The Unexpected Kingdom
Or, Expecting the Unexpected

Sunday, August 8th, 2004
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Luke 12:32-40

32 "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. "Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; 36 be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. 37 Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. 38 If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves. 39 "But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. 40 You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."

The first call came in shortly after 11:30. Nancy was over at Loretta’s trying to get her into her car so she could take her down to the hospital in Kilmarnock. Loretta had fallen for the second time that day, and for the 5th time in 3 days. I walked over and helped get Loretta down the steps, out of the house, and into the car.

Part of being in ministry, part of being a part of a family of faith like Jerusalem Baptist Church, means that, inasmuch as possible, you make yourself available for emergencies.

We’ve only been faced with a few such calls in our time here, and they’ve not all been late at night. The first was the call to let me know of Fox School’s death, just over a year ago. The second was to let me know of Charlotte Lewis’ passing a few months later. Both of those calls came in the middle of the day.
Most recently, Angelica’s call at 6 in the morning was a similar call, asking one of us to help take her to the hospital to welcome her baby, Cristal Esmeralda, into the world.

There is something different in a late- or middle-of-the-night phone call. Sometimes they’re expected, but generally, they are not. There is a jarring, an unsettling of the routine, when the night, which is usually reserved for relatively quiet sleep, is interrupted by either an unexpected knock on the door, the ring of the doorbell, or the ringing of the telephone.

There was something different about the way Jesus presented the kingdom to the people he spoke to. It caught them just as off-guard as a late-night phone call or knock on the door. Why would Jesus tell his listeners to not be afraid of the coming of the kingdom? It occurs to me that he was presenting them with a kingdom they weren’t looking for. They were looking for an earthly kingdom where they would, after centuries of being the vanquished, be the victors, in very specific physical and literal ways. That was what caused so much consternation among the leaders of the day. Jesus’ redefinition of what the TRUE kingdom of heaven was like went completely against the grain of what they’d been led to believe would be the reality of the kingdom by human standards. Jesus presented them with what is called a paradigm shift. That is when the very basic elements of what you have founded yourself in are flipped on end, and you have to learn to look at the world from an entirely different perspective. It comes out in Christ’s telling the disciples ‘the first shall be last and the last shall be first.” It comes through in Jesus’ telling the Pharisees ‘give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

A couple of weeks ago, we went over the parable of the Good Samaritan. In telling the parable, Jesus was not ONLY identifying who one’s neighbor REALLY is, but he was also painting a picture for his listeners of what the kingdom will be like. “The kingdom of God will be like having your sworn enemy be your best friend.” Have you noticed that when Jesus speaks of the Kingdom, he speaks in terms of relationships and values, not streets of Gold or wings and harps?

That may be why I find myself shying away from speaking of Heaven – in the way John speaks of Heaven in the book of Revelation. Heaven is the Kingdom of God fully realized. “Fully realized” means that everyone and everything is as God intended it to be. We will be fully human – the ‘whole people’ God wants us to be - in the Kingdom. We will live in a place where there is no more war, illness, sorrow, no more drug abuse, child abuse, and injustice, a world where we won’t open the paper to the obituaries to find out who’s lost whom. That by definition excludes it from being completed in our present reality.

That DOES NOT mean that IN our present reality, we won’t see parts of it. Jesus said ‘the Kingdom of God is within you”. We catch glimpses of the kingdom – Friday night at the game, we got whupped. however you look at it, by the 5th inning, we were just playing to be out on the field, it stopped being about trying to beat the other team. there was some grumbling and gloomy faces, but then something really cool happened.

Farnham (the other team) started to relax, laugh and smile, and so did we. The grandson of one of the players, who was decked out in his uniform, came out to swing his bat ... RJ, our pitcher, came up to within a few feet of home plate, and gently tossed the ball to the little boy. He was a little overwhelmed by the attention, and would have rather buried his face in his pappy's leg than swing again, but he did give it a try. With his grandfather's help, he did swing about 3 or 4 times. Then an older boy, probably 9 or 10, came up to bat. He got a base hit.
When it was our turn to come up to bat again, Leslie, who'd been cheering the team on, got a chance to bat and ALSO made a base hit. It turned into a relaxing evening. There were still some bruises and pulled muscles, and even, I’m afraid, one broken thumb. (Sorry Jay!)

The cool thing was this –

EVERYONE WAS CHEERING.

It wasn't about us and them anymore.

You could probably make a plausible argument for the fact that it stopped being about us and them when them's were the ones who had too many points for us to catch up, but looking at it another way, we could have stopped the game once we'd reached the point of no return - and emptied the field, made room for the other teams, and gone about our business. But somewhere around the 5th inning it started being about just being together.

It stopped being about the competition. About who’s going to get there first. It stopped being about base hits, tagging the runners, and catching fly balls, RBI’s and strategy, or knowing who to throw the ball to if and when it came to you. It started being about what Jesus was talking about. It started being about what we have in common, what we find joy in, what we have to share. It started being about treasuring each other as the wonderful, precious gifts of God that we are, about respecting and honoring each other even though we are on different sides of the field, about looking the other people on the field in the face and seeing the laughter of Jesus Christ himself reflected there.

"Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; 36 be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. 37 Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.

Can you imagine yourself being found by God in the middle of performing an unthinking act of … selfishness? A small thing … a cutting remark, a cold retort, a closing of the door to a person in need … God’s love for you is no different.

Now, can you picture it, being found by God in the middle of an act born from God’s own heart - a welcoming openness, an extravagant gesture of kindness, an irrepressibly warm and loving hug, a church with an average attendance of around 55 people serving meals to 80 or more people in the community on a routine basis, or delivering clothes, or much needed furniture? Again, God’s love does not change. It is now about how we respond to the kingdom.

Where would you rather be found?

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

The kingdom of God is like …

The second call, came shortly before 2 AM. It woke me out of a dead sleep. I keep 2 phones beside the bed at night – the cell phone and the home line. I was asleep enough that it took me a couple of rings to wake up, and by the time I picked up the cell phone and saw that IT wasn’t ringing, the landline had stopped ringing. We have caller ID, and I was able to view the number from which the call had come, but didn’t recognize it. I tried to call it back, but the line was busy. After a few minutes, I heard Buster barking, and sat up and looked out the front bedroom window. There was a trooper’s car pulled in over at Loretta’s, so I jumped up, threw some clothes on, and walked over. When I got there, Nancy and the trooper were trying to get Loretta up the steps and into the house. The call that I’d missed was Nancy calling me to ask for help – in trying to get Loretta from the car into the house, they’d both fallen, and Loretta’s back was soaked from having lain down in the wet grass. We got her inside the house, and we helped as best we could while Nancy helped Loretta out of the wet clothes and into a dry gown.

May we here, as part of this family of faith, be found ready. ALWAYS ready. May that be our character, our mind, and our heart.

Let’s pray.

Rich Toward God
Or, IT’S NOT ABOUT THE MONEY

Sunday, August 1st, 2004
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Luke 12:13-21 (crf Matthew 6:19)

13Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." 14 But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" 15 And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." 16 Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, 'What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' 18 Then he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' 20 But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."

I’m a science fiction buff. The first book I read that made a lasting impression on me was ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’, by Robert Heinlein. I was probably in the 10th grade when I read it. It was one of those two-inch thick paperbacks that was crammed full of witty dialogue, vast scenarios of world-altering events, and a narrator that kept you interested in the story and kept you turning the pages until the wee hours of the morning, when I should have been asleep.

It is the story of Valentine Michael Smith, the sole survivor of the first manned expedition to Mars, he is raised by Martians, and is returned to Earth by the second manned expedition to Mars. To make a very long story short - and my apologies to those who might want a more extensive synopsis here - what stuck with me from the story for these last 24 years is this: Smith ends up becoming a Messianic figure, based on his otherworldly outlook on life on Earth.

Heinlein himself never intended the book to be anything other than a satirical look at life and human conceits – marriage, love, and, in his view at least, religion. While I was saddened by the fact that Heinlein was an Atheist, his thought process reflected in his writing always had an appeal to me – there is a strictness to it, and bare-bones essentialness to his outlook on life – born from the belief that there ISN’T anything else besides the here and now, that was in a way refreshing, and more than a little challenging to an 8th grader who was in the very early stages of discovering what it meant to have faith and to live by that faith.

