God Has Welcomed

 

Sunday, September 14^th, 2008

Proper 19A/ Ordinary 24 A/ Pentecost +18

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Romans 14:1-12

Theme: Extending God’s welcome through our Service

 

 “¹Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. ²Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. ³Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. ⁴Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. ⁵Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. ⁶Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God. ⁷We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. ⁸If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. ⁹For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. ¹⁰Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. ¹¹For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.” ¹²So then, each of us will be accountable to God.”

 

To whom does Jerusalem Baptist church belong? 

 

I realize the deed or deeds for the land on which this building and the parsonage and the cemetery sit are registered in the name of the church.  And as an assembly of believers, we constitute the temporal, or earthly owners of this building.  And that is more for the purposes of the county commissioner than anything else. 

 

What I’m asking is, to whom do we, the membership of Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton, in Warsaw, Richmond County, Virginia, BELONG? 

 

In Baptist “polity”, that is, “the way Baptists do things”, we speak of local church autonomy.  Autonomy is a slightly fancy word that means ‘independence’.  Oddly enough, on the spectrum of types of Baptists that exist, we are not generally considered ‘independent.’  THAT term was appropriated by our sister Baptist churches who associate even LESS with each other than we do.  We ARE, historically and by tradition, autonomous in the sense that we govern ourselves.  No one outside our congregation has a say in how we choose to do things.  There is no earthly authority that can pick up the phone, call here to the office and say “you need to do thus and such”. 

 

We DO, by choice, freely agree to associate with several other churches in the local geographic area – known as the Rappahannock Baptist Association, as well as nearly fifteen hundred other churches across Virginia (and I think, a couple of North Carolina and Georgia congregations) through the Baptist General Association of Virginia.  On a national level, we associate with two organizations:  the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.  Beyond them, on an international scope, we relate to the Baptist World Alliance.  All that having been said, it needs to be reiterated that all those associations are by choice, decided on as a congregation, specific to us here.  True to Baptist tradition, we could, if we wanted to, withdraw from any or all of those associations and go with a whole DIFFERENT set of partners or none at all.  We have that freedom and we have that option, while still remaining as Baptist as we are today. 

 

But getting back to the nitty-gritty, local level: how we conduct ourselves here, as a family of faith, is what is going to make a difference, an impact on our local community, our friends, our relatives, our acquaintances.  THAT is what people will comment on when they speak of Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), not that we belong to the RBA or the BGAV, or the SBC or the CBF or the BWA.  (We have nearly as many acronyms in Baptist life as the military does!)  For all those associations I’ve named, there is some formal process whereby we BECAME associated with the organization in question.  With reference to nearly all of them, we have to have decided at some point to cooperatively enter into a supporting role with the other churches of that association – we have to be sending contributions every so often to help that organization carry out the tasks it has taken on.  Whether that task be to support US in our endeavor to carry out the spreading of the Gospel or whether through our giving WE support THAT organization’s task of spreading the Gospel. 

 

While we can measure our support of an effort through how much we DO contribute to it, when it comes down to membership, we have to meet certain requirements.  And that is where what we do as a Church relating to other churches and associations needs to differ significantly from what we do as a Church relating to our community. 

 

The church in Rome that Paul was writing to was struggling with an internal tension that is VERY familiar to any congregation.  There were some folks who had become Christ followers years if not decades earlier than the time of the writing of the letter, and there were those who had just become follower of Christ a few weeks or months earlier, perhaps by witnessing the way those mature Christians handled themselves through the times of persecution that they had just lived through.  The Tension arose from differences within the family of faith as to what constituted something to be ALLOWED and something to be REJECTED as a mark of the faith they all professed.  Some stopped eating meat for fear of eating something that may have been sacrificed to an idol before being taken to market.  Some felt that it was necessary to strictly observe the Sabbath, coming from the Hebrew tradition most likely, they felt that making that statement was a way to distinctively honor God.  Not everyone felt that way on either of those counts, and it made for some disagreements – people probably calling each other less than uplifting names. 

 

A faith community is a dynamic, a CHANGING thing, a relational thing.  To look at the list of positions and officers that we just voted on three weeks ago – apart from the names – is to see an organization that has directors, and teachers, and assistants and assistant teachers, and a whole SLEW of committees … and if you read through the list and just stop at the headings, I think we could come off as an overly organized, compartmentalized bureaucracy.  For a congregation of around 50 active or attending members, it would seem to be overkill. 

 

But if you left off the titles, the committee names, and just listed the names of the people included, you get a very different picture.  First of all, you get a picture of families, of people who belong to each other, who aren’t just here because they fulfill a particular role or carry out a particular function, we get a picture of people who come because they love to be with their family members, with their brothers and sisters.  As a family of faith made UP of families, we have seen, as any family does, changes in the makeup of our larger family.  We have had members of the family die, and others be born.  We have had family members suffer from illnesses that have kept them away, and we’ve seen others recover their health and reintegrate into the active life of the church.  We have also had family members suffer broken relationships whose pain reaches deep into our larger body.  We don’t, as a rule, refer to each other by our title.  I don’t call Jean ‘Madame Choir Director’, or to Cliff as ‘Mr. Chairman of Deacons.’  I call them by their names, because that is how brothers and sisters call each other.  I suppose we could come up with nicknames for each other, if need be.  Who knows, some of us may already HAVE nicknames and just not know about them! 

 

My point is this:  though we do have roles within the family, we are not defined solely by those roles.  We are – though imperfect – people whose lives are made up of any number of interests and skills and talents, and gifts that God has given us.  As such, we each bring something to the table, we each bring our specially colored thread to the tapestry that God is making of this family. 

 

As Christians, we preach Christ crucified.  We teach and sing songs about how Jesus loves the little children, and that Jesus died for the sins of the world.  We sing of a universal savior, of Jesus who made the way for everyone – anyone – who believes in him and follows him to receive salvation – and this is where our role on the front lines of the incoming reign of God is critical – remember Paul’s words at the beginning of the passage – “God has welcomed them.”  

 

While we ARE called to accountability to each other, and we ARE called to live lives of holy devotion to the Lord, and we ARE charged with living lives worthy of the image of Christ, we are NOT charged with being the gatekeepers to the kingdom.  Our responsibility as Christians is to live out, as we’ve said before, Christ’s life into the world, to BE his presence.  But we are not to be about the business of deciding who gets in and who doesn’t.  That is not our call to make. 

 

When we pause after the second hymn each Sunday and extend the Jerusalem hand of welcome, we shine!  People have noted the warmth with which we greet each other and any visitors we have.  It is that same spirit of welcome that reflects God’s welcome!  It is beautiful and open, and joyful.  And if you’ve noticed, it is also a time to, in a few brief words, touch base with each other, or to sincerely ask someone how they are doing if they don’t look like they are doing well.  It can be overwhelming if one isn’t used to that warmth – that offer of a hearty handshake or a hug, it is a direct reflection of the welcome that God extended to each of us through the person of Jesus Christ.

 

(ordination of Janie King)