Strengthened Among You
Sunday, January 20th, 2008
Epiphany 2
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Theme: Fellowship of believers, growth in the Spirit

1Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, 2To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: 3Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 4I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, 5for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind— 6just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you— 7so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. 8He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Paul’s letters to the Corinthians aren’t the first letters that come to mind when you are asked to name the great love letters of history.

Let me read a couple of sample letters to you:

First:

I and my heart put ourselves in your hands, begging you to recommend us to your good grace and not to let absence lessen your affection... For myself the pang of absence is already too great, and when I think of the increase of what I must needs suffer it would be well nigh intolerable but for
my firm hope of your unchangeable affection...

Second:

I love you, I cannot live without you... I would like to go through life side by side with you, telling you more and more until we grew to be one being together until the hour should come for us to die. Even now the tears rush to my eyes and sobs choke my throat as I write this... O my darling be only a little kinder to me, bear with me a little even if I am inconsiderate and unmanageable and believe me we will be happy together. Let me love you in my own way. Let me have your heart always close to mine to hear every throb of my life, every sorrow, every joy.

Now THOSE are love letters!

… Or are they? What our society has come to label ‘love’ is a somewhat distorted, shallow reflection of what true love is.

Henry VIII penned the first one in 1528 to Anne Boleyn, unfortunately while he was still married to Catherine of Aragon, his first of six wives. King Henry was desperate for a male heir, and ended up plowing through 6 wives in order to get one. Even having written that beautiful letter to Anne 5 years before they were married, he only allowed their marriage to last 3 years before he fabricated charges against her and had her executed for treason in 1536.

The second was from James Joyce to his at-the-time mistress Nora Barnacle, who eventually DID become his wife, but not until several years after they had met and had at least two children together. She would later confide to her sister that she was terribly disillusioned in her marriage, that James drank too much and that she didn’t understand his writing and hated to accompany him to his ‘artists meetings’.

We call the divisions in our Bible ‘books’, and, more often in the New Testament, ‘Letters’ or ‘Epistles’ – which is just another word for letter. And it is, I think, helpful to remind ourselves now and then that what we have come to regard and understand as scripture is also something else. When we call our Bible ‘scripture’, as with anything that is Holy or important, or foundational for us, we tend to add an element of … otherworldliness to it. We look at it as sacred, of course, which it IS, but in doing that we sometimes lose touch with that initial reason for the writing of the words. In this case, it is a real letter from a real person to a real group of people who were dealing with serious and thorny problems after Paul has had to move on to another place – prison, in Ephesus, by most scholars’ estimation.

I have never been in prison. I hope I never have that experience. But I can imagine that the biggest enemy – the biggest psychological trauma – would come from inactivity. I cannot imagine the loss of freedom, the inability to get up and go when and where I may be needed. Moving around has become such a major part of what I do that it is almost inconceivable to not be able to do it. And yet, it is what Paul was faced with. While travel in the first century was considerably more difficult, hazardous, and relatively expensive than it is for us today, compared to previous centuries it was almost a walk in the park. The Pax Romana – that period of peace imposed by the existence of the world power of the time – the Roman Empire – allowed for trade and travel to flourish. Though still at the mercy of the weather and the occasional band of bandits, the ability to travel on roads built by Rome throughout the empire made Paul’s missionary journeys that much more possible.

For him to have been able to take at least the four journeys we have clear evidence of during the course of his ministry would have, I imagine, given him a travel bug that was rare even in those times.

And here he was, sitting in prison, when HE gets word – perhaps through a letter, or a message sent through a person – about what is going on at the church in Corinth.

And he pours his heart out to them. His love for them is evident in the opening lines of the letter.

3Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 4I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus,

“I give thanks to my God always for you …” Paul’s not just being polite, he’s not just going through a formality. I truly believe he sincerely means every word he writes – or dictates – to the folks in Corinth.

It is evidenced further in the passion with which he argues his points later in the letter. With as much passion as we heard earlier … in those letters written by Edward and James … only this is a passion that is lit by an eternal flame – the flame of the Holy Spirit.

But in a larger sense – and this is where a simple yet heartfelt letter becomes scripture – as time has passed and different congregations – congregations beyond the one in Corinth to whom the letter was first written – have read and studied the advice, and arguments, and pleading and yes, even berating that comes through in Paul’s writing, we begin to see that it is not just Paul that is writing to us, but it is God.

There IS, in truth, an element of otherworldliness that comes into play when I make that statement. It is a statement of faith to believe that – to speak that – and to hold to the idea that in some way that is not easily or empirically or maybe even theologically clear, God is communicating to us through the words on these pages. Paul’s words are infused with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It is, on some level, the Holy Spirit speaking to ALL of us – from that first group of believers who received the letter that was physically addressed TO them, all the way to today – to this group of believers who can simply reach out and pick up one of any number of copies of a book that includes that same letter and have it apply to OUR lives.

So the question always boils down to what does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton, on this cold January morning in 2008?

Paul’s initial words, before he gets into the heavy deep and real – and messier parts of what is going on with the church in Corinth – are words of encouragement. They are words that are intended to remind them – and us – of just what it is that we are recipients of in the person of Jesus Christ.

5for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind— 6just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you— 7so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Did you hear the number of times Paul uses absolutes in those phrases? (Re-read). Paul is trying to convey to his brothers and sisters in Corinth just how much Christ has done for them. He is essentially saying that, when it comes to relating to each other – as well as to the world – in the Spirit of Christ, there is nothing they are NOT capable of doing. The catch is capacity vs. ability. While we may well be capable of doing something, actually DOING it is an altogether different thing. I have the capacity to run a mile. Actually RUNNING a mile is a whole different animal. I have the CAPACITY to smile and shake hands or hug someone who has said or done something that has hurt me deeply in the past. Actually DOING it is a whole different animal. I have the capacity to let that hurt go. Actually DOING it is a whole different animal. But read on to what Paul says next:

8He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord
Jesus Christ.

So not only has Christ provided us with the tools we need to BE in fellowships with one another and to practice BEING the BODY of Christ in the world, he has also provided us with what we need to ACHIEVE that fellowship. He’s given us the whole package. I guess the question becomes: are we going to actually open it up and pick up what’s inside?

Paul’s closing words in the opening passage stand as a promise for us.

9God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Note, he doesn’t say ‘with’ his Son, Jesus Christ, but the fellowship OF his Son. Yes, of course the former – fellowship WITH Christ, is the central part of our relationship with God, but we also get the added benefit of having access to the fellowship OF Christ – that is, his body. And that is where Paul speaks to US here today. Because that fellowship continues – from then until now and into the future – however long God gives us – to learn what it means to love in the name of Christ, to live in the way of Christ, to BE in the name of Christ.

Let’s Pray

You Know the Message
Sunday, January 13th, 2008 (Communion)
Epiphany 1 – The Baptism of Christ
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Acts 10:34-43
Theme: Knowing – and Living – the Gospel

34Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, 35but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. 36You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. 37That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: 38how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. 39We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; 40but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, 41not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. 43All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

We know the message. At least we’ve heard it enough to be able to repeat it – sometimes verbatim, sometimes in paraphrase. But we do. If we’ve spent any extended time in church – and I think it is safe to say that the majority of us here in this room have – even if it was as a young child in Sunday School, somewhere in the back of our minds there is something of a recitation we could give that would sum up our understanding of “The Gospel”.

What would that understanding be? What would it reflect? What ‘stuck with us’ from what we heard as a children, as teenagers, as young adults? What is interesting about the question is that the answer depends on when you HEAR the question. If you’d asked me this question when I was, say … 17, my understanding of ‘The Gospel’ or to put it another way, my understanding of what it meant to be a Christian would have been a fairly extensive list of things I wasn’t supposed to do. Not that I did many of them – very few if any, really. Living the gospel meant refraining from cursing, lying, stealing, cheating, ‘loose living’, smoking, drinking, staying out late at night, disobeying my parents, and generally being a good little boy – or young man, by that point.

It was a fairly straightforward proposition. It meant ethical, healthy living, obedience to authority, respect for the laws of both God and Man.

If you had asked me this question just a few years later, when I was 26 or 7, the answer would have been a little less … certain. A little less clear, even. I think I would have made the same list, but the delivery would have been much less self-assured. By that time, I’d been through some life experiences that helped me realize that the assumption that I had as a 17 year-old, that for the most part I had a handle on things, that there were some things that WERE, in fact, black and white, was one that I could not stand by so readily any more. It’s not that the meaning of the Gospel had changed, it was that my attitude towards the Gospel, and what implications my understanding of the Gospel meant in terms of living it in my daily life had shifted, and that had made all the difference.

There was a degree of internalization, a sense of ‘making the faith my own’ that took place over those 9 or 10 years that could not have happened before. I’m not saying that everyone is supposed to go through this in their early and mid twenties, I’m just saying that that was the way it happened in MY case. It can actually happen at any point in your life, if you just let it.