A couple of nights ago I tuned into the Science Fiction Channel and watched an episode of Stargate Atlantis. One scene caught my attention. In the story, several people are confronted with the possibility that they will die in exactly 38 minutes. One of the people is from an alien culture, and when HER fellow citizens hear of what is happening, they prepare to hold a ceremony with the woman through the communication system – through which they can still talk to each other, to mark the event of her death – before it happens. The commanding officer, who is from earth, nixes the idea completely, saying that “humans don’t welcome death; we do everything we can to stave it off.” The point of the group that was coming for the ceremony was that it was as unusual an event for THEM as it is for US to know the time and place of our death – the difference was that they had developed a ritual to mark the occasion, an intentional preparation for passing from this life into the next.

As some of you know from Wednesday night and an email update I sent out Friday, my Aunt Kate, who served with her husband Uncle Bill Carter as missionaries to Chile for … close to 40 years, underwent triple bypass surgery after having suffered a mild heart attack LAST week.

The update I got on her condition on Friday evening was from a fellow MK who is now serving with HER husband as a missionary to Chile herself. MaryJo spoke to Aunt Kate Thursday evening, and in her words,

“She actually told me that she was getting excited thinking that this might be her last day and she'd go see Jesus, her Mother, Bill and friends! But she was just waiting to see what the Lord wanted to do.”

The parable of the Rich Fool is one of the old ones, in my memory, probably because as a child, we had a Bible story book that told this parable, along with the parable of the man who built his house on the rock and the one who built his house on the sand, I saw the same book series still for sale at the Cokesbury bookstore in Richmond a few weeks ago, and almost picked the whole set up. The illustrations in the pages had the vibrancy and color and boldness that attracts the eye of the young, and the illustration I remember most from this story was the one of the man sleeping in a room on top of his granaries. Through the window the night sky is a deep indigo color – blue almost going to purple. Below the picture is the caption –

'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?'

That has always stayed with me. For years I took it to mean to literally seek to stay away from wealth. At times that’s been easy, at others, not so much. I think we all go through phases where we can do without and are ok with it, and at others … well, it’s more of a challenge.

An example: I bought my little black Mazda in February of 1990, after my previous car, a 1980 Nissan 510, gave up the ghost somewhere on the Western Kentucky Parkway, with Jimmy my brother, trying to come back from visiting in Paducah. At the time, economics dictated much of the transaction, but I was also going through a ‘support voluntary simplicity’ phase. I didn’t want an automatic transmission, I would have liked a radio, but it was not a deal breaker, and for some reason I was going through an anti-Freon phase, and was ok with the fact that the car had no air conditioning. Those first few months after I bought the car I felt really good driving down the road, in silence, with no distractions from the primary task at hand – getting from point A to point B. I would pull up next to some loaded-with features sedan and smirk at the waste and wasteful use of energy that it represented. Remember, I bought the car in February.

Then summer hit. Summer in Louisville is like summer here, only worse. Where I was working and most of my driving meant I spent a lot of time in stop and go traffic. I quickly began to search through automotive catalogues and started pricing Air conditioners and how much it would cost to install it.

Its funny how principles can so quickly become … overwhelmed by the basic human ability to rationalize just about anything we want, but may not necessarily need. I grew up without air conditioning, but I also grew up in a country where summers did not come with 98% humidity, but with 20%, if that.

Back to the text: It was common practice in first-century Palestine for a teacher, as Jesus is addressed in the beginning of the passage, to serve not only as instructor, but also to serve as community leader and to resolve legal and other disputes among the people of the town in which they lived. There was nothing unusual about the request from the man in the crowd for Jesus to settle the issue he has with his brother regarding their inheritance.

It does strike me as odd, initially, at least, to hear Jesus answer: "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" My initial reaction to Jesus’ statement is “who BETTER to serve as judge? Isn’t that what Jesus came to DO??

But what Jesus was doing, once again, was cutting to the heart of the matter – he saw the root of the question and addressed IT, instead of letting the whole point get lost by answering the superficial question. The root of the dispute was greed, and in addressing THAT issue, Jesus not only answered the brothers’ question, but also the question of everyone in the surrounding audience. We can so easily write off a question if the face-value issues don’t fit our profile – “I’m not in that business”, “I wouldn’t DO business with someone like that anyway,” or “I’m glad I don’t have to worry about that” … they’re all ways we can squeeze out of the need to actually stop and think for ourselves – what’s the underlying issue here? And with questions like that, we can usually find where we intersect with others on many, many different levels.

Let’s turn to the last verse in the text. At the conclusion of the parable, after Jesus reveals that the rich fool will die and his worldly goods will do him no good. The question he poses is “whose will they be?”

The final admonition to the Rich Fool echoes and reinforces Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew, chapter 6, verse 19:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Jesus is asking his listeners what is most important in life. We know, I trust, that the point of the parable is that wealth is not what is most important. Security of any kind on this plane of existence is ultimately shaky at best, and therefore not secure by definition. We’ve been reminded of that in our own community. I’m sure Dale Clark had plans for lunch on Wednesday, and probably was looking forward to the weekend with his family.

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

This afternoon we will be gathering and observing the baptism of our sister Jackie Stevens. She made her public profession of faith several months ago, but had expressed the desire to be baptized in the river. That time has now come. As a form of obedience, a step of faith, and as a public statement, baptism is a powerfully symbolic gesture. Through it, Jackie is staking her claim – not on what this world can give her, but on what she can give to God. In going down into the ‘waters of baptism’, the affirmation of faith – from the earliest 1st century Christians, is ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’. That is a loaded statement. The believer is saying by that that though it may not look like it now, and I may not always ACT like it, but Jesus Christ is Lord – no qualifiers – Lord of my life, my thoughts, my actions, my reactions, and Lord of my possessions, whether I have any or not. Ultimately, it is a statement that will last for eternity.

Jesus is Lord.

Let’s pray.

Ask, Search, Knock

Sunday, July 25th, 2004
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Luke 11:1-13

1 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples." 2 He said to them, "When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. 3 Give us each day our daily bread. 4 And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial." 5 And he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, "Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.' 7 And he answers from within, "Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.' 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. 9 "So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 11 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? 12 Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? 13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

“Can I have scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast?”

Caleb usually wanders into the bedroom around 7 or 7:30, and you can pretty much bet on his asking for his favorite breakfast every day. We’ve learned that he is the one of the three kids who thrives on routine. He prefers things to be known in advance, and he expects them to go that way. He is the one most likely to point out “but, you said … so and so …” if we don’t keep exactly to the letter of what we originally planned to do on any given day.

He has his routines. He’s helped enough in the preparation of his breakfast that he can do it on his own, up to a point. When he was still going to bed with his “blankie,” he had a particular way of holding up the blanket, letting it fall open, and then bunching it up and hugging it to himself as he flopped down to be tucked in.

Yesterday morning, the scene Jesus described in the text could have been recreated in the hallway between our bedroom and the boys’ room over at the parsonage. Caleb came in, as usual, asking for his breakfast. I had stayed up until about 2:30 waiting for word from Leslie, and she had pulled in right around 4 AM, so we were both still pretty groggy when he first came in. She explained that to him, and asked him to let her sleep for a while longer and then come back. To a six year old, ‘a while longer’ means something radically different than what it means to an adult. All too soon, Caleb came walking back into the room and again asked for scrambled eggs and toast. To make a long story short, it took him about 4 tries to finally rouse his mommy and daddy out of bed to help him finish his breakfast, and the whole time, this passage was playing in my head.

I’ve heard several sermons preached on the Lord’s Prayer, and I suspect you have as well. There’s the straightforward exegetical and expository approach, breaking the prayer down into its component phrases, and how each presents a sustaining principle that should be followed in order to match the model prayer. While it was helpful to a degree, there is something in me that rebels against the … formulaic approach that presents. The notion that there is a kind of vending machine in the sky, where if you say the right phrase, in the right way, followed by the right condition, you’ll get the response you’re looking for, just doesn’t fit with the idea that God is looking for a relationship with at all.

What was so radical about Jesus to both his followers as well as his detractors was the whole manner in which he approached God – as Abba – as daddy. The leaders of the Sanhedrin knew formulas. They knew how to proscribe the practice of religion. They knew how to control what people believed and HOW they believed and practiced it – the key word being control. Relationships make all the difference. If you deal with someone on a purely functional level, there is a set protocol you go through in addressing and interacting with that person, but as you become familiar with them, get to know their name, get to know their story, about their family, their children, you begin to see the person, and less of the function.

