Why Bother

Sunday, September 14, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
I Corinthians 15: 1-4; 12-22

1 Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, 2 through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you--unless you have come to believe in vain.
3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,

12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ--whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. 17 If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. 19 If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. 20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. 21 For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; 22 for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.

“I never quite understood this … missions thing”

We were sitting in class, and Patrick had just floored me. He is far and above the smartest person in the class, and he is a far better student than I am. He can rattle off quotes or the main ideas of any number of theologians at the drop of a hat, and is not afraid to state his disagreement with any of them, so it was a little intimidating to hear him question what immediately came to my mind as the lifetimes of service given by thousands of missionaries over the last couple of thousand years.

The question is a valid one: Why bother? What is it about the gospel that causes us to be sitting here, 2000 years after it’s beginnings, still talking about it, still acting on it, still caring about it? Why do we still engage in missions? In the sending out and GOING out to share the Gospel?

In 1792, when William Carey, the first British missionary to India, and the man considered to be the father of modern missions, presented this idea of going to India to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world, one of the other ministers, a Dr. Ryland, interrupted him and shouted,

"Young man, sit down: when God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine."

In spite of the opposition, Carey persisted, and the following year was able to set sail for India under the sponsorship of the Particular Baptist Missionary Society. Over the next 41 years, serving the first 20 undercover, since at the time it was illegal to BE a missionary in India, according to British law, Carey taught at the Fort William College in Calcutta, where the civil servants were trained. He taught Bengali, Sanskrit and Marathi. India is a multicultural nation, with hundreds of different languages, dialects, and subcultures. By the end of his career, Carey had succeeded in translating the Bible into 6 languages and the New Testament and Gospels into 29 other languages.

Our text speaks to the heart of why. Paul was addressing those in the Corinthian church who were, in their own minds, too smart for the Gospel.

Corinth would be the equivalent of a present-day New York, London, or Paris. It was a multicultural crossroads of trade and commerce. There were temples to all the Roman and Greek gods, as well as probably multitudes of other gods. The citizens, and, one would have to believe, the members of the church would have been steeped in the local culture, which included a very Greek understanding of the soul and the body, and how that played out in regards to the belief in a bodily, a physical resurrection.

Here we need to bring in a term that would not rear it’s head for another hundred years, but which had it’s roots in the ideas of the time that Paul was addressing: Gnosticism.

Bear with me; I’d like to quote from the commentary I was reading from:

GNOSTICISM A second-century heresy that was a mixture of Judaism, Christianity, and Greek mystery religions. Some of its major tenets were:

1.The human body is matter, and therefore is evil. It is to be contrasted with God, who is wholly spirit and therefore good. 2. Salvation is the escape from the body,
achieved not by faith in Christ but by special knowledge (the Greek word for "knowledge" is gnosis, from which comes Gnosticism). 3. Christ's true humanity was denied in two ways: (1) Some said that Christ only seemed to have a body, a view called Docetism, and (2) others said that the divine Christ joined the man Jesus at baptism and left him before he died, a view called Cerinthianism, after
its most prominent spokesman, Cerinthus. This view is the background of much of 1 John (see 1Jn 1:1; 2:22; 4:2-3). 4. Since the body was considered evil, it was to be treated harshly. This ascetic form of Gnosticism is the background of part Colossians (Col 2:21-23). 5. Paradoxically, this dualism also led to immorality. Since matter (and not the breaking of God's law) was considered evil, breaking his law was of no moral consequence.

Something to point out: Gnosticism as such was not a full-blown movement at the time that Paul was writing to the Corinthians, but there were … core Gnostic ideas already present, which eventually developed into the belief system we now call Gnosticism.

Basically, it went against the Jewish, and if the truth be told, the pharisaic understanding of bodily resurrection. Odd, isn’t it? That the Pharisees, the people with whom Jesus had the most problems, believed in the bodily resurrection, and actually were critically instrumental in making it a commonly held belief among first century Palestinian Jews.

The Greek understanding of resurrection – and the one with which Paul was contending at the church in Corinth – was a purely spiritual one. The only thing that is eternal is the soul. The body has no place in the resurrection. The Jewish understanding views the body to be as important as the soul in the resurrection, but views the bodily resurrection as taking place for all humanity at the same time at the end of time. They never lost sight of that original blessing bestowed by God after completing creation and pronouncing it ‘good’.

Back to the text: verse 12:

12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.

Paul’s use of the term ‘resurrection’ was in the fully human sense of the word – in the bodily sense of the word. It was what he’d experienced in his meeting with Christ on the road to Damascus. Here he was, persecuting what he considered to be heretics, and he’s confronted with their leader in a way that confirms his own belief as a Pharisee in the bodily resurrection – as radical a transformation as can take place took place in Saul of Tarsus that day. He is speaking to the Corinthians not from theory but from experience.

