Emmerton Messages

With Joy

2009-12-13T12:53:00.000-05:00

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Advent 3C

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Warsaw, VA

Isaiah 12

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

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

Where is the joy?

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

Where is the joy?

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

Where is the joy?

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

Where is the joy?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How great our joy! (Great our joy!) 

Joy, joy, joy! (Joy, joy, joy!) 

Praise we the Lord in heaven on high!  

(Praise we the Lord in heaven on high!)

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

Let’s pray.

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

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

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

Into The Way of Peace

2009-12-06T02:00:00.000-05:00

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Advent 2C

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Warsaw, VA

Luke 1:68-79

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So did Colin Jooste.

So have countless others through the centuries.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

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

May we be found so faithful.

Let’s pray.

Birth Pangs

2009-11-15T00:48:00.000-05:00

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Ordinary 33B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Warsaw, VA

Mark 13:1-8

Theme: The in breaking of the Kingdom of God

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that was when this kind of clicked for me.

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

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

What can this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

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

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

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

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

Let’s pray.

For The Sake of Appearance

2009-11-08T00:52:00.001-05:00

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Ordinary 32B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Warsaw, VA

Mark 12:38-44

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“⁵Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, ⁶who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, ⁷but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, ⁸he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.”

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

May we all be so faithful, and so obedient.

Let’s pray.

Who Can Be Saved?

2009-10-17T22:46:00.000-05:00

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

17As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. 19You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’” 20He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” 21Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” 22When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
23Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 26They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” 27Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”
28Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” 29Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, 30who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

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

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

Let’s get one thing clear from the beginning:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You tell me.

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

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

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

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

Pray with me.

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

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

Bear The Name

2009-09-27T01:19:00.002-05:00

Sunday, September 20^th, 2009

Ordinary 26B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Warsaw, VA

Mark 9:38-50

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

Why did the disciples stick with Jesus?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(ordination to the diaconate of Chris Bronner)

Let’s pray.

Arguments, Questions and Answers

2009-09-20T00:24:00.000-05:00

Sunday, September 20th^th, 2009

Ordinary 25B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Warsaw, VA

Mark 9:30-37

³⁰They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; ³¹for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” ³²But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

³³Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” ³⁴But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. ³⁵He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” ³⁶Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ³⁷“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

I know you’re probably thinking, “The Son of Man betrayed … again? Wasn’t that what he preached on LAST Sunday??”

The answer is yes, of course. Both last week’s and this weeks passages in the Gospel according to Mark have similar pronouncements coming from Jesus regarding what he is going to experience at the end of his earthly life. Though there are other things that happen between the two sections of scripture, for us to hop from chapter 8 last week to these verses in chapter 9 this week seem more repetitious than if we were to be reading through all of the intervening verses and exploring them.

While last week it was just Peter who didn’t get it, this week it’s the whole group that is exposed as being essentially clueless about what Jesus was both teaching and living. It is, as I’ve mentioned before, profoundly comforting to be able to read that those who became the Lions of our faith were not the sharpest knives in the drawer. God didn’t seek out the best and the brightest, but the ones that, even with their shortcomings and failures were willing to give themselves wholly to the Gospel once they grasped the significance, received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and set out to tell the Good News of Jesus Christ. But at this point in the story they were still providing the model for the keystone cops and the three stooges.

As the passage begins, Mark has Jesus and the disciples traveling southward towards Jerusalem, back in familiar territory, in Galilee, after having traveled to the north. Again Mark makes the comment that Jesus wanted his presence to be as unnoticed as possible, and he summarizes what Jesus was teaching the disciples, apparently taking advantage of the fact that, to some degree, they are mostly by themselves. Remember the small group being easier to teach profound truths to?

Jesus is recapping what he had attempted to teach the disciples earlier, about his suffering and death and resurrection, but again, the disciples just didn’t understand how it could be that the Messiah could achieve victory by suffering; the two just didn’t GO together. Victory just does not follow suffering. Suffering is for the loser. Isn’t it?

I’m thinking those might have been the thoughts that were going through the disciples’ minds as they were listening to Jesus tell them what was coming. I can just picture them, intently listening to Jesus, looking at his face, to see if he was just telling a joke with a REALLY straight face … and they were waiting to see who was going to laugh first … stealing quick glances around the circle at the others … but the laughter never came. So when they set off and continued their walk, the disciples kind of … held back a bit … maybe a few yards behind Jesus. Just enough space between them to allow them to talk among themselves in little more than whispers: what did Jesus mean exactly when he said he was going to be betrayed into human hands, by whom? And why would he be killed, how? And for what? And what does he mean that he’ll rise again after three days?

It’s telling that Mark doesn’t stop at saying that they didn’t understand; he goes a step further and says that they were afraid to ask him. Have you ever been in that kind of situation? I have. In fact, I am right now. And my primary reason for being afraid to ask the question I need to ask is concern for how I will be seen once the question is asked. I guess that’s why I can just hear all the questions churning in the disciples’ heads and coming out in quiet but very intense arguments among them as they follow their questions to THEIR point of origin. Certainly, they reason, Jesus cannot mean that HE will suffer and be killed. Sure, it’s a possibility, since we ARE talking about revolting against the most powerful force in the known world, the Roman Empire, but he comes from God. We’ve seen that in the way he heals people! Even IF we get into a fight with the Romans, he’ll call on his healing powers and heal any wounds we might receive and we’ll get right back in the battle … depending on the wound, it might even TAKE three days to recover … yeah … maybe THAT’S what he’s talking about.

And then … well, then we’ll have to go back to governing ourselves, like we used to. And since Jesus will be in charge, and we’re his closest advisers … hmm … who gets to be Vice Messiah? Peter? Nah. He’s a hothead. No diplomatic skills whatsoever! Who gets to be Secretary of State? John? Too young! President of the Sanhedrin? Thomas? I doubt it. Treasury Secretary? Yeah, Judas can keep that. He’ll probably outlive us all.

When we were in Louisville at the end of August, at one point we were riding with my parents in their car, and Judson and Caleb were sitting in the back with Momma while Daddy and I rode and drove in front. We had told the boys that we were going to give them a certain amount of money that they could spend any way they wanted on anything they wanted – within reason – at the store we were going to. The whole way there I could hear them discussing something, but they were keeping their voices uncharacteristically low, so even though I could hear that they were talking, it was a little hard to tell exactly what they were saying. Occasional words popped out of the conversation; “if you (something, something, something) then I’ll (something, something, something) – yes, I PROMISE I will!!” They were some of the most intense wrangling that I’d heard in a long, long time. When we arrived at the store and we got out of the car, Momma looked at me and kind of smiled and shrugged her shoulders and said something about being amazed at the level of the negotiations she’d just been hearing. They were discussing what to do with each individual piece that came in the set of an action figure and his or her package, trading one for another from another set … if memory serves. Unions renegotiating contracts with management doesn’t hold a candle to THOSE negotiations.

In the car, there is at least SOME ambient noise, whether it is noise from the road, or the air conditioner, or the radio, there is SOMETHING going on that would provide SOME interference with being able to hear each and every word that is spoken when those kinds of conversations take place. Walking is a whole different ballgame. Unless it is a windy day and you are walking into a stiff headwind, it is difficult to come up with something that would make it hard to hear a conversation that is taking place near you – even one several yards away. So I’m pretty sure Jesus heard most of what the disciples were arguing about. And I suspect that, when he asked them what the topic of discussion was, his tone conveyed to them the fact that he already knew the answer, and it probably conveyed just as clearly what he thought about them STILL thinking in THOSE terms – after all, they HAD all been there when Peter made his statement, followed by his quick fall from grace when he tried to explain to Jesus exactly what they were all thinking – and STILL thought – about what Jesus was saying about suffering and dying… nobody wanted to feel that wrath from their Master anytime soon.

But Jesus doesn’t respond with wrath.

He responds with a sad note in his voice and tries to again explain to them what this whole ‘Kingdom of God’ that he’s been talking about for the last three years is all about. Once again he tries to distill it down to it’s very essence. And he comes up with this:

“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

William Loader, Research Professor at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, puts it this way:

Human beings have mostly attributed value to those who have power. At some levels that has been physical power: an army. It is equally about having wealth, political power, family power. It is having a sense of one’s own importance on the basis that you can make others inferior, putting yourself up by putting others down. Such powerful people are engaging in the subordination and demeaning of others. It can also be that some people are powerful and have authority without such motives. They may simply be physically strong. They may have been placed in positions of responsibility. People then attribute greatness to such people – because of their power and authority. They are saying such people are of greatest value. Traditionally in most societies this related also to gender: fathers and kings, although in principle and in practice the tendency is not gender specific.

Jesus is challenging both stances: people wanting to use power to establish their own value and people using power as the measure of value of human beings. Jesus subverts both. True greatness is not about either of these relations to power. True greatness is to be like Jesus, a truly powerful person, but who valued himself not because of power but because of his being and his doing the will of God, which meant lowliness, in his case including following the path to the cross. That is all implied in the context of Mark’s story. Jesus in Mark subverts the standard values. He is a king, but wearing a crown of thorns. He is the Christ, but broken on the cross.

When Jesus says the greatest is to be the slave (9:35; 10:43,44), that is a shocking contrast. The use of the Greek word ‘diakonos’ as well as ‘doulos’, both words for slaves, helps us to see that the focus is not only the status, ‘slave’, but also the function, ‘serving’. Greatness is being a loving and serving person. Mark 10:45 makes that clear: ‘The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many’. We should not assume double standards; disciples should be like that, but not Jesus. Or Jesus and the disciples are like that, but not God! If the latter were true, we would all the time be undermining Jesus’ message every time we tried to be like God or to value what we would be valuing in God. Such has been the experience in Christian history, because people have been unwilling to be fully subverted by Jesus’ values and have found ways of reverting to the old value system when talking of Jesus and God. Our poetry, our hymns, our liturgies are often very revealing. When we hail Jesus as king and mean by it the king of love, the servant king, we have to work very hard not to allow that to be subsumed under the more popular images of greatness, which Jesus was trying to subvert.

Jesus then seamlessly gives the disciples an object lesson. He reaches for a child who is standing nearby … or maybe she was running, playing ‘catch’ with some of the other kids around, and puts his arms around her and says,

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

The image of the child, in itself, throws the focus more on the lowliness than on the service. The child is vulnerable. But then the focus shifts from the child back again to caring, this time for the child. Caring for vulnerable human beings is part of what caring is about. To take on a child in this way is to take on Jesus and to take on Jesus in this way is to take on God. In Matthew 25:31-46 we see the thought spun out into the parable of the sheep and the goats.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Behind the thought is a sense of solidarity with lowliness and vulnerability and an affirmation that in acts of caring and love we come face to face with the divine. Elsewhere the same thought is applied to those whom Jesus sends and commissions in ministry. Verse 41 speaks of giving them a drink. When people take on lowliness like this they are going to need to be cared for. The Jesus tradition assumes communities where that kind of caring is real. This will have been fundamental in the early Christian communities where leaders (apostles) needed to travel and faced all kinds of dangers. It remains an issue today: real lowly service (both for people who have power and enormous responsibility, and for those who do not) entails vulnerability. Jesus is not promoting ‘heroic loners’, but speaking of community, which provides mutual caring and support. His brokenness will become their food, the central symbol of divine presence and being – in communion and in community.

Let’s pray.