Friday night after the game in Callao, I took the kids to Nino’s for a way-too-late supper. It was about a half hour before closing time when we walked in, and as we sat down at our table, the woman who was bussing tables came by to wipe our table clean. As she approached, I realized she was Mexican. I’d heard the hostess call her name, and I greeted her by name and we started a conversation. Within a few minutes, I’d found out she has two daughters, one who is going to start kindergarten this fall, and her husband works in Heathsville. She took the job at Nino’s because it allowed her to spend more time with her daughters during the day, but it still does not pay very much at all. She spoke about a couple of places where she’d gone to interview, and some of the things she’d heard others tell of what working there was like, and I was faced again with the reality that there is still blatant exploitation of people without a voice going on in today’s society. By the end of the meal, I’d invited her to the gathering we’ll be having at Kilmarnock next Saturday, and had built at least an initial bridge of friendship with her.

But it was in that building that I had to deal with the reality in which SHE lives – which is radically different from mine, and that is not only discomforting, it is MESSY. It is unpredictable. It is unsettling.

What do I do with this knowledge that I now have of injustice being institutionalized right here in our own community? A similar story was shared at the gathering we had at Fairport two weeks ago. I’m having to wrestle with the part of me that wants to blow a whistle as loud as I can, or strike up a protest march … and I’ve never really been one to do stuff like that … It IS unsettling.

What is Jesus telling me to do in this passage? He’s telling me that God, like this friend who, because of his friend’s persistence, finally DOES get up and give him something. ‘Whatever he needs’, the text reads. Then Jesus goes on to say “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”


There was a chorus that became popular in the late 60’s, taken directly from this passage –

Seek, and ye shall find,
Knock and the doors shall be opened,
Ask, and it shall be given
And the love comes a-tumbling’ down”

This week during vacation bible school, one of the activities every class participated in was the making of this chain you see draped around the sanctuary. As I mentioned in the beginning of the discipline of silence, the names on the links are the names of missionaries who are currently serving or who have dedicated their lives to service on the mission field. As I mentioned Friday night at the commencement exercise, these names only represent 2 months’ worth of names for those who are serving through the International Mission Board, and all the names of missionaries and their children who serve through the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Even though this chain could wrap completely around the room and have some left over, it represents only a 6th of the missionaries whom we support through our giving and prayers.

The thing that Jesus made plain through his life and earthly ministry was that God is not a distant, disengaged God. God is … the theological term is immanent – PRESENT.

Last week, as I was taking communion to those of our church family who could not be here for Communion Sunday, part of the prayer was always ‘Thank you God that you have promised that wherever two or more are gathered in your name, you will be there. Thank you for your presence here today.”

I’m learning as I go as a father, sometimes not so readily, to measure my response to Hannah, Caleb and Judson’s various requests by this passage. When Jesus said,

11 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? 12 Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? 13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

I think he was speaking as much about how we are to behave as parents as he was talking about the nature of the love of God.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

What are we willing to pray for? What are we willing to ask for? We are told to come boldly before the throne of grace. How boldly do we do that?

As we’ve been studying on Wednesday nights, the spiritual disciplines are ways to become familiar with the mind of Christ, the will of God, in a real sense, the heart of God.

When we pray, pray like this:

“Daddy, can I have scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast?”

The speech and the words may sound different, but the intent of the heart is what God hears.

Let’s pray.

Running the Race

Sunday, July 18th, 2004
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Philippians 3:10-20

10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you. 16 Only let us hold fast to what we have attained. Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. 18 For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. 19 Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. 20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

On April 6, 1923, in a small town hall in Armadale, Scotland, Eric Liddell spoke for the first time of his faith in Christ. Eighty people came to hear Scotland's famous runner give his testimony. "Shyly, he stepped forward and for a few seconds surveyed his waiting audience, then he began," writes Catherine Swift in her biography, Eric Liddell.

"There was no lecturing, no fist thumping on the table, no wagging or pointing a finger to stress a point, no raised voice to impress on them what he thought they should be doing. In fact, it wasn't a speech at all. It was more of a quiet chat, and in his slow clear words, Eric for the first time in his life told the world what God meant to him. "He spoke of the strength he felt within himself from the sure knowledge of God's love and support, of how he never questioned anything that happened either to himself or to others. He didn't need explanations from God. He simply believed in Him and accepted whatever came."

News of Liddell's talk was reported in every newspaper in Scotland the next morning. God was preparing Liddell to honor Him, and his testimony still reverberates today.

"The Lord Guides Me"

Liddell was an unorthodox sprinter. Coming out of trowel-dug starting holes, Liddell ran with abandon, head tilted toward the skies, knees thrust upward to his chin, feet rising high from the ground. Before each race, Liddell shook hands with each competitor, offering his trowel to fellow runners who struggled to dig their starting holes in cinder tracks with their cleats.

When asked how he knew where the finish line was located, he replied in his deliberate Scottish brogue, "The Lord guides me." As word of his faith in Christ spread through England, many wondered if he would display the same zeal on the track. Liddell silenced any skeptics in the AAA Championships in London in July 1923, by winning the 220-yard dash and the 100-yard dash. His time in the 100 stood as England's best for thirty-five years.

He won the Harvey Cup for the best performance of the meet and readied himself for the Paris Olympics in the summer of 1924.

"I'm Not Running"

Liddell waited excitedly for the posting of the Olympic heats for the 100 meters and the 4X100 and 4X400 relays, his best events. He was stunned upon learning the preliminary dashes were on Sunday. "I'm not running," he said flatly and then turned his attention to train for the 200-meter and 400-meter dashes.

He considered Sunday to be sacred, a day set apart for the Lord; and he would honor his convictions at the expense of fame. On Sunday, July 6, Liddell preached in a Paris church as the guns sounded for the 100-meter heats. Three days later, he finished third in the 200-meter sprint, taking an unexpected bronze medal. He quietly made his way through the heats of the 400 meters but was not expected to win. Shaking hands with the other finalists, he readied for the race of his life. Arms thrashing, head bobbing and tilted, legs dancing, Liddell ran to victory, five meters ahead of the silver medalist. "The Flying Scotsman" had a gold metal and a world record, 47.6 seconds. Most of all, Eric Liddell had kept his commitment to his convictions of faith.

"It's Complete Surrender"

The next year, Liddell returned to China, where he had been born to missionary parents, as a teacher and missionary. In 1932, he was ordained as a minister and married in 1933. He ministered pleasantly and plainly, often traveling on bicycle, braving constant fighting between Chinese warlords and Japanese in their growing conquest of China.

His decision to share Christ in isolated communities, forcing him to leave his wife and children behind, was the result of insistent prayer. "Complete surrender" was his description of this attitude.

In March of 1943, Liddell, along with other Americans and Brits, entered a Japanese internment camp. He was appointed math teacher and supervised a sports program. He arose each morning to study his Bible and was the cheer of the camp.

But his health deteriorated rapidly. A brain tumor ravaged his body with severe headaches. Shortly after his forty-third birthday in January 1945, Liddell collapsed. His last words, spoken to a camp nurse, were, "It's complete surrender." Upon learning of Liddell's death, all of Scotland mourned. Heaven rejoiced.

Run The Race

Eric Liddell ran, spoke, and lived with great faithfulness and solid commitment to Christ. The movie, Chariots of Fire, chronicled his faith, influencing yet another generation for Jesus Christ. You do not have to be famous or skilled to make a difference for Christ. God asks only that you serve Him faithfully and wholeheartedly in whatever you do.
God has "appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain" (John 15:16).

Honor God in all you do, and He will honor your obedience with a life that counts for eternity. "Complete surrender" to Christ is total victory.

(With thanks to InTouch.org, and their 'portrait of great Christians, Eric Liddell, and the Eric Liddell Center Website)

Eric Liddell is for me a modern-day example of what Paul was for 1st century Christians.

His focus was on his calling, and the goal that God had set before him. He didn't let anything get in the way of that. Neither did Paul.

Most scholars agree that Paul wrote Philippians a relatively short time before his death. Reading the letter, there is a sense of Paul's looking back over his life and, in a sense, re-living the blessings.

Eric Liddell never gave up hope. He never let discouragement overrun his delight in the Lord, even until the day he died, because he knew where his hope came from-it came from God through Jesus Christ.

