limited to basically two events. She was present at Jesus’ conception and birth, and she was present at his death. She kind of ‘bookended’ the gospel story. Part of the reason she was limited to that in my upbringing was I’m sure, due to the fact that I was a Baptist in a country that even now professes to be over 80% Roman Catholic. And while it is a sad statement, it is also a true statement that just as the reformers were apt to do, Baptists in Chile who came out of the Roman Catholic tradition tended to leave lots of things behind; the veneration of saints, the theology of sacraments, the confessional, infant baptism, and the veneration of Mary – in many instances simply because they were so tied to the Roman Catholic tradition.

I think that dearth of knowledge – that scarcity of exploration of Mary’s experience, and most importantly, her response to what is the single biggest event in human history made for a lesser understanding of the message of the gospels for me.

I’m not going to come out and tell you we need to begin to set up an altar with the image of Mary, or that we should think of her as co-redemptress alongside Christ, or that we should pray to her so SHE can speak to God on our behalf, I am too Baptist to do that.

What I will say is that we DO need to stop and think about Mary more often than simply twice a year. And I say that fully realizing that in some cases, the only time many people DO stop and think about JESUS is at those same two times each year, so we’re crowding the scene a little bit, but bear with me.

If, as it is commonly accepted today, Mary was a young teenager – around 14 years of age – when she found out she was pregnant, I wonder what the REAL first thought that went through her head was. I mean, yeah, the first words RECORDED that came out of her mouth were ‘how so, I’m a virgin?’ followed shortly by ‘here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word.’ But I would love to know what her first THOUGHT was. I wonder if it might have been something that would be impolite to translate from the Aramaic she spoke? I wonder if her first thought was fear? Societal norms were different in those days – to put it mildly – and young girls of fourteen were already of an age when they could begin to conceive, so I don’t think there was a freak-out moment when she realized she wasn’t going to get to play with her friends anymore. She had probably long since given up childish things and had for at least two if not three years been a working member of the household – whether in keeping house, or cooking, helping with the family business or tending to some responsibility or other, she was not a child.

In our society today, we enjoy an extended childhood far beyond what our ancestors did – and far beyond what many other cultures in the world today do as well, and our expectations of what is proper for a young woman of 14 and what is not are different from that which was common in first century Palestine. But in one way they do remain somewhat aligned – in that a child is better BOTH conceived and born within the bounds of a loving relationship between his or her parents. I fully realize that seems to be less and less the norm, but that line in the gospel narrative still resonates with us today. We can associate with Joseph’s response to the news of Mary’s condition – that he would quietly and discreetly dis-engage from her so that there would be less of a hullabaloo when the folks in town began to notice the growing baby bump.

I am of two minds when it comes to the “Magnificat” – that is the name given to the song that Mary sings after she and Elizabeth get together - it is called that because ‘magnificat’ is the word that comes first in the Latin version of scriptures that we read in English as ‘my soul magnifies the Lord’ – it is a beautiful hymn, a beautiful expression of someone being totally in love with the will of God for their lives, totally submitted to whatever that means for them, totally engaged in moving forward into it. It even manages to include echoes of God’s justice that sound an awful lot like it comes from Psalms than from the New Testament. It’s closest in wording to Hannah’s song, which is found in 1 Samuel 2:1-10. So there is a pretty good chance that Mary was paraphrasing a passage of scripture that she grew up with and personalized it for herself on this occasion.

There is also the chance that the whole hymn was inserted at some point in the early oral history of the church – the words being placed in Mary’s mouth by faithful followers who would rather hear this than Mary’s cries of joy and fear intermingled with peals of laughter when Elizabeth comes to her door and opens it and sees her and says “Holy crap! You too?!” There are many possibilities that can be explored in that way.

But God has seen fit to give us the Canon in this form, and we believe that to be for a reason, and however it came to be, God was in the process, so here we have this joyful, faithful, spiritually uplifting and idealized response to God’s moving in her life from the woman who stuck it out. She never denied Jesus. She pushed him when he needed to be pushed, at that wedding in Cana, scripture doesn’t say she gave him a spanking when he got away from the family when they went to the temple when he was twelve, and she didn’t, but I can promise you that somewhere in there with the fear any parent feels when they temporarily lose a child in a place they don’t live, she probably thought ‘just wait … when we get home …’

You see, Mary has, to some degree even more than the apostles and Jesus himself, been dehumanized in the centuries since she found out she was pregnant. It makes it that much harder to connect with her today. We read about the disciples making mistakes or being boneheaded about something, we read about how Jesus cried, or was angry, or was tired and rested. We read the letters of Paul and his humanity comes through loud and clear. He is angry, he is sarcastic, he is blunt, but he can also be a poet, he can evoke images with sublime words that cut to our very core.

So don’t be shy about studying Mary, reading books about her, doing Bible Studies about her. She’s no more or less human than every other character in the Bible.

And while God DID use her in a special way, the bottom line is that she was willing to LET God use her – in whatever way God needed to.

We can all learn from her submission, her faithfulness in the face of the uncertainty of what the future held, and her willingness to continue to follow and to believe – wherever that ended up taking her – even if it was to the foot of the cross at Calvary.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Announcements and blessings … we have been blessed beyond measure, insofar as we have also, within us our Lord Jesus. But a blessing as we know, is not something to be contained within ourselves, but is to be shared. So insofar as we live out that blessing of having Jesus in us, we are announcing his presence. We are announcing that he is active and living in the world, and he is doing that through us. So that is our challenge. That is what has always been our challenge – to make our living in that sense comparable to Mary’s. And it’s not a perfect model to go after, as idealized as her life IS in the gospels. It is achievable. It’s not just an idea we hold within ourselves, it’s not just a concept that we profess to believe; it’s not just a life ethic that we follow. We host in ourselves the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is out to do amazing things. REALLY amazing things, if we just let him.

Let’s pray.

All The Nations

2011-11-20T01:48:00.000-05:00

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Christ The King A

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Text: Matthew 25:31-46

³¹“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. ³²All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, ³³and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. ³⁴Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; ³⁵for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ ³⁷Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? ³⁸And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? ³⁹And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ ⁴⁰And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ ⁴¹Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; ⁴²for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ ⁴⁴Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ ⁴⁵Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ ⁴⁶And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Jesus talks about salvation in different contexts to different audiences and in different ways throughout the Gospels.

Sometimes he’s pretty cryptic. Sometimes he’s a little clearer. Sometimes he speaks in parables and stories. But, nowhere else does Jesus so explicitly tell us who’s going to Heaven and who’s going to Hell like he does in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew.

In Matthew 25, there’s that theme of separation again. Jesus divides humanity into two teams: the sheep and the goats. The sheep go to his “right hand,” are declared “blessed” by their Father, and “inherit the kingdom prepared for them since the foundation of the world.” When it is all said and done, they go into “eternal life.”

The “goats” on the other hand, aren’t quite as fortunate. They go to his “left hand,” are declared “accursed,” and are relegated to “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” for an eternity of “punishment.”

Stop and ask yourself, which team would you prefer to be on? I think Jesus makes this choice a pretty easy one.

Now, how do we get on the sheep team? How do we get picked for sheep duty? Well, the Good News is that Jesus tells us in detail.

“…for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

Folks who do such things get to play on the sheep team, where the signing bonuses are out of this world.

The “goats” on the other hand, let hungry people go hungry. They don’t bother giving thirsty people anything to drink. They ignore strangers, letting them know that they are absolutely unwelcome. And they don’t give clothes to people who need them, don’t visit the sick and lonely, and let people rot in jail or prison without a thought.

It’s interesting to notice the importance of this teaching being given by Jesus in the last week of his life.

In fact, this is one of the last things Jesus says to his followers before he’s nailed to the cross in the Gospel of Matthew. What Jesus is doing here, at the end point of his earthly ministry, is making it very clear to people who claimed to be his disciples and supporters that there is no gray area at all when it comes to following him.

You’re either with him, or you aren’t.

The way to tell which it is, is by looking at how you live your life. To be on Jesus’ side means that you’re actively caring for the poor, the needy, the sick, and the lonely. To not do such things means that you’re really not with him at all, but against him. And if you’re against him, the signing bonus carries with it … fire and brimstone.

This being one of Jesus’ last teachings should add some weight to this message. After all, who remembers the coach’s locker room speech from some game in the middle of the season? But, the one before the big championship game is seared into our hearts and minds forever.

One of the interesting things about this lesson from the last few pages of Jesus’ earthly life is that the sheep didn’t know that they were earning heaven by their actions! These sheep said:

Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?

They had no idea that their good deeds meant that they were inheriting the Kingdom prepared for them. They weren’t trying to earn God’s favor, or sneak around his mercy. The sheep weren’t fending for themselves, desperately trying to avoid punishment and earn eternal rewards for themselves.

They just saw people in need, and they served them. They were just living their lives of faith the way that they always did. They were living their lives focused on God and the needs of others instead on themselves and their own needs.

The difference between some group of sheep doing these deeds trying to get to heaven, and sheep doing the same exact deeds unaware of the incredible consequences, is that the actions of the latter group are authentic. They are genuinely loving their neighbor, and genuinely serving the needs of others, instead of selfishly looking out for themselves.

That is what God wants of us.

And, in the last week of Jesus’ life, that is the kind of life Jesus is calling his followers to live.

This is what loving our neighbor as ourselves is about. Loving our neighbor just to get ourselves to heaven wouldn’t be real love, it’d be selfishness. Preoccupation with our own salvation therefore is exactly what Jesus is warning us against. When you’re living your life loving your neighbor, you don’t have time to selfishly worry about YOU!

Nor do you have to.

The Good News here is that there is no checklist of good deeds to fill out.

Jesus is talking about a way of life here, and it’s one that isn’t motivated out of the fear of Hell or the hope of heaven, but a life that’s driven by an authentic love.

It’s a way of life that recognizes that Christianity isn’t about us! It’s not about self-preservation, feeling good, or getting front row seats in Heaven.

If this isn’t crystal clear from the sheep and goats story, read on in the Gospel of Matthew until you get to the crucifixion. There, Jesus demonstrates the exact same selfless, genuine, and authentic love that he demands of us. He was flogged, mocked, tortured, and executed for God and for us, not for himself. It wasn’t some selfish egomaniacal stunt to gain fame and fortune. He loved God and us with his life and his death, and that is exactly what he asks of us.

And with that, it makes sense that Jesus gives this lesson in the last week of his life. It also makes sense to replace the well-known query used by modern evangelists, “Are you saved?” with the more appropriate, “Do you genuinely love God and your neighbor, not for your own gain, but for true brotherly and Godly love?”

Yeah, it takes a little longer to spit that out, but so do most important things.

Being sheep of the shepherd isn’t about us. Nor is it about being saved, or getting rewards, however eternal they may be. Being sheep of the shepherd is about following our shepherd’s lead, and loving others as he has loved us and given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God. (Ephesians 5:2)

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

I think it serves as a reminder of how we need to be checking our motivation, not just our actions, but how we come to the decision to do something – however good it may appear to be – and why? Are we doing it with an eye towards how it will look to the surrounding community? Are we looking for a good reputation among sister churches in the area? That may be all good and well, but I hope that is not the ONLY reason we do stuff. Are we doing things to be able to include neat little tidbits in our annual church report that tallies how many people have participated in our various activities, or joined us for special events?

What it boils down to is this: Doing things is important, but WHY we do them is AS important as DOING them.

Let’s pray.

Into The Joy

2011-11-13T01:06:00.002-05:00

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton) Warsaw VA

Ordinary 33A

Text: Matthew 25:14-30

You know how when you watch a movie, not in the theaters, but either on television or in some recorded format, before the actual start of the movie, a black screen comes up, and, in white letters so that it is clearly legible, a message is projected about the movie you are about to watch? If you are watching it on television, it usually has something to say about the movie having been formatted to fit the screen, and edited to run in the allotted time, or edited for content. If you are watching it on tape or DVD, the message has more to say about the rest of the material – the bonus features – that is on the DVD or the tape – about the views and opinions expressed in the interviews and commentaries not necessarily being those of the production and distribution companies, but that they are solely those of the participants – the actors and the production staff as individuals? Those are known as disclaimers. In a legal sense, they are messages letting you know in advance something specific about what is coming next.

I open the message this morning with a disclaimer, and it is this: The Parable of the Talents has, as long as I can remember, been at best unsettling to me. At worst, it has caused me to view my call to obedience and faithful service in a terribly negative light – I mean, seriously, who wants to be cast into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth? But is that enough of a reason to ENGAGE in that obedience and faithful service, out of FEAR of being cast into the outer darkness?

If we’ve spent any amount of time in our upbringing listening to hellfire and brimstone sermons, we immediately associate that phrase – weeping and gnashing of teeth – with judgment – and almost universally with the judgment of God. It would seem to tie in with the preceding passages that start back in chapter 24, as I mentioned last week.

These two chapters are considered by some scholars to be the last of five great discourses that Jesus gives in Matthew’s Gospel. If you remember, Matthew was specifically focused on highlighting Jesus’ fulfillment of the prophecies of the Old Testament – to identify him as what the Hebrew people were looking for – the Messiah. It is a commonly held understanding that Matthew laid out these five discourses as a counterbalance to the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures; in some ways, a mirror in which the fulfillment of those ancient writings could be viewed.

To my best recollection, I have only heard this passage preached on in one interpretation: as an exhortation to Jesus' disciples to use their God-given gifts in the service of God, and to take risks for the sake of the Kingdom of God. These gifts have been seen to include personal abilities ("talents" in the everyday sense), as well as personal wealth. Failure to use one's gifts, the parable suggests, will result in judgment.

I can understand that. That is a clear interpretation and a sensible one as well, taking into account the surrounding parables, and the general tone of the discourse.

So let’s go with that interpretation first, and then look at a couple of other, less well-known ones.

