Father & Son

Sunday, April 24th, 2005
Easter 5
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 14:1-14

1 "Don't let this throw you. You trust God, don't you? Trust me. 2 There is plenty of room for you in my Father's home. If that weren't so, would I have told you that I'm on my way to get a room ready for you? 3 And if I'm on my way to get your room ready, I'll come back and get you so you can live where I live. 4 And you already know the road I'm taking." 5 Thomas said, "Master, we have no idea where you're going. How do you expect us to know the road?" 6 Jesus said, "I am the Road, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me. 7 If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him. You've even seen him!" 8 Philip said, "Master, show us the Father; then we'll be content." 9 "You've been with me all this time, Philip, and you still don't understand? To see me is to see the Father. So how can you ask, 'Where is the Father?' 10 Don't you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you aren't mere words. I don't just make them up on my own. The Father who resides in me crafts each word into a divine act. 11 "Believe me: I am in my Father and my Father is in me. If you can't believe that, believe what you see - these works. 12 The person who trusts me will not only do what I'm doing but even greater things, because I, on my way to the Father, am giving you the same work to do that I've been doing. You can count on it. 13 From now on, whatever you request along the lines of who I am and what I am doing, I'll do it. That's how the Father will be seen for who he is in the Son. I mean it. 14 Whatever you request in this way, I'll do.

The last few times I’ve heard this passage read has most likely been in the same context in which most of us in this room have heard it read: a funeral. The words certainly provide a measure of consolation in the midst of grieving the loss of a loved one. To have Christ himself say he is going ahead to prepare a place for us signals to us not only that we will be with him, but that there is in fact, something beyond the pall! Having said that, in order to begin at a place where the funerary connotation is avoided from the beginning, we need to sometimes hear the words in a different way, with a different cadence, as it were.

That is why I chose to read the passage out of ‘The Message’ this morning instead of the more familiar New Revised Standard version. As you may have heard me mention before, humans are nothing if not creatures of habit, and even to begin to hear a familiar passage in known and expected phrasing will sometimes cause us to shut down or shut out any new understanding that may result from a different reading.

So we are here, at the point in the Gospel of John where Jesus has just shared the last supper with the disciples. Judas has just left the room to meet with the high priest, and Peter has just sworn to never deny the Lord, to which Jesus has responded that before the night is out he’d do it three times. Though we are past Easter by almost a month, in the context of the reading, we are just heading into the passion and crucifixion.

THAT is the context with which we begin today’s reading. Jesus has just dropped a couple of bombs in the middle of the disciples’ lives, by telling them first that one of them will betray him, and second that another will deny him. They are scrambling to understand what he’s saying. And having heard him speak in parables before, their initial response seems to indicate that they are HOPING, anyway, that he may have been speaking to them in parables this time as well.

He’s not.

His words are of assurance and affirmation. “You trust God, don’t you?” The implication in the question is that “yes, of course we trust God.” His statements carry with them the weight of an empowerment … a blessing, if you will, at the same time calling out and bestowing what the disciples themselves did not realize they had … or would have, shortly.

It might be called a literary device used by John to emphasize the point: the fact that first Peter, then Thomas, and finally Phillip ask questions that serve only to allow Jesus to restate his answer three times, a number not lost on the early church or, I would hope, on us here today.

The point is taken, isn’t it? We have Jesus speaking of being in the Father, and referring to the comforter, that is, the Holy Spirit, who will follow his departure. John is making that necessary but difficult to understand point of Christian Doctrine: God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the three parts of the triune God; the three parts of the trinity.

The most significant difference between John and the other three gospels is …? Remember from last week? What phrase did Jesus use in referring to himself in the Gospel of John? “I AM.” In Greek, “Ego Emi” "the resurrection and the life" (11:25) — what we just read here: the "way, and the truth, and the life" (14:6)—and the "true vine" (15:1). Jesus is in many ways much more of a compelling figure in the Gospel of John, insofar as he speaks of himself. That may be why it has been common practice to have copies of the Gospel of John to hand out on evangelistic campaigns, or when visiting or canvassing an area … people get a glimpse of a Jesus who did not back away from the fact that he was God incarnate. Growing up, I never remember a time when we didn’t have at least one box of a couple of hundred copies of ‘El Evangelio Según San Juan’ (The Gospel according to St. John) sitting around. If beggars came to the door, we would regularly give them food, and more often than not we’d include a copy of the Gospel in the bag we gave them.

Back to the passage: Jesus is telling us that he is the way, and the truth and the life; no one comes to the father except by him. That is the one point of exclusivity of the Gospel. To some, it is a hard pill to swallow. We live in a world where the prevailing culture has presented a view of religion – not faith – and certainly not an ongoing relationship with the living God -- as universally adequate. “It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe”. On some level, that is true. But only in the sense that it is better for our spiritual and emotional, and even physical health to hold some things as core values, as a centering point for our souls.

But what can make us uncomfortable in the face of that broadcasting of the net … is that Jesus didn’t say that. His contention was, at this point, exclusive. But his emphasis was on the ME part, not on the NO ONE, or on the EXCEPT. He’s in the middle of trying to explain the fact that he and God the Father are one, and by implication, the Holy Spirit as well.
So what do we do with that? What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church in Emmerton?

This is, again, the basics of the Good News – the Gospel of Jesus Christ – that God was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s self. This is instruction for us. This is fundamental. It leads into what Paul later called “foolishness to man”.

So in a sense it is a sendoff. A commissioning snuck in before the great commission we find at the beginning of Acts. Jesus is telling US – yes, he was talking to men and women two thousand years ago, but his words apply to us as well – we are his disciples today.

Jesus tells Phillip and the others they will do “Greater things” than even HE, JESUS himself, had done.

So we shrink back from that, don’t we? Can we truly imagine ourselves doing greater things than Christ himself? Humanly speaking, it’s impossible. To be honest, I don’t know if Christ was including in that his acts of healing and miracles. Perhaps, if the need arises, we would find ourselves calming the storm or healing a paralytic. I don’t know. I suspect that where we find ourselves doing greater things is in the living out of our allegiance, our devotion, our surrender to Christ. In doing that, in allowing him to live through us, we become him.

On some level, it is simple math: there are more of us, so there is more of HIM.

We are getting ready to send one of our own out to do that this week. She’s flying out on Tuesday to be Christ’s presence to the women and families whose husbands and sons and brothers are here working.

Leslie, could you please come to the front?

(Prayer of commissioning)

May the Lord bless you and keep you
May 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 mind and think through it,
May God take your lips and speak through them,
May God take your heart and set it on fire
Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Life Abundant


Sunday, April 17th, 2005
Easter 4 (Good Shepherd)
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 10:1-10

1‘Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.’ 6Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. 7So again Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. 9I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

We’re getting into a rhythm of sorts in the Park household. School during the day, gymnastics or softball practice in the evenings, and game one, game two, and game three on the weekends. I think before it’s all over, there may be a few weekends where we’ll have more than one game per child. Granted, it’s only been two weekends now, but I can already sense the rhythm starting: a rush to get ready, arrival, getting the kids to their teams, and then sit and watch, and cheer the team, shout words of encouragement to your child or the children on each team, and make quiet conversation with other parents, or friends, or meet and befriend people who you recognize, but can’t quite name. Then wander over to the concession stand for a hot dog or some chicken wings and a coke. And the whole day is bathed in sunlight, and a brisk wind that keeps your hands in your pockets more often than not pulling out a tissue to blow your nose with. Before long, the sun will overpower the wind, and we’ll be dealing with the HEAT much more than with the cold. There truly is something idyllic in the scene. It reminds me of something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. I’ve had several moments like that since we’ve been living here. It’s not a bad thing, not at all. In fact, if I had to characterize it, it would be easy to say we were living the abundant life. When friends and family have asked how we’re doing here, I always answer that we’re doing good, we’re doing fine. And I can’t help but tell them that it sometimes gets to the point where it is scary how good things are.