2009-09-13T01:44:00.001-05:00

If Any

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Ordinary 24B

Text: Mark 8:27-38

Theme: Christ’s call on our life is to live a life of sacrifice

“²⁷Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” ²⁸And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” ²⁹He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” ³⁰And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

³¹Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. ³²He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ³³But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

³⁴He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. ³⁶For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? ³⁷Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? ³⁸Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

It is almost always safer to share some deep truth in a small group rather than in a large group. The dynamics are just simpler. There’s less room for misunderstanding if you can look into the eyes of everyone present and SEE that they heard you and understood what you’ve said. There’s more time available if you note a confused look on someone’s face and go into a further explanation of just what it is you are trying to get across. People don’t feel as intimidated about speaking up when they are in the company of close friends, and that held true for Jesus and the disciples when he chose to try to get away from the crowds that seemed to perpetually be following them around any time word got out that “the one who might be the messiah” was in the area.

Caesarea Philippi had been rebuilt and enlarged by Herod Philip, son of Herod the Great, as the capital of the province, north of the Sea of Galilee, near the headwaters of the Jordan River. Prior to his opportunistic and politically expedient naming of the town after Tiberius Caesar, it was called Paneas, named in honor of the Greek god Pan, who was worshipped in a nearby grotto.

Though it served as the regional capital, it was a city surrounded by wilderness, an area that was sparsely populated and fairly distant from the established centers of population.

It was into that wilderness that Jesus retreated with his disciples. As they drew further and further away from the crowds, Jesus begins to ask the disciples questions that demand their attention, and reflection.

Jesus’ first question would sound self-serving if we didn’t know what was coming. He basically asks “what are people saying about me?” and you can tell from the disciples’ answers that they’ve been hearing stuff from the crowds, and one wonders, perhaps they’ve been discussing it among themselves as well.

“John the Baptist.” That first one always struck me as odd, since Jesus and John the Baptist were contemporaries – at least until shortly after Jesus’ public ministry began and John lost his head. But then, I’m not sure the Jewish concept of reincarnation was in play here. It sounds like they were grasping at straws.

“Elijah” carries a little more contextual weight, since he had been dead longer, and was known as the one who would prepare the way for the Messiah’s coming. Though on that same note, John the Baptist claimed to be fulfilling the prophecy in Isaiah 40:3-4: “A voice of one crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord.” Either way, both suggestions carried with them something in common: “Messianic excitement” – that is, there was a buzz going around that Jesus was the promised Messiah.

His next question brings it right in close to home for the disciples. “Who do YOU say that I am?” or “What are YOU saying about me?” The ‘you’ in the sentence is an emphatic pronoun. It indicates that the crowd he had just asked them about, the ‘people’ he refers to in his first question, have no idea who he is, and he is turning to this, the smaller, ‘safer’ group, to see what they are thinking, after having had some time to observe him, listen to him teach, as well as to watch him preach and heal.

Yesterday we sat through a couple of training sessions in preparation for Leslie’s internship this year, and most of the training was an overview of what group dynamics to expect in the context of the Ministry Consultation Committee, which we were going to form. At one point, the facilitator listed the different roles people fall into when in a group situation, and one of them, aside from leader, was ‘instigator’. That is, the person who is usually the first to speak up, the one who most easily blurts out what is on his or her mind, who forges ahead into the silences that follow a question or a presentation of a theme or topic.

Peter seems to have taken that role among the disciples. He is usually the one to speak up and say what’s on his mind. And it was no different this time.

Scholars agree that everything leading up to this point in the gospel is aiming towards that confession, and everything after this point is Jesus explaining what the TRUE meaning of the title – which he does not reject – is. And he doesn’t waste any time beginning to do that, mainly because Peter gives him his first opportunity with his first answer.

Similar to the Syro-phoenician woman’s calling Jesus ‘Sir’, or ‘Master’ or ‘Lord’ in last week’s passage, Peter’s confession of “you are the Messiah” points to something more going on in the episode than simply the words that are spoken. It’s not a game of ’20 questions’ that all the disciples are competing against each other to get right. Though we see just a few phrases later that the place Peter’s answer was coming from was wrong, the proclamation still rings true on it’s own – apart from the baggage that it carried at the time. Mark is purposefully placing this exchange here in his narrative to begin the process of discovery of who Jesus is, and his first step is to disavow any pretext that Jesus is a Messiah in the style of King David – a Military and political ruler who would vanquish the occupying pagan armies and run them out, and claim the land of Palestine once again for the children of Israel.

But you’ll notice that the words don’t come from Mark to deny that, they come from Jesus. Mark DOES summarize what happened after Peter’s confession – that Jesus, in what might be called ‘plain and simple language’ (where he says ‘he said all this quite openly’), he spells out to his disciples that what being the Messiah MEANT was that (1) He would undergo great suffering, (2) He would be rejected by the Chief Priests, the Elders, and the Scribes, and (3) That he would be killed, and that after three days he would rise again.

That last seems so plain to us, reading this passage after Easter, doesn’t it? The actual wording of that last phrase is something more along the lines of an indeterminate, though short period of time rather than an exact reading of ‘three days’… though it CAN be interpreted that way. Suffice it to say, it actually sounds reasonable for someone to take you aside and try to set you straight if you start yammering about being rejected by the whole authority structure of your church, and that you are going to be killed? … Hearing would probably stop around that word and your instinct for preserving your friend would kick in. As we know he was prone to do, Peter impetuously jumps in and begins to explain to Jesus just exactly who HE is, just a reminder, something to jog his memory, since it seems like something has obviously addled his brain – he’s been doing a lot of walking and an awful lot of healing lately. I think we need to take BOTH the Sabbath AND the first day of the week off, he’s just running himself ragged. I don’t know what I’m going to do with him.

Jesus’ response is not what we could call ‘diplomatic,’ is it? He doesn’t chuckle and say ‘Peter, you didn’t quite understand what I said … let me repeat …’ none of that coddling here. He straight up calls him on the carpet. For having just made THE pivotal proclamation of the entire Gospel of Mark, Peter sure doesn’t get to rest on his laurels for long, does he?

The problem is, as I alluded to earlier, Peter’s response to JESUS’ beginning to explain to the disciples that yeah, he is the Messiah, but THIS is what being the Messiah means for him, and for us (Being rejected by the very people who have been supposedly holding vigil all these centuries until the Messiah comes, watching and waiting for him; it means that he would be put to death, and, oh yeah, he would be raised on the third day) – Peter’s reaction to Jesus telling him that being the Messiah is, in fact, about being a sacrifice, suffering for the sake of humanity the penalty that we would all by rights be subject to – tells us that while the words were the right words, Peter was still thinking in earthly, temporal terms. He was still looking for Jesus to whip out a sword and whip all those great crowds that had been following them around into some great frenzied army that would rise up and push all the Roman occupiers into the Mediterranean or up to the North somewhere, but definitely OUT of the land of Israel. Jesus calls him Satan and tells him to get away from him.

How’s that for straining a friendship?

He spells it out: “you’ve set your mind not on divine things, but on human things.”

In other words, he’s saying “you need to look at this from GOD’S eternal and worldwide perspective, not the narrow and provincial perspective of the High Priest, the Elders, and Scribes. They’ve lost sight of the forest because they are trying to keep tabs on all the trees.” I am about more than simply freeing Israel from its captivity to Rome, I am about freeing HUMANITY from it’s captivity to SIN.

Then the crowd reappears. Did you notice? “He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them: ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’.”

There are three things he’s telling them (and us) to do:

1. Deny ourselves. The form of the verb ‘deny’ in this verse is not a suggestion, it is a command. The basic idea here is to say “NO!” To disown not just our sins, but our very self – if and when that self is vying for first place in our lives – to turn away from the idolatry of self-centeredness. It is not the kind of self-denial where we give up a particular vice or pleasure for a temporary length of time, like chocolate, or ice cream; it requires submission to a new King (Jesus Christ) in the place of the old (me).

2. Take up our cross. It’s a twin of the first one. The cross was never just a burden or trouble to the Jews of Jesus’ day, or for that matter, to the Roman’s of Nero’s time. The victim was required to carry his own cross to the place of his execution. To take up one’s cross requires absolute commitment, even to death.

3. Follow me. The form is the continuing present – ‘make it your habit to follow my example.’ It is a supporting command rather than a third requirement. It takes the first two into account and helps explain them, which in turn explains what it means to be a disciple. Mark uses the word ‘follow’ in his gospel in connection with discipleship.

The Message translates verses 34-37 this way:

"Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat; I am. Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?

Jesus puts into stark relief what is truly at stake if we live our lives as if WE are in control, as if WE are THE most important thing in our lives. We lose our identity, because we cannot sustain an identity based on ourselves alone.

Denying ourselves means rejecting the lie that we are the ultimate arbiter, the ultimate judge, of our own existence.

Taking up our cross means repeatedly, daily, hourly, choosing to follow Christ’s example of self-sacrificing love.

Following Christ means making that choice enough to where it becomes second nature.

May we all live lives of Christ.

Let’s pray.

For Saying That

2009-09-06T01:22:00.000-05:00

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Ordinary 23B

Text: Mark 7:24-37

Theme: God’s surprising movement in the world

“²⁴ From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, ²⁵ but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. ²⁶ Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syro-phoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ²⁷ He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” ²⁸ But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” ²⁹ Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” ³⁰ So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

³¹ Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. ³² They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. ³³ He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. ³⁴ Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” ³⁵ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. ³⁶ Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. ³⁷ They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

Rascal was an outside dog. Both our pet dogs growing up were outside pets. So we really didn’t have to deal with the ‘puppy dog eyes’ pleading for a morsel of food from our plates unless we ate out on our porch, which we did, but only in the summer months. Rascal was half Pomeranian and half fox terrier mix … with the coloring you would normally associate with Lassie – deep gold, with a white collar and chest. He was small, he probably topped out at 20 pounds in his later years, so he easily fit under the table while we were eating. Not having him in the house was good insofar as it made keeping the house CLEAN easier, but it was not so good in that we kids were never able to build up our immunity TO those puppy-dog pleading eyes… and were thus prone to give in whenever he set to begging at mealtime. And I was the worst when it came to feeding him from my plate.

The image our passage conjures up for us this morning is just that – of a table with children and a dog begging for scraps under the table. But the context in which we find it is not so idyllic … so … “home and hearth”.

To put the passage into a slightly larger context – that of the Gospel according to Mark, at the beginning of chapter 7, Jesus is saying in essence that you can’t judge a book by it’s cover – you can’t go by nationality, religious heritage, or social standing, you have to look beyond the external factors to get to the heart of a person’s TRUE faith – for us, that means we can’t stop at names and addresses, workplaces or family history… then Mark underscores the point by relating the story of Jesus traveling over 80 miles NORTH of Galilee, well into what was DEFINITELY Gentile territory, to begin to interact with folks there.

It almost seems like an afterthought when he says that Jesus ‘entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there.’ If you remember, the ‘secret messiah’ is a recurring theme to varying degrees in each of the Gospels, but most notably in Mark. It bears noting that in an age of slow communication, where most people lived out their lives within a radius of just a few miles from their birthplace, Jesus was mobbed nearly a hundred miles away. It would appear that good news travels fast, doesn’t it? And Mark seems to be making the point that no matter what Jesus SAYS to people about keeping his presence or true nature a secret, it just doesn’t work. Some things never change, and telling the latest ‘secret’ is usually at the top of the list – even for first-century pagans in what is today Lebanon.

The interaction between Jesus and the woman who brazenly walks up to him and asks that he heal her daughter is pivotal in the story of Jesus’ ministry. The scene is also found in Matthew, chapter 15, verses 21 through 28. In THAT retelling, the woman goes from being Syro-Phoenician to being Canaanite. It is not a huge difference, but it is noteworthy. The end result is the same – the woman is a gentile, and in Matthew the division between Jews and Gentiles is brought even more to light by the reaction of the disciples to her ‘shouting after them’ – this was no timid woman waiting her turn … she wasn’t even allowed to be in LINE. It speaks to the love she had for her daughter – but they ask Jesus to send her away. Jesus’ answer to the disciples is … silence. He only speaks again when the woman addresses him directly and asks him to heal her daughter. Jesus' response is ... troubling ... he tells her that the children (usually interpreted as the Jews) should be fed first, and the good food shouldn't go to the dogs (the common term for gentiles that Jews had ...) She answers him: Sir, even dogs get the scraps that fall from the table!...the thing is, he uses a diminutive form of the word dog - like 'little dog' - the implication is that he's talking about pets .... which ... puts Jews and Gentiles under the same roof ... which would be pretty revolutionary to a Jewish audience, but would send a clear signal to a gentile audience ... that EVERYONE is to have access to the grace of God.

