As Often As

Sunday, June 10th 2007
Second after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
1 Corinthians 11:23-32

23 For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. 27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. 30 For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. 31 But if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged. 32 But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

In case you’re wondering, it isn’t a communion Sunday. We didn’t accidentally forget to prepare the elements and lay them out on the table. The flowers are supposed to be there.

What I’d like to speak to you about this morning is the nature of sacrifice.

I had an idea yesterday on my way back from Richmond; an idea of how to bring this message to life in a different way – a very CONCRETE way. It was going to involve some heavy lifting. I was going to have a couple of you help me move the communion table up and put it over here covering these steps up to the platform, and then ask someone else to help me move this little pew back here and move it across these OTHER steps over HERE. Then I was going to move these two platform chairs and the two larger ones that are down there and line them up across the edge of the platform here… effectively setting up a sort of barricade, in case someone wanted to try to … say … come up and get close to, oh, I don’t know … Jesus, here in the baptistery painting – he IS extending his hand out in a gesture of invitation, after all.

So I ran the idea by my … editor, and, though at first it seemed to be a pretty good thing, the more we thought about it, the more it had the potential for becoming too distracting, to have people leave the service wondering why all that furniture was being moved around, to say nothing of running the risk of having someone pull a muscle, or worse. So we decided to keep it in the realm of the imagination for the time being and spare my back and theirs.

But I DO want you to imagine it, and hold that image in your minds – of all this furniture up here being lined up like an obstacle course across the front here, with no real easy way to get UP to the painting on the baptistery wall – to reach Jesus, as it were.

A couple of weeks ago our nation celebrated Memorial Day, and we held our Worship Service here incorporating the program of the VFW’s Local Chapter. We were reminded then of the sacrifice – or rather, the sacrifices – plural – that Memorial Day is dedicated to: those of the men and women who gave their lives for their country. We have that fresh in our memories. But what other forms of sacrifice can we envision? What other sacrifices have we benefited from, either personally or as a congregation, and what PROMPTED those sacrifices to begin with?

We would probably do well to further narrow the scope of our thinking. We are, after all, speaking in relation to the church, and our part in the life of the church.

I want us to do some memory exercises. Think back, as far back as you can, to the first person outside your immediate family – if you were raised GOING to church, if not, the question still stands – the first person you remember by name KNOWING in church. Was he or she a Sunday School teacher? A preschool or nursery worker? A youth or children’s worker or leader?

Now in thinking about that person – was their impact on you positive or negative? Did knowing them – or knowing that you would probably be seeing them again the next time you went to church something you looked forward to or something you dreaded?

Now think, if the person you thought of initially was a positive influence, can you think of anyone who was not that positive an influence on your choice to return or not to church? And if the first person that came to mind WAS a negative influence, can you think of someone with whom you came in contact LATER in life that influenced you in the other direction?

It may seem a little strange to ask you to think of people who dissuaded you from coming to church. As well as those who encouraged you TO come to church, but there’s a reason for that.

First, I bring it up because it needs to be addressed. We do as much harm to ourselves by the attitudes that escape us that are not in the spirit of love as any outside influence or temptation or outright antagonist. We need to hold ourselves accountable and not give in to the temptation of finding fault everywhere but … here. (point to self)

Second, to name that person or perhaps that event that turned us OFF to church and YET to be sitting here today HEARING this is to grant that in spite of that, we are STILL here, or we are BACK here. We still have a longing and a desire to be in community with a family of faith.

Third, I think it is safe to say that we have all – MOSTLY all – lived through situations that in and of themselves would easily have been enough to make us stop going to church altogether. You’ve heard me tell of a couple of those times in my own life. And yet, here I am, and here YOU are.

So let’s examine what it is that brought us back.

I’d like for us to think of what it was. Was it in the form of a person? Was it some prompting in another form? I can tell you almost the precise instance when it happened for me – in a service during a message about the prodigal son – I’ve shared it with you before – to have the image of a loving God who is running towards ME to welcome me back home was probably one of the most transformative moments – in the long run – in my life. But it wasn’t an isolated event – THAT in itself WAS a single event, but it took place in the context of a surrounding community of faith in which that message was received. The acceptance I felt from that church family reinforced for me what I had heard that February morning in 1988. I saw and felt their love and acceptance as an extension of that love and acceptance that the Pastor had spoken of.

Is there anyone who would like to share briefly either simply the name of a person, or in a few short sentences an event that drew you into or back into a family of faith?

