With Unveiled Faces (Actual)

Sunday, February 18th, 2007
Epiphany 7
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Text: 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2

12Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, 13not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. 14But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. 15Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; 16but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. 17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.
4Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. 2We have renounced the shameful things that one hides; we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God’s word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God.

Paul lived in the reality of an ongoing, vibrant, interactive, transformative relationship with the living Lord. Do we?

Paul compared his faith background; zealous, yes, dedicated, yes, given, yes, to what he had now, AFTER meeting the risen Lord, and in his mind it was like comparing apples and oranges. The two were so far apart for him experientially that he could hardly even put them in the same category.

We live in a society that among its strengths counts religious pluralism – freedom of religion – to be a cornerstone. As members of that society, or at least as a people who live surrounded by that society, that CULTURE, and particularly as Baptists who have historically defended that freedom, in order to practice and follow what we understand to be the command of Christ to persuade and convince, not force anyone to espouse a faith in order to arrive at a genuine faith, it is part and parcel of defending that freedom that leads us to respect each individual’s right to practice his or her understanding of faith – or lack of faith, in the hope that IN and FROM that freedom that person WILL be persuaded, whether by their own study or by the humble persuasion of our lives if not our words, into a relationship with Jesus Christ. One of the side effects OF that understanding is that we tend to sometimes blur the distinctions between faiths. It’s an easy thing to do. After all, there are, among the three main world religions, different as they are, a few core principles that are shared.

One of those is respect for life. The ‘rule’ to not commit murder that we find in the Hebrew passage of scriptures that WE call the ten commandments is also found in the theology of both the Christian Church and the Muslim faith, terrorist attacks notwithstanding. There are others. A high view of scripture, given that for each of our faiths those scriptures differ, a belief in a sovereign God who is to one degree or another involved or interested in what is going on in the world. And the need to ‘get the word out’ as it were, about just how God is doing that, or expects that to be done, depending on who you talk to.

Obviously, that last point is where we spend a lot of time crashing into each other. So our respective societies have chosen different ways of dealing with that particular issue. While it is not illegal to BE a Christian in a particular Muslim country, or in Israel, it IS illegal to CONVERT to, or CAUSE someone to convert to, faith in Christ if you are a citizen of that country, if you belong to the majority faith. What would seem to us a strange contradiction is in fact a reflection of the view of what it means to belong to the faith community as a member of a Muslim or Jewish Society. What we take for granted, what we have no memory of being without – freedom to believe as we want, to practice our faith as we feel led, and to speak of our faith to others SEEKING faith, is a foreign concept in many many countries around the world.

Paul’s presentation of the Gospel to the people of Corinth struck a chord in their hearts that they immediately grasped – especially with regards to the freedom that we find in Christ. We are free – and through the Holy Spirit empowered – to live a life DIFFERENT from those who came before us, those who live next to us, those who are above us who may or may not attempt to impose one or another precept on us. Our freedom is a spiritual freedom that transcends the boundaries established by human minds – and cultures, and religions.

That is what Paul is talking about when he speaks of living in the glory of God in Christ with unveiled faces.

The opening words of today’s passage are the continuation of the argument he presents from the beginning of chapter 3 – he is speaking of what it means to live in the faith and sure hope that we have in Christ – not based on our own worth or merit, but based on the worth and merit of Jesus Christ, who stands in our place before God. It is THAT hope that he is talking about when he says,

‘Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness,’

There is no place in Paul’s understanding for the uncertainty of wondering if you are or are not ‘right with God’ at any given moment. It’s actually pretty simple. You either are or you are not, based on whether or not you show evidence of the Holy Spirit acting in your life – through the way you treat others, through the way you act, through your words, through your lifestyle. The two go hand in hand – IF the Spirit is there, it’ll be obvious. If the Spirit is NOT there, THAT will be obvious.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

I guess the question is this: HOW do WE veil our faces? What veil do we choose to wear, when we don’t necessarily want anyone to know that we are Christ followers? Or do we not do that?

When we are asked, “How are you doing?” do we answer “Fine, fine!” when inside we are crumbling? One of the most significant events in my spiritual journey was walking into a sanctuary where, when people asked how I was feeling, I could tell them honestly and it would engage in conversation. They would respond, they would actually expect me to tell them how I really WAS feeling, whether I was happy or sad, whether I was despondent or angry. The place of honesty is critical within the freedom that we have in Christ.

As many of you know, some Mexican friends of ours were involved in a car accident on Wednesday morning. Thankfully, nobody was killed, but to look at the car is to look at twisted metal and shattered glass and see what a miracle looks like. Wednesday evening as one of the women was being tended to by her nurse, the television was on in the room, so I decided to check and see if there was a Spanish language station included in the selection available. I came across the travel channel. The program was of somebody who was touring around what appeared to be a medieval city somewhere in southern Europe, it seemed to be Italy. The scenery was nice, the buildings were old and obviously historic, so I left it there (there wasn’t a Spanish language option available). Just a few minutes after I left the television tuned to that station, that program ended, and the next one to come on was the World Poker Tour. Apparently this contest travels around the country and hosts playoffs, with several dozen tables playing at the same time, and as the winners of each table get sorted out, the remaining winners eventually get to play at the championship table, and that is the one that makes the program. You’ve heard the term ‘poker face, or game face?’ The table is set up with cameras that allow us to see what each player has in their hand, and if you were looking at their face, with somebody who has a pair of fours … not that I know that much about poker … I don’t know if a pair of fours are any better than a pair of eights, except that the number is higher or lower, whatever, you wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at their faces what is going on … of course, that’s part of the game – you bluff – but it reminded me of how we can do that so easily. In some ways we’re encouraged by our society to hide our true feelings, to distance ourselves. Those veils we put up, cheerful, everything’s fine, people don’t want to necessarily – at least we’re given the impression – people don’t necessarily want to know how you are doing.

What an opportunity to be different, HERE, isn’t it? That when we approach each other and greet each other during the Jerusalem Hand of Welcome – although that’s a good starting place, because the service progresses, wouldn’t that be wonderful if that lead to a conversation after the service, where you can share together and pray together, cry if need be, lean on each other. It is an opportunity to strengthen and form the bond that Christ charged us with: to BE the body of Christ, to be there with and for each other, to share in the joys, to share in the sorrows and the pain, to share in the laughter. When we respond in the freedom that we understand Christ gives us, then we become … frankly, we become vulnerable. A lot of us are uncomfortable with that concept, no matter who we are talking to.

But in becoming vulnerable, you share your frailties; you share, perhaps with someone who has the same need of being encouraged, of being built up, to be strengthened. There is a small miracle that happens when hearts and minds are joined, whether in prayer or in laughter, where both were separately weak, they are together strengthened, and that is a sure reflection of the Kingdom breaking into the world.

Let’s pray.

Credo

Sunday, February 4th, 2007
Epiphany 5
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
1 Corinthians 15:1-11

1 Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, 2through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain. 3For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. 7Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. 11Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.

Why are we here?

I don’t mean that in the rhetorical, theoretical sense, I mean literally here, today, sitting and standing in this sanctuary? What compels us, if anything, to come together on Sunday mornings and sing and pray and give and read and listen, and then come back week after week?

Is there something in our genetic makeup as humans that calls us out in search of something greater than ourselves, some greater consciousness that we can call ‘God’ and feel safer for being in his good graces? Is that the thing that Saint Augustine called the ‘God Shaped hole’ in us?

I remember watching documentaries about Stone Age tribes on islands in the south pacific, or in the interior of the Amazon jungle, and almost invariably at some point in the commentary, the religious practices are explained. There’s usually a priest or a shaman or some designated person who serves as an intermediary between the tribe and their respective god or gods … this person tells people what they are to do or not do, and how they are to please that god.

I ask myself are we that different? Is our version of god and our intermediary just a little more cleaned up and less inclined to expect a ring through our noses in order to be happy with us?

What is still an oral tradition for those tribes – not yet having their language in writing – is what we have had for almost two thousand years – Holy Scriptures. And there is a finality to seeing something in writing that somehow seems to lend it more weight than simply the spoken word.

I wonder if there are members of those tribes who are just going along because that is WHERE THEY LIVE, because it’s their family, because if they didn’t go along it would be noticed and frowned on. Is it our ability to disassociate our minds and hearts from what is coming out of our mouths that makes us … better than them? More advanced? Other words come to mind, and they are not necessarily expressions of admiration.

If their expressions of religiosity are on some level parallel to our own, then we are not that far apart in terms of a sense of need, of longing, of reconnection (re-ligion – re-tieing) to our creator. The difference is, of course, notable in the direction of our efforts. It was this difference in direction that Paul was addressing with the Church in Corinth as well. There is human endeavor and there is divine intervention.

