All Things Subject
But we DO see Jesus …

Sunday, October 8th, 2006
Proper 22 B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Hebrews 2:5-12

5Now God did not subject the coming world, about which we are speaking, to angels. 6But someone has testified somewhere, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them? 7You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor, 8subjecting all things under their feet.” (Ps. 8:4-6) Now in subjecting all things to them, God left nothing outside their control. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them, 9but we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. 10It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. 11For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters, 12saying, “I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters, in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.”

The Revised Common Lectionary maps out passages from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the epistles for each Sunday of the year, as well as for Holy Days on the Church Calendar, for those denominations that observe the church year.

Today’s passage, along with the passages over the next few weeks, will be drawn from the letter to the Hebrews. If you’ve still got your bookmark or ribbon in James from the last series of sermons, open there, and move the marker up a few pages. Hebrews is found immediately before James.

A little background on the Letter to the Hebrews: tradition holds it to have been written by Paul, but textual studies and comparisons with what can be called Paul’s undisputed writings bring out differences in style and form that lead scholars to present the possibility that, perhaps drawing from Paul’s notes, a disciple of his sat down to write the letter to the Hebrews – an undefined and unaddressed group of believers in the second half of the first century. By unaddressed, I mean that there is no greeting or identification of the writer at the beginning of the letter. It goes straight into the body of the message.

From the content of the letter – the drawing of the parallels between the duties of the high priest of Israel and the completion of that role by Jesus Christ – it would seem that it is written to a mostly Jewish congregation, but the arguments could just as well serve in addressing a congregation made up of a mix of Jews and gentile converts to Christianity.

The timeframe of the writing is also debatable. Since it speaks of temple sacrifices, a central element of Jewish worship, it would stand to reason that it was written before the destruction of the temple in the year 70. However, the strength of the arguments surrounding the sacrifices is not terribly diminished by the possibility that the letter was written after the destruction of the Temple, but not before the importance of the sacrifices performed there faded from the collective memory of the congregation to whom the letter was written.

Approaching today’s passage weighs heavy on me. Not because it’s a particularly difficult text, but because of how inadequate and … unfaithful I feel when I think of the trust that has been placed in me as a child of God, and how I am guilty of at times having squandered that trust.

Did you get where the writer to the Hebrews says “God left nothing outside their control”? Let me read it again – starting at verse 7:

7You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor, 8subjecting all things under their feet.” Now in subjecting all things to them, God left nothing outside their control. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them, 9but we do see Jesus …”

That gets me. Right here (the heart). Right where I know God knows me. While there’s some consolation in the very next phrase, insofar as it is an admission of the fact that falling short of the mark is not unique to this generation, there is still no release from the initial fact that we have been left in charge. In other words, we have been made caretakers of this world we live in.

And what kind of a world is it?

It’s a world where enough food could actually be produced to feed everyone, and yet, every 5 seconds, somewhere in the world, a child dies from hunger.

It is a world where the citizens of the developed nations fund aid and relief organizations in their work in war-torn countries through charitable giving in the millions, if not billions of dollars, and it is a world where the governments of those same nations are the largest arms providers to the nations that are receiving that same aid.

It is a world where it is easy to lose sight of the fact that Christ died for ALL of us – for the entire world, IF we continually focus on the interior life of faith. Unbalancing the message of the Gospel opens us to loss of perspective. While it is appropriate and necessary – even crucial – to nourish that interior aspect of our faith, we cannot, MUST not, neglect, as we found in James, the faith that is expressed through action.

Have you seen those white plastic wristbands that have the word “ONE” on them? I did a little research on the organization, and found that the focus of the organization is on eradicating poverty and AIDS. It is set up on the simple premise that if we all act as One, we can achieve what we set out to accomplish. Though the organization is not strictly a Christian organization, some of the leaders in it are. It would be nice to think that the Church gave THEM the idea – it IS, after all, a deep parallel to the Gospel – we all, being individual members of a body, function as one body – the body of Christ. But realistically, perhaps it would be wiser to hope that the learning would go in the other direction – the church might learn from them what it looks like to act as one.

If you had a chance to read the brief article on the back of your bulletins this morning, granted, the statistics quoted are from a couple of years ago, but you would have read of 12 to 14% increases in requests for emergency food assistance, and of the fact that 20 % of those requests went unmet, and also of the fact that over half of those requests came from families – children and their parents … of which slightly more than a third were families where the adults were employed.

What does that say about how we are taking care of what has been entrusted to us? What does that say about how we are taking care of each other?

While there are rays of hope in new technologies being developed, and a more conscientious effort being made by more companies, organizations, and individuals to be better stewards of that for which we have been made responsible, we still fall far short of the mark.

Grace is found in the fact that God tarries. God is waiting. God has extended the invitation, and the ball is still in our court.

We are still on the open side of the invitation. We have been asked to care for our world. We have been tasked with it. To paraphrase the opening words of a somewhat popular television show from the 1970’s, “our mission, if we choose to accept it.”

Because we really do have a choice. We really DO have the option. That is in part why the world is in the state it is in. It is in no WORSE shape by the same token. Decisions and choices can be made on the very local level that will impact the world at large, maybe not in ways immediately apparent, but nonetheless, significant in the long run.

Today happens to be World Hunger Day. That is part of the reason for the statistics earlier. But we cannot lose sight of the interrelationship between hunger and poverty, justice and peace, freedom and opportunity. Those are things we can not only pray for; we can also actively work towards eradicating the former and strengthening the latter.

That is Christ’s invitation to the table; to be an active participant in the breaking in of the Kingdom of God. To take into ourselves the life of Christ in the form of the Holy Spirit and to let him move us in ways that can change the world.

The invitation IS open, but when we accept it, the cost is … high. Grace is the free gift of God. Discipleship is costly. Christ asks for nothing less than our lives.

Just as his body was broken and his blood was shed, he calls us to be ready to give him our all.

We share a common loaf, and we share a common cup. When we tear off a piece of the bread, we are signaling our investment, our belief, our hope, and our prayer that as we leave this place, we will take Christ with us wherever we go. Christ does not remain here, to be visited on Sundays and Wednesday nights. When we dip that piece of bread in the cup, we are signaling our willingness to be poured out for each other – both those who are in this room with us, as well as those who are outside these walls and do not know what it means to know Christ.

How will you respond to the invitation?

(Communion)

(Blest Be the Tie That Binds)

So That You May Be Healed

Sunday, October 1st, 2006
Proper 21 B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
James 5:13-20

13 Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. 14Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. 15The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. 16Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. 17Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 18Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest. 19My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, 20you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

Candidate Conference, February, 1985. I’d received the invitation in November of ’84. Being invited to the Candidate Conference was the second step in the process to becoming a Missionary Journeyman. The first was submitting an application. The third was being accepted as a Journeyman in training. The last was being commissioned upon completion of the 5 & ½ week training required for the program. From there you were individually scheduled to depart for your country of service.

All those who were invited to Candidate Conference did not go on to training. Along with 2 or 3 other candidates, I was invited to fly into Richmond earlier than the rest of the folks in the group. There were some issues that needed to be explored with each of us that, while they did not preclude our being considered for the conference, they did need to be addressed with each of us individually. Once we had each had our meetings with the consultants regarding those, the rest of the crew arrived, and the conference began in earnest. Over the two and a half days of the conference, we were presented with the various requests that had been submitted by missions around the world for journeyman positions, we sat through review and orientation sessions about what to expect to find as journeymen, and discussions about the expectations that might arise on OUR part as co-missioners on the field.

My roommates during the conference were Tom Blackaby and Phil Cain. Tom is from Canada. If you’ve heard of Henry Blackaby, Tom is one of his two sons. He and his family moved back to Norway and are serving a church there as Pastor. Phil is currently serving with his wife as a missionary in the republic of Niger, in West Africa.

At the time, however, none of us were certain where we would end up, if anywhere.