Questions to think about: when did that ‘internalization’ happen in your life, or has it yet? Looking back, can you say you’ve gone through a process like that, where you examine what you say you believe, and for lack of a better phrase, “put it to the test” – you got through a life event that is either deeply moving or terrifyingly traumatic and it makes you stop and reassess what you think is important.

You go through a sea change, a paradigm shift – where what you base the way you live and act changes from one thing – say, the approval of family and friends and/or society, to the approval of God.

Sometimes they are graciously in conjunction, and sometimes, sadly, they are at odds.

Peter was about to experience just such a conflict coming out of the situation we find him in in today’s passage. These words are being spoken to Cornelius, a Roman centurion – a man in charge of a hundred soldiers, a man of leadership, with great responsibilities, but more specifically, a gentile.

The paradigm shift is found in this: up until now, the predominant thought among the People of Israel was that God’s covenant and special relationship was for the sole benefit of … the People of Israel, and no one else, except those who chose to convert and become People of Israel. Peter was one of them. He was the leader of the church in Jerusalem. But here he was, being called in a vision by God to go to the house of Cornelius, a Roman and a Gentile, and share the Gospel with him.

And thanks be to God, he did. He does. That is what we are reading. You see, God didn’t ONLY send a vision to Peter, but also to Cornelius, instructing HIM to send for Peter to come to HIM, because he had something “important” to share with him.

And that important something turned out to be the Gospel, which he spelled out simply and straightforwardly in just a few sentences, summed up in verse 36: “preaching peace through Jesus Christ”.

Unpacking that phrase can become a life’s devotion … or a life OF devotion.

Is that what stuck with us from the gospel we learned or heard as children?

It doesn’t seem to be necessarily the most popular theme to pick up on, if a sampling of preaching were to be taken on any given Sunday. There are more than few voices from which we can hear of how the world is dying and going to hell in a hand basket. There are other voices from which we can hear the dissection of the meaning of the words Peter used in his sermon to Cornelius. There are still others that will go to the other extreme and make this message out to be saying that it doesn’t matter what you do in life, God loves you and would not send anyone with good intentions to Hell, so disregard that idea altogether. Jesus died for everyone, so everyone is covered – no worries.

I confess I fall somewhere in between or maybe it is more honest to say that I’d rather not even be on the same spectrum to begin with.

You see, there is an inherent mechanistic view in those positions that I don’t believe applies to the Gospel. There is a cause-effect understanding that almost completely eliminates the element of relationship that is intrinsic to the Gospel. It is almost a continuation of the Old Testament Hebrew understanding that in order to be in God’s good graces, one must perform certain tasks at certain times of the year, must refrain from certain actions, must keep from certain contacts, and, regardless of the condition of one’s heart, one’s SPIRIT, if one meets THOSE specified requirements, one is IN.

Does that sound familiar?

The good news, the Gospel we like to call it in shorthand, is that God is about the business of reconciling the world to God’s self. It is what we heard last week, and it is what we will continue to hear as the year goes on. It is the foundation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, because it was THROUGH Christ that God was working that reconciliation.

And what we are celebrating today, what we are observing this morning, is the representation of that reconciliation through the sharing of the bread and the wine.

It is an observance, an ‘ordinance’ we call it in the Baptist tradition, which connects us with other Christian traditions the world over. Granted, there are radically different understandings of what taking the bread and the wine mean, there are different ways of doing it, of offering it, of serving it. In our case we don’t use wine but grape juice. We mix it up a little and sometimes serve the little cubes of loaf bread and pass out tiny cups of juice to each person. Today, we are sharing from a common loaf and dipping the bread into a common cup before eating it. Again, the specifics are not that critical. It is the symbolism that carries the weight of the event for us. The single loaf, whether cubed or here whole reminds us that we are part of a common body: the body of Christ. The juice, whether served out of one same bottle and divided into individual little cups for health reason, or provided here inside a single cup, reminds us that we are partakers in a common sacrifice, the sacrifice of Christ’s blood shed on the Cross for our collective sins.

How will we live out the meaning of this meal – this Gospel – in our lives? I invite you to come to the table, and when you leave, to be as bold as Peter in your living out of the Gospel this week.

(Communion)

Sharers in the Promise
Sunday, January 6th, 2008
Epiphany
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Ephesians 3:1-12
Theme: The Church is teaching Heaven

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

Welcome to the New Year.

Welcome to a whole set of new opportunities, challenges, problems, and vexations. And we’re not even a full week into the year yet!

If you are like me, you might welcome the New Year in with an odd mixture of anticipation and dread.

There is much to anticipate for the coming year. There always is. We are a people of hope, born of the promise that God will continue to be with us and guide us as we seek to do God’s will.

As a people of faith, we are invited to live the future into the present, and it is an essentially hopeful act. We are charged with being part of the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God. You’ve heard me say that before, and that hasn’t changed. It hasn’t changed since last year, or the last four and a half years, or in the last 175 years, or in the centuries since Paul wrote this to the Christians in Ephesus. In fact, it hasn’t changed since God made the covenant with the people of Israel long before Paul dictated those words.

But as a people living in a broken world, we experience everything living in this world throws our way. We suffer illness, we experience death as a loss, we age, we slow down, we can’t think as clearly or as rapidly as we once could, we miss friends and loved ones, we have disagreements and arguments, we get our feelings hurt, we suffer broken relationships. We face the unknown and it wears on us. As much as we’d like it not to, it does.

So we put our faith into practice. We engage with a community – a family – of fellow believers and hope to find in that congregation a place to call home. As Reverend Espy shared Wednesday evening, we find a welcoming spirit – even when the people don’t know us from Adam.

It is that hopeful openness – that welcoming spirit – that is worth noting and worth celebrating, worth encouraging, worth GROWING, because it is one of the purest expressions of what God is about the business of doing – which is reconciling the world to God’s self.

You know which phrase jumped out at me when I read the passage to prepare this message? From the title, you can tell the first part that caught my attention – that of the mystery of Christ being that the gentiles – that is US, folks – have become fellow heirs, sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel. That means the covenant that God made with the people of Israel was extended to the rest of the world through Christ’s coming.

But what STOPPED me on my second reading of the passage was further in – beginning in verse 8, but picking up in verse 9: “to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”

My first reaction was ‘did I read that right?’

“To the Rulers and authorities” is a phrase I’m used to reading in the Bible, but usually it is followed either by the phrase ‘here on earth’, or something to that effect.

THIS time it says ‘heavenly places’. Which is okay, but then you have to go back and look at the first part of the sentence: “so that through THE CHURCH the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known”.

Does that say what I THINK it says? That WE are teaching HEAVEN what God is about?

I guess it’s as appropriate a time to stop here as anywhere for a bit and try to imagine the unimaginable.

Picture yourself as a heavenly being. Go ahead. Wings if you want, twenty feet tall if you want. Whatever color hair you want – the FACT of hair BEING PRESENT if you want – if you even want to PICTURE yourself with a body – the details aren’t important. Here’s what is: you are eternal. You have spent eternity in the presence of God, along with the host of beings that surround God. There is a timeless quality to that presence that makes the concept of eternity irrelevant. You don’t get tired, you don’t get bored, don’t hurt, or weaken, or cry.

What do you know of reconciliation, if you’ve never suffered separation, or loss, or the pain of absence?

That’s what Paul is saying. We are the embodiment of what God was doing when God came into the world in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. We are the body of Christ. The revelation – the EPIPHANY, if you will – of God in Christ was for the express purpose of bringing about the reconciliation of the World to God’s self.

And we, as his living body are charged with that task. That is what WE are teaching HEAVEN insofar as we remain faithful to it. So the question is first, how in the world can we EVER hope, as frail children of dust, as imperfect, selfish, proud, ignorant, arrogant, appallingly shortsighted humans EVER teach anything to ANYONE, much less HEAVENLY RULERS AND AUTHORITIES?

The fact of the matter is, we can, and we DO. One way or the other.

We can also shoot ourselves in the foot in the process, defeat our own purpose; we can negate any good we’ve done with a passing remark. I don’t need to spell that out for us. Most if not all of us have been in situations or lived through circumstances where church people acted like anything BUT the body of Christ.

But we CAN teach, we CAN model, we CAN BE the presence of Christ in this world. And you know why? Because we are not doing this under our own strength. We are not depending on our own insights – though that comes into play in our applying our faith to our lives – we, like Paul, would do good to consider ourselves “the very least of all the saints”, and get on with the task of sharing that mystery, that gospel, the good news that God loves us and wants to be in relationship with us all.