Earlier in the passage, we find one of the earliest … some would call it a creed, but since we’re Baptists, I suppose we’d call it a ‘statement of faith’  beginning in verse 3:

3 That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures

Paul is again reiterating what he first preached to the Corinthians when he first came to them: the basic Gospel of Christ, that he gave his life for us, and that he rose from the dead, triumphant over death. What he’s found is that some believers were embracing this Greek understanding of the resurrection, this special knowledge was being imparted to them, and, being thus higher beings, they were desensitized to the needs of those around them – they were enlightened, holy, free from the law, and therefore had license to do as they pleased. There are issues that Paul addresses in other chapters; that a man was sleeping with his stepmother, that the Lord’s Supper has turned into a drunken feast, that members of the church are suing each other in court; They’d lost sight of what the primary call of the Gospel was. We find it summarized by Christ in Luke 10:27:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself"

The point is this; we live in a cosmopolitan society, even here on the Northern Neck. Compared to the vast majority of the world’s population, our educational level is high. Simply taking into consideration the amount of information we have available to us through television and radio, to say nothing of the elementary,
intermediate, and high schools in the county, and having Rappahannock Community College just a few miles up the road, and the Internet, and the libraries of all those schools, there is no lack of knowledge.

I am a firm believer in the spread of knowledge, the discovery of knowledge for it’s own sake. There is nothing to fear from gaining knowledge, but we must never lose sight of the fact that no matter how much knowledge we acquire, we will never know all there is to know. As far as we can progress as a society and a civilization, we can never achieve … parity. Chuck Colson said that when humanity loses touch with God, one of two things happens: either humans try to become gods themselves, or they get lost in pursuing sensual pleasures. Does that sound like something that might be going on today?

This month we are collecting the Alma Hunt offering for State Missions. A portion of that offering is going to fund the Kingdom Advance initiatives of the Virginia Baptist Mission Board. Those are: Empowering Leaders, Emerging Leaders, Glocal Missions and Evangelism, and Courageous Churches.

The way I see it, I think Jerusalem Baptist is moving forward in all those initiatives: Glocal Missions and Evangelism: You’re taking to heart the fact that missions is no longer divided into foreign and domestic, but that we find the world coming to us, so our mission is both global and local – Glocal.

In that Jerusalem decided to take a chance with a couple of nearly forty year old seminary students who had a heart for migrant workers and displaced people, you empowered us in this leadership role, and by virtue of the fact that you took on a first time Pastor, and in faith joined me in stepping into that partnership, you are encouraging an emerging leader and are a courageous church.

Patrick’s question was a valid question, and it deserves an answer. Why Bother?
This afternoon we are going to be hosting an ‘Encuentro’ – a Hispanic Gathering. What we are doing here today, both now and later this afternoon is all because of Christ’s resurrection. We gather, we remember, we study, and we worship. We live in community, love each other, care for each other, and sing together, pray together. And we give – to the ministry of the church, and to the ministry of the Virginia Baptist Mission Board through the Alma Hunt offering for State Missions.

Why bother with any of it? The word ‘bother’ can so easily – and accurately - be replaced by the word that is underneath. When we are asking why bother we are asking why care? Why love? The answer is simple: it is found in 1st John 4:19:

We love because he first loved us.

If you are here today and do not know that first love, that God felt for you so much that he sent his only son to die on the Cross for your sins and 3 days later raised from the dead, your invitation is to lay hold of that love, embrace the one who embraces you, and make Jesus Lord of your life.

If you are here today and are looking for a place to belong, where you can find family, and community, and fellowship, and challenges, and work to be done for the Kingdom, we would welcome you.

If you are here today and are needing to reclaim the simple mystery of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, your invitation is to rededicate yourself to living out the faith that calls us to proclaim what is foolishness to the gentiles.

Lets pray.

God Requires

Sunday, September 7, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Micah 6:6-8

6 "With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" 8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

The pictures have always been striking, if not disturbing: hundreds, if not thousands of men, chanting in unison, jumping up and down as they parade down a crowded street while beating themselves on the back or head with small whips. They apparently don’t cause any lasting damage, but they do break the skin, but the men don’t seem to notice if there is any pain.

Another sight: men all dressed in black, bearded, ritualistically praying at the wailing wall in Jerusalem, swaying back and forth as they rhythmically recite the prayers that are prescribed for the given occasion.

Another: incense, burning in a temple, before a huge gilded statue.

There is, within every human being, a yearning for communion with God. It can be found across cultures, across races, and across all of human history. From the moment we first turned our eyes to the heavens and wondered how the stars got there, we have sought after that divine spark, the one who created all that is.

Friday and yesterday, I was on retreat with the other Masters students from the Leland Center. It was held at Shenandoah Springs retreat and camp center, north of Charlottesville. Last year, we met at the same place, and our main meeting hall was in a cramped basement under the men’s dorm, called ‘The Well’. There were small windows high up on one wall, but the rest of the room was cinderblock all the way around.

Friday, when we pulled in and registered, we noticed a new roof down the hill from the cabins and dining hall. We were told that our main meetings would be held there.

We walked down, and in a small clearing, surrounded by trees, the owners of the center had put a roof over their basketball court, but left the walls open. It was in many ways like Kirkland Grove, but the roof began much higher up – probably at 20 feet, so the walls were made of the trees that surrounded the clearing.