The conference was a pretty intense time; a full schedule of meetings along with a full plate of decisions to make in a fairly short time. It’s a combination that makes for not-too-restful sleep – if any—while there. Tom and I overslept that first morning. Phil was up and out of the room before either one of us stirred, and when we DID stir, it was to realize that we barely had time to throw some clothes on and walk to the mission board – we were staying at the Holiday Inn that was just a few blocks from the board.

As we walked side by side that morning, I remember a comment Tom made. Neither one of us had a chance to shower or do anything other than plaster our hair down with water and get dressed and brush our teeth. But we DID have time to throw on some cologne. Tom’s comment was ‘cologne covers a multitude of sins.’

To be honest, that was the first memory that popped into my head when I read this morning’s passage.

What is it that can truly cover “a multitude of sins?” If you’ll notice a recurring theme in the epistle of James, aside from the idea of putting faith into action, there is an underlying theme of community – of being a follower of Christ within the context of a community – a family – of faith.

That can be difficult at times. At best, we can find ourselves surrounded by caring, loving, affirming brothers and sisters who rejoice and pray with you, or cry with you as the situation warrants.

Friday evening we held a baptism of one of our Hispanic friends, and there was group of about 15 people here to share in the service. A small group, yes, but nonetheless, a group that was willing to come out on a work night, since most of them work on Saturdays as well as Mondays through Fridays, to say to Alejandra that they rejoiced with her, and would pray with her, and would walk with her in the way of Jesus.

At worst, that faith community can turn, can alienate, can ostracize and belittle, and expel someone or a group who most needs redemption or community.

What James is laying out in these verses is a … telegraphed message about what to do when. If you’re sick, pray – with your brothers and sisters. If you are cheerful, you should sing songs of praise with your brothers and sisters. If you are sick, you should call the elders – the deacons and ministers of the church – your brothers and sisters – to come pray with you.

The passage takes an interesting turn, I think, at verse 16.

“16Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.”

The context, having just been discussing the issues of illness, and anointing with oil and prayers that are effective for the healing of the sick would seem to indicate that what James was talking about was the physical healing in response to prayer.

But there is a critical shift in the impetus, the motivation, for prayer and confession in verse 16. What is the opening phrase? ‘Confess your sins to one another,’ that seems to be step one.

Step 2 is ‘pray for one another’, and step three is … not really a step so much as a result: ‘so that you may be healed’.

I hope we’ve grown to know each other enough to understand that I don’t hold a mechanistic view of scripture, of prayer, of action and response. I don’t believe the Bible teaches that “if you do A, B and C in that order you’ll end up with result D.” I am much more prone to view the action of God in humankind as one that honors intentions of the heart as much, if not more so, than outward acts – but not separating the two, that it is revealed as we are more willing to be obedient to God’s commands for our lives, and that they will manifest themselves in ways totally unexpected – from unexpected sources as well as in unexpected circumstances. God enjoys a good surprise as much as any of us.

But the heart of this passage speaks to what it means to be in community. This is the last in this series from James that we will be studying, and it caps off a month of studying what being part of a community of faith --- a community that ‘acts out’ its faith – means.

So what did James mean when he said ‘confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed’?

What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Could we really take James’ words to heart, and actually walk up to each other and confess our sins to each other? Are we really willing to be that vulnerable, that open, that frank with each other?

Is there trust among the members of this congregation – enough so that there can be that degree of openness between us? It bears noting that verse 12, the verse immediately prior to this morning’s reading, contains the fairly well known entreaty to ‘let your yes be yes, and your no be no’ that we might be more familiar with than we realize.

James’ call is to one of openness and honesty. He doesn’t tell us it’s the easiest way. It’s not. His assessment of the human condition overall let’s us know that he is well aware that it can at times be the most difficult path to take. And yet, he calls us to it in the name of Christ.

And can we really understand the call of the gospel as anything else? Nowhere do we find Christ glossing over sinful conditions and broken relationships in order to make a situation more … palatable, or easy to walk away from. Jesus always faced the reality of a situation head-on. We are, as his disciples, to do likewise.

Christ calls us to model his behavior. He was firm, and gentle. Loving, and pointed. Honest and unblinking. He held people accountable for their actions and their words.

If we are in this relationship with each other, as a family of faith, holding each other both up in prayer and … to the task … and we’ve all come into the relationship understanding that to be the case, then we know what we ‘signed up for’ so to speak.

If we do not see the relationship that way, then we will need to reexamine what it means to be church, to be family, to be the body of Christ.

Let’s pray.

Generous Acts

Sunday, September 24th, 2006
Ordination to the Deacon Ministry of Soozin Mullin
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
James 1:17-22

17Every 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. 19You 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. 22But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.

In going through the Epistle of James over the last couple of weeks we’ve been seeing that the idea of faith being a concept – an idea ALONE is about as far from the point of the gospel as one can get. James’ point, throughout his message to the church at Jerusalem, is that Christian faith is NOT ONLY about thinking and dwelling and meditating and pondering and internalizing the message of Christ, it is about putting the message of Christ into ACTION.

That is NOT to say that we should NOT study and meditate and internalize and “think on these things”, but it DOES mean that our activity surrounding our faith should not stop THERE. Christ tells us in Mark 12:30 “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” He goes on to say “love your neighbor as yourself.” And we’ll come back to that in a minute.

The very first Student Mission Conference I attended as a college student in Kentucky was at Southern Seminary. I remember it was wintertime, either late January or early February. I drove up to Louisville in my car with fellow students from the Baptist Student Union from Western Kentucky University. In some ways I felt like I had an inside track with the whole ‘missions’ thing. After all, I WAS the son of missionaries, I had LIVED overseas, had spent my life around missions, I was on a first-name basis with Keith Parks, the then-president of the then Foreign Mission Board (he was “Uncle Keith” to any MK), so … of COURSE I knew what missions was about, right?

What I found was that, while I might have been familiar with the terminology and had the right words to talk about missions, it still boiled down to this. And it was the theme of the conference: “Be Doers of the Word”. And that was something that I needed to figure out all for myself, along with everyone else that was at that meeting. I remember sleeping on the floor in one of the seminary student’s dorm rooms. If memory serves, it was in the same dorm that I ended up living in while I was in seminary, just on the lower of the two floors.

Over the intervening nearly twenty-five years, there have been people who have shown me what being “doers of the word” looks like. Dr. and Mrs. Paul Parks showed me what it meant to be pillars of the church in the fullest sense – they both gave not only of their finances, but of their time and their insight. Dr. Parks taught one of the college and career classes for years – both before and after I attended First Baptist Church of Bowling Green Kentucky. He was the man who introduced me to Richard Foster’s “Celebration of Discipline.”

Phyllis Parks, Dr. Parks’ wife, taught me how important and meaningful even the most menial tasks performed in love, can be.

Herbert and Jackie Shadowen took me in and made me a part of their family, even letting me live in their home while they spent the summer on sabbatical. They fleshed out for me what the gift of hospitality looks like.

Truman Smith taught me about trusting God to work in and through someone, even when, in man’s eyes, there might seem to be something lacking.

Kelly Spears taught me about standing up for someone when you think they have been treated wrong, about being an advocate for someone with no voice.

Phil Brown taught me about perseverance.

Claude Drouet taught me about generosity and graciousness of spirit.

I hope that as I’ve gone through that short and incomplete list of people who have walked with me in MY pilgrimage as a Christian, that you had a chance, or that you will TAKE the time, to go over in your mind who has been pivotal in your life and growth as a Christian

Looking back over those experiences with those people, I CAN really say, as James did at the beginning of the passage, that “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” These were all people who not only believed their faith, but lived it.

When James digs in and says ‘Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves’ he is addressing a situation with which I’m afraid we are all familiar. He’s talking to people who had figured out how to hear Christian teaching without really listening to it. It basically went in one ear and out the other. He’s addressing the mindset that says “I go to church on Sundays, I sit through the sermon, and I’m done. That’s as far as it goes for me – that’s all I NEED to be a Christian.” The thought that what is learned, or heard, in Church might have some effect on the actions one takes in daily life is foreign to them. That is the deception James is talking about; people who have deceived themselves into thinking that the Gospel ends at the walls of the building.