And we do that through the power of the Holy Spirit. When we surrender our lives to the life of Christ, we invite the Holy Spirit to continue working in us on an ongoing basis. We enter, in an elemental sense, into a covenant with the Holy Spirit to mold us, change us. To make us more like Jesus and less prone to all those things I mentioned earlier – selfishness, ignorance, insensitivity, shortsightedness, arrogance, pride.

So the invitation on this, the first Sunday of the CALENDAR year, is to reaffirm that covenant – not just with Christ, but with the Christ in each other – that in this year we would SO be like Christ TO each other that the world – and that means our neighbors, our friends, our relatives, people we meet at Food Lion or in the doctor’s office, or walking in the mall, and those rulers and authorities in HEAVEN – the ones we tried to imagine ourselves to BE a few minutes ago – will begin to understand what reconciliation TRULY means – what God is REALLY doing in a world that, generally speaking, has forgotten what it even looks like, and a heavenly host that has never seen that aspect of God until the coming of Christ will know God that much better through OUR living into that reconciliation.

Let’s pray.

On Being Ransomed
Sunday, December 16th, 2007
Advent 3
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Isaiah 35:1-10, Luke 1:46-55
Theme: Living in Joy

Isaiah 35:1-10

1 The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus 2it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. 3Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. 4Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.” 5Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; 7the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. 8A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God’s people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray. 9No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. 10And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Luke 1:46-55

46And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, 47and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; 49for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. 50His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. 51He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 52He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. 54He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, 55according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

Advent is a tricky time.

We are called to engage in an act of anticipation – of waiting. But it is, essentially, an exercise. The event that we commemorate, the birth of Christ, has already occurred. What we are asked to do is to take ourselves back, spiritually, emotionally, theoretically, to that time and place, first century Palestine, through the words of the prophet Isaiah and Mary the mother of Jesus. We are asked to ponder, like her and like the children of Israel SINCE the time of Isaiah, the coming of the Messiah.

Our task, if you will, as Christ followers, is to relate that sense of anticipation, of expectation, of awaiting, to not only the anticipated SECOND coming of our Lord, but also to what Christ’s coming into our own lives involves on a daily basis.

We have our Advent Wreath to help us mark the weeks as they go by, with a candle for each Sunday; one to remind us of the Hope we have in Christ, the next to remind us of the Peace we have through him, the third to remind us of the Joy we find in him, and the last to remind us of the Love of Christ, before lighting the candle that represents Christ himself in the middle at the conclusion of Advent.

We are asked to do that, if we follow the liturgical year, each Advent season, regardless of what is going on in the world around us, regardless of what is going on in our congregational lives and our personal lives.

And sometimes that can be a source of tension. As believers we understand – or at least we TRY to understand – the eagerness with which the people of Israel anticipated the coming of the Messiah. We try to set in our minds what it would have been like to live under a foreign occupying army, our fate and the practice of our faith controlled – albeit temporarily – by forces belonging to the only world power in existence at the time: that of the Roman Empire. These forces more often than not were at odds with our understanding and worship of God. They were in some cases antagonistic to the most essential and basic claims of our faith.

So as part of our exercise, we try to come up with questions that spring from the contemporary context of the SCRIPTURE, but that relate to OUR present-day context.

The questions that come to mind are, honestly, difficult to pose if one has, to any degree, lived a life of dedication TO the pursuit of working out what Christ’s coming into our DAILY existence MEANS.

They are difficult not because we can’t imagine the context from which they come – although that CAN be a challenge – but because we lose touch with how WE were BEFORE WE knew Christ. So we forget to a degree what the questions were – if we indeed HAD any – BEFORE we decided to BECOME Christ followers. In those instances where we made that decision as very young children, it is doubly so because we tend to let those memories blur into the background of our minds. I realize I am making a generalized assumption in framing the issue like that – as though I am speaking to a roomful of Christ followers. I realize I am probably NOT.

Please understand if you are here and you are not a follower of Christ, or if you are unsure of where you stand in relationship to this whole business of “living in faith”: we are not leaving you out of this conversation. We are engaging in this discussion not JUST for our benefit, but for the benefit of anyone who might be listening in. We don’t claim to suddenly receive all the answers when we become Christ followers. We don’t claim to understand all scripture. I want everyone to know that in this quest – in this working out of our faith – we are willing to admit to question for which we may not receive answers while in this life. We DO claim to live in the hope that we will one day – most likely in the NEXT life – come to an understanding that will make sense of it all, or put everything into a perspective of which we are not capable while ‘treading this mortal coil’ that will render the questions we have now either moot or irrelevant.

So what are we to do? We are still engaged in the study of scripture, and if we are true to our heritage, in accepting scripture as sacred, we actively seek to understand it in our own context as well as the original context in which it was written.

So we have before us this morning two very different passages. One written by one of the great prophets of Israel hundreds of years before the coming of Christ, the other written by a follower of Christ after his death, quoting Mary’s words spoken (or some say sung) a few months before Christ’s birth.

What do they say to US, here, now, having been written twenty-eight hundred and two thousand years ago, roughly?

If you step back from them, there is a resonance in the tone of the writing of the two, a similarity in the themes.

There is recognition of the goodness and the majesty of God.

There is a hope expressed, a confidence in the eventual outcome of what are otherwise grim circumstances. We find in the book of Isaiah the stories of the deportation of the vast majority of the people Judah into Babylonian exile – a pivotal, traumatic, and defining moment in their history. In the life of Mary, we find her pregnant and unwed, facing the scorn of her family and neighbors, perhaps even her entire community.

The realities of the two instances are not being denied. It wasn’t just by accident that Jesus’ first reading at the synagogue at the beginning of his public ministry was from it. The people of Israel found in Isaiah’s passages words of comfort, hope, and encouragement when they faced times of crisis because they knew they had been through it before and that God would be with them regardless of how their present circumstance might seem.

The words of Mary echo the words of Hannah after the birth of Samuel, in what is called the Song of Hannah, found in 1 Samuel chapter 2. To read the Song of Hannah is to hear again the words of Isaiah, and again to find a statement of faith in the sufficiency of God despite what present reality seems to dictate. That parallel was not lost on those early Christ followers who first heard it and who came from a Hebrew tradition, and we would do well to treasure these words in our hearts as well.

The fact of the matter is, we live in a world that surrounds us with a reality that denies that there is any hope, any peace. Just in the past two weeks we’ve been horrified to hear of multiple instances of violence resulting in seemingly random, inexplicable deaths of innocent victims at the hands of pathetically sick individuals – whether by car bombs in the middle east somewhere or in a mall in the middle of our nation, or even in a center dedicated to the training of missionaries, or the parking lot of a church.

We are faced with circumstances that demand of us: what do you see here that would be a justified cause for joy? And what does it mean for Jerusalem Baptist church at Emmerton?

Within our own congregation, we have been faced with the news of a brother who is once again facing the possibility of a protracted battle with cancer. While it is not yet certain, simply coming to terms with the POSSIBILITY is a daunting task in itself; one which from past experience – again, within our own family – would lead us to give UP hope, to wrestle unsuccessfully with despair, to spend sleepless nights worrying about his welfare as well as our own.

We need to always be reminded that, as dismal and hopeless as a situation may seem, for a believer, for a Christ follower, there is an ultimate hope that truly CAN override any fears and sorrows, any worries and cares we may face in this world.

So what do we draw from our passages this morning?

We find in them a courage born not of reliance on our own skills, but rather a reliance on a reality that we cannot yet see – one which is infused with joy because we are in the hands of the one who loved us so much that he gave his life for ours, he ransomed us.

It seems a comment out of left field in the Isaiah passage – in the last verse – verse 10:

10And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

I’m sure it was as much a practice in ancient times as it is today – to hold someone for ransom.

The people of the tribe of Judah had been held in exile for decades in Babylon. Mary was facing an exilic existence away from the accepted norms of her society. But God stepped in and ransomed them all. Their response was hope and joy. And that ransom, along with the same hope and joy is still offered to us today, through Christ Jesus.

Let’s pray.

On That Day
Sunday, December 9th, 2007
Advent 2
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Isaiah 11:1-10
Overwhelming, Surprising, Unexpected, Enduring and Unfettered Love

1 A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. 2The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. 3His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; 4but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. 5Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. 6The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. 7The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. 9They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
10On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

I had a wonderful experience last night.

Along with the rest of the family and part of the church family, I got to watch Hannah and Caleb in the Westmoreland Player’s production of ‘The Best Christmas Pageant Ever’.

Not to make it too fine a point, but the cast did a WONDERFUL job. We laughed, we cried, and for those of us who have at one time or another been Veggie Tales fans, “it moved me, Bob.”
If you are not familiar with the story, it involves the ‘good kids’ from a local church complaining about being in the Christmas Pageant AGAIN … nothing ever changes. The same girl plays Mary, the same boy plays Joseph, the same kids end up being angels, or shepherds or wise men – that is, until the Herdmans show up.