But what is an abundant life? We’d surely find different definitions of that within the lives of those of us sitting right here. Is an abundant life one that is long-lived? Probably not. We heard just this past week of a young mother, the sister of a young lady who has visited here in the past, barely in her thirties, who was found by her six year old daughter lying on the floor when she got home from school. Can her life be DISqualified from having been abundant just because it was cut short at so young an age?

Is an abundant life one full of unforgettable experiences? If we were to ask our Hispanic friend, who lost her twins twenty-three weeks into her pregnancy last Sunday, certainly an unforgettable experience, but I’m not sure she’d say that her life is more abundant because of it.

Is it a life marked by significance, or impact, or one that is memorable to more than just one’s immediate family? Tuesday evening I met a man who was in the final stages of a terminal disease. Though he is barely ten years older than I am, his life would certainly make a much more interesting read than mine would. With a history of alcohol and drug abuse, poverty and homelessness, he somehow managed to find the strength to straighten himself out, and begin to live what might be called a normally productive life. In the process, he met and straightened out his wife, who was a crack addict and an alcoholic. Working together, he got her off drugs and sobered up. But then last September, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and she began drinking again. Tuesday he had asked to stay in the hospital for pain management, but she did not want him to stay there and die. Her beloved husband belonged at home with her, surrounded by his animals and the love of a devoted, though alcohol-dependent wife. He definitely made an impact on HER life, insofar as he was the reason that she cleaned herself up from all the other drugs save the alcohol. Talking to their friend who’d driven the wife the 45 miles to the hospital, and hearing HER story about losing her sister, her husband, AND her mother within the last year, there was definitely more than just friendship that prompted her to stand by this couple in the midst of what is not only devastating to THEM, but which must surely reopen painful wounds left by her own losses. I came away with the impression that this man had a way about him that drew people, not just those two women, to him. When he rallied enough to speak clearly and directly, in a strong voice, to his tearfully combative wife, she quieted along with everyone in the room. It was certainly an example of a life that had an impact on everyone else in the room, but whether or not it has been an abundant life was not for us to say at that point.

The scene in the Gospel passage this morning is … pastoral in the fullest sense of the word, parts of it might be referred to as something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, what with a shepherd leading the flock of sheep around the pasture, the sheep somehow … tuned into the shepherd’s voice, or a sound, a whistle, a call, or a specific, identifying noise made whenever he wants their attention.

We have the image of Christ as the Good Shepherd, and he himself is portraying himself as that. A man who lies down across the gate to the sheepfold and guards against wolves and marauders, whose sheep follow the sound of his voice, rather than push from behind, he leads. The sheep follow because they recognize HIM, not because he forces them in the direction he wants them to go.

What is it that we seek if we set out on what Robert Frost called ‘the road less traveled”? Christ promised life abundant in this passage, but in others he admonished us to take up our cross and follow him. And yet in another, he warned that if any man loses his life for his sake he would gain it. He wasn’t speaking of a life of ease. He wasn’t promising freedom from pain and suffering … in fact, he did the opposite. He promised a life fraught with peril, with rejection, even with bitter disappointment, but he still calls it an abundant life.

So we have to look elsewhere, perhaps even elsewhen. We have to look for another reason why he would say our lives would be “abundant”.

What are we left with?

We’re left with him. We’re left with Christ. We’re left with the Son of God, calling us to himself, and loving us and cradling us like a Shepherd calls his sheep when they are lost and holds them when they are found. To live in the full knowledge that what we do and who we are is defined not by what we accomplish or accumulate, but by whose we are, and who loves us, and who we love, THAT opens us to an abundance of life the likes of which we cannot wrap our brains around in a lifetime.

Jesus calls himself both the gate and the gatekeeper, the gospel of John is known for Jesus’ “I am” sayings. In this Gospel, Jesus will use "I am" to identify himself as "the resurrection and the life" (11:25)—the "way, and the truth, and the life" (14:6)—and the "true vine" (15:1). It is John’s way of highlighting, of echoing for us that much earlier “I Am” that we hear from the burning bush in the desert. There is no missing the point for John’s listeners and reader: Jesus and God are one.

Life, colored, molded, and formed around the presence of the living God in our hearts is the most abundant life we can hope to experience. It is for us to take that abundance and share it, spread it, release it into the world and into the lives of those who so desperately long for it.

Tonight we begin a four-night Revival campaign. We will share in worship with Farnham, our mother church, Cobham Park, Mulberry and Ebenezer, our daughter churches, a family gathering in the broadest sense of the word.

I’ve seen abundance of life. I’ve seen it reflected in my parent’s faces when all of their children and their families have otten together for a special holiday. I’ve seen it in the faces of my father and mother-in-law, when THEIR three children and THEIR families have been able to manage to be together with them for a special occasion. I saw it in Leslie’s face, last night, after a long and harrowing week, topped off by a day spent at the ball fields watching our kids play, and sitting down to the dinner table groggy after having fallen asleep on the couch, and we were all grumpy and tired, but for a minute, just a second, the children mercifully bounced back from a totally inappropriate tongue lashing from me, and Caleb was sitting in her lap, and Judson and Hannah were chomping on Oreos, and we looked at each other over their heads and that look that says ‘This is what he was talking about. THIS is life abundant’ crossed between us.

May these next four nights with family be so marked.

Let’s pray.

Hearts on Fire

Sunday, April 10th, 2005
Easter 3 (Communion Sunday)
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Luke 24:13-35
With deep gratitude to Dr. Brett Younger, pastor, Broadway Baptist Church, Ft. Worth, TX

13 Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, 16but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17And he said to them, ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?’ They stood still, looking sad. 18Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, ‘Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?’ 19He asked them, ‘What things?’ They replied, ‘The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. 21But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. 22Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, 23and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. 24Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.’ 25Then he said to them, ‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! 26Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ 27Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. 28As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. 29But they urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them. 30When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. 32They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’ 33That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. 34They were saying, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!’ 35Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Last Sunday was a pretty stark contrast to Easter, wasn’t it? As you might know, historically, the highest attendance Sunday of the year is Easter. Would you care to venture a guess as to which is the lowest attended Sunday of the year? (The Sunday after Easter)

All the special music, the children singing, the sunrise service, the banners and pageantry can make you forget that at Easter, all we’re really hoping for is a moment when we believe, when we feel, when we know deep down that it’s true. If all goes well, we catch a glimpse, just a glimpse.

We’re here again, hoping for a moment, a hint of hope, a glimpse of grace, a sign of life, but we have to pay attention.

The first Easter began without anyone even imagining they would catch a glimpse. On Sunday afternoon, which was like Monday afternoon for the Jews, two dejected disciples are walking the dusty road home to Emmaus. They want life to go back to what it was before. But they know it will never be the same. They would like to believe that Jesus’ life and death are going to make some difference. But their chins are on their chests, their eyes are blank, and their faces are empty.

They don’t even hear his footsteps. Jesus joins them incognito and asks what they’ve been talking about. They can hardly believe it. ‘Where have you been? How can you NOT know what’s been going on?” They explain to the uninformed stranger that a prophet has been executed. They tell him about the hope that they had for Jesus, how they had followed, and how their hope had been crushed when Jesus was arrested and crucified. They had never known such a wonderful person. Jesus was gracious in everything that he did. He spoke as no one had ever spoken. He loved as no one had ever loved.

Some women are spreading rumors about an empty tomb and angels, but they know hopelessness when they feel it.

Then it’s Jesus’ turn to marvel at how they can be so completely uninformed. Now you wonder how long it takes to explain the scriptures, but the stranger lays it all out for them … and they don’t get it. Jesus himself leads a Bible study and nothing happens. This story is a source of great comfort for anyone who has ever led a Bible study for people whose eyes are glazed over.

When they arrive at the couple’s house, the risen Christ seems to have things to do and places to go, but they ask him to stay for supper. They can’t let him go, whoever he is. They ask him to say grace, and the stranger is suddenly in charge. The house may not belong to Jesus, but the supper does. He breaks bread, blesses it, gives it to them, and they open their eyes. They see that Jesus is with them … and then he’s GONE. Just a glimpse and he vanishes.