What we see over and over again in the Gospels, in Christ’s ministry, in his preaching, and in the history of the early church, is that it is what is done THE REST OF THE TIME – away from church, away from worship, away from fellowship with fellow believers, that defines whether or not we are truly followers of Christ.

So we come to this point in our life as a church, where we recognize and affirm a person’s living out that discipleship, that following of Jesus, that calling, that carrying out the ministry of service, so what we do here as a church is rejoice in that, affirm it, bless it, and name it. We call it the diaconate. The Servants. Those who are set aside originally were set aside based on their “good standing”, on their being “full of the Spirit and wisdom.”

We engage in the laying on of hands – it is a ritual of consecration and appointment. By asking any who are present to join in this act, we recognize that it is this body of Christ, as a local congregation, that we bear witness to those who are called out among us to that service of the church, and while it is in a concrete sense a calling to serve this church, Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton, it is in a broader sense a consecration to serve the church universal, because we are a part of that as well.

It is with profound joy that I ask Soozin to join me here at the front. I mentioned what Jesus went on to say a few minutes ago – that part about ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ – the water and the bowl and the towel remind us of one of the last acts Jesus performed for his disciples --- washing their feet. I want you to dip your hands in this water, and be reminded of that act, and understand that it was setting the tone and setting the precedent for what we do as servant leaders of the church.

Soozin’s witness not only since we’ve been here (Leslie and the kids and I), but over at LEAST the last two decades … you all can tell me more accurately how long it’s been the case – Bobbie and Doc and the rest of the family, yes? – has been consistently living out that ‘loving’ part, the caring that her life has reflected is more than enough to show that her heart is truly one that is after God’s own.

I would first ask that all ordained ministers and deacons present please form a line along the side of the sanctuary, and as you come by to say a blessing over or a prayer for Soozin, and after them, the line is open for any and all who would join us in consecrating and appointing Soozin to be a Deacon of Jerusalem.

Rudders of Our Souls

Sunday, September 17th, 2006
Proper 19 B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
James 3:1-12

1 Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. 2 For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. 3 If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. 4 Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. 5 So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. 7 For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, 8 but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. 11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? 12 Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.

It strikes me as a little funny to have the first line of the text this morning say “not many of you should become teachers” after having just commissioned the incoming teachers for the Sunday School year just last Sunday, but then, it is probably an entirely appropriate note on which to dwell at the beginning of the new year. After all, what does a teacher use to instruct? Words!

So it is a good thing to periodically stop and take account of how we are doing with them – with our words – in relation to how we are doing with our relationship with Jesus.

Here’s a simple test. Three questions, true or false, you may want to keep the answers to yourself:

I have never hurt another person with my words
I have never repeated something about another person that I did not know for certain was absolutely true.
I never participate in idle talk about other people and their lives.

Now, I’d like to try an experiment together. Yesterday many of you were here to witness the wedding ceremony of Mark and Irma Haggerty. There came the point in the ceremony where they repeated words after me. We’re going to do something a LITTLE bit like that, but as we do, I want you to pay attention to how you react emotionally to what you are saying.

Okay, ready? Repeat after me: “I love you!”

Great! How did that feel? Good?

Now, ready for the second phrase? Here goes.

Repeat after me: “I hate you!”

Hmmm … not quite the same, is it?

Consider for a moment the power of speech. When we hear a word, the physical movement that enters our ear and then the inner ear activates 24,000 little nerves which react through the limbic system and results in the pituitary gland sending hormones into the body. Our whole physical system reacts when we hear words of care or condemnation. Have you ever heard something and it makes you physically ill? When we hear words that bring us pain or anxiety, the physical-chemical reaction may take as many as 72 hours to subside. Does that explain how some people live in a perpetual state of agitation and upset?

The power of the tongue, that is to say, the power of words, was clearly understood by James. Perhaps not in the detailed scientific way we just went over a minute ago, but in terms of what words can do TO the heart and what spoken words say ABOUT the heart, yeah, that part was clearly understood.

James is not only speaking about gossip in this passage, though gossip is definitely included in the family of words he is discussing. He is speaking about any untoward word, any unmeasured, uncontrolled utterance, anything spoken in anger, unthinkingly, or with no thought for how it will affect the listener.

It is to my enduring regret and shame to remember moments when the words that came out of my mouth were particularly harsh, especially barbed, and deliberately aimed to inflict shame or pain. There is nothing I can do to take them back. Nothing. I can only hope and pray that my actions since those words were spoken will work to dim, if not erase the memory of them.

It is an apt image that James draws – that of a rider controlling the horse with a bit in the mouth – it’s a piece of metal that is, what? Maybe 6 inches long? And it helps control an animal that weighs how many hundred pounds?

And the ship analogy – relative to the size of the ship, the rudder is miniscule! And yet, with a word from the pilot the rudder turns and the entire ship moves accordingly. Amazing to think of how much like those our tongues are. It’s actually a little eerie, if you ask me, how dead on those images are. The horse can be in perfect health, the ship can be functioning perfectly, no problems whatsoever, but if the horse is steered off a cliff, or the ship is steered towards a reef, what’s the result? Disaster. And all because of the turn of a relatively small piece in the whole system.

How many of us have lived the consequences of letting our rudders take us on a wrong turn? Lead us down a path down which we should never have gone, said things we never should have said? And the end result was disaster?

The forest fire image could have been drawn directly from the news we’ve been getting from out west over the last couple of weeks, couldn’t it? How many of us have watched words spoken in ignorance, or haste, or worse yet, malice, spread like a wildfire through a community? Or have you seen it happen in a community of faith? It is hard to imagine anything worse than watching something like that take hold of a congregation and tear at its very heart. In times of stress, tempers flare, words are spoken or perhaps yelled, and feelings are expressed in less than loving terms.

That seems to be one of the things James was facing in the congregation in Jerusalem. They were living through persecution, of what kind we do not know, though we can imagine to a point. And in that time of strain, of challenge, of hardship, and even of outright danger, words I’m sure were said that need not have been.

So how do you deal with the aftermath of a word exchange that leaves people bleeding, internally? That leaves them wondering how the other person can even call themselves a follower of Christ and still sleep at night.

The first step is recognizing that what has been said was painful, harmful; to the individual, to the situation, to the group, to the community. There is an element of accountability that is involved in living in community, in being a part of a family of faith, of a local congregation, that calls us individually to become servants of all. That is a fundamental aspect of what it means to be a follower of Christ. Christ calls us to a life of service, and by definition, that pulls us out of the mindset that we intrinsically have a position within that family that is of a higher value than another.

I mentioned at the beginning that we just held our commissioning of the incoming year’s slate of officers and committees and teachers. On a human level, we almost automatically put ourselves in layers – this one is more important than that one, that one needs to answer and report to this one, and so on … yes, there is a scriptural basis for having leaders in the church, but what is it based on? Spiritual maturity. Not on wealth, not on family, not on positions held outside the church… while we hope for a happy coincidence when we look for folks to fill the positions that are available within our community, we may be doing ourselves a disservice by not first looking at the level of maturity in a person as a follower of Christ.

When James uses the word ‘perfect’ in verse 2, he is using it in the same sense that Paul does in his writings – it is in the sense of ‘mature’.

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

Let’s ask some questions of ourselves:
How have we, with our words, in this past week, caused pain?

How have we, with our words, in this past week, torn down someone’s spirit?

How have we, with our words, in this past week, blessed someone?

How have we, with our words, in this past week, lifted someone’s spirit, provided comfort in a time of affliction, or encouraged someone in a moment of sorrow or difficulty?

How have we, with our words, in this past week, torn or mended the fabric of the cloth that we are weaving together that is called Jerusalem Baptist Church?

Let’s pray.