The Herdmans are six kids from a rough family – to quote the youngest, Gladys, they are the kind of family that child protective services is at their house every five minutes. They know nothing about how to behave properly in church, bully all the other kids, act like they don’t belong to ANYBODY, and generally wreak havoc wherever they go.

They find out about Church only because one little boy who is tired of losing his lunch to one of the older Herdman boys tells him about the refreshments they get whenever they go to church – cake, donuts, candy, cookies … and that is what draws the Herdman kids in. It happens to be around the same time that they are preparing the Christmas Pageant. Through a mysterious set of circumstances, involving threats to life and limb and ears, none of the regulars end up in their ‘traditionally assigned’ roles. And all the ‘important’ roles are filled by Herdman kids.

Everyone is in a tizzy about what is going to happen to the Christmas Pageant. Even the Reverend suggests that Grace, the director, use a near-fire in the church kitchen as an excuse to cancel the Pageant. She doesn’t, and the show goes on – with the cast never having run all the way through the play.

And that’s where the miracle happens. It is in the unexpectedness of the responses that the story becomes new. It IS new to the Herdmans – they’ve never heard the Christmas story before. They are hearing it for the first time. And they can’t help but react honestly and realistically to the situation. Imogene as Mary and Gladys as the Angel of the Lord really do break the mold that the characters had been poured into over the years. The angel of the Lord doesn’t just say ‘in the city of David, Which is Bethlehem’, but ‘They’re in the stable, behind the Inn, Jesus is in the manger!’ – just so the shepherds won’t wander all over God’s green acre – and she gives them a good shove in the right direction just to be sure they know where they are heading. Meanwhile, Mary burps the baby Jesus while she’s holding him. It’s a very unbecoming thing for the Madonna to do to the savior of the world, but a very natural thing for a mother to do to a newborn child after feeding him.

When the heavenly hosts break out into songs of joy … well … it’s not just with her voice that the angel of the Lord accompanies them – let’s just say I’ve never seen interpretive movement like THAT in any Worship service I’ve been in. It was the singularly most hilarious scene in the entire play – to worship with such abandon – what’s the phrase? “Dance as though no one is watching.”

What am I getting at, telling you about a play I saw last night? What’s the connection with the images from Isaiah this morning?

It is this:

God was about making something new in Bethlehem. In the coming of Jesus of Nazareth to a young girl and her new husband, God was showing us something as unlikely as the images we are presented with in the passage.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

What is our immediate response when we think of a wolf and a lamb, a leopard and a baby goat, or a child – ANY child – playing near a venomous snake – in the NATURAL world – OUTSIDE our faith-informed biblical image library? The immediate response is “there’s no WAY that’s going to happen without SOMEONE or SOMETHING getting hurt, bitten, or eaten!”

“God Will”
Who keeps on trusting you
When you've been cheating
And spending your nights on the town
And who keeps on saying
that he still wants you
When you're through running around
And who keeps on loving you
When you've been lying
Saying things ain't what they seem
CHORUS:
God does but I don't
God will but I won't
And that's the difference
Between God and me
God does but I don't
God will but I won't
And that's the difference
Between God and me

VERSE:
So who says he'll forgive you
And says that he'll miss you
And dream of your sweet memory

And that is, I think, the whole point of the passage. Isaiah is painting a picture for us of just how transformative the power of God’s love is. If we can begin to picture those things actually happening, we can begin to envision what would have seemed like at LEAST as unlikely occurrences in our own lives and relationships.

We can actually SEE ourselves apologizing for the harshness of our tone in that one exchange just last week. We can seek out and forgive the one who wronged us so painfully all those years ago, or if they are no longer around, we can find it in our hearts to put away the hurt and the pain and let the memory fade with time as we have NOT let it until now. We can walk up to that one who was at one time our brother or sister and once again extend our hands and arms in an embrace that begins the reconciliation that is found in the overwhelming, surprising, unexpected, enduring and unfettered love of a God who came to earth to dwell among us, LIVE with us, and BE one of us in order to reconcile the relationship God intended to have with us from the very beginning.


Let’s pray.

Walking in the Light
Sunday, December 2nd, 2007
Advent 1
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Isaiah 2:1-5
Meditation on Hope (at conclusion of the Hanging of the Green service)

1 The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. 2In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. 3Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 4He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. 5O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!

I mentioned to you last Sunday that it was the last Sunday of the church year – the liturgical year. Today being the first Sunday of Advent is then the first Sunday of the incoming church year. So … Happy New Year!

I know it sounds a little odd to be talking about New Year when we’ve been conditioned to think of January 1 as the “REAL” New Year’s Day. By that count, we still have 29 days to go. Don’t worry, when January 1 rolls around I’ll still be wishing everyone I meet ‘Happy New Year’. I’m not saying we should break away QUITE that completely – into a mindset that flaunts its differences in the less meaningful aspects of life. After all, it’s just a DAY, for crying out loud. What MATTERS … what SHOULD matter MORE to us is how we LIVE that day … or ANY day, for that matter, whether we observe the liturgical calendar or not.

The thing that kept the people of Israel going, when they were defeated, when they were deported, when they were enslaved, when they were decimated and ridiculed, what drove them to overcome, what pushed them to maintain their sense of identity, what compelled them to observe the traditions and instructions that were handed down generation after generation was the HOPE they had in the coming of the Messiah.

It is that same Messiah who brings us HOPE today.

As we’ve noted, today is the first Sunday of Advent. The one that is farthest in time from the celebration of the coming of that Messiah. And just like the people who longed for a long-awaited Messiah from a distant and strange land, our day today would seem to echo that distance, that strangeness, and that longing for a time of peace and plenty.

We read about wars and famine, terrible acts of inhumanity between people and countries, we observe it each day on television or listening on the radio, or reading in magazines and newspapers or the internet. It would seem that the news of the world was almost designed to engender hopelessness in us, by its very nature. There may be a glimmer of good that shines through occasionally, but only very briefly at best, it seems.

But we are called by the Spirit of God to inject hope into the world. To present to the world the possibility that there really IS reason to hope – there really IS reason to believe that there IS A BETTER WAY.

And we are the vessels whereby that hope is injected. We’re the … spores … we’re the virus that is set to eat away at the hopelessness that would like to envelope the world! :-)

So we pay heed to the words of Isaiah:

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.”

To walk in the paths of God is to walk in the spirit of infinite creativity, of redemptive love and of unending mercy. It means that in accepting Jesus into our lives AS our Savior, Redeemer, and Messiah, we carry within these Jars of Clay that treasure that is available to all who call on Him. And in THAT CALL, there is unending HOPE.

O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!

Let’s pray.

First Place in Everything
Sunday, November 25th, 2007
Twenty-sixth after Pentecost (Christ the King Sunday – last of the Church year)
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Colossians 1:11-20
Theme: Making Christ Lord of all

11May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully 12giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. 13He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. 15He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. 17He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. 19For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.


Let’s take stock.

Liturgically, today is the last day of the year. Next Sunday, being the first Sunday of Advent, marks the first Sunday of the NEXT church year. Although I love church history, and have read through the process whereby we came to HAVE a Church year and a secular year, I’m not sure I can explain to you why the Church year and the Calendar year differ, except to say that the Calendar year that is generally observed – the secular year – dates back to Roman times, is connected somewhat to the seasons of the year and the harvest cycles, and at least insofar as the names of the months go, is an essentially pagan construct, since they were named after various gods of the Roman pantheon or in honor or memory of one or another Caesar. Conversely, the Church year is based on events that mark for us events in the life and ministry of Christ.

All that being said, it simply bears noting that it’s not necessarily a BAD thing to be “out of sync” with the rest of the world on certain fundamental aspects of marking our existence. We are meant to march to the beat of a different drummer. We are called to be in the world but not of it. We are SUPPOSED to be something like square pegs in round holes.

We are and have been celebrating the fact that Jerusalem Baptist church has been IN existence as a congregation since August 5th, 1832 throughout this year.

We’ve had ample opportunity to reflect on and explore what that means over the last 11 months, we’ve made note of that passing of time by welcoming back former pastors; we had a model of what that first building may have looked like presented to Jerusalem; we have put together a scrapbook with pictures and notes that evoke memories of decades past; we have invited everyone to participate in a dress-up Sunday to remind us of what we used to wear when coming to church. We have welcomed Pastors and choirs of churches that were once a part of this congregation but which, for one reason or another, formed congregations independent from us. Just as we were formed out of what we call a ‘mother’ congregation, they also were born out of us. In some instances that birthing was painful, in others, joyful. We welcomed former members to our homecoming celebration that in some cases we had not seen in just a couple of years, and in other cases, we’d not seen in decades.