There are times in reading Paul where he simply sounds arrogant. Verse 17 could be one of those times, if it is taken as a separate verse from the surrounding text. Paul says, "Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us." basically, it could be read as Paul telling people to copy HIM. But before that, he is saying … confessing, really, that he has not yet attained the goal he is after, which is to be like Christ.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Paul says in verse 13, 'Forgetting what lies behind, and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus."

"Forgetting" does not mean obliterating the memory of his past, but it was a conscious refusal to let it absorb his attention and impede his progress. He never let his Jewish heritage - including his early persecution of the church, or his earlier attainments as an apostle and a missionary to the gentiles, get in the way of what he needed to be doing. That means he didn't dwell on his failures OR rest on his … laurels.

Jerusalem has a lot to be proud of. Simply by virtue of the fact that this family of faith has been meeting here or near here since 1834 and continues to do so, there is reason to be thankful to God for his faithfulness. That is not to say that we should pat ourselves on the back and say 'good job, well done.'

What we can learn from Paul is that he never did that. He never considered his job "done". He was born a Jew, a member of the chosen people, as well as a Roman citizen, but those were not the things that defined him. What defined him is what he mentions in verse 20 - "our citizenship is in heaven".

We are surrounded by several flags from different nations. Baron de Cupertain, the man who instituted the modern Olympic movement, originally intended the games to be individuals against individuals, each athlete wearing a standard uniform, if they wore anything at all … he originally wanted the oldest competition, the footraces, to be run as they had originally been in ancient Greece, where the runners were unencumbered by clothing of any kind. But De Cupertain's vision was one of a competition in which individuals competed against each other as members not of nations, but as common members of the human race - the bottom line common denominator for everyone.

Paul worked in a similar arena, so to speak. He came face to face with Greeks, and Romans, and people from any number of other places in the known world. And he reminded them that, if they were followers of Christ, their ultimate loyalty and common citizenship was shared - they were citizens of Heaven.

So for Jerusalem, let's never lose sight of the fact that we may have minor differences while here on earth, but ultimately, our allegiance is to our one and only Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Let's pray.

Mercy


Sunday, July 11th, 2004 (proper 10(15))
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Luke 10:25-37

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

The Good Samaritan.

I would venture to say we could have all told the story from beginning to end without missing any of the details: the trip, the road, the robbers, the Priest, the Levite, and finally the Samaritan. Some of us may have even gotten the lawyer at the beginning, and the fact that he wanted to justify himself with the question he was asking.

The thing is we’re never going to understand half the impact of the story unless we change the key player’s name. I remember hearing a sermon preached on this same story several years ago, and the preacher replaced ‘The Good Samaritan’ with ‘The Good Homosexual’. Perhaps today we could replace it with ‘The Good Iraqi Insurgent’, or ‘The Good Terrorist’, and we might get a sense of just what sort of regard the man Jesus told the parable to held the Samaritan people.

We still get the other details, the condemnation of those who self-righteously parade around claiming to be good, who show no true love for their neighbor in need, but the whole focus of the story changes, doesn’t it, when we have to struggle to get over the first huge hurdle – Jesus just called a Terrorist my neighbor – and made him out to be a better person than the preacher and the theologian down the street?

What do we do with that?

We realize that the story has more to do with how OUR prejudice blinds us and less and less to do with who made the right choice and who made the wrong choice.

Labels serve two purposes. They cover up and they inform. Forget for a moment that there are clear labels, let’s just talk about your basic, old fashioned, paper with glue on the back labels that we’d find on a can of Campbell’s soup, for example. That’s a best-case example. Labels are DESIGNED to be helpful in those instances when we can’t see what’s in the packaging. They tell us what is in the can and what to expect to find when we open it.

Well, now that I think about it, they are designed for the same purpose when it comes to using them with people. We can look at someone’s exterior, but we don’t really know what’s going on inside; what motivates and inspires someone, what moves them to tears, or laughter, or anger, or desperation so incredible that they would be moved to kill others or themselves in an act that would be considered by the vast majority of the world’s population as inhuman and insane. So we come up with labels. Arabs. Terrorists. Martyrs. It’s a kind of shorthand that tells us where they are from, what they do for a living, and how they see it as their place to carry out these acts.

There is a terrible danger in labeling people, though. When we label people, we try to freeze them, to fit them in a particular box, with a particular set of convictions, beliefs, and motivations. We say they hate us because that is all we can understand through their actions.

The Jews of first century Palestine were used to ascribing motives to people they had come to view as less than human.

Meier Kahane, a radical Jewish Rabbi, who founded the Jewish Defense League, crystallized for me what it does to you when you label people. Though I’m sure he had his calmer moments, I don’t remember seeing him in either an interview or a talk show when he wasn’t spewing venom in the form of hatred and insults aimed at the Palestinian Arab people. He wouldn’t let an Arab walk past him without calling the person a dog or something worse. I remember watching the report of his death – at the hands of a person of Arab descent, if memory serves - and thinking ‘what a terrible, terrible waste.’ What compelled him to such a passionate hatred of other human beings?

I think removing the ‘human being’ from the equation had a great part to do with it.

How easy is it for us to dehumanize our enemies? It seemed fairly easy to dehumanize the greater part of the population of USSR, at the height of the cold war, or the Iraqi National Guard troops, during the Gulf War, as well as the latest war in Iraq, or the Taliban, as we entered Afghanistan. But can we really find ourselves doing the same thing that is easy to do on a national level on a local level? What if we replaced ‘Samaritan’ with ‘white trash’, or ‘colored man’, or ‘liberal’, ‘fundamentalist’, ‘democrat’ or ‘republican’ or ‘tree hugger’, ‘feminazis’, … how many other labels can we come up with in the next 30 seconds? I suspect we could come up with more than (I hope) we would be comfortable with realizing we knew, and some that we wouldn’t even consciously think of as labels would probably come to mind later.

What Jesus was doing in his telling of the parable to this lawyer who wanted to make himself feel good, was this: however much you disagree with someone … never forget that the someone is a PERSON, an INDIVIDUAL, and as such, someone just as worthy of God’s love and Christ’s sacrifice as you or I. Don’t be surprised if that person whom you’d just as soon spit on as look at turns out to be your savior.

So here we are. It’s our communion Sunday. This is the time when we are all invited to the table by not me, not the deacons, not the church council or any other part of the church besides the head of the church himself, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Who was the neighbor in the parable?

The one who showed mercy.

Who has shown us mercy far beyond what we could hope to receive?

The Lord Jesus Christ.

He is here with us, sitting next to us, telling us the story over and over again.

God loves us, Christ died for us. Thanks be to God.

(communion)

Our Place

Sunday, July 04, 2004
Proper 9 (14)
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

1 After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2 He said to them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3 Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. 5 Whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace to this house! 6 And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. 7 Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8 Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9 cure the sick who are there, and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.' But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 11 'Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this the kingdom of God has come near.'

16 "Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me." 17 The seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!" 18 He said to them, "I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. 19 See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. 20 Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."

I got an email from Jimmy last night. I connected and logged on shortly after 10:00, and there was a message from him, sent at 6:40, both Chilean and Eastern Daylight Time, which, for now, happen to coincide. It was a short note, which he'd sent to everyone in the family, just telling us he'd made it to Santiago, that everyone there was fine, that they send their love, that he would be leaving Santiago for the 14 hour bus ride to Osorno a couple of hours from then, and asking that whoever got the message first to please call the rest of the family to give them the update on his whereabouts. Since I'd not heard from any of the rest of the family, I figured I was the first to get the message, so I picked up the phone and called everyone.

Though we spent the last 4 days together, Jimmy and I only had one or two … substantive conversations about his upcoming move. I'd like to think that there's an understanding between us, a brotherly connection that doesn't require blow-by-blow conversations about what is going on in our lives to get an idea about what one or the other is feeling or how we are doing. I think I've mentioned to you before what it was like when we first shared an apartment when jimmy was in college in Louisville and right after I had returned from Spain. It wasn't very different with this visit. We spent some good time together, and I don't think we left things unsaid that needed to be said.

We were standing in line at BWI Friday, Jimmy and I, with his 4 huge suitcases and two slightly smaller carry-on bags, and as is usually happens, it was a case of hurry up and wait. We'd ended up rushing to get to the airport two hours early, as per current guidelines, only to find ourselves in a line that snaked back and forth in front of the American Airlines counter. We would move ahead a few steps, then stop, prop the suitcases up, or set the bags down, and just stand and say a few words or simply people watch.

