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.