The way the woman addresses Jesus is also worth reflecting on. In Mark, the word “kurios”, which is found in both passages, is translated ‘Sir’; in Matthew, it is translated ‘Lord’, but it could also be translated ‘Master’. Either way, the significance of a Gentile woman calling Jesus, a Jewish man, ‘Master’ or ‘Lord’, would not have been lost on either audience that received either letter.

This was the truth of the Gospel coming from the lips of a pagan woman, who had no standing, who could not ask Jesus to heal her daughter because her ancestors had obeyed God and followed Moses out of Egypt… or had spent the last several centuries protecting the books of the law and the prophets, or anything like that.

Her only recourse, her only plea, was to Jesus’ good graces, and his kindness. It speaks to her desperation in seeking help for her daughter, that she would ignore culturally established boundaries, and risked being thrown out of the house without so much as a please and thank you.

And THAT is where we connect with this story. We all come to Jesus in a desperate state, with nothing to stand on, with no ‘in’ to hang on to, to throw up to Jesus and say, “There, because of THAT, you need to count me in!” All we have to offer him is our surrender, our lives, our faith, and our hope. And that was all SHE had, her faith that he would heal her daughter.

But the text continues, Jesus returns to Decapolis by leaving Sidon and heading NORTH again, to Tyre, and then from there, south … a lengthy trip by any means, especially by foot. And Mark presents us with another miraculous healing – this time of a man who is deaf and has a speech impediment. It is fascinating to me that in the healing, Jesus doesn’t say ‘be healed’, or ‘be well’, or ‘Hear! Speak!’ … What does he say?

“Be opened” …

It is not only the telling of a miraculous healing, but placed after the conversation with the Gentile woman, this is a message to the Jewish community receiving these letters, to the people of Israel who first received the Covenant that God established through Abraham. Jesus is telling them to be opened to the transformative power of the Gospel, to the Gospel that breaks down walls of separation that we so easily build around us, afraid of what is different and unfamiliar, afraid of those who are not like us, afraid of what that change might imply… is it any wonder that one of the most frequent phrases we hear from God in the Hebrew Scriptures and from Jesus is “be not afraid”?

Our calling, our task as children of God, brothers and sisters in Christ, is to be a part of the tearing down of those walls that separate, that create misunderstanding, that breed mistrust, that allow all sorts of lies to fester about ‘the others’ so that we can look into each others faces and see the face of Christ reflected there.

Let’s pray.

2009-08-16T03:16:00.001-05:00

How You Live

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Ordinary 20B

Text: Ephesians 5:15-20

Theme: Living as if your faith mattered

“15 Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, 16 making the most of the time, because the days are evil. 17 So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, 19 as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, 20 giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

At some point in everyone’s life -- and I do believe this happens to everyone -- we are confronted with the choice to believe that there is something more to life than just what we can see, hear, taste, feel and smell. There is a yearning that raises it’s head and calls out for that which is at that point unknown, and that yearning is straining to hear a reply to it’s call.

If one is in an environment that lends itself to allowing that reply to be heard, it can be the beginning of a beautiful journey of discovery - of both one’s self and of that which is outside of one’s self. In other words, a growing realization that to be truly connected to the material, physical world, one must also be connected to the immaterial, metaphysical world. It is a growing understanding that the two were never meant to be separated - to be divided, to be at odds, at war, in competition.

We live in a world that -- at least since the fall of humanity -- has consciously or subconsciously chosen on the whole to ignore the transcendent aspects of existence for those more immediate, but much more impermanent aspects of existence. That would rather overwhelm the senses with that which can ONLY be seen, heard, tasted, felt, and smelled to the detriment of those other aspects of the universe that are experienced on what would almost seem to be another plane of existence.

Facing the possibility that none of this faith-stuff is real can be -- and IS -- just such a moment. For one who was raised with no memory of life apart from the presence and the influence of faith, having to face that question head on was both a thrill and a terror. It was a thrill because that act of questioning, that act of stepping into the mental/spiritual discussion with what I now understand and choose to call the Holy Spirit, and not knowing how that conversation would wind up - whether with me walking away from all matters spiritual or possibly ending up in a tradition far removed from that in which I was raised - gave me a stake in the outcome that I had never had before -- not that I never recognized the importance of faith, but that I had never gone through the spiritual exercise to own my own faith. This conversation was the closest I was going to come to the experience of someone who had never been exposed to the Gospel, never heard of Jesus, never read the stories of the faith or heard the hymns and songs of the faith that reach down and ‘GET YOU‘ right ... right ... THERE.

It was a terror for the same exact reasons. The prospect of leaving all that had to one degree or another, even absent the ownership I was looking for, been so integral a part of my formation up to that point in my life was ... breathtaking in the WORST way -- I literally found it hard to draw breath when I thought of the possibility that I might come out the other end with a caustic attitude towards all matters of faith.

For a time I had intentionally marginalized myself from active involvement and participation in the life of a community of faith -- a church. I had gone for all my life meeting the expectations that I perceived others had of me as the son of missionaries, so my first step in ... stepping out ... was to actually, physically DO that ... distance myself from the familiar Sunday routine of getting up, getting ready, and going to Sunday morning Bible Study and Worship. To be honest, that ended up meeting with somewhat mixed results ... there were times when I would go for a couple of weeks or maybe three, where I would not find myself in a gathered community to worship ... but it never became the norm. It was always the exception. There was too much of a habit ingrained in me to get up and go on Sunday mornings for me to feel comfortable NOT doing it.

What ended up happening was that I would go to worship and the conversation would be going on in my head as I was preparing to go, as I arrived, as I interacted with the people that were there, and as I went through the motions - the prayers, the bowed head, the standing and singing, the listening to the readings and the messages.

Ultimately, the question that all the angst boiled down to was “is God real, does God exist?”. I had to answer for myself the question of whether or not I believed in the existence of God. At that point, having taken philosophy of religion classes, I was already somewhat familiar with the different arguments for the existence of God, such as Pascal’s Wager (if God exists, then to live as though he does results in infinite rewards; if he doesn’t, you have lost little or nothing, etc), The Ontological (because we can conceive of a God that exists, God must exist), Cosmological (the first cause/purpose argument), Teleological (i.e. the argument from design), and the Moral Arguments (knowing right from wrong implies there is an ultimate authority), and The Argument from Religious Experience. While some of them were persuasive, none of them really sealed the case for me. It ultimately came down to a decision about whether or not faith was going to matter to me.

Is the proposition that God exists, and that in that existence God chose to come to this plane of existence in the form of a human so outlandish an idea as to be rejected outright for it’s basic outrageousness? I think what finally swayed me was what Paul called the foolishness of the Gospel. That it is counterintuitive -- it flies in the face of so-called “common sense” to believe that ... and BECAUSE of that, because I had experienced and seen what the wisdom of man ended up producing ... I’m not saying humanity isn’t capable of doing some wonderful things, we ARE ... but there are basic, critical things, like world peace, hunger, poverty, that we are CAPABLE of addressing but cannot successfully for a whole list of reasons that we really would rather not talk about ... because they show us that we are really not all that advanced as we would like to believe.

So why have I taken up so much time talking about my wrestling with the decision of whether or not to believe and pulled up all this religious philosophy stuff? Because I’ve also discovered that this is a question that needs to be revisited -- sometimes often -- to keep in the front of our minds how we are to deal with a world that is -- sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously -- asking itself the same questions.

Paul’s entreaty to the Ephesians to be careful how they lived -- as wise, not unwise people -- and to make the most of their time, brought together two cultural streams. His reference to living wisely drew from the Hebrew concept of wisdom, which is more an attitude towards life, and not a knowledge-based concept. And his reference to making the most of the time they had was a Greek economic term - it literally means a snapping up of all the opportunities that are available -- picture a marketplace, and a customer is faced with multitudes of REALLY good bargains ... a first century equivalent of a clearance rack or shelf. He says clearly, don’t occupy yourself with foolishness, with things that don’t matter in the long run, that are so much fluff, but find out and DO what God wants you to do!

A friend joked about that next verse - don’t be drunk with wine, but if your beverage of choice is beer or vodka, you’re off the hook ... :-)

Seriously, Paul is both closing the argument of the previous statement as well as setting up the next statement he makes. Drunkenness - and daily drunkenness -- was literally a way of life at the time. Think of how hard it was to just get through the day in the first century ... not that I’m excusing the practice, but on some level, it would seem to make sense to escape the harshness of living by drinking yourself into a stupor each night. It was even an expected part of the rituals for the multitude of gods that were worshipped in the Greco-Roman world. So for this new, upstart group to come along and say that they were no longer going to be involved in the daily ritual of drinking your supper, but were rather going to engage in helping out the widow down the street, or the orphans around the corner, or the beggar that always sat at the city gates ... it just went against the NORM ...

Paul’s suggestion that, instead of being full of wine, Christ’s followers should be more about seeking the fullness which the Spirit gives is pointing them in the direction that will engage them in the worship that WILL fill their lives, that WILL draw them closer to God, that WILL fill them.

I hope we’ve all had that experience -- of hearing a song, or singing a song that brings a knot to our throat and a tear to our eye. One that we just throw back our head and sing long and hard because it is SO where we are at THAT PARTICULAR moment ...

That is the spirit moving ... that is God drawing close, tuning our hearts and singing along with us ... and molding and making us into his beloved children.

Let’s pray.

Imitators, Beloved Children

2009-08-09T03:01:00.000-05:00

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Ordinary 19B

Text: Ephesians 4:25-5:2

“25 So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. 26 Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and do not make room for the devil. 28 Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. 29 Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. 31 Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, 32 and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

5 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2 and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

Paul is well aware as he is writing to the churches he worked to establish that he might not have long to live. There is a sense of that in what we are reading this morning. He has just finished warning the people in the church to beware of continuing to live as those who do not know Christ, who have not heard the Gospel, who have not become aware that what they believe IS to have an effect on HOW they act -- with each other as well as with everyone around them in the ‘outside world.’

In this section of his letter, he runs down what could sound like a laundry list of things to check off as this mixed bag of people - from all walks of life, it seems - are learning to live together in community with each other. There are essentials to healthy relationships that are foundational in order for those relationships to last - to grow - to deepen, and to thrive, and Paul starts at the very heart of them.

The first is so basic as to beg the question, why is it listed -- be honest with each other. The fact that it is first here speaks to the context into which Paul was writing -- and in which the people were living -- more than it does to any specific problem with one or two people within the congregation. It would seem that, at the time, telling the truth in any dealings one had -- whether business or personal, was maybe not the norm but the exception; so to become a part of a community in which truth WAS the standard - the norm - and NOT the exception, was not only an adjustment, but a necessary element of belonging TO that community.

Paul’s explanation is simple: because we belong to one another - ‘we are members of one another‘ If we can go back to the analogy of being part of one body, how well does a body function if the message that is sent from one part of the body, say, the brain, to another, for example, the feet, is scrambled? We would end up tripping and falling, wouldn’t we? Or if we saw something we wanted to pick up, and the brain sent the message to close the fingers too early or too late ... it would be difficult to do even the simplest task, wouldn’t it?