In each of those events, what has been quietly underscored, what has been brought to our attention, perhaps more on a subconscious level, but not focused on in an outright manner, has been the fact of change. To look around is to recognize the changes Jerusalem has been through – not just in the last few months or years, but over her lifetime as a congregation.

It is something that we are aware of in our own lives, certainly on a yearly, but also on a monthly and even on a weekly basis. We have said goodbye to members of our congregation and extended family who had been a part of us since our earliest memories. We’ve given welcome to precious little new lives that plant themselves in our hearts and give us reason to continue to work towards the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God on earth.

We have welcomed new members into our family who have expressed a desire to walk alongside, to put their hand to the plow, to join with us as we figure out what it means to say we are Christ-followers and to live that answer out together.

So, just as we sometimes find ourselves doing around our New Year’s celebrations on the ‘general’ calendar, we can also take time to reflect on the past year and what it has meant for us as a church family.

We have just celebrated a day of Thanksgiving, which is an observed CIVIL holiday, but which allows our nation as a whole to pause and give thanks – whether directly to God or simply in the spirit of gratitude – for what we have, and what we count as blessing, and for what we are anticipating becoming.

This past Wednesday, at the community Thanksgiving service, Michael Dawson, the host Pastor, offered a time in the service for anyone there to express THEIR thank for something in particular.

Thanks were expressed for freedom, for a place to gather, for a community with which TO gather, and for family – more than anything, almost, for family – both immediate family and that family that reaches beyond – the greater family that we belong to—the family that made the way for us and the family that follows behind, the family that surrounds and strengthens, that comforts, that consoles, that celebrates and rejoices.

The traditional ‘name’ for this Sunday is ‘Christ the King’ Sunday. It is the culmination – the peak – of the Church year. Calling it “Christ the King” Sunday reminds us of that fact – that ultimately, Christ IS to reign over all. It is what we proclaim, it is what we believe, it is what we struggle to work out on a daily basis, first and foremost in our OWN lives, and as we live it out, in the life of our community and our world.

So on this morning that marks the end of this year, I’d like to open the floor to anyone who would like to voice something for which you are grateful to God.

Since I’m already talking, I’ll go ahead and start: :-)

I’m grateful to God for a faith family that is engaged in the practice of faith – that really DOES consider it important – consider it CENTRAL to their life AS A CONGREGATION – to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. For recognizing disagreements and yet joining together to worship and ‘do church’ despite those differences. For faithfulness that is a clear reflection of God’s faithfulness to us – in giving, in praying, in presence, in friendship, and in standing beside each other in times of loss and sorrow as well as in times of joy and celebration.

(Voices of the congregation)

Amen, and amen.

Let’s pray.

Weary in Doing Good
Sunday, November 18th, 2007
Twenty-fifth after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Theme: Renewing our Strength When we are Tired of doing what is right

6 Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. 7For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you, 8and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you. 9This was not because we do not have that right, but in order to give you an example to imitate. 10For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. 11For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. 12Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. 13Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.

Bone weary.

Stumbling exhaustion.

Glazed-eyed.

It is true. There are times in this life of ministry that one wonders when the next chance will come around to grab a few winks, preferably in a row, preferably in a horizontal position.

The demands of making oneself available to a larger family than the one God has blessed me with as my IMMEDIATE family ARE sometimes high, and at times frequent if not nonstop. There are weeks which in retrospect become a blur, sometimes a haze of coming and going and meeting and talking and visiting and calling and driving, always driving.

It is a hard task, at times, but it is always tempered by joy. It can be exhausting, but it is still, even now, energized by something other than my own physical stamina – or lack thereof.

As you know, the pastors of the Rappahannock Association periodically get together – on the first Monday of each month – to visit and pray and spend time together sharing our experiences, joys, cares and concerns, in many cases sharing a particular burden with the group with the express purpose being to serve as encouragement to each other. It is a forum for questions as well as advice to be shared. I remember one of the early conferences I attended, one of the pastors prayed our opening prayer, and his words were “Thank you God that another Sunday is over.” This was coming from a pastor who had been at his church for nearly two decades at the time, and I remember being struck not by the thought, but by the honesty of the words.

Not that I was surprised either. The emotion behind it was not of disgust or disillusion with the responsibilities of a Sunday, but it was more a mixture of … loving exasperation and … maybe weary anticipation of the NEXT Sunday to come. It was the natural relief one feels when a difficult taks is done.

The world seemed to respond in stunned surprise at the revelation in reading the book of Mother Teresa’s writings that for the last 50 years of her life she felt totally disconnected from God – she had no sense of God’s presence in what she was doing. I heard or read a reviewer comment that perhaps that was the only way she herself would be able to identify completely with that portion of the population of India which she served so admirably and selflessly for all those decades.

There are literally countless millions who work just like her. Men and women, saints of God who give themselves completely to the work of the Lord and receive NO recognition, who seldom are named or even mentioned in conversations, and who pass into the anonymous annals of history but without whom the church would be a shadow of itself.

It is to them that we owe a debt of gratitude in this season of Thanksgiving, as well as, of course, to God, for building on the foundations laid by Christ and following the example set by Paul, those who had the right to ‘eat someone’s bread without paying for it’, as Paul writes, but who, like him, did not.

It is one of the most repeated nuggets of advice I’ve heard over the last four and a half years, from fellow Pastors and others – know who you are talking to. Know what their lives are, what their worries are, what they like and dislike, what MOVES them. And as much as I am able, I’ve tried to do that. At the same time, the burden of the ministry of PREACHING – not Pastoring, but PREACHING – is to call us ALL out of our comfort zone, to face us ALL with the demands of the Gospel as WELL as the blessings of it, to confront us ALL with the fact that we live in a world that IS too dangerous for anything but truth AND too small for anything but love.

So in sharing with you about feeling tired, I’m not limiting that feeling to the tiredness that comes from being a full-time minister. It is the same tiredness that comes from being a full-time student or sole provider, eighty-hour-a-week employee, grandparent, caregiver, errand-runner, behind-the-scenes coordinator, or full-time mother.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton on November 18, 2007?

We are all called by God to a specific task – to love God. And we are all called by God to one Joy – to live the life given to us in such a way that IT will be our witness to HIS love for us.

I know you’ve heard me say it time and time again, but it bears repeating, because we need reminding. On those days when we look back on the week and wonder why we do it, wonder if there isn’t something better we could be about, wonder if we really ARE answering God’s call in carrying out the duties we are carrying out, WHATEVER THEY MAY BE – we need to find those answers in the combination of our prayer life, our devotional life, and the fellowship of believers we call our faith family. Because it is within this fellowship that God provides us perspective. It is in this fellowship that God provides us with the points of view that we couldn’t think of on our own, that we have trouble understanding, and that we NEED to see in order to WALK in the other person’s shoes.

We are all prone to the same trials, temptations and sorrows. We are all subject to the same stumblings. But thank God, we are all called to face them TOGETHER. God’s message to us is that we are not alone. We have a Savior who is also our friend. And we have the comforter – the Holy Spirit – to guide us along, to PROD us along, at times, and to illuminate our minds and FIRE our hearts as we follow Christ.

Paul’s exhortation to not grow weary in doing what is right is a word directed to a family of faith that is continuously learning that its source of strength is not in its own abilities and skills and talents, but ultimately on the wellspring that flows directly from the heart of God.

Let’s pray.

Thieves, Rogues, Adulterers
Sunday, October 28th, 2007
Twenty-second after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Luke 18:9-14
Theme: Humbling ourselves before God

9He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Let’s do something a little out of the ordinary this morning. Let’s stand up for the Pharisees for just a few minutes. Not THIS SPECIFIC guy, he’s pretty much already been shown to be a less than honorable member of the sect, but for the majority of the men who belonged to it.

As a rule, if you spent any time in Sunday school or Bible Studies in the course of your life, you have a set understanding of the Pharisees – as well as the Sadducees, but that’s another SLIGHTLY different topic. In short, they were a self-righteous, hypocritical, power-hungry, two-faced group of men who turned Jesus over to the Romans to be killed. They were constantly trying to trap Jesus with trick questions and they didn’t ‘get’ the Gospel because they were expecting a politico-military messiah instead of the REAL messiah.

Pharisees are not at the top of our list of people we can trust and admire.

So, does anyone here know a real-live, honest-to-goodness, robe-wearing, tassel twirling, prayer-shawl dressing, Pharisee who fits the bill from what we’ve learned in Sunday school?

If anyone knows a Jewish Rabbi, that’s about as close as we can get to the Pharisaic sect. They are no longer in existence AS SUCH, but their legacy does live on in the modern-day office of Rabbi within the Hebrew faith.

Let’s get another perspective, from someone who DID know them in their day.