As the sun fell, the moon rose behind the speakers, David and Mary Carpenter, former missionaries to Albania, as they shared the theme “Matters of the Heart” – and there was very little structure to what they shared. They were intentionally sharing from their hearts what they have been learning over the last several years, from their time in Albania from 1992 through 1996, to their move to London to coordinate north African and middle eastern missionaries, to their resignation from the IMB, to their living in downtown Beirut for the first 6 months of this year, to their enduring and growing love for Muslims and Arabs.

Watching someone speak about something they feel passionately about is energizing. It needed to be. Though the accommodations were adequate, they were also simple. Trying to sleep in a roomful of 12 men, half of whom were champion snorers, made sleep a little more difficult than it might have been had I been across the way here in my own bed. But that is part of retreating. You not only retreat from the cares of the world, you also retreat from the everyday comforts of life. That becomes a part of the experience as well.

In our text this morning, we come in in the middle of what almost sounds like a lover’s quarrel:


Hear what the LORD says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice.2 Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the LORD, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for the LORD has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel. 3 "O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me! 4 For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. 5 O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised, what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the saving acts of the LORD."

The phrase that stands out is In what have I wearied you?

There are hundreds of religions in the world, maybe thousands. All of them are expressions of humanity’s yearning for a relationship with God.

I know of no other faith where we are confronted with a God who desires communion with humanity even more than humanity desires communion with God.

Here we have God listing his miraculous intervention in the history of Israel, and Israel growing weary of him.

The New International Version translates that word as ‘burdened’. The word "burden" signifies to wear down, to cause someone to become impatient, or to become physically tired. The Lord asks how he has caused them to become so weary of him that they have ceased to obey him. Their impatience cannot be due to inactivity on his part, for he has done much for them.

The deliverance from Egypt represents one of the first acts of redemption in which God demonstrated his saving love for the people. Moses was God's great prophet, the prototype of the line of prophets yet to come (Dt 18:15-22). Miriam was a prophetess (Ex 15:20); and Aaron, the progenitor of the Aaronic priesthood, was the representative of the people before God.

Micah cites the failure of Balaam to curse the people (Nu 22-24) as evidence of God's activity among them. Besides the failure of Balak to frustrate the progress of the people, the journey from Shittim to Gilgal witnessed the defeat of Midian, the crossing of the Jordan, and the conquest of Jericho. The recital of events stops abruptly as though the intent is to depict in one great sweep the progress of the nation from slavery in a foreign land to settlement in their own country.

In verse 5 (the saving acts of the Lord), “saving” has the basic sense of "rightness" and can apply to the secular as well as religious spheres of life. Here the word underlines God's faithfulness to his standard, i.e., the covenant obligations. His great acts on behalf of Israel are more than simply coming to the aid of his people. They are manifestations of his righteousness as he maintains his faithfulness to the covenant promise.

The recital of Israel's history suddenly ends, and Micah speaks on behalf of the people, asking God what their responsibility is in the light of his faithfulness to the covenant. There is irony here as the prophet asks how one may come before “God on high." The words "on high" connote just that: "height" and speak of God in his dwelling place in heaven. What is the proper way to worship him? With burnt offerings and calves a year old? Yearling calves were regarded as the choicest sacrifices. "Thousands of rams" suggests the large quantity of animals that one might offer to curry God's favor. But God is interested neither in the choicest animals nor in the number offered. Even great quantities of oil will not bring the worshiper into fellowship with God. The list reaches a shocking climax in the mention of the firstborn. Child sacrifice was carried out by certain Israelites on occasion (2Ki 3:27-16:3; Isa 57:5). The firstborn represents the most precious thing one could give to God. Again, this was not what God wants.

What God wants is a heart response to God demonstrated in the basic elements of true religion. God has told the people what is good. The Mosaic law differentiated between good and bad and reflected God's will in their religious and social lives. They were to act "justly" here in the sense of "true religion," i.e., the ethical response to God that has a manifestation in social concerns as well. "To love mercy" is freely and willingly to show kindness to others. "To walk humbly with your God" means to live in conscious fellowship with him, exercising a spirit of humility before him. The prophet was not indicating that sacrifice was completely ineffectual and that simply a proper heart attitude to God would suffice. Rather, God has no interest in the multiplication of empty religious acts.

These ethical requirements do not comprise the way of salvation. Forgiveness of sin was received through the sacrifices. The standards of this verse are for those who are members of the covenantal community and delineate the areas of ethical response that God wants to see in those who share the covenantal obligations. These standards have not been abrogated for Christians, for the NT affirms their continuing validity. We are still called to the exercise of true religion:

1Co 13:4; Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

2Co 6:4-6; 4 but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5 beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6 by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love

Col 3:12; As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.

Jas 1:27; Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

1Pe 5:5; And all of you must clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

Jer 31:33; 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Heb 10:14-18 includes the same passage:

14For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. 15 And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying, 16 "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds," 17 he also adds, "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more." 18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

Christians are in a covenant relationship with God in which the law has been placed within their hearts, not done away with. The indwelling Holy Spirit inspires our obedience, not the letter of the law.

