Only Jesus

 

Sunday, February 22^nd, 2009

Last Epiphany / Transfiguration B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Mark 9:2-10

Theme: The centrality of Jesus – his Lordship

 

“² Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, ³and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. ⁴And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. ⁵Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” ⁶He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. ⁷Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”⁸Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

⁹As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. ¹⁰So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.”

 

The transfiguration 

 

Even the naming of it has an otherworldly feel to it.  It is in the same league as the resurrection and the ascension.  It is one of the events in the life of Jesus that we struggle with, not necessarily on the level of faith, but as an event that speaks to that element of the Gospel story with which we naturally – and I mean that in the fullest sense of the word – struggle to come to terms with. 

 

Seeing someone transformed like Jesus was that day is not something we can associate with as an everyday occurrence.  We don’t commonly run into people whose face shines like the sun and whose robe turns to a white such as no one on earth could bleach, despite the claims of any number of daytime television show sponsors. 

Whether it was an actual physical occurrence, supported by details in the telling, such as the six days specified at the beginning, the names of the disciples involved, and the emphasis on solitude and the place, or whether it was a vision, suggested by the use of the verb ‘appeared’, scholars will tell us that the transfiguration served many purposes: to underscore the divine nature of Christ, to foreshadow his resurrection and ascension, to prepare his disciples to understand – in retrospect, perhaps – just who Jesus was.  To, through the appearance of Moses and Elijah beside him, along with the voice of God from the cloud in the sky, establish a clear continuity between the prophets of old, represented by Elijah; and the Law, represented by Moses, and the present Messiah – to link the Hebrew Scriptures with the current reality being lived in that day – and by his followers, who were reading and receiving this Gospel.  

 

They may all be valid and accurate assessments of what the transfiguration was – why and how it happened, and what purpose it served.  But ultimately, we have to bring the events of scripture in to a point where we can wrap our heads around them.  

 

So we quickly arrive at the question:  How does the transfiguration affect me, here, now, today?  Put another way, and this may be the preferable one, since the focus is shifted away from US – after all, WE are not the focus of the message, though we DO receive it, we are simply here to CONVEY it… the FOCUS of the message is and always will be CHRIST:  the question is better stated:  How do WE respond to the transfiguration?  It is a slight difference, but I believe a critical one, which makes Jesus the focus of our thought.

 

The gospel writer helps us in that sense through how the passage says the disciples who were with Jesus responded in the immediate aftermath:  Peter blurts out what seems to be the first thing that came to mind (that’s SO unlike him, isn’t it??):  “Here’s an idea!  We’ve just experienced this incredible thing, let’s put up three buildings – one for each of you three – Elijah over here, Moses over there, and Jesus, who, by the way >>I<<>This is great!”  Mark adds a fairly rare editorial comment here:  “he did not know what to say, for they were terrified.”   

 

How familiar is that?  We get into a situation where we are scared, or uncomfortable, uneasy, or unsure of how to proceed.  What is generally our first response?  We fill the emptiness with words, regardless of whether or not those words add anything of value to the experience.  It would seem to be an ingrained response.  We find refuge in words.  Words can provide comfort in their familiar sounds when we are surrounded by an unfamiliar and discomforting event or experience, when we are confronted with a situation with which we are at a total loss as to how to “best” respond.   

 

Peter’s response is one with which we can all identify.  We’ve all been in those situations.  Even going beyond the ‘nervous, knee-jerk reaction’ of saying something, ANYTHING just to fill the void, and going to the place where we examine his suggestion on it’s merit, and understand that it COULD be putting words to his – and our – deepest yearnings – to be in the presence of Christ – in the presence of the divine one and to just simply ABSORB that in and of itself… that longing to simply BE … speaks beyond our need for action and TO our need for substance. 

 

We can be comforted by the fact that in his suggestion, we can see that Peter and those disciples who were closest to Jesus, his ‘inner circle’ of friends, who spent the most quality time with him, were, even at this late date, still learning who Jesus was.  So we don’t lose heart.  We are reminded that it can take us a lifetime to get to know someone fully.  It is no different with getting to know Jesus. 

 

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton? 

 

It is a fairly simple proposition.  Here we read where the disciples caught a glimpse of the fullness of Christ – his divine nature combined with his earthly perfect nature.  And after that walked back down off the mountain with Jesus again telling them to tell no one about what they saw until they understood what it MEANT. 

 

The call of Christ is not to dwell on those mountaintops where we may well BE able to commune with the Holy Spirit and great figures of our faith history, but to come back down off the mountain, back among the dwelling places of men and women just like us, people who struggle every day with the same issues and worries that we do, who share the same joys and sorrows, who have some of the same hopes and dreams, and to point them to the one who would transform their lives, their hopes, their dreams into an existence of abundant life … one where, even though we DO struggle with similar issues, we know on a much deeper level, in a much more profound way, that we serve a risen, glorious Lord, who is more than able to transfigure us daily into HIS presence in the world.         