Paul is underscoring the foundation of the relationships modeled on the message of the Gospel - it is truth. It is so basic that without it the rest is useless. If you have ever been in a relationship where you discovered that someone wasn’t telling you the truth ... or maybe WE have been the ones who were not truthful ... how does that relationship stand out in our minds? How deep does the pain go even now, when we remember what it was like when we discovered the falsehood, what felt like our hearts were being ripped out of our chest?

The natural response, in addition to pain, is anger, and Paul goes right to that with his next statement - he acknowledges that there IS a place and a time for anger; he says “BE angry!” There ARE things that it is APPROPRIATE to get angry about or to BE angry about. But he knows what unresolved anger can do to a person. It can, very simply, poison the whole of a person’s character. Unresolved - meaning unexpressed, unaddressed, or suppressed anger can and does fester. It infects the whole of a person’s character and personality. I don’t presume to know all the psychological ramifications of supressed anger, but I can speak from experience and say that unresolved anger becomes uncontrolled anger at the worst possible moments - and ends up being directed to everyone BUT the person, persons, or situations that were the originators of it. I’m afraid that in American Evangelical Christianity today, we have done ourselves a disservice in equating being angry with sinning. Anger in and of itself is no sin. It is how that anger is handled - or not - that can lead to the sin. What Paul is telling us is that when we get angry we deal with it. We go to the person with whom we are angry, talk it out, hash out whatever needs to be hashed out, clarify what needs clarifying, iron out whatever differences are apparent, and have it done and over with -- preferably before the day is over.

And that can be tough. There is a certain righteousness in the anger of one who has been unjustly injured, isn’t there? You can feel better about yourself for a good long time if you know that you have been injured by the words of someone who has told a lie about you. It can last for several days, if not weeks, or maybe even years ... so we are sometimes ... reluctant to resolve an issue that has caused us pain and anger because we are the ones who may seem to be benefitting from it.

The truth of the matter is, as Paul states, ‘do not make room for the devil.’ That would seem to be the farthest possibility from the situation as we could think of, don’t you think? When WE have been the injured party, when WE were the ones in the right, when WE, when WE, when WE ... do you see what the danger is of letting anger remain unresolved? We begin to focus on ourselves more than on the other person, more on our feelings of pain and suffering than on how to respond as Christ did, in love and sacrifice. We soon forget that God in Christ was about reconciliation, not about retribution.

Next, the fact that Paul writes to someone or some PERSONS in the church and addresses them as THIEVES ... again, speaks to what the society of the time was like. I like how Eugene Petersen phrased it in his paraphrase of verse 28; “Did you use to make ends meet by stealing? Well, no more! Get an honest job so that you can help others who can't work.”

And then he really gets down to the heart of the matter: “don’t speak evil of one another, but only say encouraging words, that affirm or build up as needed ... “ I have been pleasantly surprised at the last couple of sayings on the marquee at Calvary Baptist Church’s sign, across from the Hardee’s in town: the latest is actually a variation of this verse: “don’t speak unless your words can improve the silence.” It seems a point well taken.

I would again go to Petersen’s ‘The Message‘ with verse 30: “Don't grieve God. Don't break his heart. His Holy Spirit, moving and breathing in you, is the most intimate part of your life, making you fit for himself. Don't take such a gift for granted.” How often do we unthinkingly do or say something that is completely out of character with God and with Christ and not even realize it? That is taking God’s grace in the person of the Holy Spirit for granted.

Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, 32 and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

Finally, in his instructions for dealing with those lingering negative aspects of our lives, Paul is as clear as he can be in telling us to LET GO -- to let go of bitterness, of wrath, or anger, of wrangling ... contentiousness would be an alternative to that word, along with malice - that is, LET GO of any desire to inflict the same pain as that which we have been subjected to.

He barely misses a beat when he goes into the instructions on what TO do - on how TO BE with each other:

Kind

Tenderhearted

Forgiving.

Again, Paul doesn’t leave it on this plane of existence when he speaks of how we should treat each other, but he points to the bar that we should all aim towards: As God in Christ has forgiven you. No more, no less. And it is not an unfair comparison. He is not setting us up for failure. He is reminding us that THAT is where the ability, the strength, the resolve and the ... grace to BE THAT WAY with each other will come from - The Holy Spirit dwelling in each of us, and grown and nurtured and matured to the point where we will listen to HIM, and not our own voices, when we are learning to live in community.

Finally, children will imitate their parents.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we heard it in Hannah’s toddler ‘thank you’, and we’ve all (I hope) had the joy of watching a child mimic his or her mother or father - whether it is washing the dishes, having a tea party and carrying on a conversation, or doing things around the yard. There was even a memorable Anti-smoking Public Service Announcement that came out in the late 60’s, a man in his mid 30’s and his 6 or 7 year old son, doing various things - painting, washing the car, driving, going for a walk and throwing a rock, punctuated by the voice over saying ‘Like father, like son.’ It was one of the more effective, and definitely heart-wrenching, PSA’s of the time, since it ended with the phrase being posed as a question when the little boy picks up his father’s cigarette pack and looks at his father, who has just lighted one and is smoking it.

It is no different with us as followers of Christ and children of God. It is through Christ’s example that we understand God, and it is in our practicing that living - as Christ lived - in love - that we begin to understand more and more the heart of God and the love of God. Insofar as God gave himself in our place in the person of Jesus, we are likewise to give OURselves for God’s sake.

Let’s pray.

Marked With a Seal

2009-07-11T22:24:00.001-05:00

Sunday, July 12th, 2009

Ordinary 15B

Text: Ephesians 1:3-14

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. 5 He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace 8 that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight 9 he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. 11 In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, 12 so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. 13 In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; 14 this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

“Thank you”

Leslie and I stopped and looked at each other and smiled.

“She’s saying ‘thank you!’

Well, to be exact, it was more like ‘dankoo’, and it was very softly spoken, but the timing and inflection were unmistakeable. Leslie ha just placed her plate in front of her. Hannah was maybe a year and a couple of months old at the time - just starting to speak intelligibly. We were sitting down to supper in the dining room in the house we were living in in Norfolk, the house for which Leslie’s grandfather, Claude Kenneth Maccubbin, had served as his own general contractor. The dining room was a later addition to the house, and as such, was small, maybe 8 feet deep by 14 feet long, with dark pine paneling.

From the very beginning of our relationship, Leslie and I have been mindful of the power of words; of how words can build up or tear down, how they can bond two people together or drive them apart. As part of that, we are pretty intentional about saying ‘please‘ and ‘thank you‘ when we ask something of each other.

As Hannah began to speak her first words, a lot of what she was doing, just as other children do, was imitating sounds - the TONE of our voices more than the specific sounds our lips and tongues were making. But that was one that she picked up early, and used often, and it is one that, I hope, we as members of this family of faith, learned early and use often.

In our doxology this morning, not simply the Gloria Patri we sang after the offering was taken up, but in our worship through the singing of hymns, you may have caught something of the general theme running through the hymns: Praising God for our salvation through Jesus Christ.

As we read today’s text, what strikes me is the tone of praise and thanksgiving that permeates nearly every part of it.

Whether Paul is blessing the Lord for what God has done, or for what God has given us, there is a relentless expression of thanks in all this first section of his letter to the church at Ephesus. After reading it I sat back and asked myself, how often do we stop and simply praise God -- and thank God for what he has done for us?

We spent this past week in Vacation Bible School focusing on one country, Malawi. and were made aware of the sometimes harsh conditions that exist there, especially as they relate to the gathering and use of water. I cannot tell you how proud it made us to step back at the end of the week and see that in the space of five days, about 40 children and 40 adults from two small country churches collected $1,400.00 to send to the organization called WateringMalawi, so that they can use that money to purchase and install 7 treadle pumps, which will help irrigate gardens and provide food year-round for the families of those villages!

These last few days have also helped to remind us of the part WE play in God’s action in the world. We are not simply here to receive God’s blessings, though we do. We’re not here to enjoy the benefits of living in a land that is blessed with and abundance of water, though we do that too. We are at the same time blessed and called to BE a blessing. Just as God’s covenant with Israel was to both receive and extend a blessing, we are likewise called to that same task.

As I’ve said before, we do that, and we do that well for a faith family of our size. Through our community involvement, participation in various programs and ministry opportunities on a local level we can humbly say that we are about the work of the kingdom. On a larger scale, through our participation in statewide and national and international efforts, we can lay claim to being a part of the greater outreach to the world on behalf of Virginia Baptists, but more importantly, on behalf of Jesus Christ.

But there is a downside to all that involvement, all that activity. Becoming so busy being about the work, we can sometimes pretty easily forget, as the saying goes, to stop and smell the roses. That is, to stop and appreciate, literally, what God has done for us. And I mean that as much in the universal sense -- what God has done for us as the whole world, as he has for how Paul puts it, for those who “were the first to set our hope on Christ.”

You may have also picked up on some particular phrasing in the text, phrases like “he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world”, or “He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ”, “he has made known to us the mystery of his will”, and “In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things” These are all terms that would be understood in the normal course of events to be terms having to do with election, separation, words that speak of a special place, a special relationship between ‘us‘ and God. I would ask us to consider for a few moments this morning, who is the ‘us‘ Paul is speaking of? In simple, concrete terms, insofar as Paul was probably thinking as the words went down, I feel pretty confident in saying that he was talking about the people he was writing TO and the people he may have been WITH when he was writing them. I’m not sure Paul was really thinking that those same words would still be around nearly two thousand years later, being studied and broken down, compared with his other writings and delved into by scholars across the world and across the ages, but on THAT scale, insofar as he was writing to that larger cloud of witnesses, Paul was including all of us as well.

But even in that, we can read the word ‘us‘ emphatically, as in,

“He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world” or “he destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ”, “he has made known to us the mystery of his will”, and “In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance.”

I would invite us to think a little differently about this subject in this way. We, the people in this room this morning, are for the most part, fairly certain of where we stand in our relationship with God. At least we have a handle on what comes next.

The theologian George W. Stroup offers five insights into this passage and the subject of election:

First, election is “a statement about the wonder of God’s grace in Jesus Christ…It is above all else an affirmation that the God Christians know in Jesus Christ is gracious beyond the wildest reaches of their imaginations.”

Second, election is about God’s sovereign will, not our actions—our text notes in verses 5, 9, and 11 that “God’s choosing or election is rooted in the good pleasure and mystery of God’s counsel and will.”

Third, Christ is to be the “looking glass” in which Christians should consider their election, as God’s election is always through Christ. Stroup points to Jean Calvin and Karl Barth, who claimed that by looking at the life of Christ and seeing the grace and mercy of God, we should be assured that we are included in God’s promises.

Fourth, election “reminds Christians that they are adopted children of God;” this adoption is a gift, not a right.

Finally, we must be mindful that God’s election “does not make Christians ‘special’ in relation to other people, but calls them to specific tasks of serving God and neighbor.”

It isn’t about ‘us’ and ‘them’ - about exclusion - it is about INclusion -- it is about being called to community - as adopted children - and we are ALL eligible for adoption! No matter our age, our history, our present status, or how we think of ourselves. God welcomes us all -- and calls us all.

And it is in that reference that we would find it in us to speak, sing or pray from the depths of our hearts in praise and thanksgiving to God for what he has made available – not JUST to us, but to all of humanity through Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray.

Content with Weaknesses

2009-07-05T22:27:00.001-05:00

Sunday, July 5th, 2009

Ordinary 14B

Text: 2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Theme: Accepting our limitations so that we may rely on the Lord

2 I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. 3 And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows— 4 was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. 5 On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. 6 But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, 7 even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. 8 Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, 9 but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 10 Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

When is weakness a virtue? In a world that is established on the exercise of power, the predominance of might -- military, industrial and economic -- we are hard pressed to find anyone who would say something to the effect that, “Weakness is a good thing.”