FaithWorks

Sunday, September 10th, 2006
Proper 18 B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
James 2:1-17

We’re going to spend the next month or so away from John’s gospel. Since we just completed a five week series on the sixth chapter of John, I thought it might be good to delve into some other scripture passages. So for the month of September we’ll be looking at the epistle of James.

A little background on James: tradition holds that the letter was written by James the brother of Jesus, who after his ascension over the next few years became the leader of the Christian church in Jerusalem. During the nearly three decades after Jesus’ ascension, the church in Jerusalem underwent alternating periods of benevolent disregard and outright persecution, whether at the hands of the Romans or Jews, and eventually a severe persecution by Herod resulted in James’ being martyred in the year 62, just a few years prior to the Roman’s total destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70.

Many scholars believe that what we have in the general epistle of James is actually a combination of two things – at its heart, it is a sermon preached by James to his congregation in the midst of one of those times of persecution. It is also the result of a later Christian, who most likely knew and served with James, sitting down and expanding on the ideas and themes presented in the sermon. The resulting epistle is generally dated from between 80 and 90 as a point of information. It is ultimately a letter of encouragement and exhortation for Christ’s followers to remain true to their faith IN Christ.

Martin Luther didn’t have much use for it – he called it ‘the straw epistle’ – most likely because of its seeming contradiction of Paul’s view of Salvation only coming through FAITH that we find most clearly spelled out in Romans – and that was Martin Luther’s point of departure which sparked the reformation.

James, like Paul, doesn’t mince words. So let’s read together from the second chapter, the first seventeen verses:

1My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? 2For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, 3and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” 4have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? 5 Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? 6But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? 7Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? 8You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 9 But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the
law as transgressors. 10For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. 11For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. 12 So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. 13 For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment. 14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 15If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

And there you have it.

“So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”

Keep in mind, we, just like all those who have preceded us in the faith, need to hold that verse in a dynamic tension with the last several verses of Romans chapter 4 and the first two verses of chapter 5, where Paul says, concluding the argument he is presenting,

“Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.”

What does it mean to hold two things in dynamic tension? It means that though on some level they seem to contradict each other, there is a necessity to continue to KEEP them together – kind of like a vinegar and oil salad dressing – they won’t always stay together, but shaking them up and mixing them together brings out the best flavor in the salad – that’s sort of what we are going for when we speak of salvation through faith versus salvation through works – of course we can all agree that the seed of salvation is found in faith, and that no, salvation does not come through works alone, but there is an undeniable connection, an association between what it means to have faith – to accept Christ as Lord of your life and follow him in his example of living, and giving, and loving, and calling, and offering the world what it so desperately needs, and what that means when we translate it into ACTION.

Though we have contemplative strains within varying Christian traditions, we are not called to examine our bellybuttons, as it were. In other words, our faith does not dictate that we gather and discuss doctrine and theology, what the best form of worship is, or what color our carpet should be, our faith DOES dictate that we are to SHARE the love of Christ by SHOWING it, by doing, by performing acts of kindness and charity in the name of Christ and for HIS sake in order to draw people TO him.

But here’s the rub. Remember the chapter from First Corinthians that I read a paraphrase of a couple of weeks ago? About doing all these amazing, honorable, noble, generous, benevolent, effective things even in the name of Christ … what was the catch? If I don’t have … LOVE, it’s all dross, it’s worth zilch, zero, nada, nothing.

Can we put those together? Can we do the dynamic tension thing and keep in our heads the idea that it’s not what we DO that saves us, but what we DO DOES SHOW whether we have THAT WHICH SAVES … IN us …?

What we’re approaching is a place where we begin to understand that what we do is born out of what we believe. What we do with our hands and feet reflects where we’ve placed our hearts and our heads. And what we live – the state of grace in which we carry out our witness—begins to show whose we are, and where we come from and where we are going.

What most distinguished the early Christian Church – the early JEWISH Christian Church – of which James was the leader – from the standard Jewish synagogue of the day was the absence of distinctions. It bears noting that in the passage, in verse two, chapter two, the word that we read as ‘assembly’ is the same word that elsewhere is translated ‘synagogue’.

Last Sunday we visited Harrisonburg Baptist Church, where Leslie attended while she was in college at James Madison University. We didn’t take dress clothes with us, since we didn’t know where we would end up when we set out on Friday, but it wasn’t really an issue. We looked up the church on the internet from the hotel, and found out that they have an early service on Sundays – they call it a ‘Caffeinated Service’, and the dress code is ‘come as you are.’ There was an iron and ironing board in the hotel room, so even though we were wearing casual clothing, it wasn’t wrinkled. J

When we walked into the foyer of the church there were several people standing around chatting, and I noticed one man in particular stood out. At first I wondered if he had wandered in off the street, but that thought went away pretty quickly by watching the way he interacted with the people who more seemingly ‘belonged’ there.

You see, from the looks of him, the man was homeless. He was wearing several layers of clothing, and a pair of ragged sneakers, and the suit that made up his outermost layer of clothes was pretty ragged. And he smelled – REALLY strongly. There were a couple of bags off to one side there in the foyer that probably contained all his worldly possessions, but in watching how he carried himself, and how the other people related to him, it became pretty clear that he wasn’t an intruder, and he wasn’t out of place, but what was most amazing was that he wasn’t unwelcome. He was a part of that family of faith.

What James was pointedly saying to the folks at the church in Jerusalem was “if you make distinctions based on the way someone looks, or dresses, you might as well go back to being what you were before you professed faith in Christ, because if your faith hasn’t changed the way you treat others, then it’s really not worth calling faith, is it?” that opening phrase could actually be translated as a question rather than a statement: “You are not having faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ when you show partiality, are you?”

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

How open are our doors to those who would seek the Lord?

How open are our hearts to welcoming the stranger?

How open are our minds to understanding that God really is no respecter of persons? That it really DOESN’T matter to God what we wear, or how we smell, or what we sound like, or where we sit, as long as we are thirsting after God’s own Word, that Word of life Jesus spoke of in the Gospel of John?

Let’s pray.

Does This Offend You?

Sunday, August 27th, 2006
Proper 16 B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 6:56-71

56Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” 59He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
60When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” 61But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? 62Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? 63It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. 65And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.” 66Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. 67So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” 68Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” 70Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.” 71He was speaking of Judas son of Simon Iscariot, for he, though one of the twelve, was going to betray him.

I remember the first time I walked into a Sunday School class at Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville. I’d visited several churches since July of 1987, when I flew back from the two years I served in Spain, and was dealing with re-entry back into the culture of the United States after having been away from it.

I say ‘dealing with’ because two years can go by pretty fast, but it is a significant amount of time when you are going through formative – and TRANSformative experiences – both spiritually and emotionally. Moving from wherever those experiences took place BACK into what used to be familiar territory, but with a radically different outlook, can be a trying experience, and this was one of those.

I’d just spent the previous two years living in a culture that was post-christian – that accepted the fact of their historical enmeshment with the church, but which was, and continues to be, intent on ignoring the voice of faith. The society had relegated faith to irrelevance. The power acquired and wielded by the church over the previous 500 years resulted in a backlash against it – and by association, against most matters of faith. There were no active measures to keep it quiet, there is no suppression – no ACTIVE suppression of the practice of faith in Spain – on the contrary; there is a freedom of expression that had not been experienced for a long time in Spain, but the culture has been exposed to a view of the church that is foreign to the New Testament record – a church – an earthly church – that became powerful, and VERY powerful, and in the power, it became corrupt, and in that corruption, it lost it’s moral compass and strength.

That morning I walked into the adult 1 class, and the discussion if I remember correctly, was about the Good Samaritan. The question was, predictably, who was the most Christlike in their actions. A man who was sitting across from me, a schoolteacher, spoke up and said something along the lines of “I know we’re supposed to say the Samaritan was, but I can’t. If I came across that man, I’m not going to go out of my way to help him!” The response of the class was … mostly silence. I had only been attending Crescent Hill for about a month at that point, but if that was what I was going to find there, I thought, the point of the Gospel is completely lost here. It was the closest I came to getting up and walking out of a Sunday School class in my life.