          

Let’s pray.  

Made Clean

 

Sunday, February 15^th, 2009

Epiphany 6B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Mark 1:40-45

Theme: Jesus’ Redeeming Action – in History and in Our Lives

 

“⁴⁰ A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ ⁴¹Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ ⁴²Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. ⁴³After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, ⁴⁴saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ ⁴⁵But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.”

 

It would seem to be a straightforward miraculous healing story from the life of Christ.  Jesus is out and about, a leper comes up to him and pleads with him to be healed, and Jesus does just that.  It is nothing surprising to us, since we know Jesus to be compassionate and caring, and willing to ‘make all things new.’

 

There are a couple of things about the story that are not readily apparent to us as twenty-first century readers, but that would likely jump out at the folks who read it or heard it read for the first time. 

 

The first is that Jesus actually touched a “leper.”  As you might remember, the term used then and which is translated as ‘leprosy’ could encompass any number of skin conditions and ailments, not just the one associated with the term today – which is more specifically named Hansen’s Disease.  Someone stricken with any of these forms of ‘leprosy’ was banished from interacting with society in general, sent away to live outside their given village or town or city, and forbidden from coming into contact with anyone that was NOT stricken with a similar ailment.  The fact that Jesus touched the man communicated in a dramatic way that he was identifying with what would be the most wretched outcasts of society.  In daring to come in physical contact with a leper, he was making HIMSELF unclean – but in the process, he was doing something greater and more powerful – he was not simply healing the man, he was making him CLEAN in the ritualistic sense as well. 

 

What would be somewhat perplexing to us TODAY would be his statement following the healing:  he ‘sternly warns’ the former leper to tell no one of what has happened, but to go show himself to the priest first, then offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving to God.

 

 

Wouldn’t it be nicer if Jesus had told the man to go greet his family first, to hug his mother or his wife and children, show them that he was healed, and THEN to go to the Priest?  It would certainly give us a much warmer, fuzzier feeling about the whole story, wouldn’t it?

 

When we read in the text that Jesus ‘sternly warned’ the man, we could easily envision him putting on his serious face, and intently saying whatever it was, maybe even shaking his finger a little bit.  But the term actually denotes a much stronger emotion – to the point of anger or even violent displeasure.  It gives us perhaps a little more insight into the interaction going on between the two.  It could even be an indicator of Jesus’ recognition of the man’s character… even though he was moved with compassion to heal him, there were still some changes that needed to happen in that man’s life, and he needed a swift kick in the pants to get started on them.  As it turns out, for all the stern warning he gave, it didn’t work. And Mark makes note of it. 

 

What did the man do?  He did what any one of us would have done.  He ran out and started telling everyone and their BROTHER what Jesus had done for him! 

 

It is interesting that in the course of the story, Jesus and the leper sort of switch places.  The leper is at first an outcast.  Jesus is not.  Jesus heals the leper, and in doing that gives him back his home, his family, his life.  What does the leper do for Jesus?  He forces him to remain out in the country, granted, for radically different reasons – too popular, too likely to be mobbed if he were to venture into any center of population, so he is essentially banished from a normal existence by this act of compassion.    

 

We can accept the story at face value, seeing it as just an illustration of Christ’s divinity, God’s miraculous healing power at work through him, and leave it at that.  After all, Jesus ministry WAS a big deal –  he WAS, after all, GOD INCARNATE.  People were going to find out just who he was sooner or later, or they were at least going to THINK they knew who he was, and of COURSE it was going to cause an uproar.  THIS is as good a time as any for that to happen.        

 

We can nod in understanding of that statement fairly readily today, but there is a question that needs to be asked in light of the event and in the reading of the Gospel:  Why is the story here?  What purpose is it serving being placed just so, after traveling throughout Galilee, and before being cornered at home in Capernaum – and being swamped there, blocked in by the crowd, and we have the healing of the paralytic who was lowered through the roof by his friends. 

 

If we could turn just a few verses further back – back to verse 34: 

 

And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. 

                   

There is a recurring theme in the Gospel of Mark.  Scholars call it “The Messianic Secret” – there are multiple instances where Jesus tells people – not just his disciples, but people he has healed or had some form of contact with, who on some level recognize who he is and want to proclaim it, usually at the top of their lungs, just as this leper did, but whom Jesus commands to tell no one.  We can be find examples in Matthew as well as in Luke, but they are significantly fewer.  In the Gospel according to Mark, it is a unifying theme throughout the telling of the Gospel. 