Freely offered obedience is qualitatively different from obedience out of obligation, or worse, out of fear of retribution.

God is saying ‘I have been faithful to you, won’t you be faithful to me?’ It is a plea for a response in kind. God has made each of us capable of carrying on a relationship with God, freely, not by coercion or out of fear. And he spells it out here: to live justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.

Will we answer his call today?

Let’s pray.

Beautiful Feet

Sunday, August 31st, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Romans 10:14-17

14 But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? 15 And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" 16 But not all have obeyed the good news; for Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed our message?" 17So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.

To begin with, I would like everyone in here who can to take a moment and remove his or her shoes. Go ahead and take them off.

I will remove mine as well.

And I promise, I won’t do this every Sunday.

Ok, on with the sermon.

In the movie ‘Die Hard’, Bruce Willis’ character, a New York policeman flying across the country to meet with his estranged wife to reconcile, is a little anxious about the trip. One of his fellow passengers tells him that the best way to relax after a cross-country trip is to take off your shoes and socks and walk around barefoot for a few hours, getting used to the feel of the carpet between your toes. Willis’ character takes the advice, and removes his shoes and socks on arrival in the office/apartment tower that becomes the setting for the rest of the movie, he spends the next couple of hours shooting bad guys and blowing up helicopters and incidentally running through fields of broken glass barefoot. It’s been several years since I saw the movie, but if memory serves, he only complains a couple of times about his feet. If I haven’t retold the details correctly, I suspect I’ll be corrected next Sunday night at the pizza and movie night over at the parsonage.

In J. R. R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’, we’re introduced to Bilbo Baggins, a resident of The Shire. Hobbits are known to be very settled creatures. They love nothing better than to stay home, live quiet lives, and eat good meals. They also have unusually large feet for creatures their size, and they are especially hairy. Their feet are also very … hardy. Hobbits wear no shoes.

In The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Rings, there is a scene where the 9 members of the fellowship are trying to get to the land of Mordor, and at one point, they attempt to get to it through the most direct path they know, which is over a mountain pass. Here they are, trudging through snow and ice, thousands of feet up in the mountains, and Sam, Pippin, Mery, and Frodo are all barefoot, and yet seem unaffected, other than being chilled.

Though it is a minor point in the movies, I’d like to focus on feet for a few minutes this morning.

Mine, for example, have what I think are called bunions at the base of each of my big toes. The right one points to about two o’clock, and the other points to about ten o’clock. I have to be careful what kind of shoes I buy. I remember standing around the pool at the place where we had mission meeting in Spain with Bruce Reeder, Steve D’Amico, and Eric Thompson, other Journeymen and a Volunteer with whom I served while there. Bruce was from Missouri, and he was good about coming out and saying exactly what he was thinking. He took one look at my feet and said, “Well, Kenny, your toes are going all to Jones’!” I’d never heard the expression before, but I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. I knew exactly what it meant.

I’ve been remembering and noticing feet over the past few days.

There is a woman whose feet no longer form a pair. She lost one of her legs to an amputation several years ago and is now unable to walk. She spends her time in bed or in the chair next to her bed. Her remaining foot tells the story of a life spent raising 11 children on next to nothing. Her face tells more of the story, and her eyes are clouded by the years. But she still finds it in her to speak of ‘the good Lord’, and of an almost instinctive trust in his will having been carried out in the course of her life.

I remember the feet of hermana (sister) Elena de Alarcon, who taught me 4th and 5th grade Sunday school. She suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, and, though I never saw her feet out of her orthopedic shoes, her hands were gnarled like the branches of a twisting oak tree. I can only imagine what her feet may have looked like. She must have been in her late 70’s back IN the 70’s. I remember her voice being so strong, so sure of what she was saying. I remember one of her favorite illustrations was to compare us to the Andes Mountains, before and after a fresh winter snowfall, and explain that that was how clean the blood of Christ washed us all of our sins.

I remember one of the games we played at family night during mission meeting growing up was to have 5 or 6 of the men step into a back room and take off their shoes and socks and roll up their pants, and then step out behind a sheet, to where only their lower legs were visible, and the wives of each of them had to figure out which were who’s.

Last Saturday I watched a woman who’d suffered a stroke a couple of years ago and whose right side is paralyzed slowly, painstakingly make her way across the street and the graveyard to the sight where her friend of over 30 years was being laid to rest after a final battle with cancer. Her husband had the prayer of committal. She was the last one to arrive at the graveside, and the sun was hot, but nobody complained, or even said a word. Everyone waited respectfully and silently until she could be seated with the family under the awning.

I remember watching the feet of Robert Lindley, the former organist at Thalia Lynn, as he played the postlude after Sunday morning services. Watching them move as nimbly across those pedals as his hands did across the keys and listening to the resulting sounds coming from the pipes on more than one occasion elicited a resounding ‘AMEN’.

Another pair of feet comes to mind. Attached to knees that have been causing pain and discomfort for some time, making it difficult if not impossible to manage the stairs in this building, the woman has still faithfully carried out duties as the director of Sunday school, and teacher, and choir member.