It is fairly straightforward. The man is Jesus, and he has gone away and left his servants, that is, US, to tend to his business. He gives each of us varying amounts of things to tend to, and we are responsible for seeing that his business grows, that his wealth increases, that his kingdom grows, in other words. The first two servants take what he gives them and do amazing things with it. They invest it, they end up multiplying it like a well-connected Wall Street insider, who knows who to call, knows what to buy and when, knows the ins and outs of high finance, because we are talking about high finance here, the equivalent of hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars being entrusted to the servants.

The interpretation works out something like this: the talents being discussed, rather than being a sum of money, are to be understood in OUR normal, run-of-the-mill use of the word: our skills, our abilities, our gifts. You have a knack for putting words together with music, you have a natural ability to be a welcoming presence to anyone who walks in the door, you are able to put people at ease in an otherwise tense situation, you can defuse an argument and bring the opposite sides to an agreement that is more than acceptable to those who would otherwise end up as enemies.

The message of the parable is this: use those talents, those skills and gifts for the furthering of the Kingdom of God. Yes, each of them involves risking something – personal time, energy, an investment of effort, of emotional capital that COULD potentially result in a negative outcome – there is a real possibility that the people you are investing IN will reject what you offer, will reject the welcome, will reject the proffered solution to the conflict, will not be moved by the song you wrote, and remain untouched by the Spirit. That risk comes with the territory. But that doesn’t keep you from risking anyway.

Or at least it didn’t keep the first two servants from taking the risk with what they’d been given.

That third servant though, he didn’t get it. He didn’t understand the treasure he’d been given. Sure, it was a smaller amount than the other two had received, but it was still not an inconsiderable amount.

The lesson is: no matter what you’ve been given, no matter how insignificant it appears to you, God will still use it if you invest it – if you risk it for the sake of the Kingdom.

The consequences are too terrible to be ignored. See what happened to the servant who was given just the one talent and then turned around and HID it rather than RISKED it?

So this first interpretation lands on this conclusion: we’re reminded of it in our congregational benediction every time we share it: Risk something BIG for something GOOD, and that “good” thing is nothing less than the Kingdom of God.

And it is an especially timely understanding of the passage, since most churches across the country dedicate some portion of the fall of each year as Stewardship Emphasis time. It ties in with the question of how well we are stewarding what God has given us – both financially and in terms of time and skills and abilities and gifts – and makes for fairly easy dovetails into reviewing what the upcoming budget year looks like, what we hope to accomplish, and how. There is good evidence to suggest that this understanding of the parable of the talents is, in fact, the reason we THINK of gifts and skills and abilities AS talents – the meaning of the word was changed through this interpretation of THIS parable.

So that is the first and most common interpretation.

The second is not really that different from the first. The only shift is in whom the parable is focused on. It’s still about wasting what you’ve been entrusted with, and the end result is still the same, but the subjects of criticism are not the listeners. This is not a warning to each individual hearing the story to do what they can with what God has given them for the sake of the Kingdom, rather it is a criticism of the Religious Leaders of the time for squandering that with which they had been entrusted by God – namely, the word of God and the care of God’s people – and simply maintained their place in society. They’d lost sight of the commission that God included in the covenant with the people of Israel to be a blessing to the nations of the world; basically, to spread the just and righteous precepts of God across the world. They had opted instead to bury their treasure and keep it to themselves, not spread it and double it’s size while he was away.

There is plenty of room to understand the parable in this sense. After all, Jesus spent a lot of time calling a spade a spade when talking – to not say arguing – with the religious leadership that he kept running afoul of.

Before I get into the third interpretation, I need to review something with you. There are different types of parables found in the Gospels. Some of them are Kingdom Parables – usually they are easy to identify, because they start out with the words “The Kingdom of God (or Heaven) is like …”. These parables are usually presented as an image of what the Reign of God will look like, or will speak to God’s action that brings that reign into more of a reality through Jesus’ followers. There are also Wisdom Parables, which are teachings that are just that – words of wisdom – knowledge to be retained for future reference. Here is the interpretation of the parable of the talents as a wisdom parable, and I am freely borrowing from David Ewart, a minister of the United Church of Canada, who says,

How might this parable have sounded to the peasants who were Jesus' followers?

First, they would not see themselves as any of the characters in the story. They certainly were not "masters," nor were they even the slaves of a master.

Second, they would have been well aware that it was against the law of Moses to charge interest. And, they would remember that when the twelve tribes entered the Promised Land, the "promise" was that every family would receive and hold a share of that land - FOREVER. Therefore, those who had gotten rich, did so by stealing land that rightly belonged to others. This understanding of the rich is shown in Verse 26:

I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter.

In other words, the rich get rich by stealing what belongs to others.

Third, for the followers of Jesus, the slave who buried the talent was doing the honourable thing. He was not using the wealth to steal even more. He was protecting his master's wealth in the safest way possible.

Fourth, notice that this parable does NOT begin, "the Kingdom of heaven is like..." In fact, the opening two words in Verse 14 are variously translated:

"For it is as if" (New Revised Standard Version)

"Again, it will be like" (New International Version)

"It's also like" (The Message)

But what exactly is the "it" that the following parable is like? Does the "it" refer to the Kingdom of Heaven (i.e. referring to the subject in Verse 1); or does the "it" refer to the delay of the coming of the Kingdom (i.e., referring to the subject in Verse 13)?

In Luke 19, this story is told following the story of Zacchaeus - a rich man who changes his evil ways! Surely this is a sign that the Kingdom is eminently at hand? Verse 11 then gives this introduction to the parable:

(Jesus) went on to tell a parable, because he was near Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the Kingdom of God was to appear immediately.

I take it that Luke intends us to hear this parable NOT as a teaching about the Kingdom, but as a caution against thinking that the Kingdom was coming immediately.

And so, similarly, the "it" in Matthew 25:14 refers to the subject in the previous verse 13:

Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour (when the Kingdom of Heaven will arrive).

The parable of the talents then is NOT intended to be an introductory lesson on how the Kingdom of Heaven is like modern Western capitalism - extolling using wealth to make even more wealth.

As George Hermanson puts it in his sermon, A Kingdom of Surprises, the servant who buries the talents acts as a whistle-blower. He takes a very public action that draws attention to the injustice that has come to be taken as "business as usual."

Burying the talents is a classic piece of non-violent resistance: the servant does nothing to harm anyone, but he makes a public act of refusing to participate in the unjust system of acquiring wealth for the few by impoverishing the many.

The master's wrath is the response of an elite who has been publicly shamed by one of lower status.

It is highly ironic - to say the least - that the master's words to the servant have been taken by the church to be Jesus' words, and have been used to continue to support the very practices that the parable condemns.

David Ewart believes this is NOT a "Kingdom" parable; he believes it is a “Wisdom” parable teaching us about the perils and difficulties of the ways of the world until the Kingdom comes. It warns us to continue to expect the rich to steal from the poor; and for the followers of Jesus to expect to be punished by the rich for behaving honorably. (And in passing says ‘So much for all the stewardship sermons I have preached using this text!’)

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

A Sunday morning message is not supposed to be a lecture on biblical interpretation. It is supposed to be an encounter with the living word of God. I would invite you to reflect on each of these interpretations of this passage and consider which brings it most to life – which resonates with you the most at this time in your life and in this place in your life, because that is the way the living word works. That is how the Spirit prompts and moves and nudges us into a deeper knowledge of who Christ is and of how God wants to be in relationship with us.

Whether you resonate with a given interpretation or not – you may even have an understanding that is unique to you – know that God is working through your understanding to bring to full fruition God’s Kingdom in your life. It is that specific, that individual, even as God is working to make the Kingdom a reality on the macro level – across the world.

And so we move into the response time of the service of worship. Whether you identified with the servant entrusted with five talents, two talents, one talent, or as none of the above; whether you took this parable to be a word of admonition for the religious leaders around you – including me – or whether it clicked for you as a warning about how things might continue to be until the Kingdom of God is truly and completely established here on earth as it is in heaven, I invite you to live out that reality in your life this afternoon, this evening, this week.

Let’s pray.

Neither The Day Nor The Hour

2011-11-06T02:07:00.000-05:00

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Ordinary 32A

Text: Matthew 25:1-13

Theme: How normal (or normative) do we make our faith?

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. ²Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. ³When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; ⁴but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. ⁵As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. ⁶But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ ⁷Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. ⁸The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ ⁹But the wise replied, ‘No! There will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ ¹⁰And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. ¹¹Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ ¹²But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ ¹³Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

A question for us this morning: when I read phrases like “the bridegroom”, “the wedding banquet” and “neither the day nor the hour”, what do we associate that imagery and those phrases with most frequently?

If you answered “the second coming” or “the rapture” or “Jesus’ return”, you wouldn’t be alone. There are plenty of folks who would affirm unequivocally that this passage is a picture of the eschatological event – that is the theological term for the ‘end times’ – the eschaton – in which Jesus will return to and establish his reign on earth.

All the elements are there: Jesus – the bridegroom – the wedding banquet – the celebration – and the reference to ‘neither the day nor the hour’ echoes in our minds with what Jesus says in the Gospel of John in answer to a direct question about that specifically, so therefore, THIS passage MUST ALSO be referring to the second coming, right?

You already know what my answer will be, don’t you?

I would invite us to look at this passage differently, and take into account what both the preceding and the following passages speak to as we look at these verses.

In previous passages, Jesus has gone into a haunting vision of what that time will be like – that unexpected but predicted return – put to music by Larry Norman in his song “I Wish We’d All Been Ready”; two men walking up a hill, one disappears and one’s left standing still … I wish we’d all been ready, a man and wife asleep in bed, she hears a noise and turns her head, he’s gone, … you get the picture. The text is slightly different: “⁴⁰Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. ⁴¹Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.” It is a description of something that happens suddenly and in the middle of everyday events.

In what has become a relatively recent historical phenomenon that truly only developed since the 1830’s, we have this frenetic, morbid fascination with ‘end of the world’ scenarios. Multimillion-dollar movies have been made about it, hundreds if not thousands of books have been written and sold about the subject. We want to know what comes next.

We have watched as claim after claim of the impending end of the world has come and gone. While there was an expectation of Jesus’ prompt return among those first Christians in the early years of the growth of the movement of followers of Jesus, when time continued to pass and there WAS no triumphant return, no clouds rolling back, no thundering trumpets, people began to understand the true nature of Jesus’ remarks.

Most recently we heard predictions of the rapture to take place this past spring, and the end of the world to have taken place on October 21^st. When nothing discernible happened in May, we were told it was not so much a physical rapture as it was a spiritual one … but that the end of the world was inevitably and irrevocably, going to take place right at three weeks ago.

As you can tell, we’re still here. So is the world. Not much has changed.

There were several headlines that ran a few days after the expected date that claimed that the man who made those predictions was sorry, that he was apologizing and repented of his false teaching.

But a closer review of what his statement said reveals that, in the face of such a total negation of what he claimed was revealed to him in scripture, which WAS the exact time and date of the end of the world – rather than take responsibility for shattering peoples’ faith by first building their foundation not on Christ but on this prediction of a date after which there would be no need to worry about ANYTHING – bills to pay, families to feed, and clothes to wear, shelter to protect and a means by which to provide all of that, this man came out to say that, since God is in ultimate control of everything, then it must have been God that led him to come to the wrong conclusions regarding the rapture and the end of the world, and therefore it was not him but God who is to blame, and also to be trusted to not have abandoned us.

I ask you: does a god who would do that appeal to you at all? Does this man’s call to trust a god who would, in essence, mislead his followers in that way and yet expect them to trust him seem like a god worthy of our worship and praise? Our obedience?

So here is Jesus, painting this incredible word picture of all kinds of things happening at the end of the world, the Sun going dark, the moon not shining, wars and rumors of wars, the whole nine yards. And at the end of this, after saying that THESE WILL BE THE SIGNS, BE READY, he includes this, “³⁶“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

It would seem our friend with the multiple failed predictions didn’t pay attention to that part of the Gospel.

Then Jesus begins to tell the stories of people paying attention and people… not. People doing and LIVING the Gospel message and people … not. People thinking they were on the inside but finding out that they were … not.

Here’s the deal: we don’t live our lives – we don’t live the life of CHRIST in distraction mode. We can’t. We are either present for Jesus and are about living a life that brings about reconciliation and forgiveness into the world beginning within the relationships in our own lives right here and right now or we are … not.

If we are not outwardly expressing the experience that we claim to have inwardly, that disconnect is a really big deal. We may then need to reexamine whether or not we actually believe what we say we believe about who Christ was and is, or maybe we need to reconnect with that person we were at that moment when it DID become clear to us that our righteousness is not our own, that it is fully and completely the gift of grace.

If we have somewhere along the line forgotten that and come to believe that we are better than another because of something they have done, or failed to do, or because of a disagreement we may have had, and we have not taken active steps to mend that relationship, we are being as foolish and unprepared as the five bridesmaids who ran out of oil for their lamps.

Our unpreparedness is our own responsibility. We are each accountable. And insofar as we as a community allow unpreparedness to remain, insofar as we don’t reach out in love and forgiveness to each other, we as a community are ALSO accountable.

The passages following this one are the parable of the Talents and the parable of the Sheep and the Goats. Familiar images again: a landlord gives his servants different amounts of money to be responsible for while he is away, and two handle their responsibility faithfully. One does not. In the other, people are separated based on how they treated the weakest around them – the ones least able to help them in some way in return.

In a nutshell, Jesus said he himself did not know when he’d be back, that only God does.

In the meantime, we are to be about that business of reconciliation and forgiveness. If that is missing from our lives, then we have entirely missed the point and the message and the LIFE of Jesus.

***

“Why do you do what you do?”

The question comes up periodically as I go through my week, helping people that ask, or helping people whom I am asked TO help.