 

There is a sense in Mark that the further you get into the story, the more involved you become, the more you get to know Jesus, the more you get to KNOW Jesus.  It is a growing thing.  Just as in any relationship.  The longer you spend time with someone, the more you get to know them; their quirks, their habits, their idiosyncrasies.  It is a similar situation with Jesus in Mark.  You catch glimpses of who he is, or what he’s about, as you read through the things that happen as he moves through his public ministry, but it isn’t until the last week of his life that we are made fully and completely aware of who Christ is.  And then we are left to do with that knowledge whatever it is God has for US to do.  Mark is singularly different at his conclusion.  The tomb is empty, and the women ‘left the tomb and fled, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.’  That is the end of the Gospel in the oldest manuscripts that have been found to date.  There is, of course, more to the Gospel as we have it now, an additional eleven verses that draw a picture that is more in accord with the other Gospel narratives of the resurrection. 

 

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

 

It is a tantalizing question.  What if the short version was the original, and what if it was left at that? 

 

Let’s think for a minute what the people who first heard this Gospel would have responded if the story had ended there.  I know how I sometimes react when a particularly suspenseful program comes to a cliffhanger point and then the dreaded words appear onscreen:  “to be continued” and it usually involves yelling at the television.

 

I can only imagine being in a congregation, sitting and listening to Aquila or Priscilla read the Gospel to me, and I edge closer and closer to the edge of the bench that I’m sitting on, and then the story takes that unbelievable turn, where the Messiah is beaten and crucified and DIES and is buried, and then the women come to the tomb three days later to finish dressing the body, and it’s not there! And they run away and that’s the end???  No WAY!!!

 

So I rush up to Aquila and grab him by the front of his robe and yell in his face “THEN WHAT HAPPENED???!!!” 

 

And he looks at me and smiles this incredible, knowing, gentle smile, and he says “sit down, let me tell you the rest of the story.”    

 

And that’s where we come in.  That’s where WE get to tell the rest of the story, because the rest of the story is the one that God writes with OUR lives – how God through Christ has made US clean. 

 

What better way to tell people today about what God is doing today than through the lives of people living today?     

          

Let’s pray.  

Astounded

 

Sunday, February 1^st, 2009

Epiphany 4B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Mark 1:21-28

Theme: Christ’s authority

 

“²¹They went to Capernaum; and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. ²²They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. ²³Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, ²⁴and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”²⁵But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!”²⁶And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. ²⁷They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” ²⁸At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.”

 

I began to fall asleep in church as a young boy, probably from the time I was a baby.  At first, it was a natural thing, something to be expected in one so young.  I would fuss a little, momma would give me a bottle or a pacifier, and I’d suck on it for a few minutes and then be gone for a good half hour at least, if not longer. 

 

As I got older, I’d last longer.  But usually about ten or fifteen minutes into the sermon I’d be gone.  I sat under the preaching of … probably at least a good dozen pastors.  Many more if you count guest speakers and evangelists, visiting missionaries and others. 

 

But I remember when it started to change. I remember once waking up during the preaching, having been laying on the pew with my head in my mother’s lap, and something in me was disappointed that I’d missed some of what was being said.  I must have been around ten or so. 

 

But the real breaking point came when I began to actually engage with what was being said.  It wasn’t all the time, but it began to happen more and more frequently.  I would still occasionally nod off, if I was particularly tired, or the topic was especially uninteresting to me.  It’s just the nature of the thing. 

 

So when I was reading in the passage this morning, especially where the contrast is made between the way Jesus was teaching as compared to ‘the scribes’ … to be honest, my heart went out to the scribes.  I can’t imagine having to bring the lesson on the Sabbath after Jesus made his debut. 

 

But the message of Mark is not about feeling sorry for a secondary character.  The message of Mark is to introduce his readers to the Messiah, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  And in this passage, he does that in spades. 

 

I remember the first time I was changed by what a preacher said.  Well, in retrospect, it wasn’t the preacher, exactly, because I don’t remember his exact words, or the text.  What I remember was what happened at the end of the service.  I understood that I needed Christ as my savior, and wanted him as my Lord, and I gave my life to Christ.  What I’ve come to understand from that experience is that the Holy Spirit was at work on me, and that changed me.  That was the right time and place for me to become a follower of Christ. 

 

Mark’s description of the events that took place in that synagogue are vivid, to say the least.  But he doesn’t fill his telling with details we find in other gospels – he doesn’t quote the passage that Jesus read from when he stood up, he doesn’t tell what Jesus taught.  What he DOES talk about is the reaction, the response from the people gathered in the synagogue. 

 

“²²They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”       

 

The word translated ‘astounded’ here is the same word used to describe the reaction of Mary and Joseph when they found Jesus teaching in the temple at the age of twelve, which is translated as “astonished” in the Gospel of Luke, verse 48.  I tried to put myself into each of those two situations … in the first, it is the emotion felt by a mother and father after three days of frantic searching for a son they thought they may have lost.  In this situation, it is describing the reaction of a congregation on hearing their faith taught, not as a matter of wrote memorization, or dry reading from ancient scrolls, but as a living thing – something relevant and pertinent and applicable to their daily living.  In other words, what was astounding to both Mary and Joseph AND to the men who heard Jesus teach that morning was the fact that what had for most of their lives been something that was simply a duty, something that HAD to be done, because you were one of the tribes of Israel, something that could put them to sleep just as easily as a lullaby had become a call to … worship, a transformative power to be reckoned with.