Airports are the best place to people watch. The sheer number of stories represented by the people milling around or walking hurriedly down the hall makes it as entertaining as any good book.

We were standing a few feet apart, I was in front of him facing back, and he chuckled and said 'Don't you miss this?' (Referring to what we were doing; lugging heavy bags and suitcases all over creation, standing in line, wishing to be at the other end of the trip) "not really," I said, I thought a minute and continued "this is different, after this you leave the building on that side (motioning towards the departure gates) and I leave the building on this side (motioning to the way we'd come in). I didn't quite get it out in the joking way I'd intended, and my voice cracked. So I stumbled on, "that's not a BAD thing, in the least."

"No, it's not, he answered."

I think I realized then, to some degree, what was happening. That exchange was my commissioning of my brother for his trip 'home'.

The text today is one that finds Jesus commissioning 70 of his followers to do a sort of 'first run' with this whole 'ushering in the Kingdom of God' thing.

I suspect the story is somewhat familiar to you, but if it isn't here it is in a nutshell: at the beginning of chapter 9, Jesus commissions the 12 disciples, giving them power and authority over all demons, and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. There are a few instances of consternation on the part of townspeople who are confronted with the miracles that the disciples performed, and at least in the gospel of Luke, we find the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 shortly thereafter. We also find Jesus' entreaty to the disciples and to us today who are choosing to follow him to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow him. The theme recurs in the text from last week, at the end of chapter 9, where we looked at the cost of discipleship.

Ultimately, though, Jesus' statement that we studied last week about how harsh conditions might turn out to be for those who follow him did not, apparently, dissuade some (at least) from following him. He is presented here with the duty of sending out the 70. He sends them out in pairs, with fairly specific instructions. Some of you might remember we touched on part of this passage last august, in the sermon where I thought I was asking you to remove both shoes from your feet but only got across that you should remove one of them. I apologize for that, and would like to say that, if you wish to, you may remove both your shoes now, though it might not tie in directly with the understanding of the sermon. :

What follows the introduction of the story is a series of instructions. Jesus is commissioning the 70, and we would do well to heed his words as well: travel together, GO, trust in God to provide for your needs, let hosts practice hospitality, and be gracious guests.

The traveling together probably had roots in the requirement of Jewish law that, in order for something, a message, an announcement to have legal standing, it needed two people to bear witness to it. But it also had a deeper purpose. The two who were traveling together offered each other support, Physical, emotional, and spiritual. It seems appropriate top mention that we are called to be in community for the exact same purpose.

Sometimes we think that when we are named to an office in the church, when we are asked to do a particular job, that this is an honorary designation. An honorary designation is one that gives us a title without an expectation of personally carrying out the task.

Jesus expects that disciples will go, now.

Jesus did not award these folks with an honorary title. In verse 3, Jesus emphatically tells them to get on with it. "Get the work done, he says. Go right now - don't wait for a phone call, or a meeting notice, set it up yourself and do it!

We are all commissioned to go into the entire world and proclaim the kingdom. Jesus' disciples were going out, telling the people they met "Jesus has been walking with us! We see a different way to live now." It's the proclamation of a new world, one in which the poor are made rich, the imprisoned are freed, the blind are given sight. It's the kind of world in which, according to Jesus, you are to walk into the house of a stranger bearing the peace of God. To proclaim the kingdom is to proclaim that the living Christ is with us, offering us love and grace.

The disciples were also commissioned to care for others.

The apostles were told by Jesus to "cure the sick." The Greek word that is translated as "cure" has a broader meaning than simply healing. According to the Greek understanding, the apostles were called to be servants of the sick, one's who cared for them and helped to relieve their burdens. We understand this today as care giving. Care giving is proclamation through action. It is about living out the values of the kingdom we proclaim in real and tangible ways.
The list I read at our invitation time last week ended with the statement: you're the messenger, not the message.

Jesus was trying to get that across to his disciples here as well. As we jump to verse 17, the 70 have been and gone, and they are coming back - and it sounds like they've just been to summer camp.

"The 70 returned with joy, saying, "Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!"

You can almost hear the giddiness in their voices. So excited about their experiences on the road, so eager to share about what they'd seen and done.

There's a key phrase that may get lost in the telling:

"In your name"

Whatever it is we are called to do, proclaim, lead, care, direct, teach, conduct, play, WHATEVER … we are to do in the name of the one who sent us in the first place.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

What is "our place?"

Where is our home?

Jimmy's earthly home, until a few months ago, was Pennsylvania. He'd lived there for a few years, had his circle of friends, work, places he frequented. He'd built a life in Allentown.

Then that started to change. His childhood home beckoned, and he answered the call. He did not go as a missionary in any official capacity. But he is modeling for me what it means to hold two places dear in your heart.

So we celebrate the anniversary of the signing of the declaration of independence of the United States today. We do well to give thanks for what part of our country models for us the kingdom, understanding that in many areas of culture and society we fall far short, as we would expect to see, this side of heaven. We can also take heed of the passages that tell us to shake the dust from our feet of those places that reject the kingdom, and work to change. Work to give a glimpse through the glass, dimly, of what the kingdom of God looks like.

Since most, if not all, of us were born here, we can't help but be citizens of the United States, and as such, we can be proud of that fact.

What is ever more precious is that we are, by the grace of God and the love of Jesus Christ citizens of the kingdom. And that reflects a CHOICE we made at some point in our lives.

It is because of THAT, and for no other reason, that we are gathered here, and that we go from this place to proclaim that kingdom to the world.

Let's pray.

What’s In The Way?

Sunday, June 27th, 2004
Proper 8 (13)
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton, VA
Luke 9:51-62

51 When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; 53 but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. 54 When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" 55 But he turned and rebuked them. 56 Then they went on to another village. 57 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." 58 And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." 59 To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." 60 But Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." 61 Another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home." 62 Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

Wherever He Leads I’ll go
Wherever He leads, I’ll go
I’ll follow my Christ, who loves me so.
Wherever he leads I’ll go.

That was the invitation hymn the evening I made my public commitment to missions in July of 1984. Keith Parks, then president of the Foreign Mission Board, was the speaker. He spoke about rope-holders and risk-takers. My family and I were attending Foreign Missions Week at Ridgecrest, outside of Asheville, NC. For the previous 3 years I had been wrestling with what seemed to be the ever-diminishing prospects of fulfilling that call to ministry as changes were coming about in the course of the Controversy within the Southern Baptist Convention.

I still had a year to go before graduating, and had known since before college that God was calling me to serve in some full-time capacity; one which I thought would eventually put me on the foreign mission field. I had gone through college pretty much assuming that, once done there, I’d go directly to seminary, and from seminary, knowing there was a requirement of at least 2 years’ experience in ministry, I had calculated that I’d be on the field by the time I was … 26. Unless I overlapped my two years’ experience with going to seminary, in which case I WOULD tie for youngest appointed missionary to that point, which, as far as I know, remains at the age of 24, but may have gone lower in the last 20 years.

What’s the phrase? The best laid plans?

Our text this morning is about that … about plans … hopes, dreams, even … and how we relate them to Christ’s call on our lives. We have Jesus traveling through Samaria, heading for Jerusalem, with his disciples in tow, as usual. Samaritans and Jews didn’t exactly relish each others’ company. There were longstanding differences having to do with, surprise! Matters of faith and practice! In this case, they began with where the ‘real’ place to worship was – “JERUSALEM”, said the Jews, ‘NOT’, said the Samaritans, who preferred Mount Gerizim as the correct place of worship, since that was where Jacob’s well was.

It seems almost a passing comment at the beginning of the story, at least in relation to what he says in later verses. Jesus has sent messengers ahead of the group to get things ready for them – a kind of first century version of today’s “advance teams.” Anyway, the messengers go into this Samaritan town and are apparently told in no uncertain terms, “thanks, but no thanks. We don’t want his business here.” and pretty much kick them out. The text doesn’t say exactly if the messengers WERE James and John, but it DOES report their reactions – and it actually sounds more like something you would hear Peter say –

"Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?"

Jesus rebukes them (again!), just tells them to drop it and move on. So they do.

As they keep moving along the road, someone comes up to Jesus and lays it out on the line for him:

"I will follow you wherever you go."