Then - and this part is worth noting - they walk the seven miles back to Jerusalem. By this time it must’ve been dark, except, in a way, it was during the day as they walked TOWARD Emmaus, that they walked in the dark. Now, at night, they’re walking in the light. That moment at the table has changed them, turned them around.

Now it’s easy not to notice, but there’s a worship service going on here. The preacher interprets the Bible; he takes the bread, blesses, breaks it, and gives it to them.

Scholars suggest that Luke has given us the order of worship for the early church. The scriptures are read and discussed, and then they share the Lord’s Supper. Justin Martyr wrote the oldest surviving account of a Christian worship service about sixty five years after the Gospel of Luke. Justin describes their Sunday service:

“And on the day called Sunday an assembly is held and the records of the apostles – we call them the Gospels and Epistles – or the writings of the prophets – the Old Testament – are read for as long as time allows. (For some of you, twelve O’clock is as long as time allows) Then, when the reading has finished, the one presiding, in a discourse, admonishes and encourages us to imitate these good things. Then we all stand up together and offer prayers, then bread and wine are brought forward, and the one presiding offers thanksgivings. And the wealthy who so desire, give what they wish as each chooses, and what is collected helps orphans and widows, and those who through sickness or any other cause are in need, and those in prison, and strangers sojourning among us. In a word, it takes care of all those who are in need.”

Now, they didn’t chime the hour, or have an organ on one side and a baby grand on the other, but the order of worship two thousand years ago is a lot like ours. We worship as they worshipped in the belief that we will meet God here. When the scriptures are preached, and the bread is broken, Luke says that Jesus is present.

We come each Sunday to this sanctuary, but it’s easy to miss Christ in worship, in part because we forget that Christ comes not because we make it so, but because this is Christ’s church. Sometimes we act as if WE make worship happen. If the preacher says something profound for a change, if the choir enunciates perfectly, if we get a seat right in front of a speaker, if the children in the row in front of us will sit still … if the deacons are sufficiently somber during communion, then we’ll have worship “right”.

We ARE here to give our best to God, but we do so understanding that we will not coerce Christ into our presence. Christ comes as a gift; he comes suddenly out of nowhere. We don’t even hear his footsteps. We’ll miss the sacred moments if we don’t look with more than our eyes, and listen with more than our ears. But if we seek God with our hearts and souls, we may catch a glimpse.

God comes in a phrase in a hymn, a word from the scripture, a hope during a prayer, a moment when we feel God with us, a moment when we are truly alive. And we shouldn’t expect much more than a moment. God is with us for the whole journey, but we feel it only in partial, obscure, muffled experiences of the sacred.

What we hope for is a fleeting glimpse that takes our breath away, makes our hearts burn within us. For, if we catch a glimpse, it can turn us around; if we look with all of our being and imagination, what we may see is God. What we may hear is the faint sound of a voice; somewhere deep within us, saying that there IS a purpose in this life, in OUR lives, whether we understand it completely or not.

Christ comes to explain our lives and our world in the light of the sacred stories; Christ joins us at this table, and gives us his life, so that we might share life together in his name. It’s all a gift.

Worship is a gift.

Christ’s presence among us is a gift.

And if we pay attention, and feel God with us, when God sets our hearts on fire, it’s a gift.

(Communion)

Life in His Name

Sunday, April 3rd, 2005
Easter 2
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton, VA
John 20:19-31

19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ 22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ 24But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’ 26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ 27Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ 28Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ 29Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’ 30Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

I’ve often wondered what Thomas’ voice sounded like when he uttered that ultimatum.

More often than not, the words have been spoken in a sarcastic ‘yeah, RIGHT - I wasn’t born yesterday’ jaded tone.

But as I read over the passage again in preparation for this morning, I thought that perhaps his was in an altogether different tone.

Imagine yourself hoping against hope for a reality that cannot objectively become fact, a hope on which you have built your life, a hope born out of three years of living, and eating, walking and talking with and learning from the most amazing man you’ve ever known; Jesus of Nazareth. And not just a man, but you’ve almost come to believe him to be the Messiah, the Son of God.

You’ve seen him heal the sick, silence the storm, cast out demons, cast out the money changers and call the priests and rulers to task for making the desecration of the temple possible, and you’ve seen him raise the four-days dead Lazarus.

But you have also seen him arrested, beaten beyond recognition, and finally crucified. And you’ve gotten the report that he had died.

You’ve only gotten the report because, in that darkest hour of your life, you ran and hid. You didn’t want to end up on the cross like him, with him. You’d heard Peter vow that he would die first, before he would betray the Lord, and just a few hours later you heard the betrayal from that same mouth.

And now, on the third day from that hellish event, everyone is telling you that they’ve seen him – in PERSON, and you dare not believe it.

You don’t dare because if you do and it is NOT true, you have only set yourself up to plunge again into the pit of despair from which you so desperately want to climb, but in the face of unending hate and violence, and callousness, you find yourself completely overwhelmed.

In the last 72 hours, your world has become a place devoid of truth, devoid of grace, and devoid of hope. You’ve been confronted with a world that rolls over dreams and visions and faith as indifferently as a wave crashes over a grain of sand on the beach.

You are angry. How can they play with that which has become so sacred to you??!! How can they so blithely prattle on about having seen him when everyone who was there saw him die? And though he may have been able to raise someone else from the dead, how could he act to raise himself from the dead when there was no breath left in his body?

What he did, what he said, what he taught, none of it belonged in the world after all, even though he tried. YOU tried. You really did. After he sent you out, along with the other disciples, to cast out demons and heal the sick in his name, you watched it happen with your own eyes. You couldn’t believe it at first, but it kept on happening. And when you came back together, you compared notes with the others, and they told of the same thing happening to them.

And so, hope was born.

Against all odds, against what your logic told you, you began to believe. It was tiny at first. No bigger than that mustard seed he’d mentioned. If you hadn’t known what you were looking for, you would have missed it.

And the seed grew, just like he said it would, into that huge bush.

And it started taking root in you, and reaching its branches all through you.

Into that place where you were thinking “It’ll never work HERE,”

And there, where you couldn’t help but wonder “what world is he living in?”

And over there, in that far corner, where that hissing, slithery whisper was telling you “perhapsss, but YOU could never measure up to THAT.”

And the roots and the branches were pushing those voices out. You found yourself smiling a little more often, believing a little more deeply, questioning a little less frequently. And the world started to seem like a different place. It seemed like there was something new happening in the world, something magnificent, and magnificently different.

Then, in a night and a day, the hope was dashed to pieces. It was beaten and crucified and died just as surely as Jesus was. And you heard that slithery voice inside say “see, I TOLD you so.” And as much as you hated it, you found yourself agreeing, realizing that a part of you always held back, always reserved judgment, always sat back and just watched.

And now, your hearing that he’s back, “We have seen the Lord!”

And your heart starts beating faster and faster, and you can’t catch your breathe and your mind is trying to wrap itself around the news and then you can almost HEAR the fist slam down in your head.

“NO!” It can’t be true. It’s too good, too good to be true. And like they say, if something is too good to be true, then it most likely ISN’T. And you’re thinking,

“DON’T MESS WITH MY HOPE. I ALREADY LAID IT TO REST, AND IT IS TOO PAINFUL TO TRY TO RESURRECT IT ONLY TO HAVE IT DIE AGAIN. I CAN’T KEEP MOVING THAT STONE BACK AND FORTH”

And the words spill out of you in a furious torrent:

‘"UNLESS I SEE THE MARK OF THE NAILS IN HIS HANDS, AND PUT MY FINGER IN TH E MARK OF THE NAILS AND MY HAND IN HIS SIDE, I WILL NOT BELIEVE!!"

You see, the voice that is crying out of you is the voice that did not want to give up hope, but is finding it so hard to FIND, it is setting itself an impossible barrier to cross – the barrier of the tomb, the one that was sealed with that stone, the one that is separating you from Jesus.