In today’s passage, we find Paul beginning to deal with what is at the heart of his letter to the church in Corinth, that is, the fact of the resurrection of Christ and it’s implications for their lives – and ours as well – he was going to the heart of the Gospel. What the Gospel actually turns on. Another way of putting it: this event, this resurrection that we will begin to move towards in a specific, intentional way as we approach and move through the season of Lent, leading up to the celebration of Easter, this event is what turns the story of Jesus from an insignificant historical footnote to a cosmically transformative cataclysm.

Paul is dealing with the specifics of the situation in Corinth, but it is difficult to tell from the way he writes to whom he is directing his arguments. The words, and the way he uses the words, are rare in the rest of Paul’s writings, so there is no solid point of reference in terms of comparing it to what he says in other letters to get an understanding of what he means with them here.

He is, in a sense, putting his faith on the line – he is saying ‘this is what I received, this is what I believe, and this is what I taught – delivered is the word actually used – to you when I was with you.’ All in the face of reports that what he had taught – that core of the Gospel – had been cast aside for ideas that fell more in line with what the citizens of Corinth were used to hearing and believing all their lives. For example, that there was no resurrection of the body, that it was only the soul that was immortal, that Christ had risen in spirit only, and that we should not expect anything different. That our resurrection in some sense had already occurred when we became a follower of Christ. It disassociated the belief from the living, and the result was that it gave them permission to do just about anything they wanted.

These contradicted what were central beliefs to the early church – those that were most clearly and most quickly identified as fundamental to the faith. Scholars believe that the latter portion of verse three through the end of verse five actually are a quote of those beliefs:

That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5and that he appeared to Cephas …

The Latin word ‘Credo’ means ‘I Believe.’ It is, you may have guessed, the same word from which we get the word ‘Creed’ – usually used to refer to one’s belief system or worldview. Most of us have heard of the Apostle’s Creed, or the Nicene Creed, but as good Baptists, we have not committed them to memory, since we, historically have stood on the principle of ‘no creed but the Bible’ when it comes to such things. And yet, it is important to periodically, if not continually, delve into what it is that makes us DO what we DO, especially on Sunday mornings, if for no other reason than to make sure that we are still engaged in exercising our faith through exercising our minds and hearts, not simply going through repetitive motions each week.

So what do we believe as individuals, as members of this family of faith, as members of the universal church, as followers of Christ? Do we really, truly believe that Jesus was beaten, crucified, died, and buried? Do we truly believe that God raised him from the dead on the third day?

If we do believe those things, what implications does that have for our lives? How is that going to play out in how we carry on, on a daily basis?

What does saying that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Let’s look at just those two things – that Jesus died, and that Jesus arose from the dead.

The first is a statement that is more related to life as we know it from an earthly standpoint. We have, almost to a person, been faced with the death of someone we know or love, we know what it is like for someone to be there, talking, laughing, and singing alongside, hugging, whatever … and a short while later to NOT be there, seemingly irretrievably gone.

There is nothing we can do or say that will bring them back to us. As time passes, we move on as best we can, sometimes with a gaping wound in our lives, and sometimes with a not quite so painful … space … where before we shared a meal on a certain night of the week, or a phone call at a particular time of day, now there is silence. That is what the first statement resonates with inside of us when we hear it.

The second statement is different. “Jesus arose from the dead.” How crazy is that? How contrary can you get? There is nothing we know that is as final as death. And yet, here, at the core of the Gospel is this statement that is basically saying that it ain’t necessarily so. That death is not the end, but in a proportional way, it is more of a beginning. To say that Jesus arose from the dead is to turn OUR reality, OUR limited, fragile, shortsighted, self-absorbed, provincial, anthropocentric world view on its ear and say “maybe there really IS more to life than I’ve assumed there was ‘til now.”

Saying and believing it means opening ourselves up to possibilities that we can’t even imagine, which could end up putting us in places we’d never expect to be – whether that be HERE, standing in this pulpit on Sunday mornings, or talking to a stranger at the post office, or in the hardware store, striking up a conversation for no good reason other than because you just felt like you HAD TO speak to them in a friendly, compassionate way. And in the course of the conversation to make a connection, to make a difference in the way that person’s day was going, and give them a sense that they truly are not alone, just as we realize we are not alone by coming and being a part of this community.

The audacity of the Gospel is to proclaim a reality that we can only see dimly, if at all. To proclaim in faith that this is not the final reality, where we are right now, but that it is a temporary one, a passing moment – the writer of James calls this life ‘a mist that appears for a little while, and then vanishes’.

To believe the Gospel is to believe that what we do here matters, yes, but that what is to be is the truth of our existence. That the Kingdom of God is higher and deeper and broader and stronger and MORE than we can even imagine, but that it IS THERE.

The invitation today is to live in THAT reality, and in THAT living, bring IT into THIS fragile one.

Let’s pray.

A More Excellent Way

Sunday, January 28th, 2007
Epiphany 4
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
1 Corinthians 13:1-13

1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Confession time again. If you are keeping track, this is, I think, the fourth time I stand in front of you and reveal another frailty. What? So few, you may ask? Don’t worry. There’s more where this came from. (smile) I have to measure them out … I plan on retiring here, so we’ve got a while to cover them all.

The confession is that, more than usual, I am keenly aware of my inadequacy in approaching the subject matter this morning. We are talking about agapē love. For those of us here who have heard it before, no in-depth explanation is necessary, except for the purpose of refreshing the memory. For the rest of us, here’s the shorthand version of the forms of love:

In English, we have one word for the multiple variations of the emotion we call love; and that word is LOVE. We would just as soon love an omelet for breakfast as we would love to hear from a friend whom we haven’t heard from for years. We love the smell of bacon frying and we love the way that dress looks on you. We love you more than anything in this world, and we love the taste of chocolate syrup on vanilla ice cream. We love our country, we love our president, and we love our town. We love our pets, we love the way the new window treatment looks, and we would love to have the opportunity to tell you about the love of God in Christ.

Who said English is a complicated language?

In Greek, the Greek of the New Testament, there are FOUR words that we translate as love. The first is Erōs. You probably can make the connection as to what type of love that refers to – it is the love of deep desire, passionate aspiration, and sensuous longing. It often has a sexual or physical connotation. Neither the noun form of the word nor the verb form of it – eran – ever appears in the New Testament.

The next is storgē and the verb stergein – they concern the kind of affection we find in a family. Plato writes that a child stergein his parents and his parents love him. THESE words for love never appear in the New Testament, although the adjective philostorgos, brotherly affection, appears in Romans 12:10, which brings us to the third form of love found in the Greek language and, unlike the first two, also in the New Testament: The noun is philia and the verb is philein. They are used to describe different kinds of love throughout the New Testament – philein, the verb form, is used 33 times and Philos, the noun form, is used 29 times. They are the most common words used for love in Greek culture and literature.

The fourth one is the first one I mentioned earlier – agapē. What is interesting about this word is that it is used only rarely in Greek literature of the period, but it is the most widely used word for “love” in the New Testament and in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures that the Hellenistic Jews – those Jews of the diaspora – who moved out and away from the land of Palestine – and may not have been able to speak, much less read Hebrew – the Septuagint was their translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.

In that, the verb form of the word – agapan – occurs approximately 200 times. The noun agapē is used there 19 times. The verb agapan is used 130 times in the New Testament, and the noun agapē is used almost 120 times.

What is it about this word that eliminates it from common use in the Greek language? Why are the other forms of love so much more visible in the context of normal, regular, secular Greek life?

I think we could find a similar situation if we went over the uses of the word ‘love’ in our own culture and literature as well. After all, in that paragraph I read to you earlier, listing some of the ways in which we use the word ‘love’, you caught a glimpse of how the word can be used to express a whole range of feelings.

It would be an interesting exercise to try and come up with different words in English for the different kinds of emotion we now generally call love to be expressed. We do try to qualify the emotion with words such as ‘like’ and ‘esteem’ and ‘appreciate’, and to a certain degree, they serve the purpose, but it’s not always the case.

But this morning we are characterizing the love of God for humanity as defined in the person of Jesus Christ. Let me say that again: the love of God for humanity as defined in the person of Jesus Christ. What the seventy scholars who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek and what Paul had an opportunity to do in using the word agapē to describe the love they were talking about was to frame the use of the word into a context that would communicate as clearly as they could make it communicate what that love was like. There is an element to that love that is distinct from the others in this particular passage. The form of the word calls for the adjectives that Paul is using to describe it to be put into tenses that speak to the essence of the emotion – to the essence of the love – they are not simply nice things being said about love – let me read it to you this way:

4Love is BEING patient; love is BEING kind; love is not BEING envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It is not insisting on its own way; it is not BEING irritable or resentful; 6it IS not REJOICING in wrongdoing, but REJOICING in the truth. 7It IS BEARING all things, BELIEVING all things, HOPING all things, ENDURING all things.