‘The Painted Veil’ is the story of a young couple, a British Doctor and his new, spoiled and selfish wife trying to move on with their lives after the discovery of infidelity on her part. They arrive in the middle of an outbreak of Cholera in a small town in the interior of China and are barely on speaking terms. He becomes engrossed in the work of trying to identify the source of the outbreak and how to stop it. She ends up finding work in the local orphanage, run by French nuns to occupy her time, since she literally has nothing else to do.

In one of the most poignant scenes in the movie, she and the Abbess – the Mother Superior – are in a conversation about love and duty, and the Abbess speaks longingly of the time when she was young and in love with God – that was why she took her vows – but in the ensuing years and decades, she says, she and God have had their arguments, he has disappointed her, she has failed him, they have come to a place in their relationship where they exist in a state of studied indifference. It is a terribly sad statement. But she goes on to speak of that being the difference between doing something out of love versus doing something out of duty. Her concluding comment is something like this:

“To do something you love out of passion burns bright, but only for a short time. To do something out of duty can last, but easily becomes drudgery. But when love and duty are one, ah, then grace is within you.”

Thinking back on those people we mentioned or who came to mind a few minutes ago, do you think their influence was born out of a sense of duty, or love, or that grace-filled blending of both?

Today’s question is not what does this MEAN, but what does this have to DO with Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

In your worship bulletins this morning there was an additional sheet. It is the Church and Sunday School Service Sheet. It heralds the beginning of the process whereby the nominating committee begins its work. Over the next couple of months the committee will meet, and meet again, and in between the meetings will be contacting different members of the congregation to see if they would like to participate in the life of the church in a more hands-on way. What that sheet has on it is a list of those roles and responsibilities that are available within the church and help this body of believers function and fulfill its duties day in and day out throughout the year.

And recognizing that we are frail children of dust and fallible human beings, there are also blanks to be filled in if you have seen a need that is unfulfilled, or have an idea for something new and different that we haven’t thought of already, or would like to volunteer to do something that might spark a new fire in others in this family of faith. New ideas are welcomed and encouraged.

So let’s get back to that imagined blockade up here. The question is first going to be a discomforting one: do we find that at some point we became more of a blockade to someone’s getting to Jesus? Did we at some point say something – or NOT say something – that resulted in the distance between that person and Christ GROWING – not SHRINKING?

The second question is the question that brings grace with it: are we willing to join hands – together and with Christ, to break down the barrier, remove the barricade, and open a way for someone to get closer to Christ?

That is what serving the community of faith means – opening a way to Christ. Sometimes this whole business of figuring out what it means to believe in Jesus, to accept him as Savior, to follow him as Lord, to love your neighbor, to pray for your enemies, to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s, to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength can get pretty involved, pretty complicated, pretty disheartening, pretty isolating even.

Serving in any of these capacities – however seemingly trivial, opens you up to an opportunity to have a positive or a negative impact on the life of someone who is looking for God and might only be exposed to that possibility through that one, brief contact with US.
So the question now becomes, as it often does; how will we respond?

The invitation right NOW is to do something very concrete, very exact: pick up a pencil or a pen and go over the list, fill in your name and phone number, and check off or fill in something that you feel God leading you to do. I use those words, “God leading you to do”, in the assumption that we all know what they mean – and I think we do, for the most part, but it can sometimes be frightening to PUT it in those terms – so let me say it this way: if there is something on those lists that catches your eye, that stirs your heart, that peaks your interest … that for some unexplained reason draws your attention more than the rest of the stuff … please be open to the possibility that that is God’s Spirit moving you to step out in faith to do something you might not ever have considered doing before – believe me, sometimes doing something completely out of your comfort zone is the best thing to prove to you that it isn’t YOU that is doing it, but CHRIST in you!

The invitation, beyond, beneath and before that is first and foremost to follow Christ. If it manifests itself through serving in one of these capacities, all the better, but we don’t expect that at first. We DO invite you to JOIN us if you are ALREADY in relationship with Christ to deepen and strengthen that relationship, to walk alongside us as fellow pilgrims on the way.

And now, if you are already ‘all of the above’ – if you HAVE that relationship with God in Christ, if you ARE a member of THIS family of faith, the invitation is a little more of a challenge. You already understand that in a small congregation, members sometimes wear multiple hats, sometimes as members of multiple committees, sometimes as CHAIRS of multiple committees. The challenge and invitation is to, THROUGH that dynamic – THROUGH that wearing of multiple hats, BEING here as often as you are asked to come – two or three nights a week for meetings, SERVING in multiple capacities – the invitation is to find the confluence of love and duty that speaks to what it means to follow Christ and serve his body, all at the same time.

Let’s pray.