***

In our text this morning, we’ve come to the end of chapter 6, and it is the conclusion of the lessons on bread, on wine, on the spirit, and on life – at least for the time being.

One commentator, William E. Hull, in summarizing chapter six of the Gospel of John, put it this way: “(the chapter) opens with 5,000 excited warriors (the folks who’d been fed on the shores of the Sea of Galilee and want to make Jesus a King), and ends with twelve troubled disciples, one of whom was a traitor!” (The Broadman Bible Commentary, Volume 9, Broadman Press, 1970, p 279)

The crowd-pleasing miracle at the beginning of the chapter gives way to what begins as a theological discussion on the significance of what real life is, and ends with Jesus being rejected by many of those who had up until then been his followers.

What turned them off? What changed? Did Jesus? I think not. What changed was their knowledge OF Jesus. Jesus’ message had always been – and would continue to be – the same. It’s in the perception of that message, in the internalizing of it, in the pondering it, mulling over it, studying it, and ultimately, putting it into practice – or not – that we find how we really see Jesus. Is he … an image? A picture on the wall, a concept, a word, someone who lived a long time ago and had some good things to say, but who probably wouldn’t cut it in today’s world, a religious genius, who knew how to manipulate people into believing he’d done something when he was actually doing something else? Is Jesus someone we relegate to the irrelevancy of Sunday mornings, to the reading of the Christmas Story on Christmas morning and the Easter story at Easter, someone we consider a historical figure, or are we willing to explore what it means to make Jesus actually Lord of our lives?

I know we speak a lot in Baptist circles about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as Lord of our lives. That is standard Baptist practice. It’s part of the culture of being Baptist. It comes as naturally to us as fried chicken in the fellowship hall. But what do we mean by that? And is that the only relationship we should aspire to in our faith pilgrimage? I remember at one point in my life going through a phase where I was pretty sure I had the inside track on what this whole business of being a Christian was about. There wasn’t a lot, if anything, anyone could tell me that I didn’t already know … kind of like a 15 year old, but in the faith sense of the word.
I remember saying with a degree of certainty that now seems alien to me, that I didn’t need to go to church to be a Christian. And it is true to a point – you CAN accept Christ and begin to follow him and NOT be a part of a family of faith, but it is a terribly lonely place to be. So lonely, in fact, that THAT is why Jesus entrusted us to each other. Because we are not alone in this – we weren’t intended to BE alone.

There is comfort in companionship, true, there is also enjoyment, fellowship, and camaraderie, and there is even joy. But there is also accountability. There is a word we don’t hear too often unless it is in a congressional hearing.

There’s the … “iron sharpens iron” aspect of living together in community – when there is more than one mind thinking on something, different views, different perceptions come into play, and begin to fill out the picture we have of the Gospel. What would be a one-dimensional picture if one of us were the only one to think of Jesus in a certain situation gradually becomes … richer, deeper, the details begin to get filled in; the shading begins to lend depth and dimension to the somewhat flat portrait we had at first.

***

The reason I had almost walked out of the Sunday School class that morning was primarily simple aversion to fact that the statement made by the man across the circle from me flew in the face of the message of Christ – but it was also due to what I perceived initially to be a tacit acceptance of his statement by the rest of the class. I was new, I hardly knew anyone in the church, so I was not at a place where I felt like I could call him on it. I did say something that didn’t quite come out right. I think I may have been too afraid of what might come out that I held myself back considerably. That’s not an excuse. In retrospect, I still think I should have spoken up more forcefully than I did.

But I’m glad I didn’t walk out. I got to know him as the years went by, and learned more of where the statement came from – he was a new Christian, and from his experience of having to fend for himself from a very early age. He had not, in his life, experienced the grace of either receiving or extending a helping hand in the name of Christ. There were times when I heard or saw him react in later years that gave me the impression that his views on the matter had changed.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

That is something we will, as I mentioned last week, continue to explore together.

What does it mean to make Jesus Lord of your life? That is something we begin by answering individually, but end answering as part of a community of faith – as members of the body of Christ.

Let’s pray.

Eating for Life

Sunday, August 20th, 2006
Proper 15 B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 6:51-58

51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 52The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

Again with the bread.

I promise the subject will change – so let’s get started.

Over the last three weeks we’ve been moving through the 6th chapter of the Gospel of John, and have been unwrapping, so to speak, John’s telling of Jesus’ presentation of himself as the bread of life. We are drawing towards the end of the chapter, and Jesus is drawing towards the end of his explanation of just what he means when he called himself the “bread of life.”

Today’s passage actually overlaps with last week’s. The lectionary reference actually does that on purpose, to provide some sense of continuity. Though, thinking about it and reviewing the themes and the wording of the passages we’ve been studying over these last weeks, it wouldn’t seem necessary to do that so much for continuity’s sake – but more so for the sake of differentiating one passage from the other.

Three weeks ago, our passage was from the beginning of the chapter, and Jesus performed the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, and from that point on, we’ve been following what seems to be the fallout from the single event. It seems the majority of the chapter has been devoted to a discussion that began when the crowd caught up with Jesus and his followers in Capernaum the day after having fed them, and Jesus’ reply to their request for more bread was an intentional sidestepping of the superficial nature of the question to get to the heart of the matter.

There’s a radio program that comes on late at night on National Public Radio out of Washington University called ‘To The Point’ – every time I hear the title, it reminds me of what Jesus did when people asked him a superficial question – he drilled right through it to the underlying question – the underlying need, want, desire, motive, and answered THAT.

The discussion so far began with a conversation about breakfast, about not having to work so hard to eat and live. That was on the part of the crowd that had just had a taste of the miraculous when Jesus fed them with the five barley loaves and the two fish. Jesus’ reply was to focus on what is truly lasting – the bread of life – provided them by God in HIM, Jesus – his words

“This is the work of God – that you believe in him whom he (God) has sent.” (cf. v. 29)

And the continuation of the conversation is an explanation of what it means to believe in Jesus, what it means to follow Jesus, and what it means to bring him into your life. That was what we were exploring some last Sunday, when we read the passage immediately prior to today’s, where Jesus starts off by telling the folks to whom he was speaking (not just his disciples, but folks from Capernaum and the surrounding towns of Galilee, as well as the usual Pharisees and teachers of the Law – the scholars of the day) that he was “the bread that came down from heaven.” To which the ladies in the back replied “I changed your diaper when you were a baby. I KNOW where YOU came from!” – or something like that (actually, scripture records the people saying “isn’t this Jesus, Joseph’s son whose father and mother we KNOW?” – it seems a little more proper to quote something a little less … REAL … right?

It speaks to the expectations of the people that their responses reflected such a concrete understanding of what and who the Messiah – the savior of Israel – would turn out to be.

Jesus then started to spell out for them who the Messiah was – and what his role was, and what his MISSION was. And in that explanation, we get to the nitty-gritty of the gospel.

In today’s passage, we come to the heart of the conversation between Jesus and the leaders, as well as the crowds, who were so insistently following him. The people were hungry, Jesus gave them food. The people asked for more food, Jesus told them “God has sent you food that will satisfy your hunger for what MATTERS forever”. They ask him to give it to them. He tells them “I am the bread of life. Believe in me and you’ll never hunger for meaning again.”

Then he takes it to that next step. He’s given them the concept, now he’s going for the application. And he gets really REALLY graphic.

“I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you”

Jesus dropped a bomb. He told them they had to eat HIS flesh, and drink HIS blood in order to have the life he’s been telling them about. The “bombness” of the statement is found in the fact that in the Judaism of the day, and still to this day, it was and IS, forbidden to eat the flesh of an animal with it’s blood still in it – check out Genesis 9:4 – that goes back to the days of Noah. Leviticus 3:17 makes it a perpetual statute – in other words, a permanent law – that we must not eat any blood. Likewise in chapter 17, verses 10-14 – the law applies to foreigners as well as the Israelites. We find a similar injunction in Deuteronomy 12:23.