The meaning of virtue was one of the prominent ethical discussions in the writings of ancient intellectuals. So-called "virtue lists" abound in classical literature; they typically commend such traits as piety, reverence, excellence, practical knowledge and patience. One quality of character, however, that one never finds in the Greco-Roman "virtue lists" is the trait of weakness.

You may have noticed how often this quality was mentioned by Paul in his Corinthian letters. We are weak... Who is weak and I do not feel weak? If I boast, I will boast about the things that show my weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest upon me. Not only does Paul champion weakness in himself, he extols the weakness of Christ. For to be sure, he was crucified in weakness... And then he says about us all, Likewise, we are weak in him... The point is this: true holiness is not a matter of personal power—it is a matter of God’s power in the midst of personal weakness.

The city of Corinth, like many ancient cities, was filled with the images of power. The impressive temple of Apollo under the brow of the acropolis greeted all visitors to the city. The biennial Isthmian Games featured contests of athleticism and feats of power. Corinth, the “master” of two harbors, Lechaeum on the North and Cenchrea on the South, was an economic trade center and power-broker for much of the Mediterranean world. Hence, it is not surprising that the cult of power was alive and well among Corinth’s citizenry and even among the Christians who responded to Paul’s preaching. Sometimes the exaltation of power infiltrated even their understanding of the graces and gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Because of what he wrote, we can be almost certain that Paul’s critics in Corinth boasted of superior ecstatic experiences, since Paul chose such an experience for his own climactic “boast.” His words, “I will go on to visions and revelations,” indicate as much, and we know from 1 Corinthians that the Corinthian church valued highly the more sensational kinds of spiritual experiences. The ecstatic experience that Paul chose to recount in 2 Corinthians 12 occurred some fourteen years prior, and it happened to someone Paul does not name but says he knew. It becomes clear that the person of whom Paul speaks is Paul himself, since, still in the same context, he shifts from “the man” to “me.”

There is no way to directly identify this experience with any known occasion recorded in the book of Acts or in Paul’s correspondence. Some have suggested his vision on the Damascus Road as a possibility, others his trance in the Jerusalem temple, and still others his near death in Lystra. They are all possibilities, but none is definitively ‘the one’.

In this experience, Paul was caught up to the “third heaven,” to “Paradise.” Both of these terms are known from Jewish and Christian Pseudepigrapha -- religious writings of the time. Heaven, the abode of God, was depicted as multi-layered, usually in a sevenfold way. By entering the third heaven one could stand near the Lord. Paradise was a Persian loanword meaning “garden,” and in Jewish apocalyptic literature it represented the home of the departed righteous.

The irony of this ecstatic experience is that in it Paul heard things that were not possible to describe nor permissible to repeat. It is a further irony for Paul to say, “I will boast about a man like that, but not about myself,” since that man was, in fact, Paul. Instead, Paul contents himself to boast of his weaknesses. If he wished to follow the lead of his opponents in boasting of transcendent experiences, he could do so truthfully. But he chooses not to.

Paul saw an inner connection between the ecstatic experience he had just recounted and another personal situation, this time a debilitating one. Paul suffered from some deep personal affliction, so deep that he compares it to a skolops, which means a thorn, or splinter. While Paul obviously uses a metaphor, the reference is ambiguous. Tertullian, an early Christian Author and historian, thought it was a physical affliction, St. Augustine and Martin Luther thought it was a temptation. Scholars have argued that it might have been migraines, epilepsy, convulsions, ophthalmia, malaria, a speech impediment, rheumatism, fever, and even leprosy.

Whatever the case, Paul certainly understands his experience in a Job-like context. Just as Job’s affliction was dealt by Satan but permitted by God, so Paul understands his own affliction to be a blow from his archenemy, yet at the same time, allowed by God in order to prevent any conceit on his part. If ecstatic experiences might tend toward conceit, the direct refusal by God to answer Paul’s prayer for healing drove him toward humility. Three times he prayed for deliverance, but God declined, only letting Paul know that saving grace was enough and that divine power is brought to perfection in human weakness.

In that divine “no,” Paul understood more clearly the nature of God’s power. If his opponents boasted of spectacular things, Paul was forced to boast of his weaknesses, not because weakness itself was glorious, but because it was the place in which Christ’s power was most clearly displayed. “Therefore,” Paul says, “I delight in sickness, insult, pressing needs, persecution, and distress.” His final declaration is one of the most quotable quotes in the Bible: “When I am weak (in myself), then I am strong (in the Lord)!” Can you imagine how that sounded against his opponents’ misguided philosophy, “When I am strong (in personal power), then I am strong (in spiritual things).”

Holiness often is confused with personal power. A holy person is construed as one who is disciplined. He or she is a person with a rigorous code of conduct. Holiness is believed to be the expression of religious fervor, the measuring of oneself and others by a demanding litany of religious criteria. The problem with this way of seeing holiness is that it misses the very heart of what holiness is all about in the first place.

Perhaps that is why Paul says so much about weakness when writing to the Corinthians. As Greeks, the Corinthians took great pride in their intellectual and cultural history. They were especially proud of the classical virtues of wisdom and power. In their approach to the Christian life, they championed all the ancient Greek virtues that were part of their heritage.

Paul, to the contrary, knew that the message of the cross put all virtues in a very different light. To the Greco-Roman world, the cross was shameful and humiliating - and ONLY that. To the Jew it was the symbol of God’s curse. To the Greek, it was the shame of public disgrace. To the Roman, it was the death of traitors and rebels.

Nothing in the whole structure of ancient culture, either Jewish, Greek or Roman, prepared anyone for the preaching of the cross. It was a stumbling block to Jews and absurd to the Greeks. But to those whom God had called, it was Christ—the wisdom of God and the power of God.

In a contemporary culture that stresses individual freedom and social advancement—even in a Christian sub-culture that at times succumbs to the appeal of political clout—we would do well to more directly conform our minds to the gospel of our weakness.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

We may need to ask ourselves, do we worship power? That we live in a culture that worships power is, I think, understood. The bigger, the better. Anyone from a captain of industry to a politically persuasive leader, to a militarily powerful leader is considered someone to be admired ... or feared by virtue of the fact that they CAN command anywhere from thousands to hundreds of thousands to millions to do their bidding.

But are we at risk of bringing that same mindset into the practice of our faith here within our family of faith? Even now, nearly two thousand years after Paul wrote his letter to the church at Corinth, we are still swayed not by stories of weakness, but of strength. We would rather hear about victories than struggles, triumphs rather than defeats. And that goes with our human nature, doesn’t it? we are expected to be ‘strong’. We encourage each other to be strong, we pray for strength, we don’t pray for weakness ... it seems ... out of PLACE to pray for anything else ... so how SHOULD we pray?

First, I think we acknowledge our weaknesses. We accept that we are not doing this under our own strength, we consciously make the decision to be PRIMARILY reliant on God’s strength and God’s wisdom, God’s movement in our life as a community of faith. And we set aside anything that we would like to control. Power, and strength are translated into control. And we do like to control things, don’t we? From the temperature around us to how level the ground is, to how soft our seats are, to how much light we have ... it is a subtle thing, isn’t it?

We pray for grace.

We pray for peace, we pray for acceptance. We pray for Christ to be manifested in us, over and above anything that might draw people to US, we pray that it would be more and more to HIM.

Let’s pray.

With deep gratitude to Dan Lewis, Senior Pastor of Troy Christian Chapel, Troy, Michigan, and guest essayist on journeywithjesus.net.

Excel in Everything

2009-06-28T09:18:00.000-05:00

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

Pentecost 4B

Text: 2 Corinthians 8:7-15

Theme: Giving as a mark of being a Christian

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

What makes us Christ followers?

What makes us Christian?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We give because God gave first to us.

Let’s pray.

Open Wide

2009-06-21T19:18:00.000-05:00

Open Wide

Pentecost 3B

Text: 2 Corinthians 6:1-13

Title: Open Wide

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So why am I telling you all this about camp?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s pray.

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s stand and sing.

Go Therefore

2009-06-07T00:45:00.001-05:00

Trinity Sunday

Text: Matthew 28:16-20

Title: Go Therefore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s pray.

2009-05-30T23:57:00.003-05:00

You Shall Know

Sunday, May 31st, 2009
Pentecost B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton, VA
Ezekiel 37:1-14

1 The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. 3 He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6 I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.” 7 So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8 I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. 9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” 10 I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude. 11 Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ 12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. 14 I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act,” says the Lord.

It is easily one of the most bizarre scenes in the Hebrew Scriptures. The prophet Ezekiel is transported in a vision to a valley that is representative of everything that the exiled people of Israel were feeling. It was full of the dry bones of a slain army -- and Ezekiel is called on by God to preach to them. The people of Israel -- and Ezekiel as on of them -- are struggling with the reality they have been forced to deal with.

God’s promises have been impossible from the very start. There is the call of Abraham and Sarah, two impossibly old folks who were charged with giving birth to a nation as plentiful as the stars in the sky. The nation did grow up, but before too long it had been enslaved. When God liberated the people, they continually fell away – even when they had been given their own land, even when they had judges, kings, and prophets to try and keep them in line.

Ezekiel was faced with a situation in which a promise made thousands of years ago, a promise that seemed too good to be true, was turning out to be exactly that. The exile was one of the most traumatic events in Jewish history, and there’s a whole book of the Bible – Lamentations – dedicated to the words of despair and hopelessness God’s people felt at that time. The land was supposed to remind them of God’s promise; the king was supposed to remind them of God’s promise; the Temple was supposed to remind them of God’s promise. Now all those things were gone and the people were left despondent – utterly alone. We can hear their anguish in the words of Psalm 137.

By the rivers of Babylon - there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy. Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem’s fall, how they said, ‘Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its foundations!’ O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!

What we hear are the words of a people who are utterly lost, utterly without hope, utterly defeated. That terrible image in the last verse speaks more to the frame of mind of the Psalmist than to the enduring wish of the people of God. It is an honest expression of the bitterness and hatred that can so easily settle into the heart of one who no longer has hope, who sees no way out of their present circumstances, who is sure that God has -- at least for a little while -- abandoned them.

Despite the 2,500 years that separate us from Ezekiel, I think each of us must have some idea how he felt, how his people felt. I suspect that there are things many of us treasure as reminders of God’s promise: a passage of scripture; words spoken by a dear friend at just the right moment; the memory of a particular star in the sky one night. They are meaningless to anyone else, but to us they are touchstones to which we cling when everything else falls away. Now imagine that you’ve lost even those, and I think you begin to grasp the magnitude of the exile.

So we return to that painful conversation between Ezekiel and God. Painful because Ezekiel knew. “Mortal, can these bones live?” -- the prophet knew the answer; he knew it was impossible.

And yet, that’s precisely what happens in the vision that follows. In essence, God says, “You think it’s impossible for me to restore my people from exile? I’m going to show you that I could do something infinitely more impossible than that. Not only am I going to restore the bones and sinew and flesh, but I am going to return my breath to these bodies, and they are going to live again.

“I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.” God keeps promises, even though they have been impossible from the very start.

(Thanks to Joshua T. Andrzejewski, Union PSCE, Richmond VA)

The people of Israel were dealing with very real, very present issues in their life as as a corporate entity - as a nation - they were hundreds of miles away from their home, bereft of their leaders, their temple, their sense of identity -- everything that for so long had helped them understand who they were in the world.

But then, I guess that may have been part of the problem, don’t you think? They were sure of who they were in the eyes of the world, just not in the eyes of God. I’m not saying that they had NO idea of who they were in the eyes of God, they were just ALSO very aware of who they were in the world BECAUSE of who they were in the eyes of God ... and as so often happens in these cases, the ‘who’ they were in the world ended up taking precedence over the ‘who’ they were in the eyes of God, and when the ‘who’ they were in the eyes of the world got LOST, the initial response was to associate that loss with their PRIMARY identity -- who they were in the eyes of God. So they ended up digging a hole twice as deep as they WOULD have been in had they kept that sense of who they were in God‘s eyes.