I’ve not been able to boil the answer down to a concise, simple, memorable phrase or two. Sometimes I simply answer, “It’s what I DO.” Sometimes the answer is ‘because I can.’ Other times I try to go into the explanation – which is more complete, but is also a bit wordy: “I do this (helping) because there are people in the churches who support me who want you to know that they care about you, your family and how you are doing.”

On occasion, I’m ‘on’ enough to be able to answer, ‘I do this because God has shown me so much love through Jesus that this is one way in which I can show what that love feels like.”

Rarely is my answer one that includes the statement: ‘because I want to get into heaven after I die,’ or, ‘because if Jesus comes back, I want him to see me doing this instead of something else.’

I DO, but that’s beside the point. J

The point is this: We live the truth of reconciliation and forgiveness in our lives – that means in our relationships, how we respond, how we react, how we engage with each other and the community around us – because of or out of knowing that to be a reality in our own case in our own relationship with God. Not because we see it as a formula for “If you do A, then B will happen, where A is ‘good things’ and B is ‘you’ll get into heaven’.”

When we pray “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven” that starts with us. How else COULD it start, if WE’RE the ones praying?

Think on this fact: God loves you. God is in the process of redeeming you. God cares for you and wants you to be who he created you to be. Fully, completely engaged in living an abundant life that is free from bitterness and resentment and hatred; not free from struggle and hardship, but free to live in a joy that is so profound that it transcends our circumstances and taps into the same source that fires the sun and the billions of stars across the universe, that marks the beats of our hearts, that sets us spinning around each other in this beautiful dance of life that we’ve been given.

Let’s pray.

Gentle Among You

2011-10-23T22:30:00.002-05:00

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Ordinary 30A

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw

1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

You yourselves know, brothers and sisters, that our coming to you was not in vain, ²but though we had already suffered and been shamefully mistreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition. ³For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, ⁴but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. ⁵As you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; ⁶nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, ⁷though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. ⁸So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.

I want to start today with a confession.

I sometimes have to fight with that part of me that would rather turn inward and keep to myself, sometimes we refer to it as ‘introversion’, sometimes it ends up being perceived as aloofness, but either way, it is not always compatible with the duties and responsibilities that have become associated with being a pastor.

There is a particular person, a member of our community, that for a number of reasons it has been a challenge for me to visit as a part of my weekly routine. The question of whether I have a routine is open for discussion, though with Leslie’s help and insistence, that seems to be becoming more and more a reality in my life. To my shame, at times weeks if not months would go by without my going to see him. A few weeks ago, I finally found myself driving down the road on my way to his house. Part of the dynamic that happens as you try to convince yourself that you need to go see this person is that you begin to imagine how that initial conversation is going to play out. And you create these images in your mind of these conversations being awkward, being pointed and angry, being frustrated, and as someone who like most of us doesn’t particularly enjoy confrontation, the imagination does more than enough to dissuade one from going into that situation where you THINK there might be a confrontation. As I got closer, I was wondering how the visit would go, and I got a little anxious. I knew what I needed to do. I was already praying for grace during the visit, so I asked God to help me see the man through his eyes, not mine, nor my own perceptions of him. Show me how YOU feel about him.

What came over me as I made one of the last turns before reaching the house, was this deep yearning, a longing to spend time with him that I don’t remember ever experiencing before.

It was such a strong emotion that I began to cry. By the time I reached the door to the house, I couldn’t wait to get inside and speak to him and see how he was doing and what he’d been up to.

It wasn’t particularly outstanding in content – as it turned out, nothing extraordinary was happening in his life. Well, there were a couple of things, but nothing out of the ordinary for a normal Christian’s life. Some health issues, which are to be expected in a person of his age, but otherwise, a routine visit. But for me, the visit turned out to be one of the most meaningful and sweet experiences of my life.

What made it different was how I ended up approaching it. I didn’t go into it with a sense of ‘this has to happen because it hasn’t happened for so long’ – though it WAS the case – but I believe that God answered my prayer really quickly that afternoon. He made it so that I could tap into HIS heart, and in tapping into his heart, I found where my heart needed to be.

***

We know from other references in the New Testament that Paul was able to spend at most a month – most likely just three weeks – with the people who became the church in Thessalonica, so the depth of the emotion that he conveys in his letter to them can seem in some ways disproportionate. Usually, you become close to people when you spend a lot of time with them, not a short amount of time.

But that can vary considerably.

A crucible is, for lack of a better term, a pressure cooker.

I experienced that, as I’ve shared with you before, during my time in training before going overseas as a Journeyman to Spain. The sixty-five people that I went through those five and a half weeks with, even though we don’t keep in touch that often, we have that shared connection, that shared bond, that was formed over those brief weeks, twenty-six years ago, and we still pick up where we left off. I’ve heard countless similar stories from people who’ve gone through various, intense experiences as a part of a small group. The shared experience – and hardship – does something to the group dynamic that bonds them in ways that would normally not happen in a stress-free setting.

But Paul seems to have bonded with the people of the church in Thessalonica in such a way that he needed to touch base with them again.

We have only these two letters as a testimony to that ‘touching base’ in scripture. Many scholars believe that what we call the first letter is the only letter we have that was actually written by Paul himself. It is a tantalizing question as to whether he wrote other letters to them, letters that have been lost to history. But we DO have these. And this is what we go from.

A few weeks ago I reconnected with a childhood friend. He was the person I considered my best friend growing up. Our parents were fellow missionaries, and we went to school together, though he was a year and then two behind me.

In the years since we graduated from high school, we maintained some connection as younger adults, but hadn’t spoken in nearly ten years. His father passed away a few weeks after Hannah was born, and we traveled to go to his funeral, but since then, we’d pretty much dropped out of each others’ lives.

Our mothers talk periodically on the phone, so I was able to keep up with him at a distance. I knew he’d been in and out of rehab, struggling with drug and alcohol addictions. But on this particular day I was on the road, and I had his number loaded in my phone. I knew I was going to be driving for a while, so I called and spoke briefly with his wife, and then he came on, and it was a conversation like we’ve never had. It was from the heart.

We had heart to heart conversations as teenagers, but you know how that can go.

He sounded … so … grown up, so mature, so centered. Before, he was always goofing around, even when the topic of conversation was serious. This conversation consisted of us sharing from our hearts. We apologized to each other for not keeping in touch. He shared with me about his work as a lab technician in a local hospital, and how much he loved it, but that his supervisor was excessively controlling… nothing new there. About how he’d like to be a part of an MK reunion that we’re hoping to put together in the not too distant future, about how his family is, his sons and his wife.

The emotion that came along with that conversation is one that I don’t really know how to put into words. The bond, the connection, the LOVE that was I guess rekindled is probably the word for it, because it was there before. It’s not that it WASN’T … it didn’t just LEAVE… it didn’t disappear. There has always been an affection and a love in our relationship, but it was just kind of put on a back burner and left there for a long time.

As older teenagers we had our disagreements, we had our fights. There was a time when we didn’t talk. Intentionally didn’t talk out of anger with each other, but that was all gone on that Saturday.

The reason I’m sharing this kind of sappy stuff is because when Paul writes “we were gentle among you like a nurse caring to her own children” that struck a chord. It underscored for me how important it is to handle each other with kid gloves, but it also pointed out the fact that we are people who will fly off the handle. That’s part of our nature. With some of us words spoken in anger are words that bring profound regret. I know there are words spoken to my children that I would give anything to take back.

And yet it still comes back around to the grace of being able to say ‘I love you’ and receive that love back in return.

I would encourage us all to tread lightly, to tread gently but TO tread; to BE in each other’s lives. Because that what it means to be family, that what it means to be community, that’s what it means to BE the body of Christ.

That what we say and what we do expresses care and concern always, and always, love.

Let’s pray.

The Worth of the Gift

2011-10-16T20:52:00.000-05:00

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Matthew 22:15-22

To what do we ascribe value, and to whom do we give it?

¹⁵Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. ¹⁶So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. ¹⁷Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” ¹⁸But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? ¹⁹Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. ²⁰Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” ²¹They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” ²²When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

Tony, have you stopped beating your wife?

How are you supposed to answer that question? You answer ‘no’, and it sounds like you still spend some part of your day using your wife as a punching bag. You answer ‘yes’, and it is an only marginally better answer, since it seems as though, by implication, you DID, at some point, beat your wife.

To them, it was that kind of question.

The disciples of the religious leaders and the men who supported the rule of the Herods – each of them (hence the name) – those who had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and their own positions of power and influence, of course, could only conceive of two possible answers, ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

They figured, if Jesus answers ‘yes, it IS lawful to pay taxes to Caesar’ then he’d lose the base of support of everyone who was itching for a fight with the occupying forces, who could, potentially, cause a LOT of problems for THEM if Jesus just put out the word that it was time to take up arms against the Romans. If he answered ‘no, it ISN’T lawful to pay taxes to Caesar’, it was a simple matter of treason, and they could dispose of him based on THAT charge.

What they didn’t understand was that Jesus understood that place from which the question originated. Something they themselves probably weren’t even aware of until this confrontation.

It’s that place where we all live when we try to figure out at any given moment in our day how we translate our spiritual convictions into real life living.

Almost everyone here today was born in this country, under this flag (US flag to the right). But part of why we are here in this room this morning is because, at some point in our lives, we have accepted the one whom THIS flag (Christian flag on the left) represents as our Lord and Savior, we have pledged ourselves to HIM.

But we still live in this world and in this country and under this flag and all that that entails.

Part of what I think makes this passage a little harder for us to grasp in it’s original impact is that we live in a country where we enjoy – where we benefit from – the separation of Church and State.

Even now, two hundred years and more into this grand experiment of a country, we are still living in the exception to the rule when it comes to how the State and the Church functioned in society throughout history. Centuries before Jesus, and through the vast majority of the last two thousand years, cultures the world over have joined the two together into a seamless unit.

It was no different in the Roman Empire. Caesar, the emperor, was, by definition, a self-proclaimed divinity – a god, to be worshipped and revered along with all the other gods in the pantheon of gods that the Romans had picked up through their expansions and annexations of territory. His very title, Caesar, meant ‘Lord’. When you exclaimed ‘Hail Caesar’ you were literally saying ‘Praise the lord!’ and it carried with it both a political AND a religious connotation. In other words, you were stating a political allegiance AND a spiritual conviction at the same time.

THAT is why early Christians got into so much trouble when, before they were baptized, as we have heard in this sanctuary or at a baptism at the river, they were asked to proclaim their faith, and their response was three words, the same that we hear today when we celebrate a baptism: “Jesus is Lord.” They were making not ONLY a spiritual statement, but a political one as well.

Because we live in a country where those two spheres of influence have been separated (and rightly so), we don’t hear our faith terminology as political, we hear it as simply … words that express our faith. It doesn’t register that we are making statements about our political convictions – and sometimes we don’t think of them as that – as well as our convictions of the Spirit because of the gulf that exists between the sanctuary and the county seat, or the state capital, or the national capital.

But that wasn’t the case when these people approached Jesus and tried to trick him into that yes or no answer. In that day and age, to speak of religion was to speak of the empire – and the emperor.

That is why Jesus’ response was so brilliant. He knew they were trying to trick him. He knew they were trying in some way to get him give them an excuse to validate their view of the power structure and their place in it.

But Jesus didn’t give them the satisfaction. He knew that, at its heart, the question was REALLY about ultimate allegiance.

And that question applies as much today as it did then: Who are we going to let define who we are. Who establishes our value, our worth?

When he asked them to show him a denarius, what would be as common as a quarter in today’s currency, they had one available and presented it.

Keep in mind, this is happening in the temple, these were folks who considered it a matter of pride to adhere – to STRICTLY adhere – to the letter of the law. Including the first two of the Decalogue – the Ten Commandments. The first is ‘You shall have no other Gods before me’ and the second is ‘You shall not make any idols to worship’. The denarius of his day carried the image of Caesar – the ‘lord’ – along with his face in profile – his image.

I have this picture in my head of Jesus asking for a denarius, and two or three of the guys reaching into their robes for their coin purses, and one manages to get into his faster than the others, and eagerly flips the coin towards Jesus, and as the coin is arching through the air, glinting in the sun, the realization hits this young man that ‘DOH!’ He’s just revealed the emptiness behind the question… something that can actually be read between the lines leading up to the question itself, the insincerity virtually drips off the page as we read,

“Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.”

As we talked about on Wednesday evening, Jesus could have stopped right there, and walked away. He could have left them hanging. Everybody in the place realized the obvious moral bankruptcy that the fact of that coin being present in the temple represented. They weren’t concerned about how the law did or didn’t apply to THEM, they were more concerned with how they could manipulate it for their benefit. His point would have been obvious to everyone there. He could have driven the knife in even deeper and asked a very simple question of them that would have left them squirming, twisting in the wind: “what are you doing carrying around an idol in the temple of the most high God, creator of the universe, of the stars and the planets, the earth and all that is in it?”

But he didn’t ask that. He let those obvious points be exposed without even mentioning them. When he DID ask his question, I wonder if they hesitated with their answer: because here is how it went:

Jesus: “Whose face is this, and what is his title?”

Herodians: “Uh … the um … well, the emperor’s.”

Emperor and Caesar were interchangeable terms. To even call anyone other than God ‘Caesar’ in Latin, “Lord” in English, was a sin. The very utterance of those words within the confines of the Temple would have sounded thin and meaningless in the ears of those standing around, because if they were true Hebrews, they would KNOW that there WAS no way to create an image of God, and that nobody – not even the most powerful man in the world at the time, could be called Lord except God – Yahweh.

So with that thin excuse of an answer ringing in everyone’s ears, Jesus concludes the encounter saying, “Then give to the emperor what belongs to him and give to God what belongs to God.”

For effect, let me rephrase that statement: “Give to the Easter Bunny what belongs to the Easter Bunny, and give to God what belongs to God.”

He had exposed the fallacy of power.

