Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Ephesians 4:25-5:2, 1 Cor 11:1
25So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. 26 Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and do not make room for the devil. 28 Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. 29 Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. 31 Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, 32 and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2 and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Yesterday morning, as I was standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes, Caleb and Judson got a hold of two balloons they’d gotten the night before and decided they were going to draw and write on them. While Caleb was working on his in the living room, I think, Judson chose to work on his right there in the kitchen. After a few minutes of intense, concentrated effort, he held up his balloon and declared “there! My PERFECT name!” (show balloon) (for text only readers: the balloon was yellow and had a couple of unrecognizable streaks on it ... one COULD have been a 'J'...)
We won’t be drawing on balloons today, at least not up here, but we will, hopefully, learn what it means to have a ‘perfect name’.
“Belonging precedes Believing precedes Becoming”
A brief review: two weeks ago, we discussed what it means to belong. Reading back over last week’s summary of the previous week, I think the quickest thing to do is to reread a couple of sentences from one of the paragraphs. For those of you who might not have been here, this is the message before last in a nutshell:
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. In that introduction, we are carrying out a dual role: we are both doing the introducing, and being introduced. Because we are Christ’s presence, and in that, 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.
To summarize last week: the title of the message was “What do you believe?” We didn’t go down a laundry list of items we believed. We are not a creedal people, though if we were to recite or read the Apostle’s Creed today, there would be very little if anything that we WOULD disagree with, I THINK. The question in the title is necessarily rhetorical. One of the central tenets of Baptist Theology, the single item that, as a Christian denomination, Baptists brought to the table, is the concept of Soul Competency. That is, each of us, as individuals, can receive, interpret, and respond to the movement of God in our lives, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. That includes what we each believe. While we can all agree on most things, I KNOW we don’t all agree on everything. That is why I didn’t pull out a laundry list. I thought briefly about changing the title to ‘When do you believe’ because I compared and contrasted Saul’s Damascus Road conversion experience to what may have been Timothy’s gradual, growing-up-in-the-church experience of faith, coming from his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice.
So here we are, at the end of the quote.
“Belonging precedes Believing precedes Becoming”
Today we get to ask ourselves the question: Who are YOU becoming? Who are we, each of us as individuals, becoming? And by implication, who are we, Jerusalem Baptist Church, becoming as a congregation?
It’s appropriate to ask this question in light of what took place earlier in the service with Chris and Cindy and Mary Alyce and Mac. As a congregation, we just promised that, “With God’s help, we will so seek to follow Christ ourselves, that Chris and Cindy will be strengthened and confirmed in their resolve and that Mary Alyce and Mac, surrounded by steadfast love, may be nurtured in the faith and strengthened in the way that leads to life.”
Put another way, whom are you allowing to shape you? Whether we like it or not, as parents and as members of the body of Christ, our children, and like them, folks who look to us as an example of Christ followers, whether from inside these walls or outside, are going to be following our example, or deciding if they want to bother with the Gospel based on the example we set.
That is a huge responsibility. In 1st Corinthians, chapter 11, Paul, in light of what was going on with the Corinthian Church, probably with some exasperation, puts it into just a few words:
“Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ”
Who do you see when you look in the mirror? Who has marked you with a seal? Do the eyes of Christ look back at you, or the eyes of the world? Who guides your thoughts? Who controls your actions? Who has made the biggest difference in your life? I confess that the person I see varies from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour.
There’s a song that came out several years ago, by a contemporary Christian trio of singers, Phillips, Craig and Dean, entitled “I Want To Be Just Like You” the refrain (chorus?) goes like this:
Lord I want to be just like You
‘Cause he wants to be just like me
I want to be a holy example
For his innocent eyes to see
Help me be a living Bible, Lord
That my little boy can read
I want to be just like You
‘Cause he wants to be like me
I never get through a hearing of the song without pretty much dissolving into a puddle.
The reason we celebrated with Chris and Cindy and their extended family as well as their own, young, nuclear family, is this: we are in community together. That means we share with each other. Through the living of our lives, through our words and actions, we, like Christ, are helping to break in the Kingdom of God.
As many of you know or have heard us tell, when Lucio and Domingo Perez, who work down at White Stone, back from Mexico and joined us here at Jerusalem for the first time since we first met them in March when we hosted the gathering back in September, Domingo opened his knapsack and pulled out a beautiful blanket. The colors on it are vibrant. It is a thick blanket. It is designed to protect and to warm. We have another piece of fabric that I would have brought with me if it weren’t, like, 14 feet long and a little wrinkled. We used it as a window treatment in Virginia Beach. It is almost gauzelike. If you hold it up to the light, you can practically see right through it. the image might be a little fuzzy, but it is there. Picture if you will, sheers covering a window on a sunny day.
Wynn Lewis, the former rector at Old Donation Episcopal church, in Virginia Beach, the dayschool where Hannah, Caleb and Judson went, loves to talk about ‘thin places’ in the fabric of this world, where we can catch a glimpse of what it will be like in the next world. When we speak of helping break in the Kingdom of God, that is what we mean: we are creating a thin place, where the kingdom of God is not only future, but present as well. The colors of the blanket we are surrounded by today, though beautiful in their fall splendor, pale in comparison to the colors we will someday see, but if we look closely, just like those sheers, the colors of the Kingdom come through.
Let me read again the first two verses of the 5th chapter of Ephesians:
5:1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2 and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
“Belonging precedes Believing precedes Becoming”
The question stands: who are you becoming? Maybe we should now ask who do you WANT to become?
Judson proudly declared, “my perfect name!” yesterday morning.
What is your perfect name? I’d suggest this: your perfect name is the name God gave Christ at his baptism, and has given us all, and the name by which Christ called us and Paul, in imitation of him, called the so many of the people he wrote to over the years:
We have, through belonging and believing, become a part of the body of Christ. As such, we become imitators of Christ, imitators in fact of God, who calls us to live in love, to love the unlovely, to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord Jesus until he comes again.
If you are here and are not yet named beloved, your invitation is to take on the name of Christ by making him Lord of your life.
If you are here and are already called by his name, but are looking for a local community of faith with which to join to grow to know him better, we would welcome you.
If you are here and are already a member, and are still wondering what your name is, know that it is this: “you are my beloved son. You are my beloved daughter.”
“beloved.”
Let’s pray.
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