Other feet that come to mind:

Feet that spend their day teaching children acrobatics, stretching not only their muscles but their minds, their wills, exercising them all to reach for new goals, new heights. Yesterday, those feet took her to Kirkland Grove, where their owner spent the afternoon getting to know people who do not speak the same language she does, except when it comes to what David Wilcox calls ‘the language of the heart’ - where it’s more than just words that get spoken.

Feet that spend 6 days a week working for their employer, encased in work boots, heaving, hauling, directing, and moving, but that on Sunday morning sit under a table downstairs and share the word of God with other young adults, bringing to mind ideas that might otherwise go unthought. Finding new ways to think of old words, making them new all over again in the process.

Feet that come to the activities committee meetings, hurrying to bring to the folks gathered around the table ways in which we as a church can engage not only each other, but the community of which we are a part as well. Those same feet walked into church with their owner’s daughters just a couple of weeks ago to celebrate with them their baptism.

There are the feet that got uncomfortably warm this week in the wake of the storm that came through, knocking down several trees and knocking out power to the house, and thus the air conditioning. It took … 2 or 3 days to get power back, and in that time, those feet walked or drove their owner to all the places she needed to go to take care of getting everything back in order, but were still faithfully here yesterday checking on the flowers being ready to grace our sanctuary this morning.

In scripture, there are the feet of Adam and Eve, which walked with God in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day.

There are the feet of Noah, which worked for years to build the ark, alongside his sons, following God’s command.

There are the feet of Jacob, struggling the find a foothold in the 32nd chapter of Genesis, wrestling with a man all night, and prevailing. The next morning, he demands that the man bless him. As we find out, the man was God, who in blessing Jacob gives him a new name, the name “Israel” “for you have striven with God and with Humans.”

We find feet in the book of Isaiah, chapter 52, where our text this morning is itself drawn from:

6 Therefore my people shall know my name; therefore, in that day they shall know that it is I who speak; here am I. 7 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."

In the New Testament, we come, of course, to the feet of Christ.

There was a youth musical that I remember singing, “What’s It All About’, sometime in the mid to late 70’s … one of the songs was ‘Sandals’ – and the words to the chorus went something like this:

Sandals, sandals on his feet, dusty roads where people meet,
sandals, sandals came to me, steps that lead past Calvary.

There was, as we know, no public transportation in 1st century Palestine. The primary mode of transportation was walking. Except for the ride into Jerusalem the week before his death, I’m not sure the Bible mentions Jesus ever having done anything besides walk. Imagine what 30-plus years of walking barefoot or with open sandals would do to your feet. They must have been rugged feet. Mostly hardened to the elements, and calloused. Those same feet stepped into the Jordan to be baptized by John, climbed into a boat to teach from the water to the shore, curled up in sleep in the middle of a storm on the sea of Galilee, stood in front of Lazarus’ grave as Jesus wept, and carried him into the temple, bracing him as he overturned the money changers’ tables and cleared them out.

Those same feet were pierced by a long heavy nail at Calvary, and were hastily wrapped in a burial shroud on Friday afternoon and laid in the tomb.

Then we start reading of other feet again…

The feet of the women on Sunday morning, as they ran from the tomb to be the first missionaries, proclaiming the risen Lord.

The feet of the disciples, who at first did not believe, but who, after witnessing the risen Christ, could do nothing else but proclaim to the world that Christ has risen.


The feet of Paul and Silas, bound, in prison, while they sang hymns of praise to God. Feet that did not take their owners running from the prison after the walls came down in the earthquake, but stayed, and witnessed to the jailer, and introducing him to a powerful, risen Lord.

There is one major player in the Old Testament I haven’t mentioned until now. Can you tell me who it was? Scripture actually makes reference to his feet: Moses.

Exodus Chapter 3: most of us know the story: Moses tending his father in law’s sheep, Moses sees the burning bush, Moses hears the voice of God. The event galvanizes him, and God sends him back to Egypt and to Pharaoh and ultimately to be the liberator of Israel. But at the beginning, what does God ask him to do?

“Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."

It is not the physical location, as it is the fact that he was in the presence of God that made the ground Holy.

We are, here today, in the presence of God. We are on Holy Ground. It is altogether proper that we remove our sandals. What we are about is carrying God’s kingdom to the world around us. And it is within these walls that the Kingdom must be seen, and felt, and heard, and spoken.

Seminary started back this week. I’m taking a class with Randel Everett, president of the Seminary and now also Pastor at First Baptist Church, Newport News, which is where the Hampton Roads Campus is now located. I got a Jewel in class on Thursday night. It is a quote from Leslie Newbigin, who served for nearly 40 years as a missionary, a scholar and a theologian in India:

“The greatest hermeneutic of the Gospel is a community that lives by it”

Hermeneutic is a fancy word for Preaching.

We are all Moses, hearing God say “I have observed the misery of my people, I have heard their cry, and I know their suffering”. We are all called to do nothing less than bring in the Kingdom of God to this world.

Lets pray.

Shining Like Stars

Sunday, August 24, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
(2 Timothy 2:22 reference: Pure in heart) Philippians 2:1-15

“She can decorate your whole room for $5.00!”