What was and is being communicated here is not an apportionment plan – Jesus isn’t saying “23% of what you own and earn belongs to Caesar, so give him that, and give God the 10% that belongs to God.” No. What Jesus has just pointed out is that Caesar is a straw man – that the earthly power structure is a temporary fabrication, that whatever supposed power they wield over us is nothing but a fiction. They may have the power to take work and property and perhaps even life, but that which is of ultimate value, of infinite worth – to God – is something that can ONLY belong to God – us – our spirits.

It is so easy for us to talk about something belonging to us or to someone else, the concept of property – private property – is one that has been ingrained into us from infancy. But Jesus is putting it in perspective.

If we look around and begin to qualify that which surrounds us as belonging to this person or that person, to this group of people or that group, to that organization or to another, … and this may sound extreme, but … go with me … what we are saying is that ‘that person, group, or organization’ is Lord over that item, this place, or piece of furniture, or book, or idea …

Do you see how radical Jesus’ pronouncement is? He is clarifying a point that we can sometimes so easily forget and it bears being reminded: A: There is no other Lord but the Lord God, and B: EVERYTHING CAME from him, so, ultimately, everything BELONGS to him. So we give God that which is most valuable to him of all that. We give him what he came for: ourselves.

The words of the hymn come to mind: “My life, my heart, my all I bring, to Christ, who loves me so, he is my Master, Lord, and King, wherever he leads I’ll go.”

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

How DO we give to God what belongs to God? How DO we make an eternal truth a reality in a finite world? We do it by living counter culturally – against the prevailing culture – against a culture that equates wealth with importance, and poverty with irrelevance, that gives more power to the rich and pays lip service to not say ignores the poor and the hungry, that assigns worth according to fame rather than by virtue of a simple shared humanity. We do it by rejecting the idea that God cares any less or any more for ANYONE over ANYONE else for ANY reason.

Scripture tells us, the gospel of John, the verse we all memorized, chapter 3, verse 16: ‘For God so loved THE WORLD’.

Our task is to do likewise.

Let’s pray.

Hearing and Understanding

2011-07-10T00:49:00.001-05:00

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Ordinary 15A

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton) Warsaw VA

Matthew 13:1-9; 18-23

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. ²Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. ³And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. ⁴And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. ⁵Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. ⁶But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. ⁷Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. ⁸Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. ⁹Let anyone with ears listen!” ¹⁸“Hear then the parable of the sower. ¹⁹When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. ²⁰As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; ²¹yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. ²²As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. ²³But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

What would be considered a ‘wise’ farmer? Scripture itself speaks of wisdom expressed in the careful assessment of the pros and cons of a situation, and acting accordingly.

So I think we could agree that a ‘wise’ farmer would be one who made a clear-eyed assessment of the land to be used, and to plant accordingly. To avoid the rocky soil, the soil that is too hard, the soil that is prone to be invaded by thorns and weeds, choking the tender shoots of the grain to be harvested.

So it almost seems contrary to the rest of the Gospel to read about this Sower, who heedlessly tosses his grain behind him, seemingly not paying attention to where it falls.

After all, we have to ask, is that a wise use of what he’s been given? Is he acting as a responsible steward of the resources God gave him?

We need to be reminded of a couple of things in this reading: first, it is a parable. It is a story with a moral or a teaching purpose. Second, the Sower is, at least at first glance, a representation of Jesus, and through him, of God. So we need to pay attention to the details, and we need to pay attention to the deeper truths that might be found in the story.

Wednesday evening I shared a thought that came to me as I was reviewing the passage, and it is that, contrary to our inclination to assign each type of soil to a particular type of person, which usually results in US being the ‘good soil’ (funny how that works, isn’t it?), I suggested that we begin to think in terms of each type of soil being present in each of us at different points in our lives – whether due to circumstance or personality – I think an argument can be made for the possibility that, at any given moment, for any given teaching that Jesus presented, we can be one or the other kind of soil.

I know that even now there are some teachings for which I would be, at best, rocky soil, that receives a teaching with joy, but that doesn’t allow it to take deep root in the soil of my heart, and it withers and dies because of that. I’d more readily enjoy sharing with you a teaching that ‘fits me’, that I can readily agree with, and thus become good soil for, allowing it to grow deep roots into my being and produce a hundred fold fruit in my life.

But it’s not quite that simple.

In order to be fallow, soil has to be turned, tilled, somehow disturbed, and made ready to receive the seed. The first soil that is described is the hard soil of the path. Paths are those lines, if you will, of hard packed soil that can be as hard as concrete. Paths around the Neck are what were first made by animals – deer or other foraging animals – who made their way from one place to another, and were eventually followed by people, walking along those same paths, which just naturally followed the lay of the land, followed the path of least resistance (no pun intended), and eventually turned into roads, and roads turn into highways, and highways get paved.

It is the story of constant use making a walkway unsuitable for anything else – locking in an area of otherwise fertile soil and making it useful for only one thing – but not for … change … for nurturing growing, living things.

On the one hand, I can appreciate the need to have space to MOVE, to go from one place to another. On the other hand, what growth are we choking off by the simple fact that we close that ground off to the possibility of nurturing life?

Beyond that, and in confessional mode, there are teachings that I read of Jesus’ and it is an almost conscious decision to receive them conditionally. ‘We’ll see how it goes with this one’. If it is too challenging, then I’ll set it aside and (maybe) come back to it later.

So it is with this whole business of ‘sacrificing myself’ for another. It is THE central teaching and example of Jesus’ life – and today it is exemplified in what we are observing as a central part of our worship service – celebrating communion.

What is our attitude towards this most central part of the Gospel? Are we hard soil, packed down by years of wear and routine? Or are we rocky soil, willing to entertain the notion that we DO need to be willing to sacrifice OUR wellbeing for the wellbeing of a brother or sister, but when the rubber meets the road we find out that our priorities … shift? Or we find ourselves to be thorny soil, more susceptible to the whims of our culture and society than we would care to admit, until again we come to a point of having to choose, and in a moment of weakness we choose … the easy way, the comfortable way, the … popular way?

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means that what we choose today isn’t set in stone, that choices we’ve made in the past don’t define our future. They do INFLUENCE it, but they don’t define it. God the sower of all good seed is a God who continues to toss the see out to his people, continually renewing his call on our lives to germinate and grow, to become that strong stalk of wheat that produces thirty or sixty or a hundred fold of what was planted … we serve a God who is extravagant both in expectation and in generosity of Spirit – who pours out his Spirit and lets it germinate where it will – even in the unlikeliest of places, in places that might not have been welcoming before, but which are welcoming now.

We serve a God who keeps calling us regardless of the kind of soil we’ve been in the past, who keeps giving us a chance to be that good soil that he keeps looking for, and preparing for, and who actually DOES the preparing OF …

Let’s pray.

(communion)

Whoever Welcomes

2011-06-26T09:35:00.000-05:00

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Ordinary 13A

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton)

Matthew 10:40-42

⁴⁰“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. ⁴¹Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; ⁴²and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

Can anyone tell me what the bottom line on our sign out front says? The last word is a little cattywompus, since the brackets that hold the letters are slightly warped, but can you tell me what it says? (All Welcome)

We like to think of ourselves as a welcoming people. In fact, we’ve been affirmed in that conviction on more than one occasion, when a visitor has joined us in worship and later has commented on how friendly and warm we are. I mention that partially to brag on you, but also to ask this question: where does that come from?

In our order of worship we have the word ‘Welcome’ listed right after our opening greeting, and when we share the hand of fellowship and greeting a few minutes later, what we say to each other are frequently words of welcome, but where is that welcoming spirit born?

In English the word finds its roots in a compounding of "well" and "come," though with slightly different connotations that we tend to use today. The root of "well" could go in two directions: it could mean something close to our current understanding of "wellness" or "well-being," but it could be stronger than that, implying desire or pleasure. Some scholars see a link between "well" and "weal," the root of our word "wealth," and thus perhaps the word offers a kind of blessing. "Come" finds its roots in an Old English word "comer," that is, one who arrives or, perhaps closer to the Greek, one who is received. Thus "welcome" can offer in its earliest sense an invitation to come and be well, or to be well in coming. Either way, it is an invitation to be received into the goodness of this new place, this place here that one has just arrived.

While we use the word casually and commercially, making one welcome is not as simple as offering a word, though it often starts there. The art of making one welcome is rooted in the ancient practices of hospitality.

Preparing to welcome someone takes thought and intention, even discipline. Some practitioners of hospitality are masters of the art; they're always ready with the bits and pieces of welcome: an appropriate beverage, food, a comfortable chair, a few thoughtful and respectful questions of the "comer."

Their very presence seems to wipe away the strangeness or awkwardness of social greeting and make one feel as if they are home. If you've ever been the recipient of such hospitality, you know exactly what I mean. If you are such a master practitioner of hospitality, please know that those of us who have received it notice, and we thank you.

Perhaps the measure of true welcome is the ability of the host to make the guest feel at home. There are some places where one can go and always feel at home. It may look different. It may smell different. It may be full of strangers. But, somehow, it just feels like home, and it is good to be there.

Our text this morning touches on a practice that was so ingrained in the fabric of the culture of first-century Palestine that it has carried through to today, and has, I believe, worked it’s way into our tradition here, and not only here, but in most if not all congregations around the world.

In those days, when a traveler came through a town and stopped, there was no Holiday Inn Express or Best Western available to stay for the night. The practice was that the traveler would go to the well, that focal point of town life, and stay there and wait. It was the responsibility of the townspeople to take it upon themselves to welcome the stranger and provide him or her with a place to rest and food to eat.

For Jews and Christians, such hospitality has always been a part of who we are. The call to welcome the stranger is anchored in the Torah and was a part of the measure of the Hebrew community's faithfulness to God.

How well they did that carried on to the neighboring communities, and that is how a town or city developed a reputation. It was not a tradition that was practiced out of fear of how you would be thought of by others, but a very real understanding of the fact that if the roles were reversed, the current host would certainly hope to be treated in a similar way by the current traveler.

Simple practicality in the absence of any other way to deal with travelers and strangers. Not only were they treated kindly, but you knew where they were as well. Hospitality balanced out and in most instances eradicated the natural fear of the stranger, since in the act of welcoming him, he went from being a stranger to being a guest.

It is noteworthy that in the Greek, the word for stranger – xenos - is also the word for guest and host. In our age of contemporary tribal warfare, of Balkanization – that is, splitting ourselves into smaller and smaller groups based on certain aspects of our own individual cultures and societies and subgroup and gated communities, most of us are all too aware of the term "xenophobia," or fear of the stranger. Such a fear leads to nationalism, racism and even genocide. As many scholars have noted, however, Jesus' call to welcome another is a call to xenophilia, or love of stranger, the stranger who is also guest, who as the embodiment of Christ after a long walk on the Emmaus road with two disciples - also becomes host.

There is simplicity and straightforwardness in welcoming a stranger that speaks of the openness that we find in the love of God for all of humanity. When we welcome the stranger, we don’t know who he or she is. We don’t know what position they hold in their place of origin. We don’t know what power they wield or don’t wield. We don’t know who they know and how we could gain by hosting them. We don’t know their history, their family, their story. We simply see a person in need of welcome, and in providing it, we enter into this relational dynamic that is risky, certainly, but which has the potential to become so much more than a simple act of kindness.

In fact, what Jesus is telling us is that in the act of practicing hospitality, we are welcoming HIM even as we try to emulate him by doing it. The examples he uses, in speaking to his disciples, spells it out. Wherever they go, if they are welcomed, HE is welcomed. And if THEY, the disciples, welcome someone, be it a prophet or a righteous person, and by implication, anyone else, on their terms – in other words – simply because that person they are welcoming is who they ARE – then in that act they are welcoming Jesus into their midst.

This is not simply an affirmation of traditional Middle Eastern hospitality. What Jesus is saying goes much deeper, and much wider.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

If in our way of being we are called to open our homes to strangers, whether we mean our individual homes or this place, our spiritual home, what Jesus is underscoring for us is the fact that a stranger is a brother or a sister whom we simply don’t yet know. That we are all connected, even related. That we are not that different from each other, however much we would tend to dwell on superficial and inconsequential differences.

By the same token, in light of the commission we received in last week’s text from the END of Matthew, that we are to GO as Christ’s representatives, then we are integrally involved in both sides of this scenario – we are to be the traveler, the stranger in a strange land, the wanderer, if you will, as well as the one who receives that same traveler. Christ is present in both roles. We are not allowed to choose one or the other, but are called to do both.

That translates into having a willingness and an openness to take the risk of receiving a stranger as well as to take the risk of being one.

As we share in our benediction, may God give us the grace to risk something BIG for something GOOD.

Let’s pray.

Those Who Love

2011-05-28T23:18:00.000-05:00

Sunday May 29, 2011

Easter 6A

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

John 14:15-21

¹⁵”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. ¹⁷This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

¹⁸”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. ¹⁹In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. ²⁰On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. ²¹They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

As far back as I can remember, if we were going to be handing out New Testament tracts, or portions of the New Testament, we would load up with copies of the Gospel of John. I remember they were little yellow paperback booklets, or in later years, they had a picture of a flowing stream and a small waterfall in a green glen in a forest. It was a picture of living water.

And I remember wondering, why are we giving out the Gospel of John, and not one of the other Gospels? As I began to study the different accounts, from Mark and Matthew and Luke, I began to get some idea of why, but it was never that clear to me. Coming from a background that taught me that every part of the scriptures is equally important, equally valuable and equally applicable, it seemed somewhat unfair to always be pushing the Gospel of John over the others.

But when you go to the beginning of John and begin to read it, and compare the opening sentences of it to the opening sentences of the other three, the synoptic Gospels, you quickly become aware of the difference in tone and approach between John and the other three.