And then it’s a week later, but it feels like an instant, and just like that, he’s there, in front of you, plain as day, but different. The door was closed, but he is THERE. And his first words are: “Peace be with you. Shalom.”

Then, “Okay, here’s what you asked for. Here’re my hands. Here’s my side. Go for it. TRY ME.”

And your heart slows, and you breathe deeply, and the air seems purer, and the light seems brighter.

“My Lord and my God.”

And like he always did, he snaps it into perspective. “Do you believe because you see me? Was your hope born of what you see, or was it born from what you now understand to be the endless possibilities for life in my name, what you know can happen but which you CAN’T see?

Let’s pray.

Ears, Feet and Hands

Sunday, March 27th, 2005
Easter
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 28:1-10, James 1(17- )22(-25)

1After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. 4For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5But the angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come; see the place where he lay. 7Then go quickly and tell his disciples, “He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” This is my message for you.’ 8So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9Suddenly Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. 10Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’

This is it. This is THE defining story of our faith.

This is what sets us apart. This is unique to Christianity.

We speak of Jesus’ death. More than that, we admit to it. But it’s not so much that we do it today. It is that it was done that way from the beginning. In first-century Palestine, it wasn’t … desirable to begin a new religion by proclaiming the actual human death of your Savior, much less, have the initial proclamation of that Savior’s resurrection be carried out by women. There is a radical-ness to that combination of events that is lost on us today, however entrenched we may be in a male-dominated somewhat chauvinistic society, that still finds it very easy to objectify women and belittle the relevance of faith to human existence, over the last 20 centuries we’ve gotten used to the story that women were the first bearers-of-good-news, the first evangelists. We’ve become immune to the unbelievableness of it.

That the four Gospels contain the story of the empty tomb is to be expected, but that they differ from each other makes the story even more tantalizingly believable. Think about it. Take, for example any given modern conspiracy, any given movie, or television crime drama involving a group of people involved in a crime and trying to hide it. What is the first thing the conspirators do when they decide to conspire? They get together on their story. The thinking is that if their stories all agree, it is more believable.

The Gospel writers couldn’t even get together on that. How many of us, if we were to all witness a car crash here at the corner of Mulberry and History Land Hwy, would all tell exactly the same story, down to the smallest detail? In the varying accounts, there’s a sense of them saying ‘I saw him first! No, I did!’

The Gospel of John has Mary as the only named woman coming to the tomb, and on finding it empty, running back to find Peter and “the other disciple” and then they all go to the tomb. Luke has two men in dazzling clothes meeting ‘them’, an unspecified number of women and men. Mark has three named women – Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, going to the tomb, and there they encounter a single young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting “on the right side”. The amount of detail begs you to ‘remember with me, don’t you?’

Rather than weakening the story, it speaks more to independent traditions, and reinforces the likelihood that the details on which they DO agree are true.

Just as there is diversity in the telling of the appearances of the resurrected Christ, there is a corresponding diversity in the way we each experience Christ today. How we encounter Christ can change dramatically within each of our individual lives over the course of the years, much more so from one person to another.

Brian Stoffregen, pastor of Faith Lutheran Church, in Marysville, CA, writes:

There are those who experience Christ in a radical transforming, "born-again," event in their lives. There are those for whom Christ as been such a reality throughout their lives that they can't think of a moment when Christ wasn't present to them or when there was a great turning point in their lives. How the risen Christ comes to people differs from person to person.

And that’s where we come in. It is THE Gospel story, and in the beginning, all we can do is hear it. We hear it, of course, with our ears. And if the time is right, and the Spirit moves, we also hear it with our hearts. When we do that, it becomes OUR story. We each make this story our own, when we step into it, by stepping out on faith.

Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary (and Salome, and however many men there may have been with them) stepped through the early morning light and made their way to the tomb. The same feet that took them to what they thought would be a continuing point of sorrow in their lives became instead feet that ran them joyfully and fearfully back to tell the disciples and all who would listen that they had encountered the risen Lord.

So on a morning that may well have been very similar to this one, likely having had very little sleep if any, the story began to spread. So it is for us to take up the story and tell it.

We can use words, if we have to. But we don’t have to. Know this, however. Whether we verbalize it or not, we tell the story. We tell the story in the way we live out our lives. We are telling the story whether we realize it or not. We tell the story of what Christ means to us, what Christ has done for us, what Christ IS to us. Sting put together a set of phrases in a song several years ago, “every move you make, every breath you take, every claim you stake, and every vow you break”, the concluding phrase may be applied from a different perspective by us here today “I’ll be watching you” Sting has said of the song that it is a dark song about obsession, we can look at it today from the perspective that … we are the walking Gospel corporately, as the body of Christ, but also individually, our lives tell the stories that we believe.

The question is: what Gospel story is our life telling?

James speaks to that:

17 Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures. 19 You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. 21Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. 22 But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. 23For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; 24for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. 25But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.

We can sit and hear, but unless we go beyond that, the Gospel means precious little to us. Hearing, we believe, and believing, we act, and by acting, we either claim or disclaim the truth of the Gospel.

The question for us today is, if I truly believe the Gospel to be true, that God raised Jesus from the dead, and in so doing He vanquished sin, death and the devil. Does my life reflect that?

So we’ve heard the central story. Now for the central act that proclaims our faith. Maybe it would be better to call it the seminal act of our faith, the ‘seed-act’ of our faith. When we join together at the communion table, we are in fact proclaiming the Gospel. Because we are proclaiming Christ’s death until he returns.

The invitation is open. Your response is what will transform you.

Your ears hear the invitation, your feet will bring you forward, and your hands will take the bread and the juice to your lips.

May your ears always hear the invitation, may your feet always be ready to carry you forward, and may your hands always be ready to be put to work for the Kingdom.

(communion)

The Lord … Needs?

Sunday, March 20th, 2005
Palm Sunday
Jerusalem Baptist Church
Matthew 21:1-11

1When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2saying to them, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. 3If anyone says anything to you, just say this, “The Lord needs them.” And he will send them immediately.’ 4This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, 5‘Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’ 6The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; 7they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. 8A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!’ 10When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, ‘Who is this?’ 11The crowds were saying, ‘This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.’

“The Lord … Needs?”

If you think about it, it seems to be a contradiction in terms. “The Lord.” – means someone who is in control, one who has the power, who is ultimately able to do just about anything he wishes.

To say that someone like that ‘needs’ anything … would seem to be saying that it is a limited Lordship, and as such, no Lordship at all, if we’re going to get right down to the heart of the matter.

As Christians, we believe that Jesus Christ was God incarnate. We believe that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit form the trinity. They are each both individual and one and the same. That is a core belief of the Christian faith.

And now, we come to the toughest and most glorious part of the story, beginning today and continuing through this coming Saturday we will be observing Passion Week. For the last 5 weeks we’ve been moving through the Season of Lent, which as we know, leads us to the cross, to Christ’s death and burial. Next Sunday we will celebrate Easter, we know that is coming, but right now, we remember Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.

Palm leaves waving, people shouting, donkeys walking, colts too, and Jesus riding both … check it out, Matthew seems to have become so caught up in telling the story that he has Jesus riding both a donkey AND a colt (verse 7). It doesn’t matter so much how he came into the city, it matters more what he came to do and what happened over the course of the next week.

Before the first verse of chapter 21 is done, we have Jesus sending a couple of his disciples off to find the donkey and the colt.

Sending.

Jesus did that with the disciples, and he continues to do it with us. Just as God sent Jesus, Jesus in turn sends us.

To do what, you might ask? Well, that depends on what gifts and qualities God has given you to begin with, as well as what God has called you to do. Get used to the idea that we each have been called to do something for God, by God, through God.

I heard an interview with Henry Blackaby this week. He wrote “Experiencing God”. If you’ve not read it, let me know, and we can read it together. Something he said in the interview stuck with me. His point was that people can sometimes take their talents, those abilities with which they were either born or developed on their own, or through training and encouragement from others, and call them spiritual gifts.