 

And the folks in the synagogue were confronted with just who it was that was teaching them right there on the spot. 

 

There is a whole separate message in the fact that there was a man possessed of an unclean spirit in the congregation, but we will hold that thought for later date. 

 

What is important for now is to realize that as a narrative element, this is pivotal.  Jesus teaches, and we are faced with our sinfulness, our own demons.  Some of the most traumatic events in my life have been when God’s word has been spoken to me in the context of a worship service, and I have been faced with something that I needed to change, to repent of, or to DO, to BE. 

 

This man’s cry is a cry of fear – fear of being changed, fear of ending a familiar surrounding.  The demonic spirit that was in him had become accustomed to the status quo – to the way things were, and here comes Jesus, totally disrupting the comfortable existence it was enjoying. 

 

If you are looking for an early version of the Gospel in a nutshell, I think this may be it:   

          

“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”

 

It is more questions than answers, and in the end, we are only confessing who Jesus is – the Holy One of God. 

 

In his first question, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”  We are asking out of our sorrow, our grief, our despair; “what are you going to do with us, Jesus?”  it is a question born out of anxiety about where we will end up after Jesus takes us out of that misery, that grief and sorrow; because while it may be a terrible, lonely, sad existence, it is at least a familiar one.  And we do most definitely prefer the familiar and comfortable than the unfamiliar and uncomfortable, don’t we? 

“Have you come to destroy us?”, the second question, is one that might resonate with those of us who have been confronted with what the English poet Francis Thompson called the Hound of Heaven – Jesus as a relentless, persistent, unyielding hound … who is ruthless in paring away from us that which would weigh us down, distract, even destroy us.  Because it can, truly, feel like we are being destroyed, when we are being taken through the purifying fires of holiness, when we are struggling with coming to grips with living for someone other than ourselves, when we are learning to give EVERYTHING up for the sake of Christ.

 

The final proclamation becomes confession when we read it.  We confess that Jesus is indeed the Holy One of God. 

 

Snapping back into the context of the story, Jesus demonstrates with just a few words that the authority that he brought to his teaching style carries over into his deeds.  The old adage “Those who can’t do, teach” does NOT apply here.  Jesus not only talked the talk, but he walked the walk. 

 

In this era of movies and television shows that depict demonic possessions, exorcisms, and all things scary, to read the next line is to conjure up images from any or all of those scenes in the movies where someone is being released from the grip of that which possesses them – convulsions, screaming, writhing in agony on the floor, maybe even a head spinning – after Jesus has commanded the evil spirit to come out of him. 

 

You see, it’s never easy to let go of our demons.  They have insinuated themselves so far into every area of our lives that we don’t realize how painful their absence will be, because we have begun to believe their lie that tells us that THEIR life IS our life.  That their presence means that we ARE alive, when in fact, it is the opposite that is true. 

 

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton? 

 

What is it that we are possessed by?  Do we quietly go about our weeks and come Sunday, we quietly make our way here, expecting everything to continue just as it was when we walked in this morning?  That is a form of possession.  It is the illusion of tranquility, of predictability.  It is a lie that tells us our lives have no impact, and that no other lives have an impact on us, that we can go about our regular, daily existence and not touch or be touched by anyone or anything. 

 

God in Christ is calling us to understand that we do not live in a vacuum; that we have impact, that we have the potential to make a difference in the world we live in – even a profound difference – and all we have to do is trust him to guide us, to change us, to remake us as his own. 

 

And I think it is safe to say, we will be astounded at the results.                 

 

Let’s pray.  

The Imperative Tense

 

Sunday, January 25^th, 2009

Epiphany 3B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Mark 1:14-20

Theme: Christ’s call on our lives

 

“¹⁴Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, ¹⁵and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” ¹⁶As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. ¹⁷And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”¹⁸And immediately they left their nets and followed him. ¹⁹As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. ²⁰Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.”

 

The lectionary does some interesting skipping around here in these first few weeks of the year, with the Gospel readings.  We began the year in John’s Gospel, then bounced to Mark, then back to John, and now we are back in Mark, just a couple of verses from where we left off two weeks ago.  The contrast between the two presentations CAN be a little disconcerting, but it can ALSO serve to highlight what each is trying to do.  John’s is focused on the person of Christ; Mark’s is on his message.  Those are, admittedly, gross generalizations, but they give us a kind of thematic peg on which to hang our basic understanding. 

 

As we read into the Gospel according to Mark, the tone and the style of the writing has as much to do with understanding the message as does the content itself.  