To one degree or another, the synoptics, Matthew, Mark and Luke, are more self consciously biographical narratives. While they interweave theology and teachings with the life narrative of Jesus, that life narrative is the primary vehicle that they use to convey the message of the Gospel.

With John, it is the other way around. John is a theological treatise that pauses to include life narrative episodes from Jesus’ life. The primary focus of the Gospel is so that we, the readers, will believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah and savior of the world.

Stop and think for a moment about that statement. Tradition holds that John the beloved disciple wrote the account. And he wrote it to a group of believers who had been taught by him, who had listened to him tell the stories of his experiences with Jesus probably for years if not decades, and who were struggling to believe them – and to believe in Jesus.

It sounds a little odd to us, that members of the early church, especially members of a congregation led by one of the actual apostles – would be struggling to believe that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah … and yet, it wasn’t any more uncommon than it is for believers today – or people who wrestle with belief, with faith.

John wrote these words long after Jesus was gone. This gospel is written backwards, in the midst of a community for whom Jesus was only a memory. Most of those in John's community had never met Jesus. Most, if not all, the disciples were dead. The temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed-a sign for many that the end-time would soon come.

But the end-time didn't come.

Life went on and that was, in many ways, the hardest part of all. Jesus hadn't returned even when all the signs seemed right. This community of believers felt pushed to the very edge of despair, and despair could defeat them. John knew the dangers of such despair. So it was that he pulled together many of the things Jesus said into this one section of the Gospel known as "The Farewell Discourses." It's a bit like The Last Lecture Series in some colleges, where professors are asked what they would say if they knew it was their last chance to speak. Here at the table, Jesus says the same things over and over in different ways. The central word is love.

If you love me you will keep my commandments.

A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you.

Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.

I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

"But how can we do that?" the disciples must have wondered. Knowing they had a hard time loving each other even while Jesus was with them, how could believers love like that in John's community where memory was fading?

Let's just keep hearing about that time when Jesus was here.

And we are so prone to be like that, aren’t we? Don’t we love to hear about the good old days, when things were better, simpler, slower, healthier, more peaceful, less chaotic, more friendly, less self-centered? Who can blame us? After all, yesterday can’t be worse than today, and certainly it will be better than tomorrow, at the rate things are going. I mean, look at the increasing rate of … well, you name it: crime, corruption, murders, bomb threats, whatever negative statistic you want to pull out is probably enough to make the person you’re speaking to nod in agreement. After all, it’s obvious, isn’t it? The world is going to hell in a handbasket!

Jesus didn't call the disciples to hold up his life as memory but as presence. "I will not leave you orphaned," Jesus said, "I am coming to you." What a strange thing to say on the night of betrayal and arrest. He should have said, "I am leaving you." Jesus didn't deny what was going to happen. "In a little while the world will no longer see me," Jesus said, "but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live."

Jesus was calling his disciples to live and love in ways that seemed impossible. They couldn't do it, not without the Spirit. The Spirit is the other theme repeated over and over around the table. Sometimes Jesus says the Advocate, like someone who stands beside you in a court of law. Sometimes he says Helper, sometimes Spirit of Truth. When Jesus said, "I am coming to you," he didn't mean he would return like an old friend from a long journey.

Jesus would be with believers in a different way. Or perhaps we could say that God would be with them in a different way because Jesus had been there. The eternal, cosmic Word of God became flesh in Jesus. That's what John wrote at the very beginning of this Gospel. The Spirit, which blew like a wind over the face of the deep in creation, took on flesh in the one who now sat with them at the table. This Living Word had just bent down to wash the disciples' dirty feet. You can't get much more down-to-earth than that. Jesus was very clear. The Spirit that dwells in me will abide also in you.

Shortly before this, Jesus had said something audacious. "Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these because I am going to the Father." If anyone other than Jesus had made such a claim, we would call it blasphemy. Yet, that's what Jesus said that night at the table, even as God breathed into lifeless clay to create a living person, the Spirit will breathe the presence of Jesus into you. In the power of the Spirit, Jesus will continue to be present with you. "I will not leave you orphaned. I am coming to you."

Love and the Spirit-these two are at the center of Jesus' farewell message, his Last Lecture Series. "Love one another as I have loved you" and "The Spirit of Truth will abide with you when I am gone." A little later in this same chapter, Jesus says, "The Holy Spirit, whom God will send in my name, will teach you everything and will remind you of all that I have said to you." That is, Jesus was saying: You don't know everything yet. You have more to learn. In every generation you will be faced with new questions and perplexities. Does the sun revolve around the earth or is it the other way around? Should nuclear weapons ever be used against an enemy? Is welfare the best way to bear one another's burdens? Should women who feel called by God be ordained to preach? Jesus knew there were some questions the sacred writings didn't address. Jesus also acknowledged that there were some things he had never talked about. "The Spirit will be your tutor," he said, "guiding you into all the truth."

Rosemary Radford Reuther is a church historian. She says there are two things the church must do. One is to pass on the tradition from one generation to another. Tell the story of Jesus to your children and your children's children. But that's not all, says Reuther. There is a second thing the church must do. Be open to the winds of the Spirit by which the tradition comes alive in each generation. That is different, deeper than memory.

At the very end of this chapter, Jesus seems to be ready to leave. He says, "Rise, let us be on our way." You can almost see him getting up from the table, then realizing that he forgot to say something. "I am the vine," he says, sitting down again, "and my Father is the vine grower. Abide in me as I abide in you." But how can we abide in Jesus? He has told the disciples over and over, repeating himself at the table: You will abide in me through the gift of the Spirit. The Spirit will teach you how to love one another. The Spirit will keep us connected, said Jesus. You to me, each of us to one another, and all of us to God.

Years ago I read something funny: "The reason mountain climbers are tied together is to keep the sane ones from going home." Whoever said that was playing with us a bit, for we know mountain climbers are tied together to keep from getting lost or going over a cliff. But there's another piece of truth here. When things get tough up on the mountain, when fear sets in, many a climber is tempted to say, "This is crazy! I'm going home." The life of faith can be like that-doubts set in, despair overwhelms us, and the whole notion of believing in God seems crazy. Jesus knew his disciples would have days like that. So he told them we're tied together like branches on the vine-or like climbers tied to the rope-tied together by the Spirit, to trust in one who is always more than we can understand, to keep us moving ahead on the journey of faith, to encourage us when believing seems absurd. "I will not leave you orphaned," said Jesus. "I am coming to you."

This promise is far deeper than a simple word of encouragement, and it wasn't only for Jesus' disciples, but also for you and for me. The Spirit ties us to Jesus. We feel a tug on the rope whenever we are tempted to settle for answers that seemingly make more sense in the eyes of the world, but that cannot give life.

May the God who breathed life into lifeless clay breathe life and hope into us now and in all the days to come.

Let’s pray.

Come, Holy Spirit, tie us to Jesus and to one another. Breathe into us not only memories but the very presence of Jesus that we may love one another even as Jesus has loved us. Amen.

Guardian of Your Souls

2011-05-15T00:10:00.000-05:00

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Easter 5A

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

1 Peter 2:18-25

¹⁸Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh. ¹⁹For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. ²⁰If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. ²¹For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. ²²“He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” ²³When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. ²⁴He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. ²⁵For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.

On Friday I made a quick run to the grocery store in town to pick up a package of chicken, thinking I was maybe going to cook it for supper. I bought it, but ended up storing it in the refrigerator until today. I didn’t think twice about storing it rather than cooking it. Didn’t think there was a real chance that it could go bad and be wasted before I had a chance to cook it.

I was in Mechanicsville yesterday afternoon, meeting with a couple for the initial plans for their wedding. We met at a restaurant, and after our meeting, I stayed and had a late lunch. As I drove back, I drove by a department store that we tend to frequent to buy our clothes and shoes and such. I debated on whether or not to stop in and see if I could pick up something, but decided against it. After all, we have all the clothes we need, and in fact, we have MORE than we need. I went through my closet last weekend and bagged close to twenty shirts which I could not remember when I wore last, and gave them away to some friends.

Last night, rather than cooking, I went online and placed an order for two medium pizzas from Domino’s, and made a quick run to pick them up. It was sprinkling as I headed out, and I got to the parking lot in front of the store just as the storm got really bad. I only hesitated a moment before opening the car door and running across the parking lot and stepping inside to pick up the pizzas and head back.

According to the GPS we have in the car, it was a 10-mile trip in each direction. I traveled at or below the speed limit, and made it there and back in something under an hour … maybe even less than 45 minutes. Through the heavy downpour, across the river, listening to podcasts of religion stories that had been broadcast on NPR over the last few months.

There was one moment coming back through town, as I passed St. John’s, where it seemed like lightning struck the new communication tower beside the Northern Neck Electric Co-Op complex, it was a momentarily blinding flash of light with an accompanying loud BANG of thunder, but all it did was startle me.

Aside from that, it was a completely uneventful trip.

And it struck me that we have managed to engineer any sense of dependency on something other than ourselves nearly out of existence.

The mark of modern technology is that we have begun to master our environment. Whether it is cooling the hot air of summer or heating the cold air of winter, or constructing a bridge across what would otherwise be a serious impediment to travel – a river – with a few obvious exceptions, we go about our scheduled activities regardless of the weather or our physical surroundings.

Most of us don’t give a second thought to getting in our cars or onto an airplane and traveling across considerable distances through the air and over geographical regions at speeds that would astonish our grandparents and great grandparents, to say nothing of our ancestors from further back than that.

Before I go on: I am not a Luddite. I am not opposed to advances in technology. I believe improvements in agriculture, food production and energy supplies hold the key to ensuring a more just and equitable society as we move into the future.

But …

There is a downside to those advances. We can very easily forget just how vulnerable we are.

As I have watched the price of gasoline rise over the last few weeks and months, the thought has crossed my mind as to what it would be like to get around on bikes rather than in automobiles. I know Hunter and Gwen could give me a really good idea of what it would feel like to ride these roads around here, and I know I could use the exercise… but that part of our ministry that calls for giving people rides to and from places – either school or the doctor or the airport – that would be the exception rather than the norm. And what would happen on a night like last night? We would definitely be eating leftovers or a home cooked meal. A trip to Mechanicsville would also be an event – a once a month or maybe even a once a quarter trip, rather than a once or twice a week errand run.

It is a seductive draw for us, so subtle that we’re not even aware of it. We seldom stop to consider or even wonder about the risks in what is inherent in our daily activities until something tragic happens.

Earlier this week, friends of ours whose daughter has also recently gotten her driver’s permit were out on the road, the daughter was driving, and an oncoming driver, who was apparently in need of some serious rest, nodded off as she was driving, and drifted across the center line into oncoming traffic. Our friends’ daughter was able to swerve away from a head-on collision, but wasn’t able to miss the other driver entirely. The other car clipped the back end of the car they were in and they spun out, spinning several times before coming to a stop – shaken, but thankfully unharmed. If not for quick reactions and a low center of gravity, this story could be coming out tragically different.

We live in a part of the world and at a time in history when we don’t give a second thought to flipping a switch to be able to see at night, or to turning a valve to get hot or cold clean running water for our wash, our hygiene, or for our food. Some of us can remember a time when getting clean water involved either a trip to an outside pump or a trip to a stream, but it is a distant memory for the most part.

Sometimes circumstances remind us – in harsh ways. Hurricane Isabel did it for us here eight years ago. Hurricane Katrina did it for folks in New Orleans and along the gulf coast six years ago. A magnitude 9 earthquake and a horrendous Tsunami did it for folks in Japan a few weeks ago. A storm system that tore across the southern states did it for millions of people here just a couple of weeks ago.

At times like those, it is common to hear cries for God’s help and presence, for strength and patience, for protection.

But when things are good, when there is no threatening wave, no storm, no earth rumbling beneath our feet, how readily do we find ourselves crying out to God for that same help, that same presence, or strength, patience, and protection?

The same can be said for times when we are sick over and against times when we are healthy. Why is it that we so readily call to God in times of distress rather than times of plenty?

I think what we have to struggle against is this idea that we don’t need help when things seem to be okay. That it is only necessary to look for help when things are not okay.

C. S. Lewis wrote, “God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.”

It does seem to hold true, that we just don’t learn something in theory as completely as we do when we learn it in practice.

So with a few notable and significant exceptions across the world, we have been the beneficiaries of an extended period of freedom in the practice and sharing of our faith. There are few instances that any of US can recall when we were attacked – and by that I mean physically assaulted – for doing or saying something that indicated that we were followers of Jesus. In fact, I think it would be almost a safe assumption that if I were to ask for a show of hands of people who had experienced intense persecution for what they believed, I would be surprised to see any hand go up.

On the one hand, part of me wants to celebrate that. To know that we live in a time and a place where we don’t have to face persecution and are free to share our faith and to live it without any hindrance is an unmitigated blessing.

On the other hand, part of me is uneasy about that. Insofar as we are prone to be lulled into a sense of complacency, and we easily forget the more radical nature of Christ’s call on our lives. Because is really is a call to radical discipleship, to radical commitment, to radically reimagining what the world could look like if all those who claim Jesus as Lord let him actually BE Lord of their lives.

How much injustice would be corrected? How much hunger and poverty would be eradicated? How much justice and compassion would be evident where it is now absent? How many would truly act as brothers and sisters rather than pay lip service only, but make no move in the practice of daily living?

Can we really see what that world would look like? Can we really trust God to the point where we actually take the steps that Jesus calls us to in following him?

Do we really trust God like we say we do?

Hannah Whitehall Smith, a Quaker from New Jersey who lived and worked and preached at the turn of the last century, believed and staked her entire life on this idea that we are to really, truly, completely trust God; with our souls, with our lives, with our all. She wrote a prayer that speaks to the awareness of what it truly means to give up our idea of self-sufficiency and self-reliance and live in that radical faith that relies ultimately and solely on God through Jesus Christ.

