Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Acts 9:1-9, 2 Timothy 3:3-7 (Matthew 5:33-37, Romans 12:9-18)
Acts 9:1
Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. 3 Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" 5 He asked, "Who are you, Lord?" The reply came, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 6 But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do." 7 The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. 8 Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. 9 For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
2Ti 1:3
I am grateful to God--whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did--when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. 4 Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. 5 I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. 6 For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; 7 for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.
“Belonging precedes Believing precedes Becoming”
Just to review, last week we began to look at the components of this statement. Our question last week was “Where do you Belong?” Hopefully, the answer to that question for most of you here today is ‘Here’. But if not here, the answer, regardless of where you find your family of faith, is definitely with and to Christ. Our scripture passage last week was from the fourth chapter of Gospel of Matthew, the scene was on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, the event, Jesus’ calling his first disciples; Peter, Andrew, James and John, the sons of Zebedee.
What we found last week is that, before they grew to believe, the disciples were welcomed into fellowship with Jesus through his invitation to join him. It is that same invitation that Christ continues to extend to us and to everyone today. Insofar as we invite and welcome people into this fellowship, this family, this small part of the body of Christ, we are initiating the dialogue of faith between that person and God. We are making introductions between that person and Jesus, but in that introduction, we are carrying out a dual role: we are both doing the introducing, and being introduced. We are Christ’s presence to them, and in that presence, we are carrying out the incarnational witness of the Gospel, in other words, through the living of our lives, through our words and actions, we, like Christ, are helping to break in the Kingdom of God.
Belonging precedes Believing precedes Becoming.
The first ‘step’ in the series, so to speak, is to experience a sense of belonging. As the saying goes, you only have one chance to make a first impression. The same is true – especially true – for church. I know of no other place where the perception of a group as a whole can hinge on the actions or words of a single individual – and not necessarily the Preacher - to the degree that it does in a church setting. That is why it is SO critical to be nothing we are NOT in church. That is, don’t say or do anything IN church that you wouldn’t say or do OUT of church. To turn it around: Don’t say or do anything anywhere else that you wouldn’t say or do here, between these walls. What is the most common accusation launched at the church? What is the most common reason given for someone NOT being involved or becoming active in a church? That it is full of hypocrites. Let’s work at nipping that in the bud. Biblically, Jesus puts it this way in Matthew 5:33 and following (part of the sermon on the mount):
33"Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, "You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.' 34 But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 Let your word be "Yes, Yes' or "No, No'; anything more than this comes from the evil one.
Paul puts it beautifully in the 12th chapter of Romans (for those of you who were here for the Associational Brotherhood meeting, forgive me for reading this passage again, but it is one that doesn’t seem to lose any of it’s power through repetition):
9 Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; 10 love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11 Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. 13 Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. 14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. 17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 18 If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
It could be said in a simpler way: Be Real; being a part of a family of faith is an ongoing act of trust. Not only are we trusting God to guide and direct us as a congregation, as well as individually, but we are trusting each other with each other’s lives, cares, worries, fears, and in some cases, secrets and children. It’s usually a point of pride to be able to say ‘what you see is what you get’. Let that be true of us here at Jerusalem. Let’s be that transparent, that open, that welcoming. But it doesn’t stop there, because there is more to it, more to this being church to each other, than that. Belonging is the beginning place, but we come to the heart place.
We come then, to believing.
Our opening scripture presents us with two images of coming to faith, coming to the point of believing in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The first is probably the most famous. It is Saul’s conversion experience on the road to Damascus. It is so famous, so well-known, that the phrase ‘a Damascus road experience’ can be found outside of faith communities, and still carry the same connotation. It means having an experience so dramatic, so radical, that it marks you for life. Perhaps some of us here today in this room can claim to have come to faith through a similar experience. In those cases, it is easy to pinpoint the day, date, and time when we ‘got saved’.
Probably for others, the reference to Timothy is more appropriate: “a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.” Paul doesn’t mention Timothy’s wild days as a teenager, or how he used to chase around town in a chariot, throwing empty wine jugs out the back. What we have is progression. The faith of your grandmother and your mother, that is now yours.