So why is Jesus directly contradicting the laws as they were laid down from the beginning? Why is he flying in the face of specific prohibitions – and taking them a step beyond to speak not of an animal’s blood, but a HUMAN’S FLESH AND BLOOD??? That is cannibalism- and THAT was prohibited as well in Jewish law. It is a practice that was as abhorrent to the Israelites of the day as it is to us today. And yet, here Jesus is, telling these people that that is exactly what they have to do.

Was he telling them to step up with a good sharp knife and have at him? Was he telling them to kill him and carve him up? What was he telling them?

We need to understand the concept of ‘flesh and blood’ a little better in Jewish thought. “Flesh and blood” was a common way of referring to the state of being human. It was a way of saying ‘I am part of the earth’ – in contrast to part of heaven. We’ve all heard the phrase “My own flesh and blood” when someone is referring to a relative – a son or a daughter, brother or sister – I suspect that the phrase originated from somewhere in there.

Jesus is saying this:

1. He is giving the true bread of God from heaven.
2. He is himself that bread of life.
3. Bread by its very nature is to be eaten, therefore, somehow Jesus is to be eaten.

What we need to understand is that Jesus was, in pointing explicitly to his flesh and blood, insisting that the life-giving sustenance which he offered humanity was conveyed not by some timeless thought or intangible spirit unrelated to his particular life, but by his incarnate existence as a concrete historical reality living in their midst.

Christ’s temporal existence was the unique link mediating the eternal life of God to humanity.

To put it in another way, by the very fact that he lived, and breathed, and walked on the earth, God was offering God’s self in the person of Jesus to bring life to us all.

To believe in Jesus is to not only follow his teachings, his lessons, his practices and ethical principles, but it is to believe that he was born, wandered, taught, ate, did everything we do as humans, and yet did not lose in any way the divinity of who he was – the Word of God made flesh – that goes back to why John begins his gospel the way he does – In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means that we need to never lose sight of who we believe in and why. We need to be constantly reminded that ours can be a reasonable faith, and with reason we can go far, but at a certain point, the point of the incarnation, and the resurrection, and the ascension, we part ways with those who rely solely on reason to be their guide in life, and become people of faith.

Faith allows us to hold the claims of our faith close to our hearts and say “Yes, it might seem to be empirically impossible, but that’s okay. I’m not called to have all the knowledge, all the answers, I’m called to believe.”

In his letter to the Corinthians (I Cor. 1:23), Paul calls it the stumbling block to the Jews, and foolishness to the gentiles.

We need to remember what it is we are foolish about, and stand firm on that solid ground.

Let’s pray.

Bread of Dissent

Sunday, August 13th, 2006
Proper 14 B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 6:41-51

41Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 43Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. 44No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. 45It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. 46Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48I am the bread of life. 49Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

What was it about Jesus that so infuriated the leaders of his day? What was it that set their teeth on edge, that made them cringe, or tear their garments, or want to chase after him with an armload of rocks to throw at him?

It seems the image we have of Christ today is the victim somewhere along the line of a publicity rewrite. Somebody wanted to make him a lot more popular than he started out to be, a lot more palatable than he might have otherwise been; a lot more pleasing to the general public.

I’m reminded of one of the selling points when you see an add for a cat from the animal shelter – “de-clawed”. I wonder if we haven’t sanitized the image, tamed the rhetoric, smoothed the rough edges, and come up with a Jesus that is … just so NICE, that you wonder why anyone could possibly have anything against him – and by extension, against US, as his followers? After all, doesn’t Jesus preach peace, and justice, and truth, and righteousness, and isn’t he so incredibly gentle that it would basically take a madman to oppose him in all his frailty? A friend of ours has a term for it – terminal, toxic, NICENESS.

Before I get into this, here’s the disclaimer: I don’t have anything at all against niceness, against nice people, against the concept or practice of being nice … heck, I think I’m probably one of it’s strongest proponents … and I DO believe Jesus was incredibly nice – that he showed us a way to be nice that hadn’t even been THOUGHT of, much less experienced, in the world before he arrived on the scene.

What I’m getting at is that we make a mistake if we stop there. And I confess to you that *I* DO that TOO often – stop at the end of the niceness and say “that’s what Jesus was all about”, when in truth Jesus was as fully multidimensional, as fully complex an individual as we are. You’ve heard the terms “single issue voters”, or “single issue candidates”? Well, I don’t think Jesus was either—and while I can understand the reasoning that would make one a single-issue voter or a single-issue candidate, it would not be advisable to call Jesus a single-issue Savior.

Yes, he DID come to reconcile the world to God.

Yes, he DID come to teach us the way to live meaningful, rich, FULL lives.

Yes, he DID come to show us how to face tyranny and injustice and call a spade a spade, and not let the truth get buried in the froth of distracting chatter.

Yes, he DID come to live a life that shows US how to live in his footsteps.

…

You see? We can’t stop at any one of those items on the list and say “this is what Jesus was ALL about.” It’s a yes, AND list, not an either-or list.

So what do we do with that?

How do we figure out what it means to follow Christ when he was about so many different things?

In all honesty, it is safe to say that these all stem from a single point.

Life, fully lived, as God intended.

God gave us life and we squandered it. We devalued it, we discredit the life of those with whom we disagree, we belittle the ideas and philosophies of those who are different from us, we more often than not find ways to diminish the views and attitudes and … contributions of those with whom we are not comfortable sharing a PLANET, much less a room.

But it is all part of what it means to participate in the life of this world.

Yes, the world is broken, yes, it seems to have broken more over the last 5 years, and especially in the last 6 weeks, with everything that is going on … it seems almost overwhelming to even contemplate the hope that it will one day get better.

But it will.

Hope tells us that. Faith tells us that.

Love pushes us in that direction.

Last night I had the privilege of conducting the wedding ceremony of a couple in Montross. The groom is from a local family. The bride is from Mexico. When we met for their premarital counseling, I asked them how things were with their different cultural backgrounds. They didn’t gloss over their answer. They both said there were times when they realized there were some pretty big hurdles to climb in that area. But what got them through was the fact that they are committed to each other and had made that promise to love each other – whatever happens. The bride’s three brothers and one of her sisters were able to be at the ceremony, but her parents were not. They are back in Mexico. At the beginning of the ceremony, there was a beautiful song sung by a cousin of the groom – in Spanish – that spoke of the wonder that love unbound brings to a life – how it opens our eyes, how it shows us things we’ve never seen before, how it communicates when there is not always an easy way TO communicate … and the bride began to cry.

I know it’s not unusual for the bride to cry at her wedding, but I couldn’t help but wonder what was behind the tears. I suspect it had to do partly with the absences of immediate as well as extended family members that she would have dearly loved to have seen on this occasion, of all. But I think it might have had to do with the words of the song – to realize that there is something strong enough to break through the walls that we build around us – for protection, or for isolation, for insulation or for defense… there are as many reasons to put up those walls as there are people in this room. But there is an overarching, overwhelming and COMPELLING reason to tear the same walls down.

Love.

I started out talking about how we’ve come up with a nice Jesus, (good boy!) whom we are much more easily able to pigeon hole into a box and keep him there, away from the darker aspects of our lives, the ones we want to keep hidden from him – and from God – and pretend that there’s really no need for him to either see them or be aware of them.

Does it sound as silly to you hearing it as it sounds to me saying it?

That we really DO somehow think that God doesn’t know – THROUGH PERSONAL EXPERIENCE – what some of those darker aspects of life on earth are all about?

Why do we equate niceness with innocence? Because we don’t think that anyone who has been around the block a couple of times can remain NICE. They have to develop an edge somehow. They have to be rough deep down inside – where the wounds first appeared, and scarred over … where the knife-words or -acts cut, or festered, and created that blackness that we express by being ‘real’, a euphemism that usually translates into salty language or bawdy humor at some point. We have a way of communicating our experiences without actually communicating them, don’t we?

So let’s take one of our better-known passages and read it in new language, to see where it leaves us:

If I can sing so gorgeously as to melt your heart with the beauty of my song, and don’t love, I am fingernails scraping down a chalkboard.