This seems like a pretty clear-cut statement. It could be, in the right context, I suppose. But Jesus’ response seems to be getting at the heart of the matter, or at least beginning to. Does it seem disproportionate, or even, slightly inappropriate to you that he answers like he does? Someone comes up to Jesus and pledges loyalty to him, and his answer is … that, unlike animals in the wild, he has no place to even call home. What’s he trying to get across? Here we come to the first obstacle to be overcome in following Christ. The obstacle of personal comfort.

There are studies that have been done in the aftermath of evangelism campaigns, crusades, and campground meetings, even youth retreats; spiritual highpoints of all kinds, to try to track the level of commitment that is maintained in the aftermath of one’s having made some sort of significant decision about his or her faith.

I don’t know the exact numbers, but I will say that they are nowhere near 100%. So the question becomes, if you made the commitment, what is standing in the way of carrying it out to completion?

If we look closely, Jesus isn’t turning the man away. In the account of this encounter that we find in the Gospel of Matthew, the man is identified as a scribe. The understanding behind that is of someone who knew the meaning of the word ‘commitment’. His words were not for show. They were meant. So this becomes a peek into a heavy deep and real conversation between Jesus and someone who wants to follow him. Jesus is essentially saying, “Do you really know what you are saying? Following me means giving up the comforts of home, and security, and wealth, and position, and standing, and respectability, and so many other things … you’ll more than likely be Uncomfortable a greater part of the time than you will be COMFORTABLE. Is that what you truly want? Because that is what truly following me entails.” While in many Western countries Christians have not experienced the loss of personal security and possessions that many of our brothers and sisters in Africa and Asia have faced, those who sincerely follow Christ can expect to pay a price for their discipleship. The reality of the cost needs to be set forth clearly. Some follow Christ too quickly, moved … by an emotional decision to become a Christian. One Scholar, Richard Lenski, observed that such a person “sees the soldiers on parade, the fine uniforms, and the flittering arms, and is eager to join but forgets the exhausting marches, the bloody battles, the graves, perhaps unmarked.” (Richard C. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Luke’s Gospel (Minneapolis, Minn.; Augsburg Fortress, 1961), p. 559.)

So the question now becomes: What personal comforts are WE willing to give up for Christ’s sake?

Jesus initiates the next exchange the same way he started his conversations with Peter and the other disciples: two words: “Follow me.”

I remember when I first read the man’s response and Jesus’ response to HIM, I thought ‘well, that was rude!’ The man answers asking Jesus to let him go bury his father. And Jesus’

"Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God."

Response seems more than a little cold. After all, on first reading, you’d think the man had just lost his father, and needs to go take care of burial arrangements.

It’s not that simple. This is one of those pieces of information that fill in, or maybe better; fill out, what the text is really saying when we encounter a difficult passage. It’s at times like these that I am truly grateful for what Biblical Scholarship throughout the ages has done for our understanding of scripture.

To “bury one’s father” was a figure of speech, meaning to continue in business with one’s father until the father’s death, at which time the inheritance would be divided. Leaving before that time would mean forfeiture of part or all of the inheritance. So it seems the man was more concerned with financial security than with actually being allowed to grieve his father.

So the question THEN becomes, are we willing to follow Christ if it means changing our vocation, stepping out of our comfort zone, from the predictable and known to the unpredictable and unknown?

The last couple of verses again repeat somewhat the same pattern – what appears to be a reasonable request is rebuffed by Jesus in a less-than-gracious tone. “I’ll follow you Lord, but first let me go say goodbye to my family”.

I need to tell you that, having gone through it from the other side, I never understood what was involved in this until I found myself in the position of having to face the prospect of … not so much moving myself away from family, but for some reason MORE than that, the prospect of moving our children away from family – after they’ve established relationships with grandparents and Aunts and Uncles and Cousins … granted, it’s only a couple of hours to Virginia Beach, and it’s a day’s drive to Kentucky, but that is the part I don’t personally remember, I was too young. The subject has never come up in conversation with Karen, my sister who was 9 when we moved to Costa Rica. The only thing that gave away the fact that she went through some missing of the family is in the fact that, as long as I can remember, she’s always had a better grasp of who was related to whom, and what their names were, when conversation turned to aunts and uncles and cousins and such that were left back here in the States.

Jesus’ reply is harsh. There’s no other word for it.

"No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

He’s talking about ultimate allegiance. We can hold family; children, cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles, or even church family, brothers and sisters in Christ, the life of the church, involvement IN church, all close to our hearts, but ultimately, we must hold Jesus and our relationship to HIM as close to our hearts as he held us to his. If ANYTHING, ANYTHING else, takes that place, then he is not truly Lord of our lives.

And that is what Jesus is asking for: ultimate position in our lives. Let nothing get in the way of that.

Invitation:
As helpful as the internet is to me, I honestly didn’t think I would ever use something I got in an email in service. I was wrong. If you’ve ever thought of yourself as the primary reason God wouldn’t call you, then hear this list. Some of you may have already heard it, but here it is:

Noah was a drunk
Abraham was too old
Isaac was a daydreamer
Jacob was a liar
Leah was ugly
Joseph was abused
Moses had a stuttering problem
Gideon was afraid
Sampson had long hair and was a womanizer
Rahab was a prostitute
Jeremiah and Timothy were too young
David had an affair and was a murderer
Elijah was suicidal
Isaiah preached naked
Jonah ran from God
Naomi was a widow
Job went bankrupt
John the Baptist ate bugs
Peter denied Christ
The Disciples fell asleep while praying
Martha worried about everything
The Samaritan woman was divorced, more than once
Zaccheus was too small
Paul was too religious
Timothy had an ulcer...AND
Lazarus was dead!
No more excuses now!!
God can use you to your full potential.
Besides you aren't the message, you are just the messenger.

Let’s pray.

Children and Heirs

RESPONSIVE READING
Galatians 3:23-29

Leader: Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed.

People: Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith.

Leader: But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian,

People: for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.

Leader: As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

People: There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

ALL: And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.

Luke 8:26-39

26 Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. 27 As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. 28 When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me"-- 29 for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) 30 Jesus then asked him, "What is your name?" He said, "Legion"; for many demons had entered him. 31 They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss. 32 Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. 33 Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned. 34 When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. 35 Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. 36 Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. 37 Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. 38 The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, 39 "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you." So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.

Children and Heirs

Sunday, June 20th, 2004
Proper 7 (12)
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton, VA
Luke 8:26-39

I was in the den, watching television, when the doorbell rang. I walked into the living room and opened the door. Charlie was standing there, looking calm and collected. His eyes were clear, but his air was a little disheveled. His hair gave away the fact that there was something not entirely well with him. Though it had begun to grow back, there were still places where you could see his scalp through a very recent covering of newly-growing hair. Charlie had taken a pair of scissors to his head a couple of weeks earlier, during a psychotic break, after which he almost set the building in which he lived on fire. Charlie was a client of my housemates’ in Louisville, who worked with men and women who suffered from various illnesses of the brain that manifested in harrowing and, for the families, tortuous ways. Claude happened to not be in that afternoon, and Charlie didn’t ask to come in.

I’ve often wondered what it must be like to be possessed. Whether it was the man in our passage this morning, or Mary Magdalene, whom we read about last Sunday, having 7 demons thrown out of her. What would it be like to have a legion of demons driving me to madness, to run naked, and live in caves and tombs, away from the normal people, SANE society?

Past and present Hollywood depictions of demon possession would have us believe one who is possessed to have red-rimmed glow-in-the-dark eyes, and a raspy, guttural voice, and a free-floating very flexible neck, the easier to allow the head to spin on, as well as an easy, now you see it now you don’t subjection to the law of gravity.

Biblical records tell of demon possessed individuals and make passing reference to understandably appalling conditions, but they do not go into detail about what the people looked or sounded like. That is left to our imagination, for the most part, though some information is given.

To be honest, my first thought in approaching the text today was, ‘it’s Father’s day, how in the WORLD am I going to tie this story in with that?’

Well, I didn’t have to look very far.

Father’s day is a tough celebration for me. In relation to my own and Leslie’s father, it couldn’t be easier. James Kenneth Park and Donald Kenneth Maccubbin have given me more than enough reason to be thankful on Father’s day – I’ll not say this too strongly or dwell on it too much, but I’ve made it my intentional prayer on Father’s day to give thanks to God for Fathers who make it easy to think of God as Father.