Stacey and Jim, my new roommates, were telling me about a friend of theirs who lived in Louisville. She hosted bible studies in her tiny one-bedroom apartment, and spent her money on books like Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Living Together” and “Letters and Papers from Prison”, Sheldon Vanauken’s “A Severe Mercy”, Watchman Nee’s “The Normal Christian Life” and “Sit, Walk, Stand” and Eugene Petersen’s “A Long Obedience In The Same Direction.” Those books, and the discussions they prompted between my roommates and myself, and those sometimes monthly trips up to Louisville to gather in Sue’s living room and hang out and hash out what we were learning of what we believed, did more to spur my growth as a follower of Christ than almost anything else. It was my exploration of faith away from the familiar surroundings of church and family.

Sue encouraged all of us with her love, her humor, and her compassion. A week wouldn’t go by that we wouldn’t receive a package from her. Usually it was a big manila envelope, with individual cards or handwritten letters for each of the four of us, along with an article or two she’d copied from a magazine, like Sojourner’s that she thought particularly relevant or insightful.

The text this morning is an exhortation. Paul is writing from prison. Where that prison is, either in Ephesus early in Paul’s career or in Rome towards the latter part of his life is a matter of debate among scholars. But the context remains. Prison is prison, regardless of geography or chronology. I’m sure there are reasons to conclude one way or the other, but for the purposes of the Philippians receiving and reading the letter, the same held true. Paul was in prison, and he took the time to write to us, so we better see what he has to say.

He starts the letter off with a beautiful thanksgiving: “I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ” (1:3-6) and that tone carries throughout the letter. There is an assurance, a hope, and a joy that permeates the letter and jumps out at anyone reading it, even more so in light of the fact that Paul was writing it from prison.

There are definite references, though, to be found, which point to problems that have arisen among the Philippians. Chapter 1 verse 15-17: Some proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. These proclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defense of the gospel; the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment. What is so striking about Paul’s response here, though, is how he ultimately turns away from the negativity that prompted the mention, and summarizes in verse 18: What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true; and in that I rejoice.”

Before this, Paul presents himself as an example for the Philippians to emulate, but then he cuts loose. In academic circles it is referred to as a Christological Hymn, beginning with the first verse in chapter 2, Paul begins to build momentum.

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.

We could spend a good deal of time deconstructing the passage, speak of the structure Paul used, the wording and the phrasing, and that all deserves attention, but to simply read the words brings the message.

It seems that Paul is saying ‘do this for me’ – (make my joy complete), when he lays down the challenge: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. His exhortation is towards unity above all else. In the face of opposition from Judaizers like those he was addressing in the letter to the churches in Galatia, Paul’s appeal is to humility, obedience, and selflessness.

Verses 5-11 are some of the most beautiful found in the entire New Testament:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. Therefore, God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

You can almost hear the words reverberating in the cell … to the glory of God the Father … I can picture Paul pausing after having said, perhaps even sung that part, a Doxology not unlike the one we sang here just a few minutes ago. The New Revised Standard editors have been kind enough to lay out that section in verse format – to separate it from the surrounding text, and set it apart as what it is: a poem, a song, a hymn.

12 Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. 14 Do all things without murmuring and arguing, 15 so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine like stars in the world.

Paul here is asking the Philippians to figure it out on their own. Not only as a matter of personal growth, but as a simple necessity. In chapter 1 verse 27, we read: “Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you …” Paul knew he was not going to be around forever. From a practical standpoint, and if his spreading of the gospel of Christ was going to continue at all, he reminds the Philippians that it is not HIS instructions that they are ultimately following, but God’s. Verse 13: for it is GOD who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Stacey, Jim and I went on a retreat together with the students from the campus group called ‘His House’ – which was similar to the Baptist Student Union, and the retreat got started EARLY on a Saturday morning. As we shuffled into the main gathering room, Mark, the president of the organization, started handing out chores to be done, as in cleaning, and cooking, and washing dishes, etc. Being who we were, there was an immediate response … mostly silence, but some mumbled, undercurrent of dissatisfaction. Mark was ready, and gently but firmly reminded us of this verse – do all things without murmuring or arguing. I suspect that, had the context been anything else besides a retreat, the murmuring and arguing would have continued, but for the place and the time, HIS entreaty to be less like ourselves and more like Christ hit home.

In the end, that is what Paul is asking that the Philippians then and we now be: more like Christ: obedient, of one mind, thinking of others first, kind, selfless, giving.

Verse 15:

so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine like stars in the world.

I was chatting with Sue last night, and asked how she was doing. She and her husband Shawn adopted two sisters whose mother died several years ago, and who had been shuffled through the foster care system in Louisville for several years. She shared with me that as of December, they also adopted a 13 year-old boy whom they’ve known longer than the girls. His father is an alcoholic and his mother is mentally handicapped.

“It’s pure joy”, she said. “They are fussing and fighting with each other, and I need to go tuck them in. He sleeps over at his mom’s 2 nights a week, and we hope to someday have a home big enough to just bring his mom in with us too.”

Sue still shines like a star in my heaven.