The Jewish historian Josephus says of the Pharisees that they were known for their excellence in the interpretation of scripture, their modest lifestyle, strong faith, and prayerful practice. They refused to swear allegiance to Caesar; they believed in the immortality of the soul and divine judgment after death, and they were widely respected. In short, they were models of serious religious folk, with a habituated faith that permeated every aspect of their lives. That means they lived out their faith day in and day out.

That makes me a little bit nervous. That description would be one that …I wouldn’t mind hearing about myself.

So why was Jesus so down on them? What was it about their ‘habituated faith’ that rubbed Jesus wrong?

We can begin with their name. Pharisee means ‘separated one’ – and it was this separation – from both the general population – the gentiles, as WELL as other Jews – that went against the core of Jesus’ gospel.

As we are studying on Wednesday nights in Matthew – in The Sermon on the Mount Jesus speaks about being salt – how it is supposed to flavor the food … it has to maintain it’s saltiness – that is primary – but it also has to be IN the food, not kept separate from it. We cannot have an impact on the world unless we are right there next to people as we struggle together with what life throws us.

Yesterday I attended the funeral of a 19 year old young man in our community whose parents and brother were struggling mightily to try and come to terms with the fact that their son and brother was taken from them at much too early an age. The service was held at Warsaw Baptist, and while the grief was palpable, it was also VERY clear that the family was NOT alone. The sanctuary was completely full. People were standing against the back wall, as well as in the balcony. Unfortunately, many of us have experienced similar services – when a family suffers an untimely loss, the community of which they are a part rallies around them and supports them. It is just that community that we are called to and to which the Pharisees were averse. Their zeal for purity was commendable, but it was expressed in a way that defeated the purpose OF that same purity. They missed the whole point of righteousness, and made it an end in itself.

That is why this man, THIS Pharisee, is held up by Jesus as an example of what NOT to be when you approach God. Jesus was talking to his disciples, not a group of Pharisees. They would have, for the most part, held Pharisees in the same esteem as Josephus.

And they would have thought of the tax collector in the same way as the rest of the population – that is, as someone to be UNfavorably compared to a maggot.

We’ve heard the explanations before. Tax Collectors, or, to be more precise, Toll-collectors, worked as agents of the CHIEF Tax Collector, under contract with the Roman Authorities to collect indirect taxes, such as tolls, tariffs, and customs. They would pre-pay the Roman Administrators the taxes, and then recover THEIR costs plus “additional fees” through any means necessary, up to and including extortion.

Notice, Jesus doesn’t contradict either man’s self-assessment. For that matter, the tax collector doesn’t try to contradict the Pharisee’s assessment of HIM. He freely ADMITS he’s a terrible sinner.

What creates the ‘huh??!!’ moment in this parable is Jesus’ conclusions – his condemnation of the Pharisee and praise for the other man. What we need to pay attention to is what their purpose is in praying – in coming before God.

The Pharisee is not so much interested in what God might think of him, he seems to be more stuck on what HE thinks of HIMSELF. Have you ever heard a prayer like that? Where the person praying is praying more to be heard … more to make a point … than they are truly speaking to and listening for God’s response? The Pharisee is more concerned with his own accomplishments than in drawing closer to God … and here’s the rub: his accomplishments WERE worthy of recognition and admiration – he fasted, yes, he tithed, yes. But he forgot the WHY of his disciplines.

The tax collector ALLOWED himself to be lumped together with thieves, rogues and adulterers by the Pharisee not because he was having a low self-esteem day, but because he recognized, either through his own self examination or by the words of some poor overtaxed soul who may have unloaded on him earlier in the day after having been relieved of his earnings for the week in the name of the Roman Proconsul, that he was, indeed no better than a common criminal – both in the eyes of his countrymen and more importantly in the eyes of God.

So what does this mean for us here at Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton on October 28th, 2007?

Let me revisit a question I asked earlier: does anyone here know a real-live, honest-to-goodness, robe-wearing, tassel twirling, prayer-shawl dressing, Pharisee who fits the bill from what we’ve learned in Sunday school?

Let’s rephrase the question: have we ever found ourselves congratulating ourselves for something we’ve done that was good, and helpful, and commendable, something that others saw us do and which we KNOW will make us ‘look good’? And have we ever felt that self-congratulation turn into a sense of self-righteousness when we are confronted by someone or a situation between people that makes the gap between us seem very, very wide?

Last week, while visiting someone in the hospital, there was a necessary wait through which we had to sit. The room was shared, and the person in the other bed switched the television station to one of those ‘family in crisis’ shows – you know, the ones where a family is brought onstage to be the very public fodder for audience and an example of the theme of that particular program. They are the kinds of shows that appeal to our lowest common denominator, our fascination with watching people’s lives unravel before our very eyes. And in the process, we begin to feel like OUR lives, OUR choices, OUR messes, are so much LESS than theirs that we MUST have it more together than THEY do. I’ll admit, there IS a certain fascination with discovering the depth of human depravity, the total lack of empathy that can be achieved when someone is completely focused on themselves, and the surprisingly small space there is between the studio audience and their reaction and what I imagine the spectators at the Roman Coliseum would turn into during a gladiator fight.

We really are not that far apart from each other.

And that is what it comes down to.

None of us, for better or worse, have done ANYTHIING to deserve God’s grace more than any one else.

“…all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

We can never forget that it’s not about what we’ve done, but it’s about what HE’S done in the person of Jesus Christ, that allows us to approach God at all.

Let’s pray.

Then One of Them …
Sunday, October 14th, 2007
Twentieth after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Luke 17:11-19
Theme: How do WE express our gratitude towards God?

11On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, 13they called out, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” 14When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. 15Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? 18Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has
made you well.”

Imagine being afflicted with any one of a number of skin conditions or diseases that were all, for lack of more exact knowledge, called ‘leprosy’ in first century Palestine.

Imagine that because of that, we are forced out of the city, town or village we’ve grown up in, away from our family and friends and into an existence that is marginal at best, devastating by any measure, and one that will quickly lead us to wish for a quick death rather than endure years of isolation and pain, loneliness and struggles just to get enough food to survive on, or find shelter, or even clothes to wear, as ours fall apart due to exposure.

We are only allowed to associate with others who have been condemned to the same fate as us, who are suffering from similar illnesses, who have likewise been exiled from their communities. And we realize that in our suffering, there is a common bond that transcends any and all previous barriers we’re used to placing between us and the people who surround us. Those come-here’s, those city slickers, those rednecks, those foreigners, those people who don’t think, act, speak, or worship God just like we do are suddenly the only people with whom we ARE allowed to speak or hang out with. And however odd it may seem at first, we end up forming some kind of sad, twisted, community; a mismatched, shabby, ragged, dirty, hardscrabble band of men and women who spend our nights huddled together for warmth and our days the prescribed distance away from the “blessed ones” – the ones whom God has NOT seen fit to condemn to this horrible existence, the ones who take EVERYTHING ENTIRELY for granted … little realizing how quickly and drastically their comfortable existence could change – just a passing comment from a family friend asking “what’s that spot on your arm?” could be enough to get the ball of THEIR doom rolling just like ours was that would land THEM out HERE with the REST of us.

Then one day we hear of this man who has reportedly been traveling around the countryside healing the sick – for real! Making the lame walk, the blind see, casting out demons, even raising people from the dead! And he’s coming up the road. He’s on his way to Jerusalem, and he’s accompanied by his disciples.

And there he comes! There he is! JESUS!! MASTER!! HAVE MERCY ON US!!

“What did he say? Did you hear him? Go and show yourselves to the priest? Is that what he said? Show ourselves … to the same priest who declared us unclean and cast us out of town??”

One has to wonder what went through their minds when they heard what Jesus told them to do.

There are a couple of things that come to mind when looking at the text. Just like in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, there’s no transitional commentary on the part of Luke. No ‘grumbling among themselves, they still decided to do what Jesus said’. It goes directly from what Jesus told them to do to: ‘And as they went …’ the commentaries I studied each wrapped that question up very neatly: ‘They were obedient in faith that they would be healed, so they ALL alike obeyed.” Each scholar focused on the fact that the healing of all ten lepers occurred AS they engaged in the act of obedience, AS they walked down the road to see the priest to show themselves to him.

I don’t presume to be a Scholar. Yes, I passed Greek, and I have the books to use as a reference, but I go TO the books. That is what they are THERE for; to be used, to be consulted. I don’t know enough about the form and style of Luke’s writing to say definitively that he is telling us, “There’s something between the lines here. Pay attention.” But I can’t help but wonder.

Part of me would like to think that Jesus spoke to them with such authority and with such compassion that what little faith they might have had left in them blossomed into the kind of wonder-filled faith that took it for granted that, even as they began to take the first step in the direction that Jesus sent them, they WOULD be healed.

Another part of me wonders if the thought that first went through their minds was a world-weary “Let me check my agenda for the day, what else do I have going on … OH … NOTHING … what have I got to lose?!” And that first step got taken anyway.