But the beauty of this passage is that it is a vivid reminder -- for them as well as for anyone who has lost that sense of identity -- of just what God is capable of doing in the face of the impossible.

What seems the most unlikely, miraculous event that could happen in your life right now -- in your wildest imagination, that which you don’t even dare to hope for -- much less speak out loud? That the one you’ve lost - to distance, to estrangement, to a silly little argument - will be back with you? Or that the job you were so sure you had in the bag but which was pulled out from under you in a dizzying twist at the last minute is actually going to be offered to you? Can you picture God coming to you in your dreams tonight and telling you that exactly THAT is what is going to happen? What would that do for you? Would you look forward to whatever it was with relish, anticipating all the wonderful outcomes that would result from that one single event that was beyond hope for you until just a couple of minutes ago?

Okay. Here comes the tough question: if that miracle were to take place, where would your energies then be directed? Would you be lost in the moment, drinking in the presence and ignoring everything else that is going on around you, or would you be focused on the one who made that seeming impossibility possible? There is a sense in playing the scenario out in our heads that we would CHOOSE to do the right thing -- that we would BEGIN to put things in proper perspective, in proper order, that we would regain a sense not only of balance between God being ultimate allegiance and the world - whatever laudable and praiseworthy event, person, or entity it might be -- being second ... but we have no guarantees that we would learn from our previous mistakes and missteps. In the best of all possible worlds, yes, we would learn and carry on with our lives in such a way as to never again let who we are in the eyes of the world overshadow who we are in the eyes of God, but the frailty of the human condition is such that it is never far from our minds -- even on Pentecost Sunday -- the day that commemorates that God can take ashes and bones and turn them into living, breathing human beings, even as Ash Wednesday at the BEGINNING of Lent reminds us that we ARE, in truth, dust and ashes, This day, Pentecost, reminds us that in SPITE of that truth, God is still more than capable of taking our dry bones and our scattered dust and souls and breathe life back into us -- that God can and DOES instill in us a sense of just WHO we are, regardless of our circumstances, regardless of our scattered-ness, our lostness, our confusion and questioning.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means that if we are willing to hear the word of God -- that same word that calls us by name before we are even born, that knows us better than we know ourselves, that also calls us to be and to do and to LIVE Christ’s life in the world today, that if we are willing to hear that spirit breathed into our lives here today, we can, just as that army in that valley could, just as the apostles in first century palestine and the Roman Empire at the time DID, we can change the world, through this magnificent source of the same unquenchable fire that burned in Christ’s heart for us -- that same Holy Spirit can and WILL work through US -- frail children of dust though we be.

Let’s pray.

2009-05-24T02:01:00.001-05:00

This Life

Sunday, May 17^th, 2009

Easter 7B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

1 John 5:9-13

9 If we receive human testimony, the testimony of God is greater; for this is the testimony of God that he has testified to his Son. 10 Those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts. Those who do not believe in God have made him a liar by not believing in the testimony that God has given concerning his Son. 11 And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. 13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life..

I love to read C.S. Lewis. His style is so crisp, so clean, so convincing. He speaks with an authority and in such a systematic manner that I feel like one of those cartoon characters that gets all worked up and begins running around in a tight little circle to the beat of a frantic conga drum, not really going anywhere, until the straight man hits him up ‘side the head and knocks some sense into him, and my straight man is Clive Staples Lewis.

I'm sure PART of it is that I hear his voice in my head speaking with that British accent, and that goes a ways towards impressing me ANYWAY. But it is his thought process that is more persuasive. C.S. Lewis could write that the center of the earth was hollow and there were giant bats flying around in there and I would be hard put to NOT believe it.

There are in most of our lives, unless we are of a certain cynical disposition to begin with -- or perhaps after having lived through a lifetime of disappointments -- people or organizations or sometimes newspapers or magazines, perhaps a news anchor with names like Cronkite or Brokaw, or a Radio Talk Show host like Hannity or Limbaugh, but somewhere along the line the words they spoke or wrote ‘clicked‘ somehow and we ended up hearing their voices or reading their words and readily equating them with truth.

There is real danger in that. When we begin to assign divine qualities to human beings. When we half-jokingly refer to ‘taking what they say as gospel’, or similar phrasings. You see, we are, in many ways, either too tired or too lazy to do the hard work of thinking and studying and following on our own. I’ll be the first to admit it. If I think something’s been worked through by someone I trust, I can very easily take that and run with it, without ever having examined closely what has been thought or said. And that is a shortcoming I have. It can sometimes be such a time saver to pick up an idea in toto -- in it’s entirety -- and assume, because of it’s origin, that it is a completed whole. That there isn’t an error with the underlying suppositions, that there isn’t an ulterior motive in the idea being propounded

John understood that. He was facing it among the churches he was writing to. People -- teachers, leaders, well-meaning, well-intentioned, clear thinking, soft-spoken, accomplished people were making their way into the churches and talking about what SEEMED to be the Gospel. They used all the right words, all the right phrases, but in just slightly different ways, or they left something critical out. They spoke of the love of God, but played down the part about what that love cost Jesus. They spoke of the brotherhood of man, but de-emphasized the practical, down-to-earth applications that entails -- the nuts and bolts of getting along with people with whom you agree with in principle on CERTAIN principles, but with whom you otherwise have profound, even insurmountable differences.

What John is doing is speaking to those who first believed, but who have been swayed by these false teachings. He spells it out for them: Those who believe the testimony of God -- the message that came to them from God through the Gospel of Jesus Christ -- know this to be true in their hearts. those who don’t or didn’t believe it already consider not just Jesus, but God God’s self to be a liar.

And just in case there was any doubt, John spells out just what God’s testimony about Jesus is: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in (through) his Son Jesus. It would seem that John is belaboring the point when he goes on to say ‘Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life‘ but he is underscoring the statement. He’s driving the point home. It’s not about being repetitious, it is about being clear.

Essentially, John spends the greater part of this letter defining for his readers just what he meant when he taught them that God was love. He didn’t teach them that Love is God, but that God’s best and first and last action in human history was born out of his love for humanity. And that action was in God’s becoming incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. For John the love of God cannot be separated from the life of Jesus. It is through that life, through his teaching, through his example, through his sacrifice, and through his resurrection that we are able to BEGIN to comprehend the depth and breadth and fullness of the love of God for us as human beings and the end to which God intended his love.

Richard Foster, author of ‘Celebration of Discipline’, puts it this way:

The daring goal of the Christian life is an ever-deeper re-formation of our inner personality so that it reflects more and more the glory and goodness of God; an ever more radiant conformity to the life and faith and desires and habits of Jesus; an utter transformation of our creatureliness into whole and perfect daughters and sons of God. You see, this life, this zoe that comes from God and is the salvation that is in Jesus Christ, is a character-transforming life. It does not leave us where we are but changes us as we progress from faith to faith (that is, from the faith we have to the faith we have yet to receive) and from strength to strength and from glory to glory.

God is intent upon making each of us into "a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright, stainless mirror that reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness."

To be sure, the full realization of this "perfect reflection" awaits our glorification in heaven. But even now we need to hear the goal spoken over us again and again so that we may more consciously enter into the process that leads to this goal. God does not wait until death to initiate this process of complete transformation. It begins now, and God can and will do far more here and now than we can possibly imagine. We may not be perfect yet, but we can become a whole lot better than we are.

You see, we are so prone to settle for less than what God desires for us. We are glad enough for God to remove some irritating behavior from our personality (like a sour disposition) or some destructive addiction (like alcoholism), but it is a very different thing when God begins a fundamental restructuring of our inner affections. We may be willing to give up honors and possessions and even friends, but it touches us too closely to disown our own selves. But we simply must understand that God is not seeking to improve us, but to transform us-to show us who he really created us to be. C. S. Lewis writes that "the goal towards which [God] is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in the whole universe, except you yourself, can prevent Him from taking you to that goal."

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist church at Emmerton?

We go into this Christ-following business with open eyes, or we have them opened by the realization that we are not simply dealing with high concepts and noble ideas, but we are dealing with the transformation of our very souls. And that transformation, though it has eternal repercussions, bleeds over into the living of our lives HERE AND NOW and results in a little bit of the coming Kingdom being made present where we live. When we DO respond as Christ would, when we DO make that redemptive connection with someone -- anyone -- and show them the love that God has for them and us in the way we treat and interact with them, when we DO live this life as God wants us to: in such a way as to reflect God’s glory almost perfectly.

Let’s pray.

2009-05-17T09:34:00.000-05:00

By Water and the Blood

Sunday, May 17^th, 2009

Easter 6B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

1 John 5:1-6

Everyone who believes (has faith) that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. ²By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. ³For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, ⁴for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. ⁵Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes (has faith that) Jesus is the Son of God?

⁶This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth.

What is the difference between faith and belief? Have you ever posed that question to yourself? It wouldn’t seem to be necessary, would it? After all, we could say that faith and belief are, if not one and the same, then maybe so closely related as to be indistinguishable from one another, at the MOST, we could call them two sides of the same coin.

Let’s do a brief word study:

belief:–noun

1. something believed; an opinion or conviction: a belief that the earth is flat.

2. confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof: a statement unworthy of belief.

3. confidence; faith; trust: a child's belief in his parents.

4. a religious tenet or tenets; religious creed or faith: the Christian belief.

And here is faith:–noun

1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.

2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.

3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.

4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.

5. a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.

6. the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.: Failure to appear would be breaking faith.

7. the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.: He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.

8. Christian Theology. the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.

They appear, in our english dictionary at least, to be so closely intertwined that we can use them interchangeably.

It was not so for our first century forbearers. In the original language in which this passage was written, there are two different words at play. They both have the same root, but one is a verb and the other is a noun.

Irene Alexandrou teaches modern Greek at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, and explains it this way:

The Greek word, which is translated as faith, is pistis (noun) and believe, is translated from pisteuo (verb). The word believe (Greek verb "pisteuo"), according to Strong's Greek Dictionary, means: to have faith (in, upon, or with respect to, a person or thing), i.e. credit; by implication, to entrust, (especially one's spiritual well-being to Christ.) believe, commit, (to trust), put in trust with. "Pisteuo" comes from the Greek noun "pistis" which means: persuasion, i.e., credence; moral conviction (of religious truth, or the truthfulness of God or a religious teacher), especially reliance upon Christ for salvation; the system of religious (Gospel) truth itself; assurance, belief, believe, faith.

While this distinction seems subtle enough in the Greek, when we move the two words into the english language, even though ‘believe’ is known and understood to be a verb, the ‘ve’ at the end of the word oftentimes becomes one and the same with the ‘f’ at the end of our noun ‘belief’. You may wonder what’s the big deal? Belief, believe, faith, potatoes, po-tah-toes, tomatoes, to-mah-toes ... just leave it at that and be done with it.

But you see, that, in fact, highlights the problem. There IS a difference between the verb ‘believe’ and the noun ‘faith’. If we replaced that first instance of the word ‘believes’ with the phrase ‘has faith’, it just begins to bring out the differences.

The problem lies in that it is so easy to equate the ideas of having faith and believing in something. We run the risk of thinking of them in the same intellectual terms; that having faith means believing in something... just like believing in something means ... having FAITH in something... we put the ideas behind the words on equal footing, and end up with circular reasoning, and each word defining the other, and no clear idea of where one ends and the other begins.