I remember the first time I thanked God for fathers who make it easy to think of God as Father. It was Thanksgiving, 1991, and we had invited about a dozen of our friends, including my sisters Becky and … I think Lolly as well, and my father, who happened to be in the States on business with the Spanish Baptist Publishing House in El Paso, TX, to celebrate thanksgiving with Claude and me at the house on Field Avenue. The friends included at least two women who had been sexually abused by their fathers, though at the time, I only knew the story of one of them. I remember hearing a … quick intake of breath, not quite a gasp, when I spoke the phrase, and I sensed a sort of collective bracing in the fabric of the dynamics of the room, but there was no interruption of the prayer.

Please hear me say this: I don’t want us to come away today thinking of God ONLY as ‘Father’, but I DO want us to recognize traits in our fathers through which we can catch a glimpse of the father-heart of God. And by the same token, I hope we can, in those instances where our fathers have been less than perfect, find that the grace of God still has the power to heal and restore what is beyond our ability or power to control or restore by ourselves. Sometimes that happens through someone stepping into the father role, sometimes it doesn’t, but it does happen.

Jay, my former college roommate and United Methodist Minister and I usually end up online at the same time for part of the evening anyway, on Saturdays. We usually chat a little about how things are going, and bounce ideas off each other about what we are preaching from. Last night he pointed out a phrase that we find mentioned twice in the passage from Luke, and that is the response of the townspeople when they heard and saw that Jesus had cast out the demons from the man – IT WAS FEAR. I’m not talking about the swineherds who lost the pigs; it would seem that they would have a leg to stand on, at least in the most superficial interpretation of the event, if they had something to be sore about. After all, they were out of their livelihood. I AM talking about the people who had, probably over the years or months during which this man was possessed, become accustomed to his presence around them. Perhaps he served as a kind of built-in entertainment for the surrounding population. Here again those three verses:

35 Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. 36 Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. 37 Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear.

Doesn’t that seem odd to you? Wouldn’t you imagine that there would be a Positive response to Jesus’ casting out a legion of demons from a man who runs around with no clothes on in a cemetery? Doesn’t it seem to make sense that the end result, the man sitting in his right mind, clothed, next to Jesus would be a more desirable outcome than to have to continue to put up with him in his deranged state?

If there is a single argument for a high degree of historicity to the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry, it is this: they are true to human nature, even when it seemingly goes against what one would expect to find in the middle of a work written for the express purpose of bringing the reader or listener to faith in Jesus. If the Disciples had had the services of a modern-day publicist, the passage would probably read “they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they began to ask him about his encounter with Jesus, and thousands believed and followed Jesus that day. But it doesn’t come out that way. We find the same pattern in the passion narrative. The disciples didn’t behave in what we could comfortably call a noble or courageous manner.

So the scene begs the question: What were they afraid of? Were they afraid that perhaps the demons that had taken over this man were still at large, and might take them over as well? Were they simply afraid of the power Jesus displayed in ridding the man of the demons? After all, a legion was the term used to indicate a division of the Roman army, which consisted of 5,000 men so - drawing a loose parallel - we’re talking about a considerable number of otherworldly spirits inhabiting one person. Or was there something else going on?

Might it be that what they were afraid of was the CHANGE that the event could potentially mean for their individual, settled, to whatever degree they could be, lives in a quiet, rural area of the Transjordan?

They were confronted with another type of possession, in the person sitting beside the formerly demon-possessed man, the man they called Jesus. He was utterly and totally possessed by the living God. To the point where he could say, “if you have seen me, you have seen the father.”

I said earlier that Father’s day is a tough celebration – and I mean that in this way: it is tough FOR ME to think of myself as someone worth celebrating in the role as father. I feel inadequate to the task. More often than not, though I love my children, I wonder what damage I am doing to them; their psyches, their spirits, their sense of self… these last three days with Leslie gone have been good and sometimes bad, easy and sometimes hard. There are times when I can really identify with what it must’ve been like to be possessed by something not good for children. It’s funny, when it comes to dealing with my children, I find myself fairly often repeating Paul’s words in his letter to the Romans, we find it in chapter 7, verse 15:

“For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”

It is in those moments that I think I can really identify with being possessed by demons.

I was honestly looking forward to the time to be with the kids. I thought last night as I was giving them their baths, about asking them what they liked most and least about me being their father. I didn’t ask. I chose not to. I know they love me, and I know they know I love them. Everything else I have to remind myself to give over to grace.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

What this means is this: Can we, as fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters, as children and heirs of the promise of life, look at the person sitting next to us and say in humility and love, “if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father”?

Can we so form our lives, so discipline ourselves, to the point where, as Leslie Sanders mentioned last Saturday morning, the first thing people will think of when they see us is, “there is a child of God.”?

Let’s pray.

… Sins, Which Were Many …

Sunday, June 13th, 2004
Proper 6 (11)
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton, VA
Luke 7:36-8:3

36 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table. 37 And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. 38 She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. 39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him—that she is a sinner." 40 Jesus spoke up and said to him, "Simon, I have something to say to you." "Teacher," he replied, "speak." 41 "A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?" 43 Simon answered, "I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt." And Jesus said to him, "You have judged rightly." 44 Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. 45 You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. 47 Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little." 48 Then he said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." 49 But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, "Who is this who even forgives sins?" 50 And he said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace." 8:1 Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, 2 as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, 3 and Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.

It wasn’t until I was in Seminary, a full 16 years after I made the decision as a ten-year-old to place my trust in God and become a follower of Jesus Christ, that I came to the adult realization that, except for Christ’s presence in me through the Holy Spirit, I was no different from your average, run-of-the-mill, garden variety heathen non-believer.

Janet Hale and I were walking through the door from Broadus Lounge into the hallway that led past the upstairs mailboxes to the rest of the main academic building on campus at Southern. I worked with Janet and her parents my first year in Spain as a Journeyman, and we hadn’t seen each other for a few weeks. We were catching up on each other’s personal life, and something in the conversation, I think it may have been something that had become known on campus that struck me as more reminiscent of my days at Western Kentucky University than as something I would encounter in a place of theological study such as Southern.

There was an atmosphere at Southern at the time … something like a circling of the wagons, but it was disconnected, it was uncoordinated. There were students who were sympathetic to the movement in the convention, but at the time there were more students who were either indifferent to it or were against it. Most were simply focused on getting through the schooling and getting out and into what they felt God calling them to do.

That having been said, Southern, at the time, was not unlike any other institution of higher learning in the country, which is to say, there was a mix of people from all walks of life who were attending. There were young students who came straight out of college, idealistic and fresh-faced. There were second-career students, mature adults who had already been ‘out in the world’, making a living in a secular field, and somehow ended up there. There were professional students who had their eyes set on professional academia, gunning for their PhD and consumed by the esoteric minutiae of the translation and interpretation of a particular passage or the understanding of a single issue. Others were focusing on comparative religion degrees, spending their time at Southern learning of the Christian faith as an academic exercise.

In short, Southern was and had always been pursuing it’s stated purpose of equipping and preparing men and women called of God for ministry. What made it messy were those same men and women, because not all of them were clean-cut, called-out, right-living, wanna-be ministers. They were much more like a group of people picked at random out of the aisles at Wal-Mart on any given Saturday.

I began referring to the Revised Common Lectionary a few weeks ago, and have found it to be really helpful in following a structure in terms of sermon preparation. The lectionary is basically a list of scripture readings that, for any given Sunday, has a reading from the Old Testament, the Psalms, The Gospels, and the rest of the New Testament.

It struck me, as I read the passage for today, that the text selection included the first three verses of the chapter following the end of this particular story. Usually, chapter divisions were determined by what would be the normal process – the end of a story, the conclusion of an idea or an argument, the beginning of a new theme, a relatively logical stop and start. It doesn’t seem to be any different in this instance: verse 50 of chapter 7 is a concluding thought:

“And he said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

It doesn’t make a lot of sense to then pick up at what appears to be the beginning of the next ‘scene’ for the end of the text selection for today –

“Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, 2 as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, 3 and Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.”

But is it really all that nonsensical? Think about it. Jesus goes to the house of a Pharisee, Simon, and sits down to share a meal with him. Typical customs of the day would call for the host to greet the guest with a kiss, to offer oil to anoint their heads, and water with which to rinse their feet, since they would have traveled on foot the vast majority of the time, and dust has a way of getting everywhere, doesn’t it? But neither of those things happens. Instead, we find that a woman comes up behind Jesus, he would have been reclining at a low table, with his feet extended out from under him, and she is crying a river of tears. Have you ever found yourself uncontrollably crying? Crying even when you knew you wanted to stop, but you were unable to? That was what she was doing.