But I stopped in the middle of that sentence. The rest of the sentence that began “And as they went,” is a simple statement of fact: “they were made clean.”

This is where the one story becomes two. Up to this point, the story has been one of healing. Jesus encounters ten lepers, they ask him for mercy – for God’s mercy to be shown through him – and he does just that – Jesus brings mercy into their lives in a way that they could hardly have conceived even in their wildest dreams: complete and total healing from their physical affliction.

Here the story turns, right in the middle of the paragraph.

15Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.

The other nine kept walking. I’m sure they realized that they were healed, surely they would have felt their strength return, the feeling come back – surely they would have realized they weren’t shuffling along any more, dragging their legs and numb feet along the ground. Surely they would have noticed that they weren’t itching any more, the sores they had endured for so long had vanished, and they could close their lips and swallow with no parched feeling in their mouths.

And Jesus had TOLD them to go show themselves to the priest. So that is what they DID.

What ingrates! What gall! How RUDE!!!

Can you blame them?

After all, here was the reality that they had given up hope of ever once again attaining – of being reintegrated into their society. Of once again being surrounded by family and friends, of going back to their jobs and positions in their village, town, or cities. Of going back to the relationships they had been forced to leave behind.

Of going back to how things had been before.

But this one man was different. Yes, he was different in terms of his response to realizing he had been healed – that is obvious. He stopped heading to the priest’s place with the other nine and turned and came back to Jesus – and he didn’t just sedately walk back. He came praising God in a loud voice. And when he GOT back to Jesus, he didn’t just walk up to him and hold out his hand and say ‘hey, thanks man!’

No, he threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.

And here Luke throws the wrench into the works of the Hebrew mindset.

“And he was a Samaritan.”

Luke does that quite a bit in his Gospel. Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke’s Gospel. He champions the role of the outcast, and their receptivity to the Gospel, more than any of the other Gospels. There is a prophetic element that we would do well to heed in the reading of those passages.

They foreshadow the rejection of Jesus Christ on the part of the majority of the Hebrew people, and the eager acceptance of the Gospel on the part of the gentile people in the rest of the world.

That may give us a hint of why the nine didn’t come back to thank Jesus. His question to his disciples speaks to the reaction he knew he would be receiving once he arrived in Jerusalem. Loosely put, he asks: “Correct me if I’m wrong, but … weren’t there ten of them? Where are the other nine? Couldn’t THEY have taken the time to come back and thank God for what they have been blessed with, or is this foreigner the only one who GETS IT??”

You see, the other nine had something to go back to … or so they thought. They had position. They had standing. They were part of the chosen people. They could regain that place in the world, and go back to feeling good about themselves. What had once been done out of a dutiful sense of humble gratitude among the Jewish people – the worship of God and the special relationship that entailed –had become, with the passing of time, a privilege to be assumed as inherent through the simple act of being born into the right family.

The Samaritan knew that, even though he was healed, he would still be viewed as a heretic and unclean by the priest by virtue of the fact that he had not been healed from his Samaritan heritage, and would still neither gain nor desire a place in Hebrew society. He recognized what truly mattered in the event of his healing. He had encountered God in the person of Jesus Christ, and that had changed him.

“Your faith has made you well.”

“Made well” seems a little odd for Jesus to be stating the obvious. “Yes, I healed you. Your faith made you well.” But here’s the thing about what Jesus is saying. When he says that, it’s the same word he used in his encounter with Zacchaeus that is translated as “to save”, when Jesus says that salvation has come to Zacchaeus and his house – “for the Son of man has come to seek out and to save the lost.” (19:10)

So … what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton, on the fourteenth of October, 2007?

As we were reading the passage, as we were going through the story, who do we most identify with? Whose plight resonates with us most deeply?

Do we identify with those who, temporarily, it turns out, were suffering from their affliction, but were restored to their health and back into the society in which they returned to their place of privilege and importance in the world as it was, or does the revelation of the salvation of the Samaritan leper touch us more?

Do we understand our place in the world to BE that of outcasts, marginalized members of a society that would rather attempt to establish it’s OWN hierarchies of importance, with service, self-giving and love being somewhat FAR from the top of that list, and a sense of gratitude to God for the grace and mercy that we are so unworthy to receive being near if not AT the bottom?

How ready are we to recognize that what Jesus Christ has done for us is so radically new that it can do nothing OTHER than redefine who we are in the world, as servants, as slaves, as people who for the rest of our lives will strive to find ways to express our gratitude to God for what God has done – in the person of Jesus and through the presence of the Holy Spirit – both in each of us and through others FOR us, and THROUGH US for others. How long has it been since we ran back to Jesus, praising and thanking God in a loud voice, and fall at his feet?

Let’s pray.

Call to Mind
Sunday, October 7th, 2007
Nineteenth after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Lamentations 3:19-26
Theme: Remember God’s Faithfulness

19The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! 20My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. 21But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: 22The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; 23they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” 25The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. 26It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

Did you wonder if the floor was going to be there this morning when you got out of bed and put your foot down?

Did you wonder if the sun was going to be in the sky when you looked outside?

Did you consider for a moment the possibility that there might not be any air when you opened your mouth and yawned after starting to wake up?

When you came in and sat down this morning, did you pause to think of the possibility that the pew would collapse under you when you sat down?

The thing is, there are things we so take for granted that we don’t even think about them. Things that are so much a part of our background, of our environment, of our regular surroundings, that the thought doesn’t even register that they could be NOT THERE in the next moment.

I remember once when I was about 13 or 14, a fairly good-sized tremor hit Santiago, I think it was probably a 5.5 temblor on the Richter scale. Not enough to do a lot of damage, but enough to definitely rattle some windows and shake some furniture. I THINK we were sitting at the dining room table when it hit. There was an initial rumbling, something that could have been a low flying plane or a big truck going down our street, but then a second wave of sound came, and things started to rattle, not just on the table, but the HOUSE. Before I knew it I was out of my chair and halfway to the front door. To this day, I still feel ashamed that I wasn’t thinking about helping the other members of my family to get to either the doorway between the dining and living rooms or beyond that to the front door. I was ONLY thinking about MAKING IT there myself.

The lasting impression that I came away with from that experience, as well as other occasional brushes with plate tectonics along the Pacific Rim’s ‘circle of fire’, was the fact that things don’t always remain as solid as they seem.

And yet, it didn’t take long to go back into the ‘normal’ mindset and mostly forget that the whole house was shaking to the point of creating a few minor cracks along some of the walls and ceilings. Though I never lived close enough to one for it to be an issue, I think the same process takes place with folks who live near a volcano that erupts and then quiets for a time.

After all, you don’t expect the ground you walk on, the walls that are so solid, the mountain that your house is built on, to suddenly shift under your feet. It just doesn’t seem possible.

The writer of Lamentations, traditionally held to be Jeremiah, though there is some question about that, is confronted with a similar – in HIS mind – impossibility. Jerusalem, the holy city, David’s city, has been ransacked and destroyed. The temple has been desecrated and destroyed, and tens of thousands of his fellow Israelites have been deported hundreds of miles away.

The Babylonians first attacked and laid siege to Jerusalem in 597 BC, but didn’t finally invade, capture and destroy the majority of the city (though not all of it) until ten years later. Still, the totality of the event was as much a blow to the psyche of the Israelites as any physical attack might have been.

As we studied in Habakkuk a few weeks ago on Wednesday nights, the attack from Babylon and the subsequent deportation of the Israelites was not exactly a surprise TO the people of Israel. All the signs were there for many months if not years before the actual events took place.

And just like Habakkuk did, the writer of Lamentations came to the same place in dealing with the reality he was facing. That in spite of the trauma and the unimaginable nature of the disaster he was staring in the face, a sense of God’s unfailing presence – and more – broke through.

One commentator, Robert B. Laurin, puts it this way:

“The author is really saying: I thought all hope was gone, but my problem was that I had a very narrow view of God; but my problem was that I had a very narrow view of God; I thought only of the judgment of God and of my sin; I forgot about the mercy of God and his forgiveness.” (The
Broadman Bible Commentary, Vol. VI, pg 216-217)

And what is it that is discovered in the process of going through that trauma? What is the nature of the mercy and forgiveness of God?

The Hebrew term that we read as “steadfast love” is hard to translate into a single word. It implies a combination of ideas; it is made up of love, faithfulness, kindness, loyalty, and strength. It is the basic idea that is used to describe the covenant relationship that exists between God and God’s people.

But it is, even at that, a one-sided description of the relationship. It is, simply put, a description of GOD’S side of the relationship—GOD’S feelings, GOD’S emotions, and GOD’S care for the relationship. NOT ours.