The difference is that pistis, the noun and pisteuo, the verb, coming from the same root, lose some of their power when they are translated into our logical, conceptual, thinking minds. I’m not knocking logical thinking at ALL, but what I AM trying to do is to introduce the idea that there is more than logic at work in the argument that John is putting forth here. He isn’t simply trying to persuade or convince his hearers of the logical validity of his argument, but he is trying to introduce the idea that there is a power so overwhelming in the world that was unleashed by God’s coming to earth in the person of Jesus Christ.

You see, that was an event, it involved action, and consequences, and movement and motion. Jesus did more than just sit in the temple and argue with the teachers and leaders. And that is the way it is with pisteuo belief - it is the enacting of that pistis faith in a way that makes it obvious that we have been moved by the same spirit of God that moved over the waters at the beginning of creation to DO SOMETHING for him and through him. Ours IS a faith of ideas and reason, but it is NOT a faith of ideas and reason apart from action. It doesn’t exist if there is no action. We cannot SAY we are a follower of Christ’s teachings and leave it at that.

This is the reason John writes in verse 2: By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.

One commentator, Edward A. McDowell, a retired professor from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, put it this way:

This makes it plain enough that agape does not exist apart from its expression in conduct and action. Agape demands doing, whatever one’s feelings or emotions may be. A person may not ‘feel right’ towards a neighbor, a Christian brother, an enemy, and yet love him with agape by treating him as a person and doing right by him.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Just as God’s love for us was expressed in so much more than simply spoken and written words, but ultimately through the living word, so is our agape love for each other and for the world around us to be expressed. Over the last six weeks, and especially in these last two weeks, you have done that in spades, as the saying goes. This past week, between Monday and yesterday, we said farewell to two precious souls who understood that the love of God was more than just an idea, more than a set of theological concepts and philosophies, it was a way of doing things and saying things and a way of being, a way of interacting with the world around them that helped us realize that this love that we confess, that we profess, is one that can transform not only US, but has the potential to transform anyone we meet, as we are faithful -- literally -- full of faith -- in carrying out God’s command to love each other.

May we be found so faithful.

Let’s pray.

2009-05-02T22:58:00.001-05:00

By This

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Easter 4B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton

1 John 3:16-24

Theme: Making the Love of God real

¹⁶We know love by this: that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. ¹⁷How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? ¹⁸Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. ¹⁹And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him ²⁰whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. ²¹Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; ²²and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.

²³And this is his commandment, that we should ⁽¹⁾ believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and ⁽²⁾ love one another, just as he has commanded us. ²⁴All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

We continue in the first epistle of John this morning. Picking up just a few verses down from where we left off last week. I’m not sure why the folks who came up with the lectionary readings skipped verses 8 through 15 to bring us to today’s passage, but there you have it. I started to skip the suggested reading and pick up in the very next set of verses for today’s message, but to be honest, John makes it pretty sticky business to go from where we left off last week to using some pretty absolutist language in regards to the idea of whether a believer can sin or not. It’s not that I don’t want us to wrestle with that particular issue, it’s just that things being what they are in our life as a family and as a congregation, that question is something we can – and will – wrestle with at another time.

Jim is a friend of mine. He is a few years older than I am, he works in real estate, has a wife, a son, and an ex-wife and I believe two grown children from an earlier marriage. Jim became a follower of Jesus late in life, within the last ten years. He was raised in the church, his mother was a faithful member, so he was familiar with the terminology and with the vagaries and faults of people who gather together and call themselves a church. I vaguely remember the day he made his public profession of faith. I remember more vividly the day he was baptized.

Our church held Sunday evening services, which were dedicated to more of a straightforward Bible Study time than a full-blown worship service. I don’t remember the exact context of the question, but I remember our Pastor put him on the spot by asking Jim what was different for him now that he made his decision to follow Jesus. He hesitated for a few seconds, and then answered: “The way I treat people – the way I feel about them, act towards them, think about them. Before, I used to be pretty ugly to people. I don’t do that any more.”

In an otherwise unremarkable testimony – and I only mean that in the sense that there was no thunder and lightning or awesome miracle that prompted Jim’s decision, his was one of those quiet “now is the time” moments when a lifetime of seed planting finally took root in his heart. The statement isn’t really all that remarkable in and of itself, is it? ‘I treat people different’ I’m sure it would speak volumes if I had known Jim better BEFORE he became a follower of Jesus.

What made it stand out in my memory was the honesty and simplicity of it. He didn’t couch it in standard American Christianese. He didn’t go for the clichéd answers that DO apply, but which have become virtually meaningless from overuse … or worse, from being applied in situations where the facts belie the reality of a life UNchanged.

As I got to know Jim better – we lead the men’s group at our church for a couple of years – I came to appreciate that about him. That he didn’t use the familiar language that we as church people tend to find useful. If we are talking within the community, there ARE phrases that we can use to communicate a host of things that we would otherwise be spelling out. Phrases like ‘backsliding’ or ‘moral sin’ or ‘church split’.

Jim is as open and honest as he can be. When he talks to you, he’s sincerely interested in what your answers are – he genuinely cares for you as a person. He’s not without faults; he has a temper, which he can sometimes struggle to control, and sometimes you can actually watch as he tries to bite his tongue, but he acknowledges those faults and shortcomings, and laughs at himself and carries on with the business of the kingdom. He rarely lets that get him down.

So when I read this morning’s passage, Jim came to mind. He loves God because God first loved him, he loves his church, and he doesn’t judge anyone. He is one of the most welcoming people I know.

This part of what John is saying is directed … sort of like an internal memo, if you will, to the believers in the churches in western Turkey and eastern Greece, as we mentioned a couple of weeks ago. There are some basic but profound truths that John is both instructing his children in the faith in and at the same time reminding them of.

He opens the argument by stating the foundation of Agape love:

¹⁶We know love by this: that he laid down his life for us

And he follows that statement immediately with … the corollary to the proof offered in that first statement:

– and we ought to lay down our lives for one another

Notice that he is using the first person plural – us and we. He’s talking about – and to – the fellowship of believers here, not necessarily how we should treat the world, but that will come to an even higher test. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. John the beloved disciple remembered what he had heard come from the mouth of Jesus, and it had marked him for life.

But what he is addressing here is the way believers should treat each other. It stands to reason, if we say we love each other, and don’t show that by the way we act and speak towards each other WITHIN the body of Christ, then our efforts to present to the world a different way of being and of doing life – through the life of Christ – is wasted time and useless in the extreme.

John’s question following the statement is terribly uncomfortable for those of us who live in as wealthy a society as we do:

¹⁷How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

I heard on the radio earlier this week a talk-show host take a call from a small business owner who was experiencing what so many across our country are living through – the slowdown in his business, and he was telling about the fact that he felt an obligation to his employees to keep them employed, to keep them working, in the hope that things would turn around soon. He still had to cut costs in order to keep everyone on, so he chose to cut his own salary – apparently by a substantial amount, because what resulted was that for the first time in his life he was looking at not being able to cover his mortgage payment. He had been in contact with what seemed to be a legitimate mortgage assistance company that took the money that he would normally have paid his mortgage with, in the hopes that they would renegotiate his terms with the mortgage lender, and in the end kept his money but were unable to renegotiate his terms. The man kept coming back to the fact that he didn’t want to lay anyone off. The talk show host’s response was, unfortunately, predictable: “put yourself first, take care of yourself first.” I listened to him say the words and was struck by how selfish they sounded, how ‘of the world’ they were, and I was disheartened, saddened in a profound way.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

I hope it means that we take to heart the fact that our way of being, our way of thinking, our way of reacting and responding to a given crisis would be not to think of ourselves first, but second, or third, or last – that we would truly practice this Agape type of love – that self-sacrificing self-less love that seeks out the needs of others before thinking of one’s self. We – the kids and Leslie and I – have been beneficiaries of that selfless love in these last couple of weeks while Leslie was gone in sitting down to meals in the evening that we didn’t have to worry about preparing, because they were lovingly prepared or provided for us. There is something incredibly moving that is experienced when you receive a gift like that – so practical, so warm, so perfectly symbolic of what it means to belong to a body of believers who do love each other in truth and in deed, not simply in words and thoughts.

In the same breath, I would challenge us all to look into our hearts to see if there is, as the psalmist wrote, any iniquity in us, and that we would allow it to be exposed for what it is and get rid of it in exchange for the pure love of Jesus that can so transform our souls as to make us new again.

Let’s pray.

This Is the Message

2009-04-19T22:38:00.000-05:00

Sunday, April 19, 2009
Easter 2B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
1 John 1:1-2:2

Note: When I stood up to begin, what had been emotions just underneath the surface boiled out in the form of tears. To stand with these folks whom we have grown to love so much and know that they are walking through this valley (Donald’s (Leslie’s father) illness) with us was simply overwhelming at that point this morning. I expressed our profound gratitude to them, to let them know that the knowledge that we were going through this together is making all the difference, and was finally able to gather myself enough after a few minutes to continue into the message.

1 We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— 2this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us— 3we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. 4We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. 5This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. 6If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; 7but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. 2My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; 2and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
This epistle, this letter to a church or a group of churches, is traditionally held to have been written by John, the apostle, towards the end of his life, as a response to a form of teaching that was on the rise that took the Gospel and twisted it and began to propose that living a … unified life … a life where the physical aspect reflected the spiritual – where there was a sense of cohesion between the two – was not required. We’ve spoken of it before: Gnosticism.

It took two very distinct forms as a result of the view that the physical body and the spirit or soul of a person were actually separate and distinct, and did not affect one another: the first resulted in people who ascribed to this understanding of Gospel choosing to live a life of extreme asceticism – in other words, they lived a life of extreme self-denial – depriving themselves of any number of comforts as well as some of the NEEDS that the body requires in order to function properly. On the other extreme were those who believed and practiced that, since the two ‘parts’ of the body cannot affect each other, living a life of physical indulgence had no bearing on the spiritual health of the person, and so gave themselves permission to engage in just about anything imaginable, according to the writings of the church fathers who argued and fought against the rise of The Gnostics.

John, by virtue of his apostleship and close relationship to Jesus, had over the years become something of an overseer of this group of churches in what is today Western Turkey and Eastern Greece, and as a loving father figure to them, he wrote to them to both warn and instruct them in regards to what this up-and-coming theology truly was.

If in the reading of the passage you heard echoes of the Gospel of John, you weren’t just hearing things. It is very evidently running through similar themes – about the Word, true Life, and Darkness and Light.

John first reminds his ‘children’ that what he has learned and taught them has been firsthand knowledge. “What we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands” is a simple and straightforward affirmation that he didn’t come up with what he taught the followers of Jesus on his own – that it is from Jesus himself, because that is who John learned it from.

After laying that groundwork, John states his thesis: That God is light, and there is no darkness in God. Again it echoes the themes that we find throughout the Gospel of John.

Then he begins to elaborate some on what that means in terms of how it applies to those who call themselves followers of Jesus, or God-fearers: he says that if we say we know the love of God, but if the way we are living our lives doesn’t show that, then we really DON’T know the love of God,

Or at the other extreme, if we say we know God so WELL that we don’t SIN, we are lying to ourselves, because we have all sinned, and will continue to sin, until we are beyond this pale, and in the presence of God. Until then, he reiterates, the blood of Christ cleanses us from all unrighteousness IF WE CONFESS OUR SINS.

So John establishes a clear and strong link between living a life that is made up of harmonious action between the spiritual and the physical. The one cannot be had without the other. They are all part of the whole.

The beauty of it is that he doesn’t separate the love of God from the demands of the Gospel on how we should live our lives. He knows who he is writing to. He knows them well. He is able to express to them that he’s writing this letter to them so that they WON’T sin, and in the very next breath he tells us that IF WE DO SIN, we have an advocate before God in the person of Jesus Christ, ‘the righteous’.