Can you see the difference in the reading? This form in which the words are written are a description not simply of an emotion, but of a way of living, a way of acting, a way of BEING that goes beyond simply SAYING you believe something.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

We can say we believe in the love of God. We can sing about it, pray for it, read about it, teach about it, and even preach about it. But, as Paul himself said, if we don’t HAVE what it is we are talking about, we’re nothing. Clanging bells, noisy gongs, so much hot air. The catch is, what he goes on to say is even more than that – we can put it into action – you’ve heard me preach about how the love we profess is not simply an emotion, but it is a word that denotes action – we can go through the motions – feed the poor with the food off our tables, clothe them with the clothes off our backs, we can be the final arbiter in matters of faith and practice for the Rappahannock Baptist Association or even the Baptist General Association of Virginia, and have people lined up at our doorstep to get an answer to their up-until-now unanswerable questions … all that and more … but if we don’t have the love of God in our hearts, it’s not worth another first-century Greek term: piddly-squat.

Agapē is used to express the spontaneous, creative, caring love that is expressive of God’s nature and that extended to undeserving humanity in Christ. People who accept God’s love are empowered by the Spirit of God to live thankfully and obediently in response to God’s love and thereby live by the love that redeems them in Jesus Christ. It becomes their love, but it is the gift of God’s love. It is not their … OUR work, but God’s gift. We do not gain it, we receive it. It comes not through self-assertion, but through self-surrender. Love evokes faith and faith evokes love. Love is the aim of Christians because they have died and been raised with Christ, and because love is given those who give themselves to the Spirit.

Love is centered in concern for others. Love is the principle that controls the exercise of all gifts: love creates unity, not division. To follow the way of love – the more excellent way – is to follow the very nature of God God’s self. Agapē is the most excellent way because it is grounded in God. Love is God in humanity.
(Raymond Bryan Brown, The Broadman Bible Commentary Vol 10, 1 Corinthians, Broadman Press, Nashville, 1970)

Let’s pray.

The Body Is One

Sunday, January 21st, 2007
Epiphany 3
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
1 Corinthians 12:12-31

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. 14Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? 18But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many members, yet one body. 21The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; 24whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, 25that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. 27Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. 28And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. 29Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? 31But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

During our training as journeymen, way back in the dark ages of the mid-80s, our group of 65 candidates was divided into teams of varying sizes, with different goals set for us each week. One team I was in was asked to come up with a multi-media presentation for one of our devotional times in the evenings. We gathered, and those of the group who at that time had already decided on a career in ministry, suggested we do a slide show – back when they were still 35 mm SLIDES that you put into a tray that ran through a projector – based on our passage this morning. The rest of the group served as models for the pictures that were taken to provide the visual representation of the text as Paul walks us through what it means to be a part of a whole.

There were, course, poses of people trying to show themselves to be a hand, or a foot, or an eye, and at the same time to look down on some other member of the body. It was still pretty close to the 70’s, if you ask me.

It was not the first attempt at a more-or-less dramatic representation of the ‘many members, one body’ passage of first Corinthians.

The point was, and is, that this has been a centerpiece of our understanding of what it means to be a part of the body of Christ because it so clearly states the realities of existence AS a member of the body.

We recognize and understand that as much as we differ as individuals, however we see things differently, or even use different terminology, phrases, and titles, we are STILL all members of the same body – the body of Christ.

The congregation of the church at Corinth was about as multi-anything as you could GET at the time; racial, ethnic, cultural, religious. There were Greeks, Romans, Jews, Asians; there were former pagans, disciples of Aphrodite, the prevailing ‘church’ of Corinth, and Jews who still held to most of their own religious practices. There were former Greek Stoics, former Roman emperor-worshippers, and as there likely are everywhere, nominal members of the majoritarian popular church – folks who wouldn’t say they WEREN’T disciples of Aphrodite, but who would just as soon roll over in bed and go back to sleep if at some point the religious holiday called for an early-morning trek to the temple at the top of the mountain overlooking Corinth. Think melting pot on steroids. Think people from both sides AND ENDS of the track meeting weekly if not more frequently for worship and to try to learn about what it means to follow Jesus.

The results were … in some ways predictable. Conflict, certainly. Cliquish behavior, yes. Lack of accountability to one another in the spirit of Christ: yes. Openly immoral behavior: sadly, yes.

What is interesting, though, is that, in spite of everything that is going on, all the sordid detail of it, Paul never stops calling the church in Corinth the body of Christ. They never lose that status. Even with all the infighting, with all the bickering, the shunning, the outright enmity, the presumption remains that the church is still the representation of Christ to the half million people of the city of Corinth.

As Raymond Bryan Brown puts it, “The Corinthians ARE the body of Christ. The church … exists through the work of Christ. The Corinthians do not create the body of Christ but manifest it because they confess Christ in obedient faith by accepting the benefits of his death and resurrection. The church is the body of Christ because it draws its life from him.”

In other words, we are not the body of Christ because of who we say WE are, we become the body of Christ when we are united in proclaiming – AND LIVING – who HE is.

There is a simple obviousness to the fact that there is diversity in this room. We can look around and see differences that are apparent – by the way we dress, by the way we act and speak; differences of origin – from around the country or around the world, in some cases. There are other differences we are aware of because we know each other – differences in education, training, employment. And yet, we gather together and sing the same songs together, read the same scriptures together, pray similar prayers together.

There are people who would look at us from the outside and call us, basically, a white anglo-saxon protestant church. I would hope we would bridle at the name. Not that we AREN’T basically that, but more at the fact that we KNOW OURSELVES to be much more multi-faceted than that. We know ourselves to be … shaded here and there with some pretty distinctive colors. The experiences of our lives that have colored our perception – that have in some cases enriched our existence and in others have tainted it. We find ourselves touched, infused, tinted with a whole rainbow of experiences that makes us much more three-dimensional than a simple name can describe.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

What we come down to in the midst of that understanding, is that differences are there. They are, for better or worse, part of who we are as a family. We have either learned to live with them and love each other anyway or we have moved on. We have found that in that diversity there is strength. There is the strength and encouragement we can find when we have gone through something that we might at first believe ourselves to be alone in, only to discover that there are three other people who’ve gone through the same thing and survived. There is the understanding acceptance recognized when we are so deeply ashamed of what our lives have become and yet we long for a community to embrace us in spite of that, as we try to pull that dissolute life back together, and find ourselves among caring brothers and sisters who do not judge because THEY were not judged – or who perhaps WERE judged, and from THAT experience found the meaning in the biblical injunction against doing just THAT.

As a body, as the hands and feet and mouths of Jesus Christ in Emmerton, Warsaw, Richmond County, the Northern Neck, Virginia, the United States and beyond, we have it in our power to be a haven, to be a refuge, a safe place away from a world that would sooner serve as judge, jury and executioner when faced with the frailties of human existence; a world that would likelier scoff at sincere attempts to right the wrongs, straighten up, de-tox, clear the air, clear the name by someone who has recognized they are not who God created them to be, and are setting out on a journey towards redemption.

The question for us here this morning is, who will we invite along on the journey?

Let’s pray.

Whatever He Tells You

Sunday, January 14th, 2007
Epiphany 2
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 2:1-11

1 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3When the wine gave out, the other of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” 5His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. 9When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom 10and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 11Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

Most of you have heard at least some part of the story of Leslie and Hannah’s trip to Hueyotlipan, Tlaxcala, Mexico at the end of November of last year to help out as well as to participate in the celebration of the 15th birthday of the daughter of one of the men we work with through the associational ministry to the Latino community here on the northern neck. Hueyotlipan is a small town; it sits on a hillside at a bend in the road in a rural part of the state. There are smaller hamlets around it, and further off, some larger towns and cities. Hueyotlipan itself has a population of about 5000 people, and ten percent – 500 of them – were invited to the celebration for Berenice, Mundo and Carmen’s daughter. Quinceañeras, the birthday celebration – it’s more than just a party – are a BIG deal in Mexican culture. This one was already in the planning stages when we first met Mundo back in 2003. Today, we are reading about an event that was even bigger than this Quinceañera. Marriages in first century Palestine were arranged years in advance, so there was plenty of time to work on the guest lists, arrange for the catering, order the flowers, reserve the halls … well, none of that probably factored in to the REAL weddings in Cana, but … you get the picture. They didn’t have television, or movies back then, few people could read, so there were precious few ways to really have a good time. The party that accompanied a marriage ceremony was a BIG deal, and this one was on the point of heading south quickly and catastrophically.