A little over a month ago, Dan Bagby preached from 2 Timothy 2:22: Shun youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart

Over the last 4 Sundays we’ve looked at each of those: Righteousness, Faith and faithfulness, love, and peace. We cannot neglect that last phrase of the verse: ALONG WITH those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

We are together in this. As a congregation, we’ve been presented with a slate of nominees for deacon as well as the list of people who’ve agreed to roll up their sleeves and take it upon themselves to engage in the life and care of the church. As part of our process, we will be meeting in business session Wednesday night to elect those deacons, agreeing to support them, and to affirm our own commitment to take our part in the life of the church, by encouraging others who do not know Jesus or who have no family of faith to come see, hear, and join us as WE pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace.

If you are here today, and have not given your life to Jesus, that is our first priority. Have this mind in you that was in Christ, who didn’t puff himself up, but made himself obedient, even to death on a cross. Your call is to obedience, and obedience even to death to sin. God is calling you away from slavery to sin to victory over death through Christ.

If you are looking for a church home, a family of faith that will learn and grow and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace alongside you, we would welcome you to come be a part of this local body of believers.

If this IS your church home, and you ARE actively engaged in that pursuit, my word to you today is of gratitude, for that rightness, that faithfulness, that love, that peace that you are a part of.

Let’s pray.

Not As The World Gives

Sunday, August 17th, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
(2 Timothy 2:22), John 14:22-27

22 Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, "Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?" 23 Jesus answered him, "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me. 25 "I have said these things to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

“No Jesus, No Peace, Know Jesus, Know Peace”

We’ve seen the bumper sticker hundreds of times. While I nod, affirming the message, I bristle at the whole bumper-sticker theology idea. If bumper stickers were meant to raise a question, I’d have slapped one on my car that says, “Arminius was right”, but they don’t always do that. They try to convey a complex truth in a few short words that can be read while traveling at 65 miles per hour on the interstate. More often than not, the bumper sticker does not do justice to the issue it is trying to address. That is why one of my favorites is ‘visualize whirled peas’. It doesn’t take itself too seriously.

The thing is, in those 8 words, “No Jesus, No Peace, Know Jesus, Know Peace” what is conveyed in that nutshell is a simple but profound truth that we can readily come back to or build on.

Since coming to Jerusalem, it has been my privilege to be involved in the ministry of visitation – people from the congregation or somehow related to the congregation who are either at home, in an assisted living center, or a nursing home. This includes visiting folks who are in the hospital.
What has been a true gift has been to witness the graciousness with which people deal with their infirmities, or illnesses. To look someone in the eye and have him or her say “I’m ready to die” with complete assurance has been a lesson in faith, and have made that aspect of this pastorate rewarding in a way that I never thought possible.

Just a few minutes after he was born, the pediatrician came in to check on Caleb. He placed the stethoscope against his chest, and listened intently. He repeated the process, and then looked up at us and said, “it sounds like he may have a slight murmur”.

Hannah had been born healthy as a horse, and Leslie had made it through both pregnancies with no major setbacks or crises. There was nothing that came up in the prenatal care, the sonograms, or during the delivery process that warned us that anything might be amiss. The doctor explained what a murmur was, a hole in the wall of the heart that separates the two lower ventricles from each other.

We were scheduled to see a pediatric cardiologist as quickly as possible, and I believe it was within 2 or 3 days of his birth that we found ourselves sitting in the specialist’s office. I don’t remember his name, but he looked at us, and explained that the hole in Caleb’s heart was relatively small, and that there was a good chance that it would close up on it’s own, but that there was also a chance that that would not happen, and that we might be looking at the possibility of surgical intervention.

I remember he stopped explaining the details, and looked at us and said something like, “at this point, in my experience, 90% of couples have only one question on their minds: “why me?” I was wondering if you might be asking yourselves that same question?”

Leslie and I looked at each other and just kind of shrugged and looked back at him and said, “No, that’s ISN’T a question we were asking ourselves”. He was surprised enough to ask why not. Our answer seemed to surprise him even more. I tried to explain why the question wasn’t even on our radar screen, and finally I looked at Leslie to help put into words what we were wanting to say, and she said ‘Things like this happen to all kinds of people. We’re no different in that sense; we’re as human as the rest of the world. But we do have faith that God will be with us through this, no matter what happens.’

Let’s broaden the scope of the word “peace”. We automatically think of the word that is in opposition to the given- peace, so the opposite is war or conflict.

There’s another Bumper sticker: “If you want peace, work for justice”.

I’d contend that there has never been true peace on earth. We have, of course, experienced periods of tranquility, times, sometimes years, when conflict has been mostly absent from our environment. But if we look at the situation worldwide, there has never been a time when there hasn’t been some sort of armed conflict going on somewhere in the world. I remember reading somewhere that, at any given time, there are approximately 200 armed conflicts going on somewhere in the world. There are those we are all familiar with: the conflict in the Middle East, in Ireland, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and between India and Pakistan. There is the conflict in Liberia, and again in Burundi, as well as East Timor, a province of Indonesia, where a civil war has been raging for decades. Some places make the headlines, others don’t, but there are always, always those whose daily existence is comparable to … hell. We have much to be thankful for, and at the same time, much to be responsible for.