He said natural talents are not the same thing as spiritual gifts. Being called to do something can SOMETIMES involve your using your natural talents and abilities, but it will always involve doing something that you could not otherwise accomplish without God’s help. Let me say that again: Answering God’s call to do something will always involve doing something that you could not otherwise do without God’s help. In other words, being called by God by definition means being at a loss on your own.

Over the last two weeks we’ve been made aware of that being highlighted in Jesus’ ministry as well. With the man born blind, and with the death of Lazarus, Jesus’ healing of the one and resurrecting of the other were both examples of God’s power being made known – of God’s Kingdom breaking into the world. Both miracles went against the natural (broken, but natural) process of life as we know it.

‘But that was Jesus,’ you might say. ‘We’re not Jesus.’

You’re right. We’re not, in the full sense of who Jesus was. But we are his disciples, his ambassadors, his representatives. On one level, we ARE Jesus. When we take Jesus as Lord of our lives we begin to act, speak, think, and feel like him. Sometimes in infinitesimal increments, and often times it’s a matter of two steps forward, one step back. Some days we fail miserably at the task of becoming more and more like him. Some days we do better.

And here’s the sometimes scary part: We will find that, some days, we are the only Jesus others will ever see.

In the most recent issue of the Ministry Messenger, a quarterly newsletter published by the BGAV, John Upton, the Executive Director, says the following:

“One of my favorite passages in the Bible is Isaiah 40 where God says to His people, “Lift up your voice. Lift is up, be not afraid. Say to the people, ‘Here is your God.’” What a challenge by God. Of all people, he asks us, as inadequate as we are, to be bearers of His message of Good News. Our ignorance is monumental. We are often wrong-headed and wrong-hearted, and we can be more than a little bit foolish. Our lives aren’t worthy of the words we’re asked to carry.

But here is the thing to remember. Whose words, after all, are they? And if the Word bids us to be instruments of it, how could our inadequacy possibly matter? Our only part is to open our mouths, our hearts, our arms and our lives and let the words pass through us like breath through a pipe organ. Ready or not, we just give ourselves to it, and our lives are a good enough voice.”

So what does the Lord need, exactly? What is it that he’s asking of us?

Is he asking us only to worship him? To lift the palm branches and wave them and proclaim ‘blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord?’ Or is he asking us to lay down our cloaks, our robes, our best, so that he can walk over them towards his death? Or is he asking us to run an errand, to find the donkey, or the colt, to speak to the owner and tell him that the LORD needs them …

The truth is that he is asking for it all. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Pastor and theologian who was killed in WWII for fighting the Nazi regime, wrote “when Jesus calls, he bids us come and die.”

The Lord needs … company. God craves communion. That it is the almighty creator of the universe coming to us, his creation, is a mystery, and yet, that is what God has shown us through Christ to be God’s own nature.

He’s asking us to walk alongside, to follow, to imitate, however you want to phrase it, you’ve heard me say it before, and you’ll keep hearing me say it -- to BE his presence in a world that is hurting in unimaginable ways.

God has met and surpassed our needs. God did that through Christ. That is what we will be celebrating next Sunday. For now, the question becomes, how will you respond to the Lord’s need?

Let’s pray.

Falling Asleep

Sunday, March 13th, 2005
Lent 5A
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 11:1-45

1Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. 3So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ 4But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’ 5Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. 7Then after this he said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’ 8The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?’ 9Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. 10But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.’ 11After saying this, he told them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.’ 12The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.’ 13Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. 14Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. 15For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’ 16Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’ 17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ 23Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ 24Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ 25Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ 27She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’ 28When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, ‘The Teacher is here and is calling for you.’ 29And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ 35Jesus began to weep. 36So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ 37But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’ 38Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.’ 40Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ 41So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ 43When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’ 45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

My earliest memory of Uncle Babe was hearing momma tell stories of how he used to play jokes on her and my aunts as children growing up outside Nortonville, Kentucky. The memory that stands out the most in my memory though, apart from those stories related to Uncle Babe was hearing Momma read a letter from my grandmother, received over 30 years ago, telling us that Uncle Babe had had multiple bypass surgery.

On some level, I suppose I was expecting the call that came last Tuesday ever since then. Years might go by, but always, if I thought about it, I wondered when we’d get that call. As it turned out, Uncle Babe outlived Grandma and Uncle Floyd, his older brother, by a little more than 15 years. We almost lost him a couple of years ago, but he rallied, and over these last two years the family – both immediate and extended – to whatever degree we were able to, had come to grips with the fact that Uncle Babe would be gone from us sooner rather than later.

So the gathering that took place on Thursday in La Center, KY was in very few ways unexpected.

Uncle Babe had done many things throughout his life; he was a State Trooper, a Salesman, he was elected County Judge-Executive, and when he wasn’t re-elected, he retired and became a pig farmer. There wasn’t a lot that he hadn’t tried. I don’t remember seeing Uncle Babe in uniform, though I may have as a young child, and I don’t remember his … identity being framed by what he did – ever. Even being elected to county office didn’t change that. Uncle Babe was just ‘UNCLE BABE.’ You knew he did SOMETHING for a living, but it wasn’t the ‘something’ that stood out, it was the living.

As I prepared to travel to Kentucky, I reread the text for today, knowing that I would be … perking the sermon while in the midst of visiting with family, sharing stories, and getting and giving hugs and using up tissues.

What I found was a deep sense of comfort in the events surrounding Lazarus’ death and subsequent resurrection. There’s a sense of purpose that Jesus expresses, in his deliberateness in waiting … in understanding as those who were around him could not, that there was a greater purpose to be displayed through Lazarus’ illness and death. The text echoes last week’s story of the man born blind in that instance – do you remember Jesus’ disciples asking him why the man was born blind, because of his parents’ sin or his own, and Jesus’ response – ‘So that God’s works might be revealed in him.’

Here we have a similar response:

4But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’

In that sense, John, the Gospel writer, is intentional in how he presents the story of an event in Jesus’ ministry. There is a difference in the Gospel of John that is not as evident in the other three Gospels – John is self-consciously theological in the retelling of Christ’s ministry. The writer makes it a point, for example, to have the people around Jesus call him Lord instead of Master, or teacher, in this passage. It isn’t so much a term of respect as it is a declaration of faith – some of the earliest evidence of the early church’s belief in the divinity of Jesus. To call him Lord even while he was on earth was a radical statement among a people who were known for reserving that term for Yahweh, in our language, God.

If we’ve been raised in church, with the stories of the Bible told to us from childhood on, going into this we automatically fill in the blanks with additional information – we know that Mary, Martha and Lazarus were Jesus’ “hang out” friends. Whenever he came to visit Judea, he stayed with them. Their house was his. He felt at home, he was welcomed. The introduction seems a little out of place, when we read that ‘a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany’… what we have is a non-chronological insertion by John.

The purpose of the Gospel of John is to instill and nurture faith – “so that you might believe”. The other three, on various levels attempt to present the ministry of Christ chronologically. John does not. This is one of those places where it is not. Later on we get to meet Mary and Martha and Lazarus, or in the other gospels, but here the purpose of the story is to … highlight the power of God to transform our lives just like Lazarus’ life was transformed.

True resurrection … does not just prolong life but transforms our entire being. The resurrection is spiritual. It begins when faith moves a person to become open to receiving God’s life.
There are elements within the story that stand out. Jesus hearing of Lazarus’ illness and waiting. The word we read as ‘stayed’ carries a couple of meanings, if you will – tarried, as in … waited, intentionally … and suffered – in other words, Jesus knew that Mary and Martha and Lazarus were suffering, and even though he loved them, he held back … he knew there was a greater event coming.

There is, as is commonly found, a subtext to this waiting – if you are not familiar with the customs and practices of first century Palestinian Hebrews. It was commonly believed that after death, the soul of a person lingered around the body for two or three days. Hence, Jesus waiting for the additional two days before going to the tomb. There was no question on whether or not Lazarus was dead when Jesus finally showed up. In case there were, John takes pains to point out that the smell of a decomposing body was already being noticed.