Although the custom was to anoint the head, she’s chosen to let her tears fall on his feet, and then proceeds to anoint his FEET with the perfume. The commentary on that section of scripture that I read said that the motivation for the woman’s anointing Jesus’ feet instead of his head is uncertain.


I couldn’t help but wonder about what possibly would have motivated her to wet his feet instead of his head. My first thought was actually logistical. If Jesus was reclining, let’s say he was reclining forward from the waist, with his legs half-stretched out behind him, or fully extended on his stomach, with legs behind, it would have simply been too awkward a move for her to try to get to his head, so she just stood at his feet and her tears naturally fell on them.

But the second thought is one that, for me anyway, speaks more to where she found herself. How often do we speak about sitting at the head of Jesus? No, we speak so much more about sitting at the … feet of Jesus. The position carries with it so much additional information … the connotation, the suggestion, or subtext that goes along with sitting at the feet of someone speaks more of where we see ourselves in relation to them than anything else. I think that would have been the case in first century Palestine as well, and in particular, at the house of Simon the Pharisee, with this woman. Assumptions have been made that it was Mary Magdalene, but she is not actually named in the passage in Luke. Only in John is she named, and there she is identified as Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. Oddly, the same story appears in all four Gospels. In all the other gospels, the event is framed in a way that it makes a statement about the poor, and Jesus concludes each telling of the scene with words to the effect that ‘the poor will always be with you, but I will not always be with you.’ … In Luke, the take, the spin, is different “why are you criticizing what she is doing, since what she is doing, you were supposed to do, but didn’t?” is basically what Jesus is telling Simon and the others who are there.

A point worth noting is that, in all the other accounts of this event, Simon is identified as a Leper, not as a Pharisee, as he is in Luke. I imagine some scholars would point to the fact that Luke’s purpose and intended audience was different from what the other Gospel writers were trying to do, and I’d have to agree. It just seems odd that 3 out of the 4 instances of a gospel account of supposedly the same event would change a somewhat critical piece of information about one of the main characters in the story. Perhaps Luke was trying to convince Theophilus, the recipient of his letters, that Jesus didn’t ALWAYS end up arguing with the Pharisees, and consequently wasn’t always persecuted by them, but that it was a tense coexistence.

I have to think that the choice of changing the profession, as it were, of Simon says something about what Luke thought might be comparable to a Leper, on a level beneath the superficial. Does the fact that he made a diseased man part of the religious establishment of the time speak to how he may have viewed them? As individuals who were so … afflicted with the desire for holiness, they were not even able to recognize the Son of God when he was staring them in the face? What can that say to us today, here, as members of the current religious establishment? Do we limit our understanding of where God can be? Who God can speak through? Where God can be found? Who God can use?

Who can God use? Who DID God use? We know he used a tax collector, some fishermen, and some political zealots, but here we find others he used. The text says;

(Jesus) went through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God.

It also says the twelve were with him – those tax collectors, fishermen and zealots … it goes on, however, to name some names … but what is a marvelous coloring of the text is the way the people are identified:

Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.

In those last 6 verses, we have a full process of call and commission. The woman’s sins have been forgiven, she responds in a very natural way – she is overwhelmed with gratitude, evidenced by her tears and her extravagant gift of ointment.

“Hence she has shown great love.”

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

I would hope it means we have an opportunity to find ourselves in the story – as part of the story. The question is which part? Is it easier to put ourselves in the place of the woman, whose sins, which were many, and were forgiven found herself following Christ, accompanying him in his proclamation of the good news of the kingdom of God, and being used by him in that. Or do you more easily identify with Simon, the Pharisee, who was welcoming Jesus, but on his own terms? Do we limit what Jesus can do with us and through us? Do we impose our expectations, our sense of propriety, our cultural norms on him, in an attempt to make him more palatable, more acceptable, when if we look at Jesus closely, we find that on some level, he is offensive – in the sense that he is on the offense against those human inventions that keep us separated from each other, unwilling or unable to break down the barriers which separate the sinners from the saints?

We find the truth in Paul’s words to the church in Rome:

ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

But hear the Gospel of Grace:

Our sins, which were many, can be or have been forgiven through the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Let’s pray.

For Margaret
Saturday, June 12th, 2004, 2PM
Jerusalem Baptist Church

One of the great benefits i have in my life is that my three college roommates are or have been in some form of ministry, and we still find ourselves bouncing things off each other and exchanging ideas, even today, just as we did in college. One of them, Jay, a United Methodist Minister in Nashville, wrote a couple of days ago in his online journal the following notes about what it means to be in ministry at a time like this. His thoughts put into words my own in facing you today.

"There is something sacred in our encounters with the dying, something life affirming in the midst of death. When I am home in the shower and that shiver runs up my spine as I ponder my own mortality, the unknown of death sometimes seems overwhelming. Yet, when I am sitting beside the bed of the one who is facing death, for some reason the fear leaves and there is recognition of God's presence.

Death puts everything else in perspective. It places us in relationship to one another as the power dynamics that so characterize our lives are torn down. On the surface it may not seem so, since one party is dependent on the other for such basic needs and hygiene and the quenching of thirst. Yet, the caregiver finds him or herself in a place as helpless as the dying. No matter what we do, the outcome is still the same. We work to alleviate suffering, while knowing that the ultimate power of restoration is not in our hands.

I continue to be amazed that this power of ordination, this being called to Pastor a congregation, leads others to invite me into their most sacred moments. How many times have I been a fly on the wall, being present for a family as a loved one dies only to know that I am receiving much more than the family? The ministry of presence is a powerful gift -- both for the other and for the one being present.

We watched yesterday as the funeral of Ronald Reagan progressed in all its glory. The National Cathedral was full of men in black suits and women in their finest attire, and a coffin draped with the flag of our nation. It was a national moment of recognition, a ritual in honor of a life.

Yet, the most sacred spaces are not filled with pomp and splendor. They are happening today in bedrooms, hospital rooms, and hospice residences throughout the world. The words aren't flowery. There are tears and blood and sweat intermixed. They aren't particularly pretty. But God is present in the midst of them, helping some into a new place of being, and comforting those left behind."

As Christians we are called to be ‘little Christs’. In that, each of us presents to the world our individual ‘take’, our individual flavoring of Jesus. Some of us are more like ourselves than like Jesus. Some, more and more like Christ.
I knew Margaret briefly while she was still relatively healthy, but for the most part, I have known her in her illness.

What I drew from the time we spent together was not only from her, but from hers and her family’s relationship. To watch Ritsy and Cindy time and time again carry her to the hospital late at night, to watch them trade off time spent with her and William, caring for both of them, and to watch as William tended to and stood watch over his companion of 53 years, spoke to me so strongly about what it means to be family, to be present, to be giving. It so deepened my understanding of what Jesus meant when he commended us to each other … to be family to each other, that in that deepening came a challenge to find more and more ways to carry that out to the fullest that I am able.

In the passage I read to you, beginning with the second verse of Chapter 5, Paul says



“For in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling – if indeed, when we have taken it off we will not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden, because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.


We know that Margaret’s passing itself was peaceful. The time leading up to that, was less so. This Robe I’m wearing is a symbol of the role I hold as a minister. But I am not the robe. When I wear it, some will see the robe and not the person. In a similar way, Margaret’s body was not who she WAS. Her body was what presented her to us, it was what helped us recognize her while she was with us. But what made her who she was was on the inside. That is something that is recognizable in any form.

In the same way that I can remove the robe and present myself as the person I am, not just the calling I follow, Margaret has now shed her body and is face to face with Christ, who has known her and has welcomed her into his presence.

So what I would ask you to do as we say farewell to Margaret is to draw from your own knowledge of her, and find that part of you that she touched, and look for an opportunity to share that with William, or Ritsy, or Billy, or Lou, or Cindy, or any of the grandchildren or the rest of the family. Let them know that there are ways in which Margaret has touched your lives that they would recognize the ‘Margaret-ness’ of them. Share memories, stories, and thoughts with them. Let them know just how many lives she DID touch, and make a difference in, just as Christ made the difference in HER life.

Let’s pray.