If I am uncommonly wise, brimming with insight that illumines the minds of many, and do not love, I am a waste.

If I apply my gifts and make a contribution in my church that makes a difference in the world and love is lacking, I might as well not exist.

If I reject the shallowness of my culture and live by values that are honest, pure, responsible and right, and am not so loving, my values don’t mean squat.

If I pray daily, think spiritual thoughts, give generously, volunteer for mission work, and am actually loveless, none of it counts.

If I am totally committed to care for the neglected, am an advocate for the poor, and am personally lacking in love, I amount to precisely nothing.

The point Jesus was making was that it makes a difference what moves us – what motivates us, what fires our engines.

If it isn’t love, then there’s precious little worth doing.

That is a radical concept to folks who are consumed with DOING for doing’s sake. That is, I think, what got the leaders so riled up at Jesus – the fact that he was telling them “look at your heart, what is THERE, what is making you do all this stuff? If it isn’t love, you might as well not be doing it.”

What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Let’s explore that together.

It means to seize hold of that love that we have at some point in our lives experienced, that we have known that we have felt, that we have shared. And make that our engine. Make that our fuel. Make that that which fills us to the point where we cannot hold it in.

We are in the process, we are coming to the point where we are going to have a meeting to vote on who is going to lead this church as committee members, as teachers, as officers, and I would invite you, those who have added their name to that list, to make a conscious effort to make love your motivation for being in the position. Whether it is sitting down there or up here, behind me or back behind the sound mixer, whether it is being downstairs in one of the classrooms with the children during the worship hour, or whether it is taking care of the outside or the inside of this building, whether it is making sure that all the light bulbs are on, or that the carpet is clean. Make it love.

Make love your fire.

Let’s pray.

Bread of Heaven

Sunday, August 6th, 2006
Proper 13 B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 6:24-35

24 So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. 25When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” 26Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” 28Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” 29Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” 30So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? 31Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” 32Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” 35Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

Once again, we start with food.

Keep in mind, this is picking up just a few short verses from where we left off last week. The last sentence from last week’s reading told of Jesus’ going off on his own – alone – when he realized that the people he’d just fed – all five thousand of them – wanted to make him King by force. Jesus left the people and first went off to be by himself, then met the disciples and traveled with them a few miles away, to Capernaum, and the people followed them.

This morning we pick up the very next morning. At least some of the same crowd is still looking for Jesus with the “Jesus for King” placards bouncing up and down among them. If you look real closely, you may just be able to make out the smaller signs that some of them were carrying: THEY say “What’s for Breakfast?”

You see, the people are still stuck on the fact that their stomachs having been filled so easily the evening before. When they find Jesus, their first question is interestingly phrased. They ask of Jesus, “WHEN did you come here?” Notice, please, that they are focusing on the passage of time – on the time, specifically, between meals. Their question was probably aimed at reminding Jesus that “Hey, it’s about time for breakfast!” It would seem incredible, don’t you think, to have experienced a miraculous feeding along with thousands of others, and not be aware on some level of the spiritual significance of the event, especially if they had witnessed the event from beginning to end.

Can you imagine watching five loaves of barley bread and two fish be multiplied into enough food to feed five thousand men, plus a likely equal number of women, and an unknown number of children, and not come away as interested in the person at the center of the miracle as in the miracle itself? Wouldn’t it seem to be an obvious follow up question from the people to ask Jesus who he was?

It seems that was not the case. They had it in their minds that Jesus was to be an earthly Messiah, a political and military leader OF COURSE. Wasn’t that what they were supposed to be looking for? Someone who could help provide them their earthly needs? Fulfill their earthly desires? Make them victors rather than victims?

How often does that happen to us? That we have so set in our minds what the other person is supposed to say, or do, or think, or FEEL, that we don’t even realize it when they don’t respond the way we expected them to, sometimes to the point of reacting as if their response WAS what we THOUGHT it was going to be when in fact it was nothing of the sort? That is in a way, just what is happening here, between the crowd and Jesus.

They are literally thinking Jesus is a new Moses, coming to liberate them, and to duplicate their feeding just as the people of Israel experienced in the desert with Manna from Heaven. Jesus responds to their underlying NEED in answering their question about when he arrived in Capernaum. He knocks away the superficial ‘when is our next meal’ out of the water and addresses their deeper need. We spoke last week of some of the more basic human needs: food, clothing and shelter, but we also touched on some other, harder to quantify needs – we listed self worth, security, and success. These were the needs that Jesus begins to address, and in addressing, he redefines them, as he so often does.

Self worth, as the world defined – and to a large extent STILL defines it – is measured in direct proportion to the amount of value placed on one’s worldly possessions, not on what it is that makes one an individual, a unique and precious child of God. One whom God loved enough to die for. The people are asking Jesus for a meal, and Jesus is trying to make them see that what they are – what WE are – truly hungering for can only be found in the eternal – in that which does not perish. So he answers, and he tells them they should not work for the food that perishes, “but for the food that endures to eternal life”.

Well, again, it seems that the people couldn’t hear for their belly’s growling. Again they are stuck on Moses, and understand Jesus to be telling them that the food he has for them is like the Manna the people got in the desert through Moses – they woke up each morning and it was just THERE – lying there on the ground, and they were only to gather enough to last them that day – no more. If they did, it would go bad. So they respond to Jesus’ perceived offer and ask him to tell them what they need to be about he business of DOING in order to receive that same ‘manna’ they are hearing Jesus talk about.

So Jesus tries to be even clearer in what he is saying. If you notice, as the chapter progresses, Jesus is being more and more specific in explaining who he is and what he is here to do, and the clearer he gets, the less popular he becomes. It started when he healed the paralytic and forgave him his sins in front of the Pharisees and teachers of the law, and it continues through this passage.

The people ask Jesus what they need to DO – operative word being “DO”, and Jesus turns it around and says it’s not about DOING, it’s about BELIEVING – and believing in him whom God has sent – Jesus himself. The DOING has been on God’s part – it’s nothing they or we can do on OUR part to attain … mercy, salvation, grace, whatever you want to call it.

The language of faith that has developed over the last two thousand years is truly beautiful. To read some of the church fathers, or some of the medieval Christian mystics – and even some of the more recent writings – even many of the hymns we still sing after three or four or five hundred years, if not longer, is to be aware of the amazing creativity of the human mind – the gift of speech, and word, and phrase, and how reading or hearing something can turn our day around completely is one of the purest forms of joy that can be experienced. But there are two sides to that coin.

Somewhere I read – I’m sure with the internet, you may have as well – of a person who dies, and wakes up in the afterlife, and is given a choice to make. He is shown through one door, which opens onto a banquet hall, with a huge table loaded with food. There are people all around the table, and they are starving – none of them can eat anything. They are not able to bring their hands to their mouths to feed because they have no elbows. Their arms remain straight, and they can only sit and complain and bicker and argue.

The next room the person is shown is almost a duplicate of the first, but here, everyone is joyously feasting. They, too, have no elbows, but the difference is that here, rather than trying to feed themselves unsuccessfully, they are feeding each other. You see, they are no less equipped to take care of each other now than when they DID have elbows.

It’s a little smarmy, isn’t it? But it makes the point, doesn’t it?

What is it that, as Christians, we most cherish in our pilgrimage through life? What is it that keeps us going, that gives us the energy to wake up and get up each day and meet it head on, with varying degrees of confidence, granted, but with the assurance that we have something to look forward to – either at the end of the day, or at the end of the week, or at some point in the not too-distant future? What do we mean when we say “Bread of Heaven”?

Let’s draw the correlation with our physical bodies. What does our body need to keep going? What provides us the energy to get up each morning and make it through each day, and week, and month, or year?

Food, of course.

It’s the same with our spirits.

The question for Jerusalem Baptist Church is this: what does our spiritual food look like? We might need to change that wording just a little bit – to what does our spiritual food SOUND like? How is our table set?