I wonder if there was a time when Timothy didn’t remember being surrounded by faith? Please correct me (later ) if I’m wrong on this, but I don’t believe we have a direct reference in Scripture to how old Timothy was or if he was even born when Lois and Eunice first became followers of ‘The Way’, which is what the early Christ followers were called.
If he was a toddler, or a very young child, his experience may have been very similar in that respect to that of many of us here today. It’s not that you ever didn’t believe, it’s more an issue of … waking up one day and realizing ‘I really DO believe’. You may not be able to get any closer to the day or date than maybe give a general idea of how old you were at the time, but the truth remains the same. Sometime before that, you didn’t believe, but after a certain time, you DID, you stepped forward on this road, this pilgrimage of faith, and in the words of Robert Frost, “took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
For the disciples, that coming to faith had a specific turning point, similar in many ways to Paul’s meeting with Christ on the road to Damascus. It came after the resurrection. In the Gospel of Matthew, we read a short passage, verses 16 & 17 in chapter 28, just before the much better known great commission:
16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.
There is another passage, not so short, which I will summarize; Mark 9, verses 14 and following. The story is of Jesus coming upon the disciples surrounded by a crowd and arguing with some scribes. When he walks up to them he finds out that the disciples had attempted an exorcism. When questioned, Jesus answers “All things can be done for the one who believes”. The father of the boy then cries out, with a cry that echoes with all of us here:
"I believe; help my unbelief!"
What do we do with doubt? Is there a way to escape it? Hebrews 11:1 says
“faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”.
That doesn’t seem to leave room for doubt. In truth, it doesn’t. But what we need to remember, what we need to accept and incorporate into our self-understanding, is that we are inconstant beings. Not a single one of us, as close as we may come, are one hundred percent all the time. Speaking for myself, I can reel off several areas in my life where it would be wonderful if I were constant. Granted, self-perception is not always the most objective view, but it is what we work from by nature, and that is what comes through to me in the cry of this helpless father, who’s spent most of his son’s life looking for help, someone to rid him of the demon that had been plaguing him since childhood. He is saying, in fact, “Lord, I believe, but I know myself and I know that I won’t ALWAYS believe. I rely on your Grace to get me through those times.”
Jerusalem can be all of them, the Damascus Road and the ‘cloud of witnesses’, such as Lois and Eunice for the people who come through that door and don’t know Christ, who haven’t had an encounter with the living Lord through the lives of his followers. Jerusalem can also be the place that welcomes the person who is wrestling with doubt in the midst of faith. Here’s the thing: we don’t know which it will be for any given individual. We do know this: we are called to obedience, we are called to love, and we are called to share.
It is just that sharing that we will explore next week.
For now, for some, we are at the turning point.
C S Lewis was an avowed atheist well into his early adulthood. The only description he gives of his conversion experience is this: one day he went out for a walk, and between the time he left and the time he returned he knew that God was real. Somewhere along that walk, he came to faith. He specifically says, there was no dramatic event; it just happened that he began the walk as an atheist and ended it as a believer. If you are here today and woke up not sure, but now, somehow, someway, something has turned that uncertainty to certainty, your invitation is to consider this time and place as the opportunity to make that certainty – that step of faith - public.
If you are here today and have been surrounded by that ‘cloud if witnesses’ all your life, and know that today is the day you can say ‘I really DO believe’, we would welcome you.
If you are here today and have BEEN a part of that cloud of witnesses, or have already been ON that road to Damascus, your invitation is to continue in the faith that was first in Lois, then in Eunice, then Timothy, and uncounted others between then and now, and to strengthen the bonds of love and trust in this small but vital part of the body of Christ.
The special invitation today is for those who struggle with doubt. The struggle is part of our humanity; it is not a reflection on the strength or weakness of your faith. That you are in struggle with it is a sign that your faith is active, alive, and growing.
Let’s Pray.
No comments:
Post a Comment