This past Wednesday evening, in our mid-week Bible study, we had as our text the transfiguration of Jesus from the Gospel according to Luke. It is found in the 9th chapter, beginning in verse 28 and continuing through verse 36. We find there a telling of the events that Peter, James and John witnessed on a mountain one night while Jesus was praying. Most of us are familiar with the story to some degree – Jesus is praying, he begins to change – his clothes turn brilliant white, his face shines, and he is suddenly accompanied by two other glorified beings – Moses and Elijah. It is a pivotal moment in the lives and faith of those disciples, in that what they have been slowly becoming aware of over the course of the public ministry of Jesus is made patently, physically clear to them – which is that Jesus is in fact God incarnate – the Son of God – come to the world to redeem us and draw us to God’s self in the ultimate act of self-giving.

The events we’ve read about this morning are somewhat on the other end of his public ministry. The transfiguration is linked to the week of Christ’s passion and death, THIS miracle, the turning of the water into wine at the wedding feast of Cana, is the inaugural sign of Christ’s ministry, following his ‘encounter’ with John the Baptist. I say ‘encounter’ for a reason; an interesting side item; John’s gospel is the only one that entirely omits a DIRECT reference to the actual baptism of Jesus, though it does have all the elements of the other Gospels included in the scene – John and his disciples out in the wilderness, people flocking to him to be baptized, and a meeting with Jesus, just no baptism per se. No dove descending, no voice from heaven declaring ‘this is my son, in whom I am well-pleased’. It presents an interesting question into how the author of the Gospel viewed and wanted to portray Jesus – he DOES have John the Baptist delivering the story himself – HE witnessed the dove descending from heaven, HE explains the reason for baptizing Jesus – “that he might be revealed to Israel” and John the Baptist twice testifies as to who Jesus really is – the son of God, and the Lamb of God (in chapter 1, verses 34 and 35).

There is a theme that is woven into the Gospel narrative of John – a juxtaposition of presentation and rejection – in other words – something happens, a miracle, a healing, a changed heart and life, a sign, a confrontation in which it is made clear (in hindsight) who Christ is and what his purpose is here on earth, followed by a rejection, a turning away of just the people to whom he has come – and it is present even here, at the wedding at Cana.

What’s interesting about the miracle of the water being turned into wine is that there is no big … what’s the theological term for it? … oh, yeah: no big HOO-HAH over the fact that Jesus turns about 180 gallons of plain old well water into the best wine the guests at the banquet had ever tasted. There is a logistical element to this – a lack of publicity, if you will. The mother of Jesus (did you notice she is never named in the story?) mentions that they are out of wine. Jesus turns to her (some would say ‘on her’, and says something that can be taken several different ways on several levels – he calls her ‘woman’, not ‘mother’ or ‘mo-om’ or ‘momma!’, but ‘woman’. It could be read with a cold inflection, or a distanced one, but the fact of the matter is, the word could be used with infinite tenderness, as Jesus himself uses it in chapter 19 verse 26, when he commended John to his mother and his mother to John as he was on his way to the cross. Just as he did then, he is also doing here – he’s redefining a relationship, but this time, it is a more personal one – one that is closer to home for him. He IS talking to his own mother, but in addressing her as ‘woman’, one commentator puts it, he is telling her that “in order to gain him as a savior, she would have to lose him as a son.” (William E. Hull, Commentary on John, Broadman Press, Nasvhille, 1970)

So Jesus rebuffs his mother’s efforts to get him to do something – pretty blatantly turns her down, tells her he doesn’t have anything to do with it.

And then does exactly what was probably in her mind to begin with. It does seem odd. But if you think about it, it’s not a singular event. At the beginning of chapter 7, Jesus’ brothers suggest he go to Jerusalem. He rejects the proposal, but then goes. At the beginning of chapter 11, Mary and Martha the sisters of Lazarus send for Jesus to come before Lazarus dies, and he doesn’t, but then a couple of days later he DOES. What is going on? Is Jesus being wishy-washy?

The correct answer is, of course, no.

Jesus is working on a threefold determination in responding to these situations: first, he is not to be guided SOLELY by human pressures, even when based on genuine need, he has to relate the problem to his understanding of the will of God in a given situation, and deal with the situations and the issues at hand on a MUCH deeper level than those who are IN trouble can imagine. He wasn’t indifferent to even the most common or even misguided requests. He was quick to discover creative ways by which to set those concerns being expressed in a redemptive context – that would, if you will, bring out the lesson of his being there in the first place – of what God is doing and is WILLING to do.

So what deeper purpose would be served in providing wine for a wedding party in Cana, once all the other stuff had been finished off?

There are three words at the beginning of verse 2 that can clue us in to the reason. It says Jesus had also been invited to the wedding, but not by himself – Jesus AND HIS DISCIPLES are there.

This was as much a lesson for them as it was a pleasant surprise for the other wedding guests.

Wine, in the Hebrew tradition, is closely associated with Joy. It was a good gift of God to gladden the heart in Genesis 27:28 and Psalm 104:15. When the land was devastated and the vineyards destroyed in Hosea 14, Jeremiah 31, and Zechariah 10, the joy that wine brings became a future hope. In the new age spoken of in Isaiah 25, the Lord was expected to make a feast of wine on his holy mountain.

This is why Jesus compares the Kingdom of God to a banquet or a wedding feast in Matthew chapters 8, 22, 25 and 26, or refers to his followers as friends of the bridegroom in Mark 2:19 or just a little bit later, in John 3:29. To the consternation of the religious establishment, he openly celebrated the joy of God’s salvation with tax collectors and sinners in Matthew 11. At Cana, the disciples saw that when Christ intervenes, humanity is surprised by Joy.

Closely connected to this joy, in fact, linked to the image is the idea of abundant joy. The prophet Joel wrote repeatedly about wine being sent as a divine gift, one which would be present in large quantities, to the degree that the mountains themselves would drip sweet wine (2:19, 2:24, 3:8, respectively).

But it is also true that wine was not only associated with abundant joy, but with sorrow and suffering as well. Its color suggests blood; in its production, grapes are crushed in a winepress, and according to Psalm 60:3 and 75:8, drinking the dregs of the wine of suffering was a form of divine punishment. Jeremiah combines this image with the kindred concept of the cup, so we end up in Jeremiah 25:15 with the phrase ‘cup of the wine of wrath.’

Even here, at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus is signaling what the other end of his ministry would entail; his suffering and ultimately his death.

The joy that was experienced at Cana was short-lived. It was the anticipation – a brief glimpse into the enduring joy which we will know only when we ‘drink new in the kingdom of God’ (Mark 14:25).

Mary told the servants to do whatever Jesus told them to do. She didn’t put words in his mouth, she didn’t presume to. She simply trusted that he would fulfill his purpose. And the servants responded as she asked them to. They did exactly what Jesus told them to do. Senseless as it may have seemed, there was no hocus-pocus wand waving performed over the jars. Jesus simply told them to fill them up with water, and then told one of them to take a ladle and draw from one of them and take it to the steward, who drank of it and tasted the riches of the kingdom without even realizing it.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

The wedding guests didn’t realize what they were in for when they showed up for the celebration. Do we? And are we willing to do what Jesus asks us to do, no matter how unusual it might seem? Are we willing to do the unexpected for the celebration to really kick into gear?

(Communion)

Let’s pray.

Fellow Heirs

Sunday, January 7th, 2007
Epiphany
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Ephesians 3:1-12

1 This is the reason that I Paul am a prisoner for Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles— 2for surely you have already heard of the commission of God’s grace that was given me for you, 3and how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I wrote above in a few words, 4a reading of which will enable you to perceive my understanding of the mystery of Christ. 5In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: 6that is, the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 7Of this gospel I have become a servant according to the gift of God’s grace that was given me by the working of his power. 8Although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ, 9and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; 10so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. 11This was in accordance with the eternal purpose that he has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12in whom we have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in him.

If you would, please, everyone, close your eyes. This is not for prayer as such, though it might turn into a prayer, depending on where we end up. What I’d like us to do, as we sit in our seats, is to let our minds wander through the faces and names of people we’ve seen in town, or at Wal-Mart, or on a trip, especially on a trip, or on television, in news reports or on one program or another – keep it to actual, real-life people … and narrow it down to the one person or couple of people whom you would least expect to run into HERE, at church. Do you have them picked out?

Okay, Now, I want you to take them out of the context in which you saw them, wherever and whenever it was, and keep them just as you saw them – whatever they were wearing, however their hair was, and pick them up, spin them around a little, and land them sitting in the pew next to you.

Don’t open your eyes yet. Keep them closed. Imagine first, YOUR response to THEIR sitting beside you. You are both simply sitting next to each other. No words have been spoken, no greeting has been exchanged, no “good morning” has been offered, no hand extended, no comment about the weather, yet. You are frozen in a moment in time. You have all the time in the world to study it.

Oh, no, sorry. You have a week, or a month, maybe a little longer, maybe a little less. Maybe it’s happening to you right now.