So we have this incredible example of God’s faithfulness – Jeremiah’s, or whoever’s – recognition that in spite of the fact that Jerusalem has been destroyed, and in some sense, justifiably so, in light of the fact that the people of Israel had so lost sight of who they were, or who they were SUPPOSED TO BE, that it was going to take an invasion and a period of exile to bring them back around to remembering who they were – THROUGH ALL THAT God remained faithful.

And it is that faithfulness that we … rely on, that we sing about, that we breath in without evening thinking, that we even take for granted when we don’t think about it … it’s that faithfulness that we work to emulate, that we strive to copy, that we seek to live out in our life as a community of faith.

And it is that faithfulness that we recognize and affirm in the life of those who seek to serve the family of faith.

Janice Collins has been presented and approved as a deacon, the Greek word is best translated as “a servant.” The original deacons at the church in Jerusalem were charged with caring for the widows of the church and with waiting tables. It is essentially no different a task here. Deacons serve as ministers to the community at large. They are servants of the church. Those qualities have been identified in Janice, and today we are recognizing and affirming her position, of leadership, yes, but of leadership by example.

Because we are all called to serve each other, when it boils right down to it. We are all tasked with the responsibility of being Christ’s presence not only to the community around us, but more immediately, more noticeably, more literally, to each other. Because it is in the way we conduct the relationships we have inside the church that we learn how to carry on the relationships we have OUTSIDE the church.

(Ordination)

(Solo) (Hannah)

(Communion)

(prayer)

If Someone Rises
Sunday, September 30th, 2007
Eighteenth after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Luke 16:19-31
Theme: Do we truly live like we believe?

19“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. 23In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. 24He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ 25But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ 27He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— 28for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ 29Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ 30He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Do you remember the morning after you made your profession of faith? Did it feel different? Did anything sound different, look different, taste different to you?

I remember the morning after I made my public profession of faith, but in all honesty, not for the reasons I WISH I could name here, but for other, very self-centered ones. That day was my tenth birthday, and it was the last day of First Baptist church of Paducah’s youth camp at Natchez Trace State Park in western Tennessee, and I distinctly remember being terribly disillusioned that the entire camp didn’t stop and at LEAST sing me happy birthday. Then again, I WAS only ten. Though probably old enough to know better, still and all, it was an indicator of what my biggest struggle would be with in the following years as I grew up and as I matured as a follower of Christ.

It seems that, all things being equal, our emotional and physical wellbeing, our creature comforts and social network – meaning family and friends – if we were to try to spell out how exactly we’ve lived our lives differently from the person down the street who has never set foot in a sanctuary, who doesn’t give much thought to the place God might or might not have in the universe, much less their lives, but who lives a socially acceptable, law-abiding life, would we be able to? Could we point to specific acts, or thoughts, relationships and how they are conducted, that would distinguish those who claim to follow Christ as Lord of their lives and those who don’t?

That can be taken a couple of ways. It could be understood to be an indicator of how influential the body of believers who meet here on a regular basis has been, or ALL the congregations in the area have been in forming a Christ-like ethos – a Christ-like spirit in our community over the time we have been here. While that MIGHT be the case, if we look at the general spirit and character of the community, while we can agree that it is … more pleasant than some others in our state, it falls considerably short of being one that could be considered to be TRULY Christ-like. Even a quick read of our weekly local paper would put that idea to rest.

So how DO we distinguish ourselves as followers of Christ? By coming here on Sundays and Wednesday, or by knowing how to navigate the intricacies of Church life? By knowing what the Alma Hunt, or the Lottie Moon, or the Annie Armstrong Offerings are? By understanding the term ‘profession of faith’?

In telling the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus himself didn’t really give any details about where the two men’s hearts were. He just described the conditions they each lived in. The rich man was VERY rich – fine linen was a product of Egypt, and was expensive and rare. Likewise, the dye to make the purple cloth that he wore was also hard to come by, since it was made from a shellfish’s shell, and the mention of the fact that he wore purple cloth was a way of telegraphing to the listeners the fact that the man would probably be the equivalent of at least a multimillionaire in our day. Lazarus, on the other hand, is described in a way that is as eloquent today as it was then. He begged on the street, lay at the gate of the rich man’s house, and longed to satisfy his hunger with the scraps that dropped from the rich man’s table.

We’re given two lives from opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, and that is all. There is no value judgment placed on their lives. There’s no storyteller’s note saying “the rich man was a cold-hearted, mean-spirited, thieving, greedy excuse for a human being, and Lazarus was a saint in beggar’s rags”, no. There’s nothing quite that clear in the parable.

What becomes patently clear is that SOMETHING WAS different between them, when we read of their afterlife. And this is where we begin to feel a little uncomfortable. Even the poorest of us can go to our closet and pull out clothes and shoes that would make even the rich man gasp in wonder at our wealth. We eat better than three quarters of the world’s population, and last time I checked I know of no one in our congregation who spends their days laying around at the entrance gate to one of our houses, waiting for the scraps to be thrown out in order to eat.

What was Jesus saying then, about the way people live their lives?

It’s important to keep in mind where this parable falls in the narrative that Luke is presenting. It is just after the parable of the dishonest manager, but between the two, Luke makes it a point to contextualize the telling of the parables. He offers this comment:

"The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him [Jesus]. So he said to them, 'you are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God'" (Luke 16:14).

So we have an idea of WHO it was that Jesus was directing the parables to: the well-established and comfortable-in-their place leaders of the temple.

It is hard to try to deconstruct the parable simply in terms of its face value. We can take the original Greek and discuss what the different words mean EXACTLY, or what verb tense may have been used in one place and why a different tense might have been used elsewhere, and it would end up probably being a fascinating piece of information, full of nuances and highlights that would give us a clearer idea of how it might have affected the lives of those Pharisees… but that’s not the point of the parable for US.

The point of the parable is to connect with the audience – whether a first century or a TWENTY-first century one.

We’re tempted to dwell on the particulars of the story – the fact that the rich man wore purple and fine linen, or that Lazarus is the only named character in any of Jesus’ parables throughout the gospel of Luke, or in the details of the afterlife – the references to burning and pain and torture that the rich man is suffering and the fact the Lazarus is standing next to Abraham. None of those are the central focus of the parable.

The point is found at the end.

Jesus was telling those who were listening to him tell these stories that they were hard of heart. That means they had no sympathy, no compassion. They had lost the ability to put themselves in someone else’s place, someone else’s shoes, or begging spot, as the case may be, in order to through that experience, be able gain an understanding of how God feels towards ALL of humanity. They had SO hardened their hearts that even if someone had risen from the dead in front of them, they would find some way to explain it away, and would again miss the whole reason Jesus was standing there talking to them.

So we come to the weekly question: what does the parable of the rich man and Lazarus mean for us here today, at Jerusalem Baptist Church in Emmerton?

The question for us from Jesus is still basically the same one he had for the Pharisees: what will it take for you to let what you BELIEVE make a difference in your life? Essentially, UNLESS it changes the way you live, you DON’T, in fact, BELIEVE IT. That’s about as simply as it can be put. There IS one CRITICAL DIFFERENCE between that audience and this. Besides the obvious, time place and culture, we have an event that actually turns this parable from an object lesson into a reality.

The resurrection.

So now we read back over that last sentence:

“… ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

And we realize that we HAVE to take the place of the rich man’s family in the story. We ARE the ones who have ‘Moses and the prophets’ in the form of the Bible – easily available to us, easily studied. We have an abundance of materials and commentaries virtually at our fingertips to open the scriptures to us.

But even more significantly, we HAVE the fact that someone DID rise from the dead to make it even clearer to us what we have to do. The question is, has THAT convinced us?

Do we really live in the reality that death has been defeated? Do we really live in the reality that the dog-eat-dog mentality of the world is the WRONG way to live, and that we are called to a more excellent way – of sharing in each other’s burdens, celebrating each other’s joys, walking beside each other under the Lordship of Christ, finding ways to break in the Kingdom of God here, now, today.

Do we give to the Alma Hunt offering because it’s that time of year or because we understand that through our giving we are enabling the message of the gospel to be shared throughout Virginia and around the world?

Do we come to church to make an appearance, or to actually encounter the word of God – both the written and the living, EXPECTING to be changed by it?

In the words of Paul: “What then, shall we say” – not with our mouths, but with our lives?

We have an opportunity to live out the Kingdom every day. Occasionally, we come across other opportunities. November 3rd through the 10th there is a team going to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi to help rebuild homes that are still needing to BE repaired in the wake of Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. If everything works out, a team will be going from Jerusalem to join them. Please pray over the next couple of weeks and ask God for guidance in how to respond to this invitation. The plan is to do light construction, drywall hanging, and painting. There will be other teams there at the same time, so we will not be alone. And there’s a lesson to be learned in that as well – in receiving grace, we are not alone, in extending grace, we are not alone.

In being the body of Christ, we are not alone.

Will we live our lives as if we ARE?

Let’s pray.