Pray her prayer with me:

"Lord Jesus, I believe that Thou art able and willing to deliver me from all the care and unrest and bondage of my life. I believe that Thou didst die to set me free, not only in the future, but here and now.

I believe that Thou art stronger than my sin, and that Thou canst keep me, even me, in my weakness, from falling....

"So Lord, I am going to trust Thee to keep me. I have tried keeping myself and I have failed…. So now I will trust Thee. I give myself to Thee. I keep back no reserves. Body, soul and spirit, I present myself to Thee....

"And I believe Thou doest accept that which I present to Thee ... That this poor, weak and foolish heart has been taken possession of by Thee, and that Thou hast even at this very moment begun to work in me to will and to do Thy good pleasure. So I trust Thee completely, O God, and I trust Thee now." In Jesus’ name. Amen.

2011-04-03T00:17:00.000-05:00

You Are Light

Sunday, April 3 2011
Lent 4A
Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA
Ephesians 5:8-14

⁸For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light— ⁹for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. ¹⁰Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. ¹¹Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. ¹²For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; ¹³but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, ¹⁴for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

If you saw the movie, Forrest Gump a few years back, you will remember how Forrest always had a quote from his mama to sum up just about any situation that a person might find himself or herself in. And if Forrest were to comment on this text from Ephesians, he might have this to say: "It's like my mama always used to say, 'Light is as light does.' "

Light is as light does. And what light does is shine out of the darkness. What light does is to make darkness disappear. Light and darkness cannot exist in the same space, because anytime light shows up, it pushes the darkness away. Darkness can exist on the edge of light, but it can never invade the space light has claimed.

Our lives seem to be filled with gray areas. Areas that are not fully illuminated nor are they fully darkened. Yet, while we try to convince ourselves that these gray areas exist to give us choices, we know deep down inside that the right choices always lead to the light, not the darkness. From inside those gray areas we can see that the right choices are not hidden from us, but are in plain view.

The Ephesians text tells us: "Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." Those gray areas are described as sleep from which we can awake, or even death, from which we can rise. And when we escape those gray areas, Christ will shine on us. Not only will he shine on us, he will shine out from us.

As Christians, we believe Jesus is the light of the world. He illuminates darkness so that in his light all secrets and hidden evils are revealed. If we choose to live in the light of Jesus, all that is dark within our lives is revealed and nothing is hidden from him, or from the rest of the world.

What is it about light that makes it better than darkness? The obvious answer is that you can see light. Not only can you see light, but light also makes all things in its path visible so that you don't stumble into things. Light has a presence that makes it known to you. You can't miss light when it's around although you may not consciously think about it. But take it away, turn it off, cover it up, and you miss it immediately.

Darkness, on the other hand, is the absence of light. Darkness is empty of light.

When we think of it in those terms, and believe that Jesus is the Light of the world, it is then we can say that Jesus is something you can see, while evil is hidden. Jesus makes everything else visible, while evil blocks things out. Evil is the absence of Jesus. Evil is void of everything that Jesus has come to represent to people.

Light promotes growth. Darkness leads to death.

A woman was working in her garden and came upon a large, green, healthy--looking squash plant, and she began to admire it. The stems appeared to be strong, and the leaves were large. She thought about the beautiful squash that this plant would one day produce. She looked forward to making squash casserole with them.

A few days later she noticed that the plant was terribly wilted. There were no signs of any damage, and none of the plants around it were in this condition. She couldn't figure out what had happened and she tried to give it extra care to nurse it back to health. But in a couple more days, it was completely dead. She pulled the plant up and examined its roots. That’s when she discovered that a bore worm, which could not be seen from the outside, had eaten the heart out of the stem of the plant.

That's how our dark, hidden sins work on us. Like the bore worm, hidden sins can eat away at the heart of our Christian experience and leave us spiritually dead. When left unexposed to the light, sin continues to do its dirty work: obstructing our lives, destroying the true joy of life, and separating us from a loving God.

A lighted path is easy to follow. We stumble in the darkness.

I have a scar on my right shin. I got it on our wedding night, and although it quickly became a source of jokes, here’s the real story: We were in a beautiful but unfamiliar cabin in the woods outside London Kentucky. I got up at some point in the night, in the dark, and didn’t turn on a light. Getting out of the bedroom was no problem, and coming back in wasn’t one either, but as I approached the bed, I forgot that it was a platform bed, and banged into it solidly. Gave myself a good two and a half inch cut when I walked into that platform. If I had turned on the light – even for a moment, I would have seen the platform and would have avoided slamming into it.

Like a lighthouse on the shores of the ocean, light can lead people to safe harbor or it can warn them of dangerous waters. As people come in contact with Jerusalem, and into our lives, they are looking for family, for fellowship, and for some sense of the divine presence. They want to know God and they want to be known by God. Are we a light that others can see in the darkness? Are we easily identifiable as followers of Jesus so that people recognize our church as a safe place to be? Not by the name on the sign, but by the way we live and act when WE are outside this building? Are we, as a congregation, a string of lights that shine out and into our community? Can we lead people to the light of Christ and away from the dangers of sin?

The Holy Spirit living within us gives off a light that people cannot miss. Are we sometimes too busy going about with church work that we forget to do the work of the Kingdom? We can master the budget, the music, the worship, the fellowship times, the Sunday school curriculum, and all sorts of committees, but if we are not running our light outside the building, then it is all for nothing.

When the power gets low, or the connection is faulty, a light might begin to grow dim. And when the power source is completely severed, the light goes out completely, and the word for that is darkness.

Light cannot help but to shine outward. You cannot hide your light under a bushel basket and expect it to be seen by others and attract attention. A light that is hidden is darkness and does not do anyone any good.

Ultimately, light will show the flaws and imperfections of each of us and all those around us. Our heroes get brought down, our highest government officials have a dark side, our best friends surprise us, and our parents are really human after all. And, oh, how we love to jump on the sins of others, if not out loud, silently to ourselves.

Paul tells us, "For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light" (Ephesians 5:12--13). Sins are revealed not to be talked about or to become the basis for gossip, not to be pitted one against another to show that I am less of a sinner than you, but sins are revealed so that they might be forgiven and corrected. Sins are revealed so that what is done in the darkness might be overcome by what is done in the light. We are not to attack our brothers and sisters for their sinfulness, but are to admonish them concerning the dangers of being drawn to the darkness.

We are children of light who walk in the light. And while this passage tells us more about what life in the light is not than what life in the light is, like a parent pleading to his children, Paul challenges us to discover that for ourselves. "Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord," he says. We know that the light pleases God. So if we live in the light of Jesus, we will reveal all those things that are pleasing to the Lord. By the same token, we can avoid those things that are covered by darkness.

On that first Easter, God broke through the darkness once and for all. The darkness of the tomb of death was exposed when Jesus rolled away the stone. His light now shines throughout the world.

You who are light ... be light. Do what light does. And you will no longer live in darkness.

Let’s pray.

2011-02-27T01:10:00.002-05:00

Strive First

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Epiphany 8

Matthew 6:24-34

Theme: Setting priorities

²⁴“No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

²⁵“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ²⁸And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ ³²For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

There are passages in the Bible that speak to us in a timeless voice. Especially passages that speak of comfort, such as the 23^rd Psalm. And there are lessons that Jesus speaks that are also equally timeless – “I am the vine, you are the branch”, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life …” the phrases just roll off the tongue and the words stick in our hearts and in our memories like Velcro.

Today’s passage is not one of those. At least, it doesn’t seem to be. When Jesus said ‘do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear’, he had no idea what kind of a world we live in today.

He didn’t know the multitude of bills that have to be paid, or the letters and calls that need to be replied to, or that the cost of gas keeps going up, and all the driving that needs to happen, or the appointments that need to be made, to say nothing of the ones that need to be KEPT … it’s just one thing after another, and another, and another.

He didn’t know what MY LIFE was going to look like when he spoke those words almost two thousand years ago. Heck, >>I<< didn’t know just ten years ago! How could he?

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let’s back up a little, to the opening verse of today’s passage. Jesus is concluding the previous thought, where he was talking about wealth – back up to verses 19 & 20:

¹⁹“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; ²⁰but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.”

So the beginning of today’s passage is the conclusion to that idea, one that we’ve probably heard more than once from any number of pulpits: you can’t have more than one master at a time. You either serve the one or serve the other, but you can’t serve both.

But how does that tie in with worrying – or NOT worrying?

If we begin to think that the worldly perspective makes sense, that what we HAVE determines our happiness and our worth, we begin to fall into the worldview that underlies that idea, and it might not be what you think. The determining factor for that worldview – for what forms the BASIS for the idea that wealth equals happiness – is the idea of scarcity.

David Lose, from Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN, puts it this way:

“I think we live in an incredibly anxious culture. The evening news certainly depends upon worries at home and abroad to attract viewers. Commercials are constantly inviting us to worry about one more thing – usually about ourselves! – the sponsored product should supposedly solve. More and more houses seem to sport home security signs in their front lawns. And whenever I go to the airport I'm greeted outside by an electronic sign that reads, "See Suspicious Activity – Call 1-800...) and inside by an ominous voice informing me that, "The threat level, as determined by the Office for Homeland Security, is Orange." (I don't even know what "orange" is, but I'm betting it's not good.) And there it is: everywhere you turn, everywhere you look, there are visible reminders of just how much there is to worry about.”

Let me put it into perspective for you. If you have nice clothes to wear, AND a roof over your head AND you have a pretty good idea of where your next meal is coming from, you are already better off than several hundred million, if not a couple of billion of your fellow human being. In fact, if each of those three factors come together for you, you are actually in a minority of the population of the earth.

We hear a phrase periodically spoken “to preserve our way of life.” That is what it is referring to. Yes, it is also referring to other less palpable aspects of our culture here in the United States; ideals and laws and things like that, but when it comes down to brass tacks, as they say, it is also very much a reference to our standard of living.

And it’s not that we are necessarily turning a blind eye to the poverty that exists in the world, we’re not. Most of the time. But we ARE constantly reminded of the gulf that exists between us and those people and children whose faces we see in those commercials for any number of charities and help organizations that depend on our contributions to provide that charity or that help.

And what comes out of that is the idea that scarcity equals unhappiness. And the converse of that idea is that plenty – or wealth – equals happiness. And our response to that underlying presupposition is that we begin to be concerned with avoiding scarcity. We begin to spend a lot of energy and time in the accumulation of material possessions, or figuring out how we are going to acquire material possessions, or how we are going to KEEP material possessions.

David Lose goes on:

So why can't we give our allegiance and worship to money? Because to do so is to fall prey to the larger worldview that crowns money lord in the first place: scarcity. Again, the issue isn't money per se; the problem comes when we make money our god – ‘that thing,’ as Martin Luther once observed, ‘which we trust for our every good.’ Once we believe that money can satisfy our deepest needs, then we suddenly discover that we never have enough. Money, after all, is finite. And so once we decide money grants security, then we are ushered immediately into a world of counting, tracking, and stock piling. No wonder we worry - in a world of scarcity, there is simply never enough.  

The alternative Jesus invites us to consider is entering into relationship with God, the God who is infinite and whose love for us and all creation is infinite as well. Love operates from a different "economy" than money. I mean, when our second child came along, I didn't divide my love for our first child between the two, I suddenly had more love, more than I could possibly have imagined before. No doubt you've noticed the same thing: how the more love you give away, the more you have. Love – and especially God's love – cannot be counted, tracked or stockpiled. And when you live in this kind of relationship of love and trust, you've entered into the realm of abundance, the world of possibility, the world of contentment. Suddenly, in this world – Jesus calls it the "kingdom of God" – not worrying actually becomes an option.  

I know, I know, it's hard to believe in this world of abundance that Jesus proclaims, this world that invites us to trust God's faithfulness like a flower does spring or sail upon the currents of God's love like a bird does the air. This is why, in the end, Jesus dies – not to somehow pay for our sins (there we go tracking and counting again), but because those in power were so invested in the world of scarcity that abundance was downright frightening, even threatening. Scarcity, after all, creates fear, and fear creates devotion to those who will protect you (think "threat level orange" again). Abundance, on the other hand, produces freedom. So rather than imagine Jesus' world of abundance, and committed to keeping the power they derived from a fear born of scarcity, the rulers of Jesus' day put him to death (see John 3:17 and following).  

But God doesn't operate from scarcity; God operates out of abundance. So in response to the crucifixion of God's Son, God does not, in fact, keep track, or look for payment, or hoard power with which to destroy the offenders; instead, God resurrects – which, when you think about it, is the ultimate act of abundance: creating something, once again, out of nothing, drawing light from darkness, giving life to the dead.  

This is the world Jesus invites us into: a world of abundance, generosity, and new life. But it is also a world of fragility, trust, and vulnerability. Lilies and birds, after all, can't defend themselves but must trust God's providence and love.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means we have to become adept at identifying when that other worldview – the one that feeds on fear and seems to come so natural – is informing our thought process and our motivations, and stand against it, and in the reality of the Kingdom, where there is an abundance and a generosity that comes directly from God.

What priorities can we set that would reflect that Kingdom reality rather than the worldly reality? What projects would we take on that would speak to the fact that we DO strive first to live out of the abundance of God’s love rather than of our fear that there won’t be enough to go around?

What would we dare to do if we daily lived in THAT Kingdom reality?

Let’s pray.

2011-02-20T01:04:00.000-05:00

Belonging

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Epiphany 7A

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Text: 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23

¹⁰According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it.¹¹For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.

…

¹⁶Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? ¹⁷If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.¹⁸Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. ¹⁹For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” ²⁰and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.”²¹So let no one boast about human leaders. For all things are yours, ²²whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you, ²³and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

Last Saturday afternoon, knowing that Leslie would be preaching on Sunday, I decided to set myself a task: assembling Hannah’s new dresser. It came in 3 flat boxes from the store. I began at 3:30, opening, unpacking, counting and organizing all the pieces, and, with a little help from Hannah turning the thing over in the later stages, was finally done at 10:30 that night. Even though I freely admit to being mechanically challenged, there are some things that I DO feel capable of doing. I managed to complete the job with only one small blister and one small cut.