Okay, you can open your eyes now. What questions were going through your mind? Let’s set aside for the moment the ones that have to do with HOW they ended up next to you, and walk through some of OUR feelings and responses and thoughts about their being here. Remember, up to this point you are only SITTING next to each other. Nothing else has happened.

Were they sitting in someone’s regular spot? How were they dressed? Did they seem uncomfortable? Were they sitting quietly or were they acting otherwise? Were you surprised to see them? I guess that might be an unnecessary question, since I asked you to imagine the person you would LEAST expect to run into here. But still, what was your reaction? Did their simple presence make you uncomfortable? Did you find yourself worrying about how they would respond to the service, if they would know when to stand, when to sit, when to read out loud, when to bow silently and wait?

Okay. Hold that image and those emotions in your minds for a few minutes, and let’s turn to the passage for this morning. Paul is calling the gentile members of the church in Ephesus ‘Fellow Heirs’. If you didn’t catch it, he’s talking to them as very much a Jewish follower of Christ. From the point of view of someone who comes from the “Chosen People of God – The People of Israel, Descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, A Member of One of the Twelve Tribes”. All those words are capitalized, by the way. There is no doubt in Paul’s mind that his lineage was entrusted with the mystery he’s referring to – the secret to what it takes to be in relationship with God the Creator of the Universe – ‘access to God’, he calls it – or that they still hold a unique and privileged place in humanity’s relationship to the Creator, but now he is going and calling these gentiles, these outsiders, ‘Fellow Heirs.’

Are we all clear on what an heir is? By definition, an heir is the legal inheritor of something – somebody who receives or who has by law the right to receive the property, position, or title of another, usually (on a human level) when that first person dies.

Here’s the property, position, or title the People of Israel held in relation to God: Children; Sons and Daughters. And Paul is calling Non-Israelites ‘Fellow Heirs’. He’s calling them brothers and sisters.

Over the centuries, the direction in which the people of Israel had moved in their relationship to God, called worship, was to a practice of exclusivity. That is, of keeping people OUT by way of a set of legal requirements that HAD to be met in order for someone to be considered worthy to approach the temple and the Holy of Holies, the dwelling place of the Most High God.

It was a position of privilege, you see. The world population at the time was somewhere around a little more than HALF of what the population of the United States is today – about 170 Million people – WORLDWIDE. Though there is no consensus among historians as to the population of first century Palestine, estimates range anywhere from 1 to 6 million people, and not all the inhabitants of Palestine were practicing Jews. Let’s say that half of the population was, so 3 million people practicing temple worship according to the laws of the Hebrew Scriptures. If I entered the numbers in my calculator right, that translates into roughly just over one and three quarters percent of the entire world population having “access to God” – quite an exclusive club by any standard. If we went with the lower number – that is, a total Palestinian population of 1 million, and still assume that half the population was not practicing the Hebrew faith, that percentage changes to just over one half of one percent being on the inside when it comes to being able to communicate with God.

Do you get the picture? To quote a modern-day advertising campaign that you might have seen in a magazine along the way: ‘Membership has its privileges’. And Paul is giving those privileges away to EVERYONE. Or rather, Paul is saying that CHRIST is giving that privilege away to everyone – whoever will call on him as Lord and Savior – they become ‘members of the same body, sharers in the promise’ – they take their seats right next to the folks who’ve been “guarding and protecting” that body, that promise, for all those centuries … how do you think THEY felt? Our exercise in imagination this morning was designed to try to make us understand the response.

The New Testament is full of how they felt about it. We were studying Luke on Wednesday evenings before Advent, and as we get back to it, remember what Luke was trying to speak against as one of the principal focuses in the Gospel? The Judaizers – those who were trying to make the new followers of Christ practitioners of the Hebrew religion BEFORE they could be called and accepted as followers of Christ.

The letters of Paul to most of the churches he started deal with the same problem almost universally. It was the deepest schism in the early church, and the one that was the most troublesome to it. Those who WERE on the inside trying to figure out the newcomers who don’t know how things are “done.”

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Okay, back to the folks sitting next to you in the pew. Not the ones who are actually there, but the ones whom we were imagining a few minutes ago: but this time, with a change.

Now, they are standing next to you and, somewhat hesitantly at first, and off-key, and stumbling a little bit here and there, they are singing the hymns or choruses along with you.

Now they are participating in the Responsive Reading with you.

Now, they are bowing their heads in prayer next to you.

Now, they are reciting the Lord’s Prayer with you.

Now, they are listening to the choir, and to the preaching, and to the invitation hymn with you.

Now, they are greeting you at the end of the service, with a big smile, and a hug, and thanking you for inviting them.

Because you see, that’s really the only way they will probably come. People almost NEVER just pull into a church parking lot on Sunday Morning and walk through the door out of the blue. It happens, but it is so unusual and unlikely that the probability of Jerusalem seeing someone come through the door in that manner is almost zero.

It is through relationships developed OUTSIDE this building that people will most likely end up INSIDE this building – and more importantly, inside this FAMILY. And in this case, I’m using the word ‘relationship’ in it’s loosest sense – it might be someone you see only on Saturdays at Food Lion, maybe the cashier, or the stocker, it may be the attendant at the gas station where you fill up once a week, or the person you rent your movies from, or the person who drops off your newspaper, or the mail. These don’t have to be lifelong friendships that you are calling on to come to join you in worship. The fact that you are acknowledging someone’s PRESENCE, in speaking kindly to them, calling them by name, greeting them and thanking them for what they’ve helped you with – that simple act initiates a relationship – however tenuous it might be – on which you can begin to build. And if the building of that relationship moves from where they work or where you run into them to a place where you come together to worship God, there is no telling where and to what depths God will take that brotherhood or sisterhood, that fellow-heirness … if I can make that term up and understood.

Will we dare to open our hearts and arms to those people who just a short while ago we couldn’t even imagine we’d ever be seeing inside this building?

The invitation this morning is for us ALL to extend this invitation on behalf of Christ just as he first extended it to us – to anyone and everyone who would, to become fellow heirs of the incredible riches we have IN Christ.

Let’s pray.

Dwelling Richly

Sunday, December 31st, 2006
First of Christmas
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Colossians 3:12-17

12 As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 13Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. 16Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. 17And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Dear, Beloved, Sweetie, Sugarplum.

Have you ever stopped to think how the way someone is addressed sets the tone for the whole conversation? If you were to receive a letter, and the opening word was one of those (Dear, Beloved, Sweetie, Sugarplum), you would usually more or less know what to expect in the body of the letter. It is, I think, what we find more often than not comforting when we open scripture. While there are significant passages that get … shall we say … a little hard-nosed, if you take the general tone of scripture, especially the New Testament, you find that it is in many ways a love story. And it is the story of the love of God for humankind.

In his letter to the church at Colossae, Paul does set the tone by his greeting;

“To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae”

If you are familiar with the New Testament, it may slip right past you as an example of a pretty much standard greeting at the beginning of the epistle.

Imagine, though, what it would mean to you to be a person who just recently heard the story of Jesus, and only in the last few weeks decided to become a follower of Christ.

You have no point of reference for what it means to BE a ‘good Christian’, you struggle to figure out how following Jesus is going to affect how you live your daily life, you get together with a small group of fellow believers who are in the same situation you are in … there are four or five people in the group who have been Christ-followers longer than pretty much everyone else. The one person who first brought the news of Jesus to the city, who helped start the group, moved on to another city three months ago, and left that first small group of converts to lead the rest of you. There’s a definite tie-in with the local Jewish Synagogue, but you are no more familiar with THEM and THEIR scriptures and rituals than you are with the local temple to Aphrodite. You’ve just never really gotten into “religion” – ANY of them.

That was what attracted you to this Jesus in the first place, he wasn’t about “standards and practices” – what words to say when, what incense to burn on what day, what prayer to recite at which hour, but about actually being in a RELATIONSHIP with God – the picture you got when you first heard the story was of what you never had – a loving, caring, giving father. And you wanted to be with him and be like him and be IN him all at the same time.

*****

Something was going on with the church at Colossae, on that much scholars agree, and somewhat as well on the nature of what it was – there were what seemed to be practitioners of a type of Jewish mystic tradition that fell back on ritual and merged it with some of the early ideas that said that in order to be a TRUE follower of Jesus you had to UNDERSTAND certain things in a CERTAIN WAY – it later developed into Gnosticism, we’ve mentioned it before, but in short it was a type of faith that was at it’s core EX-clusionary rather than IN-clusionary. It defined itself by who was part of the ‘in’ crowd, rather than opening its doors to the whole of humanity, as Jesus did in extending his arms on the Cross at Calvary.

The short of it is, there were folks who had moved into the group – the church – at Colossae, and were proclaiming that ‘special’ brand of knowledge that was required to be true followers, and people were becoming confused, some were dropping back or dropping out, some were swallowing the new stuff hook, line and sinker.