Where are we in the story?

Do we identify with Lazarus, who is known more for what Christ did for him than for what he did for Christ? Or are we like Martha, the kitchen-maven, who gets the intellectual approach from Jesus, a mini-sermon on resurrection. Or Mary, the scholar willing to break gender stereotypes to receive the instruction she needs, gets the emotional approach from the depths of Jesus troubled spirit.

There is a connectedness in their responses – and in Jesus’ responses to them, that carries through to today.

We are, all, facing life with the shadow of death looming. What God offers us in Christ is Life. True life. Abundant life.

When Jesus tells the people to unbind Lazarus, he is literally telling them to destroy what holds him down. Send him forth free.

That is our call today. We are Christ’s presence in this community. We are called to set people free – through Christ – of the stench of death and sin.

Let’s pray.

Work the Works

Sunday, March 6th, 2005
Lent 4A
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 9:1-41

1As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ 3Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. 4We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. 5As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ 6When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, 7saying to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. 8 The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, ‘Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?’ 9Some were saying, ‘It is he.’ Others were saying, ‘No, but it is someone like him.’ He kept saying, ‘I am the man.’ 10But they kept asking him, ‘Then how were your eyes opened?’ 11He answered, ‘The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, “Go to Siloam and wash.” Then I went and washed and received my sight.’ 12They said to him, ‘Where is he?’ He said, ‘I do not know.’ 13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. 14Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, ‘He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.’ 16Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.’ But others said, ‘How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?’ And they were divided. 17So they said again to the blind man, ‘What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.’ He said, ‘He is a prophet.’ 18The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight 19and asked them, ‘Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?’ 20His parents answered, ‘We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 21but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.’ 22His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23Therefore his parents said, ‘He is of age; ask him.’ 24So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, ‘Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.’ 25He answered, ‘I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.’ 26They said to him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’ 27He answered them, ‘I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?’ 28Then they reviled him, saying, ‘You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.’ 30The man answered, ‘Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. 31We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. 32Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. 33If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’ 34They answered him, ‘You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?’ And they drove him out.
35 Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ 36He answered, ‘And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.’ 37Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.’ 38He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshiped him. 39 Jesus said, ‘I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.’ 40Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not blind, are we?’ 41Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, “We see,” your sin remains.

I’m a bedtime reader.

I don’t mean I read to the kids at bedtime … though I DO, sometimes, I mean that when I go to bed at night I have to at least open a book and read a few paragraphs in order to go to sleep.

As far back as I can remember, lying down in bed hasn’t been about going to sleep as quickly as I can, but about curling up with a good book. As a result, I have a stack of books next to my side of the bed, in, on, or under the nightstand, as well as on the floor.

Over the years the variety of books has broadened. I’m a science fiction fan, so for a long time that was all you could find in the stack. But lately, I’ve expanded the options. I’ve got Herman Wouk’s “War and Remembrance” next to the bed, as well as a couple of bestsellers.

I also have a book co-written by Tony Campolo and Brian McLaren, entitled Adventures in Missing the Point, How the Culture-Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel. In it, Campolo and McLaren address issues facing the Church today, under three main subheadings: God, World, and Soul. Under each, they address various sub-issues. Under God, they speak about salvation, theology, the Kingdom of God, the End Times, and the Bible. Under “World”, they touch on Evangelism, social action, culture, women in ministry, leadership, seminary, environmentalism, and homosexuality. Under “Soul, they speak on Sin, Worship, Doubt, Truth, and on Being Postmodern. Each has his own ‘take’ on the issue, and each responds to the other’s essays – a good example of good dialogue around a given subject.

I bought the book in September or October, I think, and I’ve only gotten a few chapters into it. Campolo and McLaren posit an argument that the Church has been co-opted, that we are too … influenced by our culture, rather than the other way around, to bring about the radical changes that the Gospel of Jesus Christ can make happen.

I’m not talking about making change happen by controlling the legislative process and effecting those changes through laws. I’m talking about individual, life-altering, face-to-face contact that ends up transforming both participants.

We’ve just finished reading the ninth chapter of the Gospel of John. Besides the length of the reading, is there any single event in the passage that stands out most for you?

Are you struck by the way everyone seems to keep trying to pass the buck when they are asked about Jesus, or more by the way the Pharisees keep asking all these questions all those questions, or by the way the neighbors supposedly couldn’t say for sure if the man who could now see was the same man they’d known all their lives?

In some ways, it can almost read like a keystone cops episode, if the subject weren’t so serious.

Here’s what we have: Jesus is walking along with his disciples and they run into a man who is blind. The disciples ask Jesus why the man is blind, is it because of HIS sins or the sins of his parents? It is telling that they already had what seemingly were the only two answers they would consider as plausible in their heads when they asked the question. It is indicative of the reactions we read of throughout the rest of the chapter from all parties. People were not used to thinking outside the accepted norms of society. And that society at the time was controlled by the Pharisees. Well, by the Romans, I suppose, ultimately, but in first-century Palestine, the day-to-day stuff was left up to the locals themselves. The Romans knew that they – the locals - were MUCH better at micromanaging than the Romans were, except where circumstances demanded direct intervention. That would come later.

Anyway, Jesus tells the disciples that it was neither his own nor his parent’s sins that caused the man to be born blind, but rather he was born blind so that God’s works may be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me. In other words, there was a greater purpose … a deeper reason for which this happened. Watch!

What does he do? Jesus spits on the ground, makes mud, spreads it on the man’s eyes, and sends him off to the pool of Siloam to rinse off. And when the man does, he opens his eyes and he can see. The healing takes all of two verses out of the 41 into which the chapter is broken up. That part of the narrative ends at verse 8. For the next 33 verses the arguments go back and forth, about who Jesus was, if he was a sinner (because he’d healed on the Sabbath), if the man actually was who he said he was, talking to the neighbors and the PARENTS about who the man was, then arguing back and forth about who might or might not be a disciple of Christ, likening him to a disciple of Moses … the litany seems endless. There is so much talk filling the rest of the chapter that by the time we get to the end, we almost forget what started the whole argument in the first place: a man was healed by the power and the love of God through Jesus Christ.

The Pharisees missed the point. They were so caught up in the fact that the Sabbath had been violated, they couldn’t get past the fact that Jesus had, in their minds, sinned. It didn’t fit in their heads that God might actually do something outside the strict parameters they had set for themselves by codifying those 613 laws.

Richard Lischer, professor of Homiletics at Duke Divinity School, writes the following:

‘The question of origins pervades the Gospel of John. In our story we have the ancient version not of Who's on First? but of Where's He from? The authorities sink to the oldest of all debate tactics: assail the source of your opponent's argument. Poison the well. Where is this Jesus from? What rabbinical school did he attend? Where did he learn to break God's law? The formerly blind man replies, "He restored my sight. Where do you think he's from?"

Does this story mean that you must possess special knowledge to be a follower of Jesus? Must you see the way God sees?

No -- not knowledge, but acknowledgment.

The formerly blind man did not know all the correct religious phrases with which to interpret his salvation. He was not pious in the traditional sense or even respectful of his elders. What he knew for sure was that once upon a time he sat in darkness, and now the whole world was drenched in sunlight. And he acknowledged that.

"One thing I know," he said. And as he makes his witness to Jesus, we realize that the man blind from birth has a multitude of sons and daughters with their own stories to tell. "One thing I know," one of you might say (sounding like the Samaritan woman in John 4), “is that when I was going through my divorce I hurt so much I couldn't sleep or eat, and I was so filled with hate I couldn't think, but somehow I got through it, and I've come to recognize that the somehow was Jesus."

"One thing I know." How is that for ironic understatement? As if the only teensy little thing you happen to know is -- who saved your life! No, you start not with special knowledge but with acknowledgment. You may begin not with a public profession but with a prayer to the Light of the World.