To be able to watch it come together from all the seemingly hundreds of little pieces and flat boards into this big, solid piece of furniture was a deeply satisfying experience. I’m pretty sure the single determining factor was the fact that I was able to see the project move from beginning to end, and the end product was … something concrete, something I could put my hands on and touch. Something that was easily quantifiable – easily measurable.

Not all the tasks to which we set our minds are that clearly defined, that cut-and-dried. Especially when it comes to spiritual ones.

Paul was dealing with that issue in his continuing interaction with the church at Corinth: the fact that it was not a completed work, but a work in progress.

In the first few verses of chapter 3, Paul uses language that evokes the image of a farmer. It would be familiar to the Hebrews of his day, who would have grown up with the concept of Israel as being referred to in Isaiah 5 and in Ezekiel 36 as a garden or a vineyard, in those passages, each servant has a God-given task to carry out. These tasks are meaningful and necessary work. One plants the seed another waters the land … but growth? Growth is a gift. Those who have worked to plant and water can only do one thing once their work is done, and that is to wait. They cannot make a plant grow. It is the same with spiritual growth.

Paul continues the description with a different metaphor, that of a building. There is the foundation that has been laid in the person of Jesus Christ, and that is what he is building on – he or whoever comes after him.

The point he is making is that each of the builders – whether himself or someone else – is working towards the same end – the completion of the building. Just as the farmer and the farmhand go about different tasks to the same end – the harvest – so it is with Paul and other apostles who come and preach and teach the people of the Corinthian church – to deepen their faith, to strengthen them, and to help them mature in their knowledge and understanding of the Gospel. They are not in competition with each other but are collaborators, coworkers for the Kingdom. It is the noblest thing that can be said of anyone who works for the Kingdom, that we are fellow workers for God.

I remember in youth group how 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 was always brought up when the discussion turned to how we were to treat our bodies as young people.

¹⁹Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? ²⁰For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

It would seem that verses 16 and 17 are an early reference to that same thought, and while that IS one way to understand and interpret those verses, and there IS a valid point to be made, their focus is different at this point in the letter.

Paul is using the plural form of ‘you’ here. He is speaking to the Corinthian church as a whole – as a congregation. This is one place where the King James English serves a clarifying purpose in it’s use of ‘ye’, rather than the modern English ‘you’ that has come to be used for both singular and plural cases.

Note what Paul is saying: that the Spirit of God – the Holy Spirit – dwells in us both as individuals AND as a community – and that even as we would seek to allow the Spirit to show himself through us by individual action, we are just as bound to allow the Spirit to show himself by COMMUNAL action. The two go hand in hand.

We cannot say that the Holy Spirit is working through and dwelling in us when our words or actions are tearing at the spirit of unity, at the willingness to work together for the Gospel, when they are causing strife and dissent and conflict in the larger community of believers. That is not an easy thing to say or an easy thing to dwell on, but it is one of the lessons we have from the Corinthian church. There were factions that had formed within the church that were still living as they had in the world before they heard the Gospel, still separating themselves from other believers based on status and wealth and position, still looking down on the poorer and marginalized members of their same community, and considering themselves to be holier because of it.

Paul is reminding the Corinthians that they are ALL – each and every one of them – a member of that Holy Temple of God, and he gives warning in verse 17 to anyone who destroys the unity of that Temple. There is some uncertainty as to whether he is directing the comment to particular individual or to a group of individuals in the church, but it is, in either case, a sobering thought.

Paul then goes back to the themes he’s touched on earlier in the letter – those of factions and of wisdom. He again uses the word ‘sophia’ in verse 18. His juxtaposition of the ‘wisdom of this age’ over and against the foolishness of God again underscores how we as humans so easily fall back on trusting our own ability to achieve so much that we extend that skill to … everything.

For most of our 50,000 years of recorded history, we gazed at the moon and wondered what it was, what it was made of and how far away it was. And finally, we decided to engage the challenge. Our technology had advanced to the point where it was almost within our reach, and from that day in September 1962 when President Kennedy announced our intention to put a man on the moon within the decade, we set our minds to it and completed the task within seven years of that date of that speech.

Our abilities and skills and knowledge have grown exponentially in the intervening decades. And our hubris – our pride – has kept pace with that growth. There is an almost breathless anticipation to know and to see what we are capable of. To be sure, we are capable of what would even in the relatively recent past be considered miracles. To be able to instantly communicate with someone thousands of miles away simply by pushing some buttons and placing a device next to our ear, or to be able to open the chest of a living human being and repair a tear in the tissue of an organ and close them back up and have that person recovery to full health, would be unimaginable to our ancestors.

There is a measure of justification in being proud of an extraordinary accomplishment, but hubris is something else – it is unmitigated pride – pride without humility, pride that ignores the fact that we are created beings, frail and fraught with weaknesses and flaws.

We are SO skilled, SO capable, SO gifted by God to be so creative and inventive, that we tend to forget where the gift comes from, so dazzled are we by our fancy trinkets.

It is a fundamental point to understand that if we begin to rely on our own abilities, our own skills and knowledge as a way to understand and master the relationship between God and us, and by that understanding we are attempting to close that gap ourselves, we are trying to be the arbiters of our own salvation, and that is something that only God is in a position to do. There is no form of human understanding, of human wisdom, that can hope to fully grasp the mystery of the cross.

I wrestle with it even now. I question the why of the sacrifice, the why of the atonement, why the need for all of that – the passion – to take place at all. It seems, to my supposedly modern sensibilities, such an archaic thing, a barbaric thing. I would much rather find a cooler, less passionate, cleaner, clearer, simpler act that God might have taken in order to redeem the world to God’s self.

There must be a radical break in our understanding of wisdom. It is a turning away from our self-centered wisdom and an acceptance of God-centered wisdom that is revealed in the cross of Christ. Not what we can learn about life in the world, or the Solar System, or the galaxy, but what God reveals at the cross – THAT is wisdom. It’s not that we SHOULDN’T strive to learn as much about life in the world, the Solar System and so on, but that we must keep in perspective what that knowledge is to be used for.

Verse 21 – ‘for all things are yours’ … Paul steps back and is saying to the Corinthians, ‘look, yes, there is all this knowledge and all this wonder and it is all there and it is all good, but it is not to be used to divide you from your brothers and sisters in Christ.’ His essential call to the Corinthians is for unity in Christ. He again brings in the factions, speaking perhaps euphemistically of those belonging to him, or to Apollos, or to Cephas, and he expands it to encompass the whole of human knowledge – ‘the world, or life or death, or the present or the future,’ and he says that that way of thinking is irrelevant to the Kingdom. We all belong to Christ, and through Christ we all belong to God.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist church at Emmerton?

I wondered as I was putting this message together how many of you would begin to question at a certain point in it whether I was directing the message at a particular situation within our community of faith. Let me assure you I am not – at least not intentionally – not KNOWINGLY.

I simply think it is helpful to visit the lessons we find in scripture at any point in our walk, in our joint pilgrimage, as we travel this road together, to have maybe a dispassionate view – a view at a distance – of a situation with which we may have been faced in the past or with which we may be faced with at some point in the future.

In doing that, my prayer is that we would be able to step back and remember the lesson that our spiritual ancestors at Corinth laid out for us as they struggled with their own faith and their own identity as a community of faith.

Let’s pray.

Shall Flee Away

2010-12-12T02:10:00.002-05:00

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Advent 3A

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Isaiah 35:1-10

Theme: The Improbable Good News.

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus ²it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. ³Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. ⁴Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.”

⁵Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; ⁶then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; ⁷the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. ⁸A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God’s people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray. ⁹No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. ¹⁰And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Note to the reader: While I will continue to put manuscripts together, I am going to be trying to step away from them more intentionally. I will use them as a way to put thoughts down in words as they come to me, and hopefully to organize them as they may need to be. They may or may not reflect what and how the messages are delivered on Sunday mornings.

Christmas used to be so simple. It was about the presents. Even growing up in a home where the Christmas story was THE Christmas story, where we would wait to open our gifts because first Daddy had to read the passage from Luke and then we would always have a family prayer, even in that context, at least as a boy, IT WAS ABOUT THE PRESENTS.

I DO remember that, even from a relatively early age, it wasn’t ONLY about what we got, but also about giving. There were a couple of years as a young teenager when that went by the wayside somewhat, but from what I can remember, it really WAS as important to give as it was to receive. I would encourage you to check that against the memories of my family, though, as their memories are likely different than mine.

One thing I do remember, distinctly, and it is something that has persisted to the present day, was the feeling of frustration that came with the business of Christmas – the busy-ness of it. The sense of near-desperation that came from spending time doing something that I increasingly found distasteful – shopping. Not just dealing with the crowds, but dealing with the feeling of inadequacy when it came to finding ‘that perfect gift’ for whomever it was I was looking for. You wanted to find something nice, but … maybe not TOO nice … something that seemed more expensive than it actually was. You wanted to impress, but not break the bank in the process. The exception was our Christmas engagement. But that is just what it was – an exception.

One exception to this was a couple of Christmases ago when we purposefully gave to an organization – Heifer International – in the name of the kids’ teachers as Christmas gifts – gifts that provided either chickens or goats or some such thing to families in developing countries that would then enable them to … improve their situation – their condition in life.

But even in that circumstance, the prevailing culture had so insinuated itself into our sense of what Christmas is about that it still felt like something was missing.

It’s been in the light of that that I’ve realized just how hard it is to swim against the stream. Especially when that stream is supposedly celebrating something you AGREE with – that you in fact celebrate yourself!

I don’t want you to leave here thinking that I am the Grinch, or that Scrooge and I are interchangeable. It’s not that I don’t like Christmas. I do. I really do. I love the idea of celebrating – especially as the winter deepens and as we move into a new year – both the church year and the secular one.

I like the idea of blessing people with unexpected gifts … sometimes even overwhelming them. We’ve been on the receiving end of that, and knowing how it feels makes me want to try to do it as often as we can for others. I like the idea of celebrating in spite of the circumstances. We’ve lived through Christmases that have followed both personal and family losses, but being able to celebrate regardless of what has happened, or of what we are in the midst of suffering, helps me to lift my eyes to the hills, as it were, and see from where my help comes. It gives me a sense of perspective and helps me remember that there is more going on than just what is happening in my life at the moment, and that it’s not all about me.

And that was the first step in my discovery that Christmas … that Christ’s Mass, wasn’t at all about exchanging gifts … but about receiving the greatest, the best gift of all.

And that is where the music from the last Christmas Cantata begins to swell in your head and you tune out the rest … and you fill in the words to the songs you’ve sung all through the years during this season … and it all begins to sound … plastic.

But let’s focus in on something that isn’t plastic, that was real, that happened.

I heard an excellent message a couple of days ago, preached by Bruxey Cavey, teaching pastor at The Meeting House, which is a church made up of a network of six different congregations in the Toronto, Canada, area. They belong to the Brethren In Christ denomination. He was the guest speaker at Woodland Hills church in St. Paul, Minnesota, last Sunday.

In it, he stated something that really resonated with me, and it was this: The world is full of pain and suffering. That is a fact. In the nativity, God was running towards our suffering, to come alongside us and share in it – to be with us in that suffering. God chose to enter into our existence in order to show us how much he loves us.

We may not admit to it, but I think there are times when we tend to lean towards the idea that, because of all the suffering in the world, that God must be at a remove from us. But he is anything BUT that. He has drawn close, he has entered into our own lives, through the person of the Holy Spirit, to make us aware of that otherness that exists, that may not be evident, and unfortunately frequently ISN’T, but that DOES come into existence whenever we model Christ’s behavior and life to the world around us.

And this is where it gets hard.

It’s hard not just because we are swimming against the current and because the current in our particular instance claims to be generally flowing in the same direction of our faith tradition, but hard because it gets down to being open with each other, to being willing to admit faults and failures, and to ask for – and hopefully receive – a gift that Christ himself modeled in his ministry: forgiveness.

Part of being a part of a community of faith – a family of faith – is being accountable, being willing to share in our struggles, in our shortcomings, as well as our victories.

I stand here this morning to ask for your forgiveness. Whether by accident, or a confluence of circumstances, or by reluctant intent, there have been instances in the last few weeks and months where I have not been the pastor that I needed to be to you. Times when I stood here and preached on the importance of being Christ’s presence and ended up being absent for the most part from your lives.

For the most part, you’ve been models of grace to me in the wake of those times. You’ve understood the demands on my time from other responsibilities, and have allowed for that. And while I am profoundly grateful for that, you need to know that I understand that it is not something that I would allow to go on, that I am mindful of what it means to BE with you, alongside you, sharing with you.

So it is in the hopefulness of Advent that I come to the place where it started, to the manger, and ask God to prepare my heart once again to receive the Christ Child. The hay here is still a little damp, a little musty, and being that, it reminds me that the circumstances of the world didn’t change just because Christ came into the world. The potential for the world to change went through the roof, but the actual circumstances remained … imperfect. Jesus was born, and Quirinius was still governor of Syria. Herod was still in the palace. The Romans still occupied – and terrorized – Palestine.

But the world was ready for Christ. That was the perfect time for his coming.

So this handful of hay is my imperfection, my clumsy attempt to be what Christ wants me to be, and this manger is my life, my heart, and I want to make myself ready for what God would have me do, even as I know he has led me this far, with this I’m saying to him, whatever comes next, whatever you ask, with your help, I will do it.

As we close this morning, I would invite you to come forward, if you want to do it during the hymn of response, that's fine, or if you'd rather wait and do it after, on your own, that's okay as well, and take a handful of hay and place it in the manger, by way of saying ‘Yes, Lord, prepare my heart. May it be your resting place, your home.”