The fact of the matter is it is not only the ‘Newbies’ who are susceptible to misunderstandings, to confusion about what it means to be a Christ-follower. How many times have we heard someone share in their testimony that it wasn’t until they were an adult – after a lifetime of going to church – that something clicked – something got through – to make them realize just how important that RELATIONSHIP was, rather than the practice of going to church on Sundays, Wednesdays, and the occasional Tuesday or Thursday, like a good committee member or even a deacon? Can we each think of people whom we’ve known who simply attended church out of habit, because it was the acceptable thing to do, not because there was a true desire to or even an interest in seeking a deeper relationship with God in Christ?

In missions terminology, we speak of ‘Cultural Christianity’ – that is, bearing the name ‘Christian’ because the Christian church – whatever the local predominant denomination might be – has been so identified with BEING from a region, or country, or state, or area, that to be called a Christian has become identified more with one’s nationality or heritage, and is NOT a way of describing one’s faith pilgrimage. Most often I grew up hearing it in relation to the countries identified with the Roman Catholic tradition in Latin America, and I witnessed the hollowness of Cultural Christianity on at least a weekly basis, if not a daily basis.

I think I’ve shared with you the struggle involved in growing up as the son of missionaries in Chile, and having to come back to the States periodically – ultimately for good – once I graduated from High School – what made coming back to the States so difficult for me, first as a teenager, and then for college, was that I found Cultural Christianity to be AS present within our own Baptist tradition as anywhere else, and coming from a lifetime of being literally supported – affirmed, cared for, taken care of – by an agency of the Southern Baptist Convention, it was at best eye-opening, at worst completely disillusioning – to the point of turning me off to the whole idea of church – to see evidence of Christianity being NOT about faith, but about social standing or expectations.

I’ve come to the point in my own personal pilgrimage where I am able to understand and to a point affirm the need to recognize secular holidays and days of remembrance within the context of worship. That’s not to say that I am comfortable with it, but I understand that as a church we are called to bear witness to truth and righteousness in whatever context they appear, and that, I consider to be part of why we follow the civic calendar of the United States of America. If we were a congregation in another country of the world, we would to some degree probably celebrate and/or acknowledge, for example, our independence day, if there were such a date, or the date of the official organization of the nation of which we were citizens.

But what are we – Jerusalem Baptist Church, in Emmerton Virginia – really and truly ‘about’? What is it that is at the core of our being? What has kept us here for one hundred and seventy-five years? What has kept us GOING for this long?

Very simply, it has been the Spirit of the living God.

Do we look today as we looked one hundred and seventy-five years ago? Not at all. As we sing in worship, do we SOUND today as we did a hundred and seventy-five years ago? Probably not at all. We will have opportunities to sing again some of those long-forgotten hymns in the coming months. Do we ACT today as we did a hundred and seventy-five years ago? I would suspect that, though in the way we TREAT each other it is not that different, the way we interact, the way we speak to each other, would sound about as foreign to Elder Braxton as if he had hopped on a ship and traveled across the big pond to a far distant land.

So what has been the uniting thread through the years?

It has, I TRUST, been the love of Christ, being shared, being spilled over, being made EVIDENT in our actions, words, and manner.

There is another Missions term I’d like to share with you this morning. The word is ‘unchurched.’ It is a term used to describe someone who has had little or no exposure to matters of faith in the context of a local body of believers – someone who may have been taken to church as a young child but who probably cannot remember the last time they were inside a church building for anything other than a funeral or a wedding.

Did you know that, for all of the richness of the history that has been accumulated for what was first Royal Oaks and later became Jerusalem Baptist Church, even having been here for one hundred and seventy-five years, we are surrounded by people who can’t remember the last time they were in church? There are people within 10 miles of this building who know they are surrounded by probably a dozen churches but are really not interested in stepping into any of them. Some of them don’t bother coming up with a reason. Others have very good reasons for not wanting to step inside. It usually involves someone who DOES step inside one of these buildings on a regular basis, but you wouldn’t know it from the way they live their lives the rest of the week, perhaps even for the rest of the afternoon.

Paul is telling us, showing us how it works. How we are to treat each OTHER, and everyone else. There HAS to be something here that will draw people back, if we’ve been that faithful witness for seventeen and a half decades, there’s no reason we can’t be an even STRONGER witness to the love of Christ in the NEXT seventeen and a half decades.

(Reread passage in its entirety)

Look around at each other. There are people here that you know and love. There are people here you’ve gotten to know over the years, or months, in some cases. But the key word is ‘know’.

How many people are here that you’ve known only a short while? Do they outnumber the ones you’ve known for at least a decade or more?

Dearly beloved of Christ, brothers and sisters; if we come to church to only be with people we know, if we only make worship something familiar to US, something WE are comfortable with, that speaks to US because we’ve been around it all our lives, there will be very little that will be attractive or UNDERSTANDABLE to someone who has never been in a worship service or who has had a terrible experience with a supposed Christ-follower.

It’s not a popularity contest. It’s not about pandering to the masses. It’s about being genuine. It’s about being real, being honest, being open, and being vulnerable in the presence of God with each other. That’s an uncomfortable position to be in for ANYONE. Unless that vulnerability takes place in an atmosphere of acceptance and trust that precludes – that LITERALLY ELIMINATES the possibility of that trust being violated or betrayed.

Life is hard. Hard enough. There HAS to be a place where we can come and know that we are safe. Whatever they’re dealing with, whatever happened last night, whatever happened last week, whatever we’re facing this afternoon or this evening or tomorrow. This is what Paul meant when he said ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly’ – if we make Jerusalem such a place, if we can make our discomfort secondary to the needs of those who’ve never experienced an extended, loving caring, committed family, we will look even LESS like the Royal Oaks family of the 1830’s, but we will still be recognizable as the most important thing we are – the body of Christ.

My invitation to you as 2006 comes to an end is to think about the people you know. Think of the ones who might not be involved in a church in the area. If they ARE, affirm them, encourage them to continue to be involved there. But if someone you know does NOT go anywhere, invite them to come to Jerusalem. The CHALLENGE for us all is to make this a place to which they will want to RETURN.

Let’s pray.

On Love

Sunday, December 24th, 2006
Advent 4C
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Romans 8:38, 39

38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

How often have we actually stopped and thought about exactly what it was that took place – on an eternal scale – one night in a tiny hamlet in the Judean countryside somewhere around two thousand years ago?

On the face of it, it was a non-event. A young, anonymous woman had a baby boy accompanied by her fiancée – a man who was not yet her husband, who had initially planned on releasing her from their engagement quietly when he found out she was expecting, but who, somewhat mysteriously, changed his mind a short while later.

It might have been only slightly unusual that the delivery took place in a stable, but realistically speaking, the conditions in general – even for a well-prepared-for birth, were probably only marginally better, in terms of hygiene and exposure of the newborn to potentially fatal diseases and parasites.

The most notable aspect of the event was that it took place in the middle of a census. There’s a pretty good chance that, with all the other people who had been forced to report to their hometown in order to be counted, this may not have been the only birth that night.

What was one more baby boy?

It is, as we have said over these last few weeks of advent, one of the most important stories of our faith – this coming of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, this search for a room in a town overflowing with people. The image of the young couple, resting on the hay, with Jesus lying in a manger, surrounded by a bunch of farm animals is indelibly imprinted on our mind’s eyes. Then we have the shepherds, out in the fields, watching their flocks.

One of the true blessings of living away from large metropolitan areas is the night sky. Several nights this week have afforded us the opportunity to catch a glimpse of what the night sky might have looked like to the shepherds that night. There was no ‘light noise’ drowning out the glitter and glimmer and twinkling of the thousands and millions of stars in the sky that night. I read an apt phrase earlier this week, where the Milky Way was described as a dusting of stars across the sky. If you look at it … well, you can tell why it was called the milky way, because it DOES resemble a river of milk across the sky – but in the absence of drops falling on our faces, a drier analogy might be appropriate – to see a trail of dust across the sky – to not be able to distinguish anything more than the fact that there are literally millions of points of light that seem more like dust than enormous balls of burning gas billions of miles away … I find it PERFECTLY understandable to picture the shepherds laying on their backs on the hillside above Bethlehem, gazing at those same stars in wonder AND wondering about how the universe came together.

The 136th Psalm says it well. Just a part:

1O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,*
2O give thanks to the God of gods,*
3O give thanks to the Lord of lords,*;
4who alone does great wonders,*;
5who by understanding made the heavens,*;
6who spread out the earth on the waters,*;
7who made the great lights,*;
8the sun to rule over the day,*;
9the moon and stars to rule over the night,*;

Those were just a part of the first nine verses. What is beautiful about the 136th Psalm is that it is a hymn. There is a recurring refrain after each of the phrases I just read. You might recognize the first line of the Psalm as the beginning of one of the choruses we sing sometimes in our non-traditional services. The refrain is:

For his steadfast love endures forever.