 

The transposition of events between Mark and John also give us a sense of what in cinematic and literary terms would be a flashback or a flash-forward, depending on the case.  Our passage this morning is something like a prequel to last week’s passage in John.  You remember we had Jesus coming to Philip and Nathanael and getting them to follow him with just those two words, in Philip’s case – ‘Follow me’ and it was done.  Today’s passage is chronologically just before that event: Jesus’ very first disciple selection. 

 

In Mark’s telling, this scene begins right after Jesus has returned from the wilderness where he has been tempted with worldly power and wealth and glory and has denied his tempter at every turn. 

 

The connecting phrase between the two events is a pretty smooth transition.  If you back up a few verses, to verse 9, Jesus is baptized by John in the Jordan.  Then we have the Spirit immediately not just leading or moving, but DRIVING Jesus into the wilderness, and Mark telegraphs the wilderness temptation into a single verse – 13 – and then pops Jesus back to Galilee.  The scene of his baptism is, by Markan standards, an extensively written and descriptive passage – we have Jesus coming up out of the water, and seeing the Spirit descending like a dove, and God’s proclamation of his beloved son coming out of heaven. 

 

And what does the first verse of today’s passage say? 

 

“Now after John was arrested …”   

 

And what are Jesus’ first words of proclamation? 

 

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” 

 

Did you hear it?  Did you hear the baton pass?  Who does he sound like – especially that second imperative?  Repent.  Who said that?  John!  Only he followed it with “and be baptized” … Jesus’ message involves something closer to the heart – “and believe the good news.” 

 

So we get a really clear picture … I have this image of a telephoto shot down a street – the perspective is foreshortened – there’s very little sense of depth, but you kind of know it is there.  From where we are, the telephone poles look like they’re pickets in a fence, when we know that there are dozens of yards between them.  Picture this:  John is walking towards the camera, and he’s got a pitcher of water that he’s carrying (bear with me, this is just for the movie audience …) as he’s walking, he’s preaching – looking a little ragged, and wearing the expected odd outfit, but he is preaching the baptism for the forgiveness of sins.  While he walks, people come up to him from one side or the other appearing in the frame, and he douses them with water from that pitcher, but doesn’t stop moving.  Then a little while into that, Jesus steps into the frame from one side … and John stops and says ‘you should be baptizing ME’ … to which Jesus replies ‘this has got to happen this way …’ and John agrees and douses Jesus … who then promptly steps out of the frame, is gone for a few minutes, and just before he reappears, John is grabbed from one side and pulled off screen, and just then Jesus steps in and starts walking directly towards the camera, just like John was before him, and he starts preaching … .    

 

“The time is fulfilled,

 

And the kingdom of God has come near;

 

Repent,

 

And believe in the good news.” 

 

But Mark doesn’t dwell on the message right here that much.  He mixes it up and adds some action to the story.   

 

Jesus is walking along the Sea of Galilee and runs into Simon Peter and Andrew, his brother, and they’re standing on the shore casting nets into the sea … for some reason Mark chooses to add what would seem to be an unnecessary comment “for they were fishermen” … I suppose there has always been some level of fishing done for recreation as well as sustenance, but I suspect that in first century Palestine, if you fished you fished mainly for trade or for food – in other words, to sell or to eat.  Life may have had its pleasant moments – I’m sure it did, we can find ourselves in the most difficult conditions and still find pleasure in some seemingly insignificant thing – I remember while working my very first job at Opryland – hauling trash – smelly, messy, sticky, nearly nauseating garbage – out of the trash cans and loading the bags into the carts that we then had to haul across the park to the nearest dumpster or compactor – to that point it was the hardest physical work I had ever done, but I remember being able to stop even in the middle of pulling that cart behind me and feeling a cooling breeze blow through the trees and hear the birds chirping or watch the butterflies flutter around and marvel at the pleasure it brought just to watch them – or to feel that breeze cool the sweat on my face and neck – my point is, why would Mark point out that they were fishermen when it would be an automatic assumption made by his readers that that was what Simon Peter and Andrew WERE – by virtue of the fact that they are introduced in the act of fishing. 

Mark’s reason comes in the very next sentence in Jesus’ words: 

 

“Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”   

 

You see?  There IS a style to Mark’s writing after all – it’s not ‘just the facts, only the facts, and nothing BUT the facts’- he is using metaphors and balancing one phrase against another – fishermen evokes the image in our minds of someone with a rod and reel in their hands.  Fishers OF men … of PEOPLE … well … what kind of an image does that bring up in our minds?  The same rod and reel?  Maybe at first, but then our minds reject it, because we understand the task of pursuing a PERSON is going to be arguably, I think – if we were to ask some of our resident fishermen – quite a bit more challenging than pursuing a fish … so the same tools will not apply. 

 

We are given a hint of just what tools they would be using in the way they answered Jesus.  What did they take with them?         

 

“And immediately they left their nets and followed him.”

 

It would seem an unusual thing to do, to abandon one’s livelihood on nothing more than ten words from a total stranger.  And yet, they did. 