Turning to the text, the context is at the last supper. John is a little different from the other Gospels in that sense. If you have a red-letter edition of the Bible, you can compare the four Gospels, and you find that in Matthew, Mark and Luke, there is a lot of connecting material, and the words of Jesus are interspersed throughout. In John, it is almost the opposite. There are pages and pages of Jesus speaking, interrupted here and there with connecting material, or text that is setting up the situation. In the passage, Jesus has already alluded to his coming death to the disciples, and they are struggling with trying to understand how that might happen. The peace Jesus spoke of could not be exemption from conflict and trial. Jesus himself had been "troubled" by the impending Crucifixion (12:27 "Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say--'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name."). The peace he spoke of here is the calmness of confidence in God. Jesus had this peace because he was sure of the Father's love and approval. He could therefore move forward to meet the crisis without fear or hesitation. The world can give only false peace, which mostly comes from the ignorance of peril or self-reliance. With his promise of peace, he repeated the words of comfort he had spoken in reply to Peter's earlier question (cf. v.1"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.). The disciples must have continued to show their dismay as they contemplated Jesus' departure.

William Powell Tuck, professor of Preaching at Southern Seminary for many years, [wrote in ‘The Struggle for Meaning’ (Pennsylvania: Judson Press, 1977), pp. 113-114,] describes it this way:

Two artists were commissioned to paint their conception of peace. Each went into his studio and worked for the allotted time. The day came when the paintings were to be viewed. The veiled canvasses were placed on easels in the gallery. The first artist threw the veil off his painting. Everyone smiled and took a deep breath. The tranquil, pastoral scene almost exuded the delightful odors of suppertime, hot biscuits, freshly mowed hay, and the contented lowing of farm animals being fed in the barn.

When the other painting was unveiled, viewers were jolted by the scene of a raging, torrential waterfall cascading, exploding, crashing on the rocks below. A gnarled little tree seemed to be clinging to a craggy opening in the rocks. Through the foam and mist of the waterfall, you could see a bird's nest precariously perched on the end of a limb stretched out over the falls. There on the nest in the midst of the crashing, thundering torrent was a mother bird singing her heart out. This is how Jesus would have painted peace-contentment in spite of conflict, joy that comes from within rather than from without.

We have in our own midst people who are facing the raging torrents of life. Some of us can look back on events of the last year, or the last few months or weeks and sometimes days, and see that waterfall in hindsight, aware that the raging is behind us, and that we have, through the grace of God and the presence of the Holy Spirit, come through. Others of us are aware that we are in the middle of the biggest storm of our lives.

Eijrhvnhn the greek word for peace used in verse 27, from which we get the name Irene, is an inward peace that comes from knowing who you are- and WHOSE you are.

I asked Elwood’s permission earlier to share some of his story, and he agreed, so here it is: He’s been healthy as a horse all his life, active, farming and working … for several months, beginning last year, he started feeling discomfort. For a long time the doctors thought it was a sinus infection. He finally went in for some serious testing, and they found that his spleen was three times the normal size, and ruptured. Surgery followed as quickly as possible, in early June. Tissue was sent off for analysis, and the diagnosis came back like a raging flood: cancer, and not only cancer, but also melanoma, as serious a prognosis as they could encounter.

I first met Elwood in the hospital after the surgery. At first, he thought I was a doctor. At the time, we didn’t have the pathology report. I went to visit him at home on the 11th of June, and I believe at that time he’d been given the report. As we sat and prayed, Elwood has shared that he felt a flood of peace come over him. Since then, going through all the testing, and the doctor’s appointments, and everything else, including the death of his father, that peace has not left him.

A few minutes ago we sang the hymn “it is well with my soul”. Reflect on those words:

“when sorrows like sea billows roll … though satan should buffet, though trials should come”

Are YOU at peace? Do you know to whom you belong? Can you look at your life and say “I am at peace”?

If you cannot, your invitation is to take the first step in that direction, by giving your life to the prince of peace.

If you have already done that, and are looking for a home from which you can share that peace with others, we would welcome you.

If you are a member of Jerusalem, your invitation is to recognize that peace, and be sensitive to anything that would hinder it, and strive for peace not only in your own life, but in the life of the church and in the life of our community, and in the life of the world.

Let’s pray.

By This We're Known

Sunday, August 10th, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
(2 Timothy 2:22), 1 John, 3:1-3

1 See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. 3 And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

I have a picture on my desk. It is sitting just in front of the monitor and next to the keyboard. The picture is of Leslie, Hannah, Caleb, Judson, and me, taken in 1999. Judson was coming up on 4 months of age, Caleb was not yet 2, Hannah had just turned 4. The Christmas tree is behind us, and the kids and Leslie are decked out in festive red and green. All of us except Judson have smiles on our faces, to varying degrees. Hannah is smiling sunnily straight into the camera, Caleb looks like he’s getting ready to say something (nothing new under the sun), Judson is looking down at his hand, holding Leslie’s, and Leslie and I are both looking into the lens.

That year, Christmas was an incredible time. I’