Are our ‘meals’ brimming with words of encouragement, and affirmation, and concern, and love, and hope, and peace, and togetherness, or are they silent events, where few if any comments are made until we are away from each other and only then are the true words of our hearts expressed; of bitterness, and envy, mistrust, disdain, and even hatred.

If we are to be a true reflection of the Kingdom of God on earth, which do you think will be heard as a truer representation of that? I can tell you, but I think you already know.

35Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

So what is it that we truly hunger for in this life? Forget about the fact that it is nearly lunchtime for a minute, and let’s ask ourselves, what is it that we have been longing to hear, to TASTE in our souls, in our very hearts?

Is it compassion?

Is it acceptance?

Is it forgiveness?

Is it repentance?

What kind of meal is this that Jesus is inviting us to share in – to take an active role in setting the table, and to feed each other?

Let’s pray.

Kingmakers

Sunday, July 30th, 2006
Proper 12 B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 6:1-15

1 After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. 2A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. 3Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. 4Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. 5When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” 6He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. 7Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” 8One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9“There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” 10Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. 11Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” 13So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. 14When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.”

15When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

Last Sunday, as well as the one before that, we moved from worship in the morning service to a celebratory meal – either at Jim and Mary’s in honor of Helen and Edythe Schools, or right here – last Sunday, for our Sunday School picnic. As things have worked out, it will be no different today either. As you know, we kick off Vacation Bible School this evening with a taco bar picnic. If you don’t like Tacos, come anyway. We’ll also have hot dogs.

It’s interesting, don’t you think, the emphasis … the importance we place on food? Have you ever looked really closely at the pictures of meals or dishes that are being discussed in homemaking magazines? We get at least a couple of them, and the pictures of the food are incredible. There’s something about zooming in on a plate loaded with food and it being lit ‘just so’ that can REALLY make my mouth water. I want to go out and try at least two recipes per issue. But somehow they never end up looking quite like the picture. Hmmm. Wonder why? I’ve grown up with jokes being made in church about how much and how often Baptists eat, but I think if we ran a poll to see what church jokes those who’ve been raised in traditions other than Baptists heard growing up, we might discover that Baptists are not alone in focusing on meals. Specifically, communal meals.

If you joined us last Sunday evening for the Sunday School picnic, you might have heard me say something in my prayer about being grateful for those meals that we share here on earth that remind us of the feast we will one day celebrate when we are in God’s presence.

I was somewhat surprised to learn from Jaime this week that, in Italy, among Baptist Churches, it is a common practice to have lunch together as a congregation every Sunday. So the fact that we had a big family picnic these past two weeks probably did more to remind our Italian brothers and sisters of home than anything else.

Now I bet you are wondering what in the world this has to do with Jesus multiplying loaves and fishes and miraculously feeding 5000 people. Isn’t this passage about the compassion Jesus had for the poor? Perhaps this sermon should be about the persisting hunger in our world that could so easily be wiped out if we only had the political will.

1 in 10 US families cannot afford to buy the food they need for good nutrition on a regular basis. That’s 11 million children and 19 million adults. 841 million suffer serious malnutrition worldwide. The UN World Development program estimates that basic health and nutrition needs can be met for about $13 Billion. Feeding the hungry is an important part of following Christ, but doing justice is not the main theme of this passage.

Isn’t it about Christ’s mysterious, miraculous power that will help us overcome the problems we face in the world? Or it could be preached as an example of teaching the disciples the power of faith. This is a great opportunity to preach about the power of faith and the need to trust God with all of our problems, but faith is not the main theme of the passage.

I’m most interested in what happens after Jesus feeds 5000 people. They want to make him King. Now that is no small desire in a little outpost ruled by the powerful Roman Empire. We might think Jesus would be happy about this. After all, we admire people who can draw a big crowd and deliver the goods, but Jesus is apparently not flattered by all this. Jesus has uneasy thoughts here, probably because of a very important spiritual experience he had in the wilderness. Remember Satan’s temptation to turn the stone into bread? The temptation was not just appealing to the hunger Jesus felt in the wilderness. Many commentators on scripture point out that it was a temptation to have a primary focus on humanity’s material needs. Here’s the bigger potential problem. When mob makes you King the mob rules you. They want Jesus to be king because of what Jesus can do for them.

The question I ask myself is this: Has our consumer culture taught us to approach God as consumers rather than disciples? In other words, are we Christians because of what we can get out of it, rather than because we want to truly know this God who created us? It has become common to hear a Gospel of health, wealth, and prosperity in our country. We may have all seen some of the more … memorable, shall we say, televangelists ask the audience to place their purses or their wallets on their television set in order for them to be healed. That isn’t exactly what I’m talking about. We can hopefully pretty easily identify those who are blatantly trying to sell us something other than the Gospel that Jesus brought to the world, yet in more subtle ways we all slip into being a Christian to get our needs met. Sometimes we think we have struck a bargain with God. We are good, then our business will prosper, or we will have career success. We will never have health problems if we just obey the 10 commandments. It becomes just another way to try purchasing inner peace.

It’s easy to fall into trap of those who are trying to make Jesus the earthly King. The crowds question is “Jesus what will you do for us?” But the first question for us is “Jesus, who are you and why are you here? What is your mission? What will that mean for my life?” That’s the problem I have with celebrities and athletes who thank God for success and touchdowns. I saw a rap star who received an award for an album where he talks about slapping women around and he thanked God for all his achievements.

We all have needs on the surface. Some are basic, such as food, clothing and shelter. You may have noticed a couple of extra cars in our driveway over the last couple of weeks. We are providing one of those basic needs to a family who is waiting for the house that they are going to rent to be ready. Being able to do that – to share the house – has been a joy. It has given us a chance to really get to know Alejandra and Daniel and their son Christian, and their friend Juan Carlos, but in all honesty, it has also been a strain. We are very aware of the fact that there is another family living in the house. It has not been an imposition on their part; they have been incredibly gracious guests. The men are away at work the better part of each day, and on weekends they have been out looking for housing, and during the week Alejandra has kept herself busy by helping with chores around the house. So even though it will be a relief in a couple of weeks when they DO move out, I know we will also miss them terribly.

Some needs are more abstract, like self-worth, security, success. Jesus knows we have these needs. He knew 5000 people were hungry and he fed them. He knows we all come to worship with unmet needs. But the miracle Jesus performed wasn’t just about feeding people bread and making their hunger go away. It was a sign that points to something greater. Later he tells his disciples, I am the Bread of life. It’s hard to preach to hungry people. They need to be fed. But feeding people isn’t the end of justice. The next step is inviting them into a community, bringing them into full participation in the life of God.

(With thanks to the Rev. Todd Weir, Bloomingcactus, for putting what I was thinking into words already in “Not Just Bread”.)

What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

You’ve heard me talk about what an amazing thing it is when we do the youth-sponsored community meal deliveries, and it is something that I hope we never stop.

Never. I mean that.

I may have mentioned this before, and I will say it again: the Church is the only organization that exists specifically to help people who are NOT a part of it. The fact that those who ARE a part of it GET helped is a side effect, but it is NOT the primary focus of the church. We are here to introduce people to the person of Jesus Christ. Therefore our focus must by definition be OUTWARD, not inward. We spent last week watching as the two youth groups – from Virginia Beach and Italy – held sports camps here and over at Bethany. Tonight and for the next 6 days we will be engaging in what has become a tradition that is well known both in Baptist circles here in the states and especially here on the Northern Neck – Vacation Bible School.

Why have we done these things, and why do we continue to do these things? Why do we go to the trouble and expense of working out the details, or dealing with the headaches, and the logistics, and the decorations, and the painting and coloring and organizing and recruiting and all the rest?

I TRUST it isn't for our own sake. But that it is for the sake of introducing children and adults from around our community to the person of Jesus Christ. That we're not doing this and pointing to ourselves and saying "look at US! See how wonderful we are! Come be like us!" - but that we are humbly pointing to the one who has called us and made us his own -- Jesus Christ.

Let's pray.