 

Most sermons I’ve heard preached on these verses concentrate on the authority with which Jesus spoke – that all he had to do was open his mouth, and the same voice that commanded demons to depart and winds and waves to be still, and Lazarus to come up out of his grave later in his ministry was used to command his disciples to follow him here, at the beginning of it. 

 

While I fully acknowledge the authority with which Christ spoke, I also understand that God endowed us with free will, and does not force us to do something we don’t want to do, but rather invites us to join in the ongoing work of breaking in the Kingdom of God on earth, and will only accept us when WE choose – yes, prompted by the Holy Spirit, but the choice IS ours.  We can sit and discuss the finer points of doctrine regarding how able we might be to resist that invitation, but when it comes down to it, it IS an invitation … though it may SOUND like a command – the imperative tense – there is always going to be another element to consider in how Christ’s call on our lives affects us.  And that is the question of WHEN we receive it. 

 

You remember I mentioned that I’ve gotten set up on Facebook a couple of weeks ago?  And about how through that I’ve been getting reacquainted with friends from childhood and college, people whom I thought I would never see or hear from again?  I reconnected with a friend of mine from Junior High and High School this past week.  His name is Dave Edmondson.  He stands out in my memory as one of the better athletes in our school.  We spent a little time together, but I wasn’t a jock, and though we had some friends in common, we didn’t spend a lot of time getting to know each other. 

 

Part of the facebook page that you set up allows you to put up a picture of yourself as an identifier for people who may want to connect with you or with whom you want to connect, and the picture I have up most of the time is one that was taken last summer, here during worship, wearing the robe, standing behind the communion table, holding the loaf of bread and the cup while serving communion.  After our initial exchange, and giving each other time to review the other’s profile – where you can give an update on your life – your education, work history, show family pictures, talk about your hobbies and interests and things, Dave said that it was neat to see how God has been working in my life, and then went on to say that he became a Christian in 1991; that he went from being an agnostic, completely ignorant of Christ as a historical figure, much less anything spiritual or religious.  After asking about a couple of fellow MK’s – we had all been in school together, he closed by asking how I ended up in vocational ministry.

 

I answered in a pretty extensive summary of the last 29 years of my life.  When I asked him to share his story, he directed me to a recording of his speaking at a Christian Businessman’s luncheon in Colorado in September of last year.  It was him giving his testimony.  He shared about growing up the son of alcoholic parents, who traveled around the world, living in a country for two or three years at a time and then moved on to a new post.  His father worked in embassies with their communications systems. 

 

In listening to his story, I was moved to tears more than once for the experiences that he went through, but as his story went on, I came to realize that I was becoming acutely aware of the fact that, if I had been a little more intentional, a little more mature in sharing MY faith while we were in high school, there may have been an earlier change in Dave’s life.  I was compelled to ask him for forgiveness for failing to do that. 

 

His response was gracious and truthful.  He said that he was enough of a Calvinist to understand that he had to go through what he went through in order to GET to the time when he DID accept Christ as his Lord and Savior.  That it happened at the right time and through the right circumstances.  His answer reassured me, and DID remind me that we can never forget the factor of God’s timing in the events in our lives. 

 

What does all this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton, on Baptist Men’s Day, 2009? 

 

First of all, the meaning drawn is NOT simply for the men in our family of faith.  We are all faced with Christ’s call on our lives.  From the time we first begin to understand the fact that we are not simply physical and emotional beings, but spiritual ones as well, I believe God begins to work through the Holy Spirit on our hearts. 

 

Depending on the choices we’ve made in other areas of our lives, we may or may not hear that call clearly.  For some of us, our first exposure to that invitation resonates and draws us in at a relatively early age.  For others, we find that there are so many other things clamoring for our attention that we are initially oblivious to that still small voice. 

 

It is safe to assume that Simon Peter and Andrew, James and John grew up not only tending their nets and setting their boats out on the Sea of Galilee, but that they also, as men who practiced their faith, tended to their spiritual nourishment as well.  I believe that it was through that preparation of their souls that they recognized the voice of the one who called to them that day by the seashore. 

 

My hope is that we here at Jerusalem will provide that same nourishment to our children as they grow, as well as to those who come through our doors who are already grown, but who, like Dave, have never encountered the living Christ.                 

 

Let’s pray.  

Greater Things Than These

 

Sunday, January 18^th, 2009

Epiphany 2B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

John 1:43-51

Theme: Wonders of God – both in creation and in our hearts

 

⁴³ The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” ⁴⁴Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. ⁴⁵Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” ⁴⁶Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” ⁴⁷When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” ⁴⁸Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” ⁴⁹Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” ⁵⁰Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” ⁵¹And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

 

First Baptist Church of Orange, Texas is by all standards, a landmark.  Organized in 1879, First Baptist merged with the Eighth Street Baptist church and began working towards building a new building big enough for both of them.  The sanctuary was built, not unlike Jerusalem’s, through the efforts of its members – through cooking lunches, selling bricks for 15 cents a piece, and eventually through public subscription.  That Sanctuary was completed and dedicated in September of 1915.