The man's profession has a terrible consequence for him and for all of us. He is cast out of the synagogue. He is cut off from Torah, family, the sweet--smelling incense of the Sabbath, the certitude of the Law -- all because he looked deeply and directly into the Light.

If J. Louis Martyn and other scholars are right, this story reflects the historic parting of the ways between the synagogue and the Jews who believed in Jesus. We were once so close. Just how close we still are can be seen in those moments when we acknowledge our dependence on God, and place no limits on who and how God saves in Jesus Christ. If we read this story as an ironic comedy and nothing more, we miss the loneliness of its final scene in which Jesus and the man converse outside the synagogue. But if we catch its underlying pathos, we will see this story for the tragedy it really is, and wait upon God to write a new ending.’

So the question for us today, here at Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton is this: Are we limiting the way we are viewing God’s work in the world, are we blind to the radically unexpected nature of the Gospel, are we ONLY looking for God to work in a certain way, through certain people, in a certain timeframe, in a certain sequence, or are we ready to acknowledge that God can and does work in ways we never even knew existed?

Can we be open to those unexpected ways in our own hearts, in our own lives, seemingly insignificant coincidences that turn out to be God-things?

What happened this week in your life? Looking back, was there something that struck you as odd, something you maybe couldn’t quite put your finger on, that now, looking back on it, seems to have been one of those instances, one of those thin places where you could catch a glimpse of the Kingdom shining through? If it DID happen, share it with a friend, or a family member. It is in those events that we find our hope and our courage … and the ability to recognize and to continue to work the works that God has for us to do.

Let’s pray.

Conversations at the Well

Sunday, February 27, 2005
Lent 3A
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
John 4:5-42

5So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. 7A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’ 8(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink,” you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ 11The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ 13Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ 15The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’ 16Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ 17The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; 18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ 19The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ 21Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ 25The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ 26Jesus said to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’
27 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you want?’ or, ‘Why are you speaking with her?’ 28Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?’ 30They left the city and were on their way to him. 31Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, ‘Rabbi, eat something.’ 32But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ 33So the disciples said to one another, ‘Surely no one has brought him something to eat?’ 34Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35Do you not say, “Four months more, then comes the harvest”? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. 36The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.” 38I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.’ 39Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I have ever done.’ 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41And many more believed because of his word. 42They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.’

What moves, motivates, enthralls, engages, and generally affects us more than anything? What convinces, persuades, perplexes, challenges, and frustrates us most? Words.

Granted, there are, among us, those who are mostly unaffected by words, but more so by actions. And we all strive to strike a balance between the two.

There is an inherent danger in swinging too far in one or the other direction. When we are too caught up in words, we lose the sense of what it means to put actions behind the words, and when we are too involved in DOING things – be they all noble and worthwhile, we can lose the perspective gained by examination and reflection provided by words.

I remember sitting in classes in college, and I remember sometimes lively discussions, engaging professors, and challenging classmates. But the most significant events – the most powerfully moving moments I remember about those four years were in the midst of the conversations I had with my roommates, usually too late at night, and too far off the subject we were supposed to be studying, but that’s another story. The conversations would sometimes go on for days or weeks, stopping and then picking back up several times over that time. As we thought of new issues related to the subject, or questions arose that we’d not thought of before, the thread of the conversation continued. To some degree, they are still going on today. When we got together in Louisville Christmas before last, there were a couple of times when all it took was a single comment, and the conversation that we began back in 1983 picked right back up.

The same goes for seminary. I remember being even more enthralled in the classes than I had been in college – we were studying the stuff of LIFE. We were learning about and reflecting on exactly what it meant for faith and life to intersect … more often than not, we ended up finding that it’s not so much an intersection as a shared lane, depending on how you approach it.

While the subject matter in class was different from those in college, the most significant moments in seminary again came in the form of conversations, and not necessarily conversations in a classroom, but in an apartment, or in the library, or the cafeteria, or the post office. There used to be a couple of bulletin boards, that were a kind of no-mans’ land. They were primarily used to post notes about stuff you wanted to sell, or buy, or apartments for rent, or looking for a roommate signs, that sort of thing.

But they were also an open forum. They were the precursor to the internet chat rooms we have today. People would post letters, or messages, intentionally leaving room for people to post replies – or even if they didn’t leave room, people would find a space to jot down some sort of response.

It used to be one of my favorite pastimes: going to check my mail, and stopping to read the latest post. There were some pretty significant events noted on those boards. A lifelong friend of mine, also a student at the seminary, announced that he was homosexual, and that he was leaving seminary. People would post accusations and counter-accusations, others would throw in a comment to try to make light of a situation, and others would then jump on THAT person for not taking things seriously enough.

Southern at the time was a relatively healthy mix of views and ideas, of thoughtful opinions and interpretations of the usual hot-button issues, along with a growing number of stridently closed individuals who would in the end strengthen their grip on the institution to the point where the interchange of ideas is mostly in one direction: from the administration to the student. That is probably an unfair statement. But comparing the then and now is to compare two institutions with radically different approaches … and to some degree, objectives.

There are moments we savor for what has happened in them. Moments where we are caught up in what is being done – in the action of the moment -- that leaves a lasting impact. Building a house for someone, if you’ve ever been involved in a habitat for humanity project, that can be a life-imprinting event. If you’ve ever been involved in disaster relief, that can be as well. If you’ve ever been involved in saving someone’s life, or in averting an accident, things like that don’t happen and then fade quickly into memory. YOUR life is changed, not only the life of the other person.

We have a little of both in the passage today.

The words spoken at the well, the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman hold some of those first moments, where the sparking of ideas and the point-counterpoint of the questions and answers engage the Samaritan woman’s mind as well as our own.

What’s the difference between the Samaritans and the Jews? Why does one claim Jerusalem’s temple as ‘the’ place to worship, while the other claims Mount Gerizim, next to where they were carrying on the conversation, as ‘the’ place? Those were questions SHE raised then.

Christ’s response to her then and to us now is the same. The time is coming when it won’t matter so much WHERE you worship, as much as it will matter that you worship in Spirit and in Truth. We can become so wrapped up in the formalities of worship, can’t we? Jesus was saying it’s not about the formalities; it’s about where your hearts are. it’s not about how you sing, or if you follow a set pattern, it’s not about how it looks to others, it is about US – YOU and ME being in communion with each other. THAT is what it’s about. If you’re not in communion with me inside your heart, what difference does it make which four walls you stand inside of on any given Sunday?

The conversation continues, and what results is action. That happens today even as it did nearly two thousand years ago in Samaria. Jesus never engaged someone in conversation to have them walk away unchanged, somehow unaffected, or ignorant of the significance of what just took place.

In this case, after Jesus tells the Samaritan woman who she really is – confronts her, as it were, with her true self, she is compelled to run into town and tell her neighbors and the rest of the townspeople who she’s been talking to at the well.

THEIR response, in turn, is to be … drawn out to HIM. There’s always the possibility that it happened to be a slow day in town – nothing showing on TV, all of it reruns … but it’s also true that the story the woman at the well was sharing was pretty … compelling … we are so easily intrigued by people who can tell us things about ourselves that sometimes even WE are afraid to admit… I wonder how many of the people who ran out to meet Jesus were approaching him thinking “there’s no WAY he’ll be able to guess so-and-so about me.”

And yet, Paul tells us there will come a day when all our secret thoughts will be shouted from the mountaintops… for all to hear.

A little unsettling isn’t it?

I wonder how many of the other townspeople continued their conversations with Jesus around that same well over the next two days.

How many looked him in the eyes and realized they were looking into the face of an infinitely compassionate God, who SO wanted to be a part of their lives that he came to earth to live among them … how many hearts sang back when they heard the melody of God’s voice singing to them by name across the way?

How many of us have let the thread of our conversation with the Savior … drop for far too long? How long has it been since we engaged in the conversation that is our working out our salvation with fear and trembling? How long has it been since we raised that question that has been on our mind with our fellow pilgrims?

There’s room at the well for all of us.

Let’s pray.