The song is “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love endures forever” … what does it say that in this Psalm, the recurring theme – the recurring refrain—what the song always comes back to – is God’s steadfast love? Think of it, everything that God has done – from creation through redemption, through salvation, has been motivated by God’s love.

The other notable event that night was one that the shepherds got to tell about. There were angels and a heavenly chorus and a wall of sound that Phil Specter could only DREAM about when THIS choir belted out

“Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

The problem was shepherds weren’t exactly considered to be pillars of the community in first century Palestine.

It’s interesting that some pretty important characters in the Bible were shepherds: Abraham, Moses, David.

And here we have more shepherds. The Christmas story talks about shepherds "abiding" in the fields. That means they lived there. They didn't lie around in fields all day and then go home and get cleaned up for bed. They lived outdoors, day and night, with the sheep. And they were required to protect that sheep at all costs...even at the cost of their own lives. The shepherd was expected to confront any wild animal that tried to attack a sheep and fight it off. If a bear or a wolf, or a mountain lion of some kind, got away with a sheep, the shepherd was expected to chase after the animal and try to rescue the sheep. Hmmm … I’m beginning to like the image of the shepherd more and more. And it’s beginning to shed new light on the reason we call Jesus “The Good Shepherd.”

All that, and Shepherds were not allowed to serve as witnesses in a trial. Shepherds and women. Their word was no good. They were at the bottom of the social register, more accurately, they weren’t even ON the social register. And yet, they are precisely whom God chose to be the ones to bring the first news of God’s coming to earth.

You see, even in the coming, in the incarnation, in God’s initial coming to earth to live among us, the Gospel message was already not JUST the words, but the FORM in which it was delivered. God was already showing us that God’s kingdom is not of this world. It would not and does not and WILL not conform to the expectations and rules and presuppositions on which this world builds itself up.

In this world, the more powerful the person, the more it is incumbent on the one who seeks THAT person to do what THEY must in order to gain an audience. In God’s upside-down kingdom, where the first shall be last, and the last shall be first, GOD came to US, WE didn’t go to GOD.

In this world, the more powerful you are, the more beautiful people gather around you.

In God’s world, the lowliest of the low, the weakest, the most marginalized, despised, rejected, unrecognized people are the ones God SPECIFICALLY calls to God’s self.

In our world, it is what we can do for the one in power. In God’s world, it is what God did for US.

In this world, WE are to show OUR love for God first. In God’s world, God showed GOD’S love for US first.

So what Paul wrote to the church in Rome was as true then as it was nearly 60 years earlier. The Shepherd’s message that God had decided, in love, to come to earth and dwell among us, and that there was nothing that was going to get in the way of that, was still true.

The marital status of Mary and Joseph was not going to get in the way. The lack of adequate shelter was not going to get in the way.

The fact that most of the people of Bethlehem, from the innkeepers who turned them away to the regular, run-of-the-mill people who weren’t even aware of what was happening didn’t get in the way.

The fact that later, Herod ordered all boys under the age of two to be killed didn’t get in the way.

Nothing was going to separate us from the love of God, come to earth in the form of that little baby boy named Jesus.

Nothing.

Let’s pray.

On Peace

Sunday, December 10th, 2006
Advent 2C
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Isaiah 9:2, 6; Micah 4:3; Matthew 5:9

Is. 9:2The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined. 6For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Micah 4:3He shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more;

Matthew 5:9“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

In her children’s book “In God’s Name”, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso relates an enchanting story of how we came up with all the names we use for God. The names are born out of our own experiences. For example, “to the lonely child, God is ‘friend’, to the man who tends sheep in the valley, God is ‘Shepherd’, to the artist who carved figures from the earth’s hard stone, God is ‘my rock’, to the farmer whose skin is dark like the rich brown earth from which all things grow, God is ‘source of life’, and to the tired soldier who fought too many wars, God is ‘maker of peace.’” (Jewish Light Publishing, Woodstock, VT, 1994)

It has weighed heavy these last 5 years, to approach this Sunday of each Advent Season, and try to come to terms with the fact that, like it or not, we are a nation at war. Even as we sit here today, there are young men and women donning combat gear and checking their weapons and preparing to move out and patrol an area, or a town, or a neighborhood, and the chance that one or two or three or more of them will not return alive is all too real.

This past Wednesday evening, we attempted to do a brief survey of how many times the word ‘peace’ or some variation thereof appears in the Bible. My NIV concordance listed 102 instances, from Leviticus through the Revelation to John, in other words, even more than last week’s concordance on Hope, with something over 80 instances.

It may seem like just a mathematical exercise, to find out how many times a word or a variation of a word appears in scripture, and it may well be, but it bears noting. It is worth considering what the meaning might be behind the fact that there ARE 102 places in scripture where the word ‘peace’ is used … and in what context.

How often is the word used in the context of speaking of the human-divine relationship – between us and God – and whether or not THAT brings peace? How often is it used in the context of relationships between us as humans, as nations, as tribes?

In the discussion Wednesday, we referenced one particular passage: Matthew 10:32-38, in which Christ himself seems to reject his ‘prince of peace’ title from the Isaiah passage we read a few minutes ago: the context is Christ’s sending out the disciples on their first ‘practice run’ for taking the Gospel message to the rest of the world—he is describing what they are to expect, how they are to act, what they are to take with them – actually more like the fact that they are supposed to take NOTHING with them – and as he comes towards the end of the ‘commissioning service’, more or less, he turns to the issue of who will accept the good news and who will reject it, and he speaks these TERRIFYNG words –

32“Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; 33but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven. 34“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 36and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. 37Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10)

That passage has always bothered me. As a younger man, it seemed to be that Jesus was saying that, in order to TRULY be a follower of Christ, you had to be in opposition to your parents, or your family. On some level, there had to be something that made you uncomfortable to be in the company of others.

What I initially mistook for a call to brace for conflict has become for me a call to radical, ultimate allegiance. It is a call to prioritize exactly what we consider to be the most important thing in our life – and to be true to that.

You remember how Jesus responded to the question about paying tribute to Caesar? ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.’

There’s continuity between the two ideas there. What Christ is telling his disciples is to know what and WHO they believe, because there will be a time in each of our lives where our ultimate allegiance will be tested.

The image from Isaiah resonates with all we read in the New Testament about Christ being the light of the world. In that light we find our reconciliation with God – the ultimate answer at the core of the world’s problems. Billy Graham puts it this way: "Our basic problem is not a race problem. Our basic problem is not a poverty problem. Our basic problem is not a war problem. Our basic problem is a heart problem. We need to get the heart changed, the heart transformed."

While I completely agree with Dr. Graham in the assessment of the basic world problem, understanding that the heart of every human being needs to be transformed in order for there to BE peace in the world, however overwhelming and inconceivably vast that responsibility seems, we cannot neglect the fact that we are also called, as we find in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, to be peacemakers. That is one of our many challenges as Christ followers.

We are called to engage the world and address the world’s needs, to fill the emptiness that sucks the joy out of life by introducing TRUE life to people in the person of Jesus. We are to do everything in our power and in our abilities to work out our differences in a manner that would honor the Prince of Peace. And that working out of differences MUST begin within our own communities, our own congregations.

The outgrowth of NOT having peace with God is sin, and sin manifests itself through selfishness, cruelty, compassionlessness, indifference, uncaring, ruthlessness ... there are many other words we can fill in here, but you get the picture.

On a personal level, I think we’ve all seen what that can look like. In our darkest moments, we fit the descriptives pretty well.

On a corporate, societal level, we have also seen what that can look like – ethnic hatred and fighting, societies crumbling under sectarian violence, the subjugation of the weak and powerless by an entrenched power-hungry minority that is not responsive to the needs of the population as a whole. Those phrases can all be summed up in a single word: injustice.

We’ve seen it in the Balkans in the early and mid 90’s, we’ve seen it in South Africa under the Apartheid regime, we saw it in Rwanda and Burundi, also in the mid-90’s, in the genocide between the Hutu and the Tutsi tribes of those central African countries. We hear of it in the massacres that are happening even today in Sudan, in the region of Darfur, in East Africa. That injustice is not limited to the rest of the world. Here in the United States we’ve been guilty of institutionalizing injustice as well, in the form of Jim Crow laws here in the south, thankfully they have been removed from the books, but the quest for equality between the races continues, even today. We still see and hear of crimes motivated by hatred of people who are different almost every day.

The Micah passage is the goal – the image that we long to attain, that golden day when all of humanity will realize that there is no more need for war. Won’t that be a day to remember? Wouldn’t it be amazing if it came in our lifetime?