 

Through the years, First Baptist grew, birthed 5 daughter churches in the area, sponsored mission work and missionaries around the world.  Its members and ministers nurtured children in their first steps towards faith, and sustained and strengthened the adults in the congregation through their hard times as well as their easy times. 

 

Then along came Hurricane Rita, in September of 2005, and caused considerable wind damage to the exterior of the building and destroyed some storage buildings owned by the congregation.  Thankfully, their insurance allowed them to rebuild and restore the building.  Over the next couple of years, the church continued to grow and the folks they were reaching were people who lived further away from their downtown location.  The church voted to begin to make the necessary motions to sell the property and move out to where the majority of its membership – and the people they were reaching out to live.  That was in the summer of last year. 

 

Then in September, Hurricane Ike hit.  Most of downtown Orange received 8 to 10 feet of floodwater.  First Baptist Church had insurance to cover wind damage, but none to cover damage due to flooding.  The basement was devastated, as was most of the above ground educational space in the adjacent building.  The building, unsold, became unusable.  While some reclamation projects have taken place, the church body is meeting in a local High School for worship and children’s Sunday School.  Youth and Adult Bible studies take place at various times and places during the week, depending on what each one has found to best suit their needs. 

 

The church is still in transition, obviously, probably still to some degree in shock from the traumatic experience of last September, but they have reiterated their decision to move from the downtown location.  The challenge has been that that move will probably take place without the income from the sale of the historic landmark property, or at least not the amount that the property was originally worth.  The congregation and the city of Orange are working out an agreement for the city to purchase the old property. 

 

In the words of one former member, our sister in law Janet Maccubbin, who visited with us right after Christmas, she writes, “If I were a member of First Baptist Orange today, the biggest question in my mind would be, “what does God really have in store for our future?  Everything seemed so crystal clear before the Hurricane and here we are today, still a church, but with no building and most likely no resources to build one.  It seems so different than where we thought God was taking us.” 

 

ه  ه  ه

 

 

As we read about the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, we are presented with events that to us seem a little disjointed, a little awkward.  We have no point of reference for the statements made other than their face value. 

 

We read where Jesus finds Philip and tells him “follow me.”  Period, end of sentence, end of scene, move to the next.  We continue reading, and find out that Philip was from Bethsaida, the same town from which Andrew and Peter hailed.  Enough background, on to the next scene.  Philip finds Nathanael, and tells him “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”  To us, coming out of the Christmas season, it sounds perfectly normal, perfectly acceptable, to have this statement introduce someone to Jesus of Nazareth.  But we are coming to the scriptures with two thousand years of historical conditioning built into our readings as good, churchgoing Christians.  We have no sense of what it would have been like to hear someone tell us the same thing if we were there and were of that time. 

 

To give you an idea, if Jesus had not come yet, and, with apologies to the residents there, I were to come up to you and tell you that “we have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Joe-bob the son of Elmer from Possum Trot Kentucky.”  Would you begin to get a sense of the exchange that took place between Philip and Nathanael?

 

We move on. 

 

Obviously, Nathanael is going to need a little convincing.   But Philip wisely chooses to not do that himself.  He tells his brother simply “come and see.”  So he does. 

 

This next scene needs to be unpacked a little, explored a little.  We need to peel this onion to get down below the skin of it and see what was happening.

 

Based on the external evidence alone, you’d have to say that Nathanael dove in based on little more than a kind of spiritual parlor trick:  Jesus claims to have seen Nathanael sitting under a fig tree even before Philip went to go get him.  The fact that Jesus seemed to know that was a neat trick, but not exactly the most startling thing in the world!  Still, it was enough for Nathanael to sign on even as it motivated him to declare openly that near as he could tell, Jesus was the Son of God and the king of all Israel.  It must be the Spirit of God that moved in him and prompted that confession.   But there is, as they say, more here than meets the eye. 

When Jesus says of Nathanael “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” to us it sounds like Jesus is simply being a good judge of character.  On the face of it, he is identifying Nathanael as someone who is, at the very least, honest. 

 

While that may be, to someone reading or hearing this passage in the first century, especially someone of the house of Israel, reading this would send up recognition flares, because there is an allusion to one of the biggest names in the history of Israel.  The word that is translated here as ‘deceit’ in the original Greek means ‘guile’ – which is close enough to deceit as to be interchangeable.  But it is a subtle reference to the one character in the history of Israel who is best KNOWN for the guile by which he lived:  Jacob.  If you remember his story, he lived by his wits.  He tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright, he also spent nearly twenty years maneuvering his Uncle Laban out of most everything he owned, and he wound up spending a good deal of time on the run because of it as well. 