Salt and Light

Sunday, February 20th, 2005
Lent 2A
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton (WMU Missions Emphasis Sunday)
Text: Matthew 5:13-16 (not from the Revised Common Lectionary)

“Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste Godliness? You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.

Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.”
(From The Message )

The life marked by the beatitudes is not to be lived in isolation.

We often assume that these inner qualities can only be developed or displayed in isolation from the world; but Jesus wants us to live them out before the world.

That’s why we were called to the Northern Neck by the Rappahannock Baptist Association and by Jerusalem Baptist Church, to live out our faith before the world that we find in Essex, Richmond, Westmoreland, Northumberland and Lancaster counties.

Jesus points to broadness in the impact of the disciples that must have seemed almost ridiculous at the time; how could these humble Galileans salt the earth, or light the world? But they did!

We were faced with the impact we could make – as individuals, as a congregation, and as an association, through the ministry to the migrant and Hispanic community on the Northern Neck very soon after meeting and getting to know the people we work with FROM that community.

Within a couple of months of meeting them, we had already been extended an invitation to come visit them in their homes in Mexico. At the time, it honestly didn’t seem to be anything more than a dream. Time constraints and other demands and commitments seemed to confine us – in the best sense of the word – to the work we are involved in on a day-to-day basis both here at Jerusalem and in the Hispanic community that is here at any given time of year. So we went on about our business … the business of the Kingdom, we hoped.

Back to the passage: Notice that Jesus does not challenge us to become "salt" or "light"; He simply says that we are - and to put it bluntly, we are either fulfilling or failing that responsibility.

Salt as a picture of the Christian

In Jesus' day, salt was a valued commodity; Roman soldiers were sometimes paid with salt, giving rise to the phrase "worth his salt". Salt was used to preserve meats, and to retard decay; Christians being salt points to their preservation of society.

And as today, salt was used to add flavor - Christians should be a "flavorful" people. However, salt must keep its "saltiness" to be of any value; it is rightfully trampled under foot; in the same way, too many Christians lose their "flavor" and become good for nothing.


****

On the 5th day of our visit to Mexico, we were sitting in Isidra and Norberto’s living room, having just gotten up from an afternoon nap that they insisted on, after having traveled from Tlaxcala, where we’d spent the first part of our trip with Mundo Perez and HIS family, visiting the men who work in White Stone and their families. Isidra began to talk about how much it means to her to be able to worship with us when we have our gatherings. She said she feels the presence of God when we are together.

She spoke about how she doesn’t practice the veneration of saints, and freely tells others who do that they don’t need to be praying to saints, but directly to God through Jesus, that it is through faith in HIM that they are receive salvation. She spoke about her local priest coming to her house and leading a study on the importance of studying scripture, of understanding how it can impact their lives, and how important it is to seek daily communion with Christ. She went on to say that the priest still talked to the group of women about the importance of observing the sacraments, and how critical they were to carrying out their faith, so there was no question about where she stood in relationship to the Roman Catholic tradition, but she still looked straight at us and said ‘There needs to be a Baptist presence here.” I came across a Baptist Church not too far from here several years ago, and I’ve not been back by that area since then, but I think we need to go to see if it is still there, and at least establish contact with the Pastor and the people who attend there.’

This was a devout Catholic telling us that there needed to be a Baptist presence in her city. It made me wonder what we had shown her Baptists to be. I honestly wondered if we were presenting her with a true portrait of what Baptist believe … and the longer I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that I think she came away with exactly the impression … that God wanted her to have. I don’t mean that we were necessarily that attuned to what God wanted to come out of the encuentros, though I hope we were more attuned than not, but I think that we were tuned ENOUGH to what God has been trying to say through the ministry and the heart of the Rappahannock Baptist Association, and Jerusalem Baptist Church in particular, to where the Hispanic Community that has chosen to JOIN with us is coming to understand that though there may be differences between us, we have at the heart of what we believe a common bond, the Lordship of Christ, and that that is a starting point for all the rest.

*****

Back to the passage:

Light.

The purpose of light is to illuminate and expose what is present; therefore light must be exposed before it can be of any value - if it is hidden under a bucket, it is no longer useful. It goes against the very nature and purpose of light for it to be hidden - so a Christian is truly fighting himself and the Holy Spirit by never letting his light so shine before men. Even as lamps are placed higher so their light can be more effective, we should look for ways to let our light shine in greater and broader ways.

Jesus gives the Christian both a great compliment and responsibility when He says that we are the light of the world; He claimed that title for Himself as He walked this earth (John 8:12 and 9:5).

The purpose in letting our light so shine by doing good works is so that others will glorify God, not us.

*****

That same evening, Isidra and Norberto convinced us to go with them to see if we could find that Baptist Church she’d seen so many years ago. By then it was nighttime, but still relatively early in the evening. We walked down to the main street, about 2 or 3 blocks down from their home, and hailed a taxi.

Taxis in Mexico are not like taxis here in the States. They are mostly, though not exclusively, Volkswagen Bugs, with the front passenger seat pulled out, to make exiting and entering the cars easier. Picture this: there were 4 of us, two of us pretty tall. Occasionally you’d see a larger model taxi go by, but not very often. One finally did stop, but it was the standard VW Bug. Isidra, Leslie and I piled into the back seat, and Norberto squatted in the front, beside the driver, where the passenger seat would have been had it been left in. Isidra explained to the taxi driver where to go, and as we got closer, the conversation got more specific about what we were looking for. We finally came out and asked the driver if he’d seen a Baptist Church around, as he was driving his fares back and forth. He thought a minute and finally said “I’m not sure. I think there may be one at ‘such-and-such a place, but I can’t be certain.” He proceeded to take us to a couple of churches, one where there was no meeting going on, and the other where there was. Both were Pentecostal. As we pulled away, Isidra tried to explain what a Baptist Church was like. She finally drew it down to the point of saying “Baptists are just like Catholics.”

The part of me that studied Baptist history in the face of state-sanctioned religious institutions cringed every time she said that. But the part of me that longs for a world where, rather than tearing each other down, or spending more time telling you why you should belong to this or that denomination, and how much better one’s chosen tradition is than others, denominations could recognize a common purpose, a shared GOAL, THAT part of me was thrilled to hear her say that.

Don’t get me wrong. I am proud to be a baptist, to stand for historic baptist principles of soul competency, local church autonomy, and religious freedom, but at the same time I long to join with other traditions and agree to disagree on some things but still maintain a common union … under the Lordship of Christ.

As the taxi ride got longer and longer, the conversation with the driver got deeper and deeper into the subject of why there are so many denominations. I finally spoke up in the midst of the expressions of some confusion and a little frustration, to say that I thought it was a good thing that there are so many denominations, that everyone needs to find a place where they are comfortable expressing their faith as they understand it, even though that results in differences, and sometimes arguments, my hope was that there would come a day when all our different traditions could be seen for what they are – a reflection of the wonderful varieties God has gifted us with – varieties of thought and understanding, varieties of styles and presentations, varieties of song and praise.

*****

A key thought in both the pictures of salt and light: distinction

There are, of course, any number of distinctions between Baptists and Catholics. But those distinctions disappear in the face of someone who has no faith, no inkling of what it means to have a relationship with God, who has never experienced that redeeming and welcoming love in the faces and words and actions of a congregation wholly given over to the task of being Christ’s presence in this world.

Salt is needed because the world is rotting and decaying; if our Christianity is also rotting and decaying, it won't be any good. Light is needed because the world is in darkness; if our Christianity imitates the darkness, we have nothing to show the world.

To be effective we must seek and display the Christian distinctive; we can never affect the world for Jesus by becoming like the world. So how will we be different?

The passage ends with a short, but beautiful picture at the end:

“Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.”

What was so overwhelming to us over the course of those 7 days in January, was that everywhere we went, everyone we greeted and hugged and sat down and talked with, all the families of those we’ve sought to minister to here, showed us what it is like to be on the receiving end of that gift – and prompted us to open up with God.

Let’s pray.