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means that it really DOES need to start in each of our hearts, but it can’t stop there. We need to be at peace with God individually before we move on to the rest of the world. And “the rest of the world” starts pretty quickly. It begins with an honest assessment of how many relationships there are in each of our lives in which we have done violence to someone else – whether by word or deed, or separation; whether through the act of speaking words in anger and not coming to a reconciliation once the argument was over, or whether by refusing to forgive or ask forgiveness from a brother or a sister when we come to realize that we were wrong or that the relationship is more important than any disagreement we might have between us.

It’s no less of a challenge to be peacemakers within these walls as it is to be one outside of these walls, but again, there is no room to neglect pursuing peace in either setting.

Our prayer, our goal, our hope to work towards is that Micah image, to beat our swords of bitterness into plowshares of gentleness, that will cultivate the loving relationships through which this body of believers will grow, to turn our spears of gossip and discontent into pruning hooks that will trim off the excess baggage that holds us back, that weighs and drags us down, keeping us from reaching and becoming more and more like Christ to each other, and then to the rest of the world.

Let’s pray.

On Hope

Sunday, December 3rd, 2006
Advent 1C
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Romans 8:18-25

18I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

We begin the new church year with the first Sunday of Advent – today. We’ve just lit the candle of Hope. Next Sunday we’ll light the candle of Peace, then of Joy, then Love, and finally, the Christ candle.

Today we also mark the beginning of the Lottie Moon Week of Prayer for International Missions – with its accompanying offering goal of $150 million dollars from across the Southern Baptist Convention – or World Missions, if we are to include missions programs other than those carried out by the Southern Baptist Convention, such as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Samaritan’s Purse, Heifer International, or the Baptist General Association of Virginia. The fact that we choose to focus for the next few days on the missions program of one agency among many does not place it above the others, it just makes us aware, in a more specific way, of how we can be a part of … the global reach of the gospel.

Paul lived the global reach of the gospel as he traveled throughout Asia Minor and as he wrote to the church in Rome the words we read a few minutes ago.
Wednesday we handed out a list of scriptures verses that contain the word ‘Hope’ or ‘Hopes’, to read and meditate over the last few days, in anticipation of today’s lighting of the candle of Hope [1]. It is a list that spans almost the full length of the Bible, from the book of Job in the Hebrew Scriptures to the first letter of John in the New Testament.

We won’t go through the complete list, but we do choose to focus on the passage in Romans where Paul speaks of the Hope we have in Christ.

We would need to, at some point, ask ourselves what business we have in spending our resources of time and money and energy – which ARE, after all, limited – in facilitating the travel of individuals to people and countries around the world, which in many cases would just as soon not have us around. We’ve been made aware of that fact in the last few years by reports of missionaries being killed while on the field.

Lottie Moon, as we have heard in the past, spent herself – literally – in service to and on mission for the people of China. Rather than care for her own needs, her sense of calling to serve the Chinese people was so strong that she literally starved while she gave away rations to her starving neighbors in Tengchow, Shantung Province, in Northern China when a famine struck. She had advocated an offering to be collected during the week before Christmas among Baptist Churches to support mission work around the world based primarily on her own experience of hardship and struggles to remain and survive where God had called her to go. She passed away on Christmas Eve, 1912, aboard a ship that was docked in Kobe, Japan, in the process of bringing her back to the States for medical treatment.

We have to ask ourselves what it is that would motivate people to give their lives like that, to throw themselves so completely into something that it could ultimately cost them their lives.

It has to do with how one views his or her life to begin with, doesn’t it? If your understanding is that life – this terrestrial life – these seventy or eighty or more years or so that we spend here on earth are all that there IS, there is very little that would move you to the point of pouring yourself out for someone else.

If, however, your view is that this life is NOT all there is, that there is more TO life than just making yourself comfortable while you are here, then it becomes a lot easier to move away from that comfort, that ease, that looking out for number one and to come to a point of realizing that it is, in a very real way, a sense of hope in what lies … beneath, beyond, above, whatever directional word you want to use to describe it … what we can hear and see and taste and feel that truly brings meaning to life.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that life is worthless – it is TOTALLY worth it. It is precisely BECAUSE life is so precious that we go. We are promised full life; Jesus calls it ABUNDANT life – when we live for him. And that is what WE become participants in when we send – prayers, money, and people – even from within our own family, or even ourselves – to share with the world this hope that we find in living for Christ.

What we are charged with is to share the message of Christ – of Hope … Paul says,

‘24For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.’

He was speaking not only to the people in the church at Rome, but he was speaking to us here today. Our hope is based on something we cannot see. And so we wait for it with patience. As we move through the Advent Season this year, let me invite you to think about what your deepest hope is, and realize that in the midst of that hope, however forlorn it may feel, know that Christ IS coming.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

This evening we will hear from Rob Brown, a young man who served in India during the first half of this year through a program initiated by the Baptist General Association of Virginia. I would encourage you to come and hear what he has to say, not necessarily because it was through Virginia Baptists that he was able to go, that is more or less understood, in being a part of an association of over 1400 congregations that in turn make up a portion of the body of Christ on earth, but more for that last part – that ‘being a portion of the body of Christ on earth’ bit.

As a small rural congregation, and an active, involved, and motivated one, it is sometimes I think easy for us to get so caught up in the immediate needs of those in our immediate vicinity that we deeply care about, but we risk losing sight of our global impact.

Our challenge this morning is to lift our eyes ‘beyond the hills’, as it were, to get the God’s eye view of what God is doing in the WORLD, not JUST in Emmerton, Richmond County, and the Northern Neck.

And to get a feel for what’s going on beyond what we can see. I would invite us to think about those hopes that we have. I’ll share one hope with you that I have. My hope for this coming year is that we can put together a missions team, maybe four or five of us, maybe more, maybe less, and DO something – go somewhere. Maybe go to help in the continuing cleanup work down in the Gulf States, after Katrina, in Mississippi or Louisiana, maybe do something overseas. We’re going to hear about opportunities of service through the BGAV, there are programs available to us, there are partnerships we can engage in, that we can invest ourselves in, and get a clearer picture – a God’s eye view of what God is doing in the world.

When I worked for Bell Atlantic, we had these meetings, and there was a part at the beginning of the meeting that was an open forum – you would “board” ideas – it was a time where anyone could mention anything and it got written down. I’d like to do that with you all, but I’d like to board our hopes. Would anyone like to voice a hope?

(I hope that our congregation will grow in this coming year) Amen. That is my hope too.

Anyone else?

Another hope that I have is that as we begin to celebrate in January and through August if not beyond, will be an affirmation of what it means to have born witness for 175 years, and that that celebration will slingshot for us to move FORWARD – into the future.

Any others?

I know it was short notice, and that’s okay. If you come up with them, we may go back over them this evening. Be thinking…

(I hope that Mommy and Hannah get back safely) Yes, Caleb, I do too.

(That everyone stays healthy) yes, that’s a good one.

Our hopes don’t have to be high and noble, those are good, and welcomed, but they can be simpler hopes - like hopes for health, hopes for safety, hopes for mending relationships, for strengthening relationships, for continued care of each other.

(I hope my son and his wife will have a beautiful baby) Margie hopes that her son and his wife will have a beautiful baby. Remind me, are they expecting? Yes? Yay! When? 5th of July? Wow! It’s early! Let’s keep Patrick and Jaqueline in our prayers.

Any others? Our hopes are sometimes not voiced, but they are there. We are a people of hope. It is what feeds our flame. It is what separates us, it is what differentiates us, it is what moves us and makes us want to be more.

Our invitation/closing hymn is number 390, ‘We Are Called To Be God’s People’. As we sing this, as we read the lyrics, as we internalize the thoughts and the ideas that are in this hymn, be thinking about how we can BE God’s people, tonight, and tomorrow, and the next day. Let’s stand and sing.

As we move from this form of worship into the worship that is our daily living, LISTEN to this benediction:

And now, may the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May God give you grace never to sell yourself short, grace to risk something big for something good, grace to remember that the world is now too dangerous for anything but truth, and too small for anything but love. So may God take your minds and think through them, may God take your lips and speak through them, may God take your hearts, set them on fire, and through YOU give the world HOPE.

Amen.


[1] (Job 13:5, Psalm 25:3, Psalm 33:18, Psalm 42:5, Psalm 62:5, Psalm 130:7, Psalm 146:5, Psalm 147:11, Isaiah 40:31, Jeremiah 29:11, Lamentations 3:21, Romans 5:4, Romans 8:20, Romans 8:24, Romans 8:25, Romans 12:12, Romans 15:4, Romans 15:13, 1Corinthians 13:7, 1 Corinthians 13:13, 1 Corinthians 15:13, Colossians 1:27, Titus 1:2, Hebrews 6:19, Hebrews 10:23, Hebrews 11:1, 1 John 3:3)