Notice he doesn’t simply stop at that – as if to say ‘he IS righteous, but it’s yet to be seen how effective his righteousness is.’ Not at all – there is an immediate word of assurance as to the efficacy of Jesus’ sacrifice: ‘not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.’ In other words, Jesus’ sacrifice is MORE than sufficient for you or for me – no matter WHAT we’ve done – again – NO MATTER WHAT WE’VE DONE. Sometimes we tend to gloss over those words – but they really are true. I don’t want to dwell on that necessarily, but it bears repeating – perhaps not just to ourselves, but to someone you know – someone who has not felt worthy to be in church? Someone who feels they might be judged if they came TO church?

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton, on the Sunday after Easter, 2009?

I was talking with a local youth this week, and he began to share with me about his father – how he LIKED to go to church, but that he felt conflicted about going. On the one hand, he liked the sense of family he got from a small group of people, the sense of fellowship and care that can be found there, he didn’t like going somewhere where he didn’t know anybody. On the other hand, that same closeness made him at times more than a little uncomfortable.

The thing is, the one comes with the other. Familiarity doesn’t necessarily breed contempt, but rather caring. For some of us, that caring can seem constraining, cloying. John spells it out –
7but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship
with one another,
Leslie and the kids spent the better part of the day yesterday at the Little League fields. We went back yesterday evening for Hannah’s game – which turned out to be a double-header that lasted until well past 10:00. Over the course of the evening, Judson and Caleb and Elizabeth and Aaron and some of their other friends were playing various games around the area, and at some point Judson’s Crocks popped one of the plastic rivets that keeps the strap on. He came and got me and we explored a little, but it is a dark gray or faded black piece of plastic, and since by that time it was dark, the artificial lights were casting shadows in the grass. It was a nearly impossible task to try to find something that small and that dark in an area that was filled with small dark patches. I realized that it was going to be nearly impossible to find a little dark gray piece in a field of green and black and dark gray patches. I told him we would need to come back while the sun was out if we had any chance of finding the piece. We have yet to go back … we will probably just end up getting another pair of shoes for him.

**************** MANUSCRIPT ********************

But that is what it is like to live in fellowship. Living the message – living in community, caring for one another and loving each other intertwines our lives in a way that bonds us together and MAKES us the body of Christ. Some of you were here Wednesday evening when I shared about Uncle Lamar Tribble. He’s not my Uncle in the sense that we are related by OUR blood somehow … but he IS my Uncle insofar as we are bonded together through the experience of living and through his working alongside my parents as a missionary in Chile. It sometimes seems disproportionate, this connection I feel with my missionary aunts and uncles, but the more I look back on my life, and on who I am now, the more I realize that they were shining lights for me. They were the models and the influences that taught me what it means to live the message of hope, and of life, and of love.

The question becomes, do we understand that we here at Jerusalem can be – actually ARE that for our children, our youth and young adults – even for each other – no matter our age? I guess the word of warning would be that it can cut both ways – we can serve as examples of what it DOESN’T mean as easily as what DOES mean to be a follower of Christ.

That is why the invitation is to live the message – to live the Gospel and to live in THAT light. Because that light … casts no shadows.

Let’s pray

********************* ACTUAL ******************

But it’s that way when you are in close fellowship.

Close fellowship brings discovery, brings knowing each other well – to reality. In the best of all possible worlds, that fellowship is marked and branded by love, by caring, by selfless giving, by words of encouragement. Yes, part of it is accountability, and responsibility to the body, but it … how can I … some of you were here Wednesday night when I shared with you about my uncle Lamar Tribble. He is one of my missionary uncles. I know it can be sometimes be tiring to hear me reference growing up as an MK, and talking about missionaries, and my aunts and uncles, and you never can know if I’m talking about the brothers and sisters of my parents or of my aunts and uncles in the faith.

But what marked me growing up was the fellowship that I saw between my aunts and uncles – my missionary aunts and uncles – my missionary ‘cousins’ – well, we’d just as soon shoot each other at times (laughing).

But we had a group of 50 or so is what I have in mind, of faithful, dedicated, loving people who spanned the entire spectrum of Baptist theology. Uncle Lamar and Aunt Betsy are probably some of the most fundamentalist people I know, and yet, the love that they expressed to me, to my family, to my parents, regardless of those differences, marked who I am, had influence, had a formative effect on who I am. Getting through our adolescence with my fellow MKs, I think all of us, I don’t know of any of us who are not … who don’t have a “default setting” where we wouldn’t open our doors to any one of us, who happened to come through , who needed a place to stay, who needed a meal. Or we would go to get them if they were stranded somewhere, if they were in range.

See, that’s where I learned what it means to be in fellowship in Christ. That first hymn that we sang “He Lives” – it is one of those hymns that we always sang at the beginning of Mission Meeting, and … yeah. I couldn’t get through it, because it reaches down and pulls at the heartstrings, it pulls right at who I am. And the thing is, that fellowship … not because … it wasn’t because – and hear me say this – it wasn’t because they were missionaries, it wasn’t because they were special in any other way besides being obedient in living their faith – that same fellowship, that same impact that they had on MY life is what YOU ALL continue to have on me, and what you ARE HAVING on my family, and on the children and youth and young adults in this church…

Christ’s call to community is that bond, that … glue (?) that constrains us to love each other in the love of Christ, that calls us to care for each other in the care of Christ, that calls us to model to – not just each other – but to our children, our grandchildren, and the folks outside these walls what it means to be a follower of Christ.

Living the message of the Gospel is that, is making an impact on the lives around you by the way you live yours. And I mean ‘yours’ in the sense of a community, of a congregation – yes, also individually, that goes without saying – but the way we live our lives TOGETHER is what is going to make the difference. It’s what is going to make people hopefully sit up and take notice, and when you say you belong to or attend Jerusalem, that the response would be “I’ve heard that is a loving congregation.”

That’s the call, that’s the challenge, that’s the invitation; to be a loving family. Loving doesn’t mean not having disagreements; it means that in spite of the disagreements we continue to love each other. Disagreements are part of being human.

So, we have this task, ongoing. It is a task that we do not, by definition, do alone, that we, by definition get tired doing, but that we have … a resource, and I know that is a cold word … that we have this well that we can draw from, to use … I’m sure there’s a hymn that has that image in it, that we can draw from and drink deep of the water of life.

Let’s pray.

Lord in a world that is fractured, that is splintered, you have called us to grow together. You have called us to mend the breaks, to form one body. And even as our bodies work together, when we walk, when we run, when we lift, when we sit, when we stand, when we lay down, you call us as a body of believers to do the same – to work together in unity and in love. So we ask, Lord, that as we work toward that end, that you would not only bless our efforts, that you would infuse us, that you would teach us as days go by, as opportunities present themselves, what it means to love in the midst of disagreements, what it means to model your giving, your caring, both to each other and to the world around us, through Christ our Lord who gave himself for the whole world.

Amen.

Are and Will Be

2009-04-26T00:35:00.002-05:00

Sunday, April 26, 2009
Easter 3B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
1 John 3:1-7

1See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. 3And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
4Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.5You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. 7Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.

Reading this passage, there’s a term that comes to mind: mercurial. It is a direct reference to what we see happen with a thermometer … or, I should say, with the old-style thermometers – the kind that had mercury in them. This particular illustration wouldn’t work if I said ‘digital’ and tried to explain what I meant by using the example of a digital thermometer. Think back to what the mercury in an old thermometer used to do when the temperature changed – it would move up the tube inside the glass – up, up, up … or plummet down and down and down, depending on how hot or cold it was. There’s almost a physical break when we move from verse 3 to verse 4. In one breath, John is waxing eloquent about hope and purity, and in the next he seems to be digressing about sin and lawlessness. We will get to that.

But first, I’d like to explore a little about the imagery and terminology used in those beautiful first three verses.

John begins the thought in the passage with an expression that means in essence, ‘see what KIND of love the father has given us’ – in other words – ‘this is the way God has loved us – through Jesus he has shown us what it means to be children of God – because that is what we are!’. While that can be a precious and energizing thought, by the same token, it is a heads up for his followers – not just in late first century Turkey and Greece, but also in early twenty-first century Northern Neck Virginia.

He goes on to explain when he says ‘Beloved, we are God’s children now.’ The meaning of that sentence can change, depending on where the emphasis is placed. If we read it with the emphasis on the word “are” it means one thing: “Beloved, we ARE God’s children now” means one thing – the emphasis on the fact that through Jesus we have been adopted as children of God, and that the fact of our adoption is the principal point of the statement COULD be one way to read this sentence. Another way would be with the emphasis on the word “God” – in other words, “Beloved, we are GOD’S children now” would remind his readers and us as well of the fact of who we belong to – that we are God’s children – a precious and laudable point to be made.

I think John may have been writing to emphasize a different point … if we read the passage as a whole, both the sentence in question and the one following, we see there is a juxtaposition going on, something that is actually carried through the whole thought process in this passage. I think if we read it in the following way: “Beloved, we are God’s children NOW; --what we will be has not yet been revealed.”

In other words, he IS saying that we ARE GOD’S children, yes, but the thing is, we are God’s children NOW – in spite of not really knowing what we will be in the hereafter. Then he goes back, and says ‘even though we DON’T know what that will be like, we DO know THIS: when he DOES come, we will be like him, because we will see him as who he REALLY is.

It almost seems like a stream of consciousness flow going on in the next few sentences.

This promise that we have – that we will be like him one day, brings us hope, because it is a hope based on the knowledge that, just as Jesus was free from sin, we will also one day be free from sin. In that sense, we will be like him.

4Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.5You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. 7Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous

Frankly, this seems to be, in tone at least, contradictory to what John says at the beginning of the letter – what we saw last week – where he wrote that ‘if someone says they don’t sin, they are fooling themselves’. There seems to be a dissonance between the two passages. This seems a far cry from John’s assertion that Jesus’ sacrifice was sufficient for the sins of the WORLD.

That overwhelming, all-encompassing grace seems to have dried up in the space of the intervening chapter.

But let’s look at it a different way. Perhaps what John is saying ISN’T that followers of Jesus are incapable of sinning, but that when we DO sin, and as he said in chapter 1, don’t think we DON’T, when he says ‘no one who abides in him sins, no one who sins has either seen him or known him’, he may well be saying that we, who profess him as Lord of our lives, are in that moment of sinning, shutting him out, we are DISclaiming what we supposedly hold dear to our hearts. By our actions we are in effect negating our statement otherwise that we ARE followers of Jesus Christ. In that moment when we are committing that act, or harboring that thought, or allowing that twist to take root, we are closing our eyes to the Jesus we know, we are disassociating ourselves from the Lord who gave his life for ours, we are no longer abiding in him – and for that moment, at least, we are dimming the light of Christ rather than reflecting it.

But John doesn’t leave it at that – remember there is a pattern of juxtaposition running throughout the passage. He has just painted a fairly bleak picture of supposed believers failing in their faith. He reiterates on the positive at the conclusion of the thought:

7Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous

His concluding words are uplifting: if you DO what is right, you are righteous, and not just on your own merit, but just as Jesus is righteous. Again John reminds the believers that being in Christ means BEING CHRIST, that Jesus overlays US when it comes to consideration on the part of God.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means we can’t pretend to in any way approach the throne of grace on OUR terms; that our only salvation IS through the gift and sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. That in that sacrifice we find our identity, our motivation, our reason for being CALLED children of God.

Let’s pray.

Emmerton Messages

With Joy

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Into The Way of Peace

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Birth Pangs

Sunday, November 15, 2009

For The Sake of Appearance

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Who Can Be Saved?

Bear The Name

Sunday, September 20th, 2009

Arguments, Questions and Answers

For Saying That

Imitators, Beloved Children

Marked With a Seal

Content with Weaknesses

Excel in Everything

Open Wide

Go Therefore

This Is the Message

Are and Will Be

Sunday, September 20^th, 2009