 

For some reason that we can’t quite fathom, God liked Jacob.  At one point while he was running, God gave Jacob a dream in which he saw a ladder climbing all the way to heaven, and angels were going up and down the length of it.  Jesus, by the way, is alluding to Jacob again when he mentions the dream in verse 51.  Through the dream God assures Jacob that in spite of all the stunts he’s pulled, God has been with him.  God even promises to bring Jacob back to the Promised Land one day, even though he is on his way AWAY from it at a dead run at the moment. 

 

Then comes the pivotal event in Jacob’s life.  The night by the River Jabbock.  Jacob is finally out of places to hide, and is on his way to meet his brother Esau, when he is attacked by a stranger in the darkness on the banks of the river.  You’ve heard the story… they fight.  They wrestle all night, and they are seemingly too evenly matched for one to overwhelm the other.  But close to dawn there comes a moment when it seems like Jacob has finally gotten his opponent pinned down… until the stranger, with supernatural ease, wrenches Jacob’s hip out of its socket.  He lets Jacob know that the whole night’s fight had been rigged, it had been a carefully crafted plan – not unlike many of the plans that Jacob himself had arranged.  But out of that experience, what happens?  Jacob comes away with both a new name – Israel – and a new attitude, a new outlook on life.  Jacob came away from the shores of the Jabbock with an understanding that the best things in life come not by wit, or cunning, or force and strength, but through grace. 

So that is who Jacob was, and that is who Jesus is comparing Nathanael to when he sees him and says something more like “Here comes an Israel who is not Jacob”, meaning that Nathanael was an example of the straight-shooting honest Israel, of the new man who emerged after God knocked Jacob flat with grace, not the pre-wrestling match trickster.

 

It seems all the more kind, since Nathanael had just finished pretty much dissing Jesus’ hometown.  So if we follow the reasoning, Jesus says that Nathanael is an honest man, Nathanael just said that Nazareth was a town of questionable repute, and Jesus confirmed it. 

 

Jesus was telling Nathanael “You’re right!  I’m not much to look at, but I’ll let you in on a little secret:  I’m the one!” 

 

And this is the moment of Grace in this setting.  Nathanael, in his straightforward, no-frills, hold no punches way, speaks the confession that will ring through the centuries just as Peter’s will later - “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

 

And in response Jesus first questions his faith – asks, basically, “Is that all it took?  Me telling you I saw you under the fig tree?  Get ready; you’re going to see greater things than these!” 

 

And what greater things was he talking about?  Healings? Yes. Raising people from the dead?  That too.  Walking on water, yes; the feeding of thousands of people from five loaves and two fish, check.  But what was the greatest thing Nathanael would see?  

 

It was the same thing we see and experience when we come together around this table, when we share this bread and this cup.  It was that moment when God gave God’s self in the person of Jesus up in our place – where God covered our debt for us.  And welcomed us into the body of Christ – both to live and to serve.   

 

I don’t think Nathanael nor Philip had any idea what was in store for them, just like the members of First Baptist Church, Orange Texas don’t have any idea where God is taking THEM – but the call is not to SEE what lies ahead, that is not ours to claim.  The call is to faithfulness and to obedience.

 

We may not have the ability to say “this and this and this is going to happen, but it doesn’t matter, because that is not in our hands.  What we do have is the ability and the responsibility to serve, to confess, to live out that self-giving love that Christ calls us to — that God modeled in the person of Jesus. 

 

In the Hebrew tradition, when Passover was shared, it was not simply a repeating of what happened when the Israelites fled Egypt.  It was actually a re-living, a re-experiencing of the event.  On the surface, yes, of course, it is much more cleaned up, I guess you could say, but in the exchanges, in the remembrances, there is a depth of meaning that calls even people today, to understand what the festival was for them on that first night. 

 

And we draw on that tradition when we share this bread and this cup. 

 

We share unleavened bread because there was no time to let it rise.  Jesus took the bread and broke it and said take and eat, this is my body, which is broken for you.  And after dinner he took the cup and poured it and said this is my blood of the new covenant shed for you.  As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, Paul writes later, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. 

 

We share one cup, we share one loaf to remind us that we are one body.  Participating, joining together in this sharing is making a statement both about what it means to be a part of this body of Christ, Jerusalem Baptist Church, as well as a part of the body of Christ on earth.  The breaking reminds us that we are not exempt from suffering, the poured juice reminds us that we may be called to shed our blood, as seemingly unlikely that would be for us sitting her in Emmerton Virginia on January 18^th, 2009. 

 

We are called to sacrifice, and that can happen in very many ways. 

 

I would invite you to come forward, tear a piece of bread off and dip it in the juice, and proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.                      

 

(Communion)

 

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

 

Just as we have on some level re-lived, re-experienced Christ’s sacrifice, we take that into our own lives, we follow that example, we follow that guidance, that leading, that spirit.  We pray for the courage to live our convictions, we pray for the wisdom to discern those moments when we can share, when God is asking us to share.  And if necessary, use words. 

 

Let’s pray.