Let’s pray.

All, All, Everything, All, All

2010-11-21T01:58:00.001-05:00

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Christ the King Sunday

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Colossians 1:9-20

⁹For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, ¹⁰so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. ¹¹May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully ¹²giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. ¹³He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. 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.

Today is the last Sunday of the year.

Seriously.

It is the last Sunday of the year – the traditional CHURCH year. Next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, and according to the traditional liturgical calendar, it is the first Sunday of the New Year. We will observe our New Year by celebrating our hanging of the green service, so please plan to come and participate in a beautiful service that sets the stage – literally – for our walk towards Christmas and the coming of the Christ Child.

But today we focus on the fact that this is the LAST Sunday – and we look to what this past liturgical year has brought us. This is known as Christ the King Sunday or The Reign of Christ Sunday, because it serves to remind us of Christ’s place, not simply in our lives and in our community, but on the whole broad stage of the Cosmos – the Universe.

Next Sunday we will begin the walk towards Bethlehem, and that will take us to the place where God became flesh and dwelt among us. We will begin his life where he did, as the newborn son of Mary and Joseph, with hands and feet and a nose and eyes and hair, everything that we each share as members of the human race was also shared by God in his incarnation, but while he was fully human, he was more. And in today’s passage, Paul underscores just how much more Jesus IS the Christ.

As I’ve shared with you before, the church year is a little different from the … for lack of a better term, the secular year. And that is as it should be. We NEED to be a little different from the rest of society – wherever that society happens to be. We read and hear about the Chinese New Year, and it is out of synchrony with our current calendar, and we can easily see and say “that is a different way of … being, a different way of counting, that is expressed in the fact that the Chinese have a traditional calendar that is maintained outside the … one that is more universally accepted and used.”

Being out of step with celebrating our ‘New Year’ reminds us that we DO march to the beat of a different drum, that we DO answer to a higher call, that we DO listen for another command than the rest of the world that surrounds us, that we ARE called to be different, to be distinct, to stand out.

That’s not to say that we are to be so far removed from it that we are unable to engage, to interact, and to enter into relationship with it. We DO have that responsibility, and it is more than a responsibility, it is … a calling.

When we use that word, ‘calling’, in our context, it needs to be understood that a calling is received from one who has authority over our lives. For us to even be able to invoke that terminology implies that we understand and accept that one’s position to be able to PLACE that call on our lives.

If I say, “I’ll call you”, what is the first thing that pops into your head … a phone call, right?

You don’t immediately jump to the conclusion that what I am talking about is a call on your LIFE – something that you’ll dedicate the rest of your life to – no. And that’s because it is me Kenny, saying, “I’ll call you”. In our context here, in Emmerton, on this next to the last Sunday of November, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, at a time when the majority of the adult population and a sizeable and sometimes troubling portion of the youth population has a mobile phone, “I’ll call you” has a very ordinary connotation. It simply means that I am saying that I would like to talk to you, so I’ll call you – from my phone to yours – and we’ll talk then. No major life-changing decision to be discussed, usually, nothing more than maybe planning a meeting at some point in the next couple of weeks.

Paul is writing to the Colossians to remind them of just who it is they serve – who they pledged to love and lives to, and from whom they might have been straying.

The language in this passage is … astounding in it’s scope. The ancient world was blatantly polytheistic. That is, there were multitudes of gods, with their accompanying temples, rituals and followers. We may think we’re an overchurched society, with a sanctuary every few miles, try every few yards.

In truth, I sometimes wonder if that hasn’t changed that much in the intervening centuries. We still tend to create our own gods, we just keep it on the ‘down low’… it’s a much more subtle presence through which these … contemporary and not-so-contemporary gods make themselves known. We still can find the god of the senses – in our hedonistic pursuits of immediate pleasures, regardless of consequences. We can still find the god of mammon, alive and well in the measure of our worth through the size of our bank accounts. We can still find the god of fear and power in our willingness to wield power over and against our fellow humans who speak, act, live and think differently from us.

To understand the radical notion that Paul is putting forth, we have to first understand that he is speaking in these terms about one who stood on NONE of those titles in order to make himself known.

Jesus did not descend in a fiery chariot from the sky and summon Caesar to an audience. He did not speak and strike down the power structure that was in place at the time – neither the Roman nor the Hebrew. He did not zap the fishermen from Galilee and make them follow him as he wandered around the countryside for those years of his ministry.

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.

You would think that if someone was that powerful, that all-encompassing, that awesome, that it would only be RIGHT for that power to be exercised, to be wielded, to be USED.

Trouble is, that is the way the world uses power. Not God.

Think about it. God creates the universe, the world, everything; sets things in motion, designs, springs them into being out of nothing; however you want to understand it, God created. Then God, who having created, is OUTSIDE creation, chooses to come into creation, into the now broken and sometimes so wretched world that we live in and become subject to the vagaries of human existence, and does that up to and including being put to death.

What does that tell us about the power of God?

It tells us that God does not use power in the same way humanity uses it.

We COULD argue that God chose to not use God’s power at all, because if God had, the outcome would have been radically different.

But I think we miss the picture if we say that, because we’re still coming at this whole incarnation of the King of Creation from a human perspective.

Knowing and understanding power from a human perspective presupposes that power to be used … to be the motivator for a response that is desired from another – whether an opponent or a friend is not important. It is the fact that that power is there that prompts the response.

God’s example in Jesus Christ was to dispose of the coercive aspect of the human understanding of power completely, and come not in the form of a King, but a servant … a homeless preacher and teacher who spent no time building up his reputation, or a movement to fight the existing power structure on IT’S terms, but on God’s terms.

And those terms were these: through the blood of his cross

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church, in downtown Emmerton?

Most of us have heard it since we were children, sometimes not so often, sometimes seemingly way too often. This whole business of the sacrifice doesn’t sit well with our current sensibilities. I agree wholeheartedly. It doesn’t. We struggle with the idea that, in order for there to be a reconciliation between the Creator and the creation, there had to be, on some level and in some way, a sacrifice made for that … atonement … to heal that broken relationship between God and humanity. I struggle with that, sometimes in more profound ways than I realize, when I see the state of the world around me, and wonder if there was any sense to it at all.

Ultimately, though, I keep coming back to this: in history – ALL of history, ALL of creation, EVERYTHING and EVERYONE that God has made; even with ALL the brokenness and ALL the turning away that has been the sad hallmark of humanity’s relationship with God, God has been the one to come back to us from a place of … love. Like a loving husband, who despite his wife’s flirtations and falls, keeps after her; like a foolish shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine sheep and goes after the one that was lost; like the obsessive homemaker who turns her home upside down looking for a single coin, like the every-loving, every-welcoming father who misses his youngest son so much that he waits and watches for him every day after he leaves, and then runs to him and falls on his neck and welcomes him home with kisses ALL over his face …

THAT is the image of God that comes through.

In this season of Thanksgiving, may we find our hearts lifting hymns of gratitude for the one who will not, no, will not, no, will NEVER desert us.

Let’s pray.

2010-11-14T23:14:00.000-05:00

Great In Your Midst

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Ordinary 33

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw

Isaiah 12

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

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

The socialists have taken over!

They are going to run this country into the ground! Thank God for the Tea Party coming through to stop them!

Muslims are going to impose Sharia law in Dearborn Michigan!

First an Islamic Center, next a mosque at Ground Zero!

Illegal immigrants are taking away our jobs, raping our women, selling drugs and doubling the crime rate!!

The fat cats on Wall Street put us in this economic crisis, took the bailout money, and have YET to invest in creating jobs and getting our economy back and running.

That is by no means a comprehensive list of sound bites and headlines that I’ve seen and heard over the past few months, but you get the idea.

Depending on the station we tune into, there is no shortage of voices that are more than willing to point out things that are wrong – or going wrong – with our country.

Indeed, if it’s not wrong, it doesn’t seem to be news. But that is the nature of the business of media news outlets. First and foremost, they are a business. And good news doesn’t sell, doesn’t, by definition, cause as much anxiety, or cause us to run to the nearest sane-sounding voice – even though it may be the furthest THING from sane – and find in that person’s words a semblance of comfort.

If things are bad, they are going to get progressively worse. That will keep you coming back for more, keep you updated on the latest scandal, the latest terrible decision, the latest abuse and it will … what?

Keep you in the loop? Help you know what to expect? Give you a heads-up on what the next major tragedy to befall our nation will be, or better yet, give you the information you need to AVOID that terrible disaster, while letting all the unsuspecting masses suffer?

As you’ve heard me say before, human nature has not changed appreciably in the last several thousand years. We still worry. We still plot and plan, we still look for our best outcome, we still tend to shy away from problems that are not easily solved. We still would rather choose to put on a happy face and hide our pain and our sorrow and our withered spirits rather than take the time to engage in the conversation that would reveal our true state of mind and heart.

"I will trust, and will not be afraid"

These words in verse 2 were spoken by the prophet Isaiah to the people of Judah and Jerusalem more than twenty seven hundred years ago, when the Assyrian Empire was the dominant power, and Judah lived in the shadow of its might.

Foreign invaders, political instability, and crises of one kind or another formed the context of Isaiah's proclamation. The people to whom he was sent and those for whom this book was originally composed lived in a world that was unpredictable and out of their control.   

The front page of the newspaper and the crawl at the bottom of the television newscast suggest that in many ways our own world is quite similar to theirs. To be sure, the details are different – the Taliban was not a threat to Judah in the days of Isaiah, and Assyria does not dominate our own headlines – but the news of the day reminds us that always there are events happening on a scale far beyond our reach and our ability to control them.

Whether the threat is widespread, such as the worldwide economic crisis, or whether it is personal, such as illness, the loss of a job or the death of a loved one, it is no small thing to stare the menace in the face and say, "I will trust, and will not be afraid." 

This passage – the twelfth chapter of Isaiah – is composed of two songs, each beginning with the phrase, "You will say in that day" (12:1, 4): "that day," when the pride of everyone shall be humbled and the Lord alone will be exalted as we find in chapter 2, verses 11 & 17; "that day," when people will throw away their idols of silver and gold, as we see in chapter 2, verse 20; "that day," when God will bring judgment against the women and men of Zion as we read in chapter 3, verses 16-26, or when those who remain are called holy, which we find in chapter 4 verses 2 & 3. "That day" is a day of judgment and salvation, a day that calls God's people forward, beckoning us to live into its reality in the present moment, no matter the circumstances.

The first song in this passage (verses 1-2) is sung by an individual offering thanksgiving for deliverance by the God who is "my salvation". The "you" addressed in verse 1 is singular, as are the pronouns in both verses one and two. Although the individual is not identified, the end of the song hearkens back to the deliverance from Egypt, quoting Exodus 15:2: "The Lord God is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation" (verse 2b; cf. Psalm 118:14). Some scholars wonder if the individual could be Isaiah himself, whose own name means "God is salvation."

The image is one of a great warrior, one who is strong enough to defeat even the armies of Pharaoh in order to free the people from slavery in Egypt. To anyone who is caught up in fear, this echo from the Exodus and all the events attending it is a reminder that earthly powers cannot defeat the power of God.   

The second song offers a refrain of Thanksgiving to the "Holy One of Israel", the one whose "name is exalted" and who "has done gloriously". Isaiah calls on the people to lift their voices in praise to God: "Give thanks...sing praises...shout aloud and sing for joy!" This is a communal song ("you" is plural, as are the verbs in this section), as if a whole choir has joined voices with the soloist who sang in the first two verses. No longer is there a lone voice singing out against fear, as though whistling in the dark, but rather a chorus of voices offering praise for all that the Lord has done. "Make known his deeds among the nations," they will sing, and "[the Lord] has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth".

This reminder of past experience with God, how the Lord has already acted for the benefit of God's people, is a strong defense against the grip of fear. So, also, is our association with a community of faith that witnesses to God's saving deeds. How much easier it is to "trust and not be afraid" when a whole community is present to join together in the refrain!  

The verse that ties these two songs together is addressed to the gathered community: "With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation" (verse 3). In its historical setting, the verse probably refers to a ritual activity, most notably during the Feast of Tabernacles. As it connects the two songs, however, verse 3 is a reminder that God's salvation is fundamental to life, as basic to survival as the water that falls from the sky and springs forth from the earth.

God's offer of salvation is what the Lord "has done gloriously" to be made "known in all the earth"; it is this saving power that makes it possible for God's people to choose a stance of trust instead of fear when the day brings situations and events beyond their control (cf. Isaiah 41:17-20). The "wells of salvation" suggest an abundant supply, spilling over to soothe tongues that are parched from fright, moistening lips so that they might sing melodies of praise to "proclaim that [the Lord's] name is exalted".

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

The question can be boiled down to a fairly simple one: with whom are you joining in chorus?

Are you wailing and gnashing your teeth in fear and panic at the situation of the world that we are being presented with, or are you proclaiming that the Lord’s name is exalted?

Are you being swayed by the voices that clamor for your attention, that would have you listen to THEM rather than to trust in God and God’s deliverance – God’s salvation – that transcends any given human condition?

I’m not minimizing the human condition – those struggles and hardships, those sorrows and pains and frustrations and seemingly insurmountable obstacles are REAL. We HAVE to deal with them.

My question this morning is HOW?

Will we deal with them from the standpoint of a people who are at the mercy of the powers and principalities of this earth, or from the standpoint of a people who are fully trusting; resting in the knowledge that the one who holds us in his hand is the one who will lead us through whatever circumstance we find ourselves in; not around it, or under it, or over it, but THROUGH it?

If God himself did not avoid suffering while walking and living amongst us, who are we to attempt to avoid it?

May we be found faithful.

Let’s pray.

With deep gratitude to Audrey West,

Associate Professor of New Testament
Lutheran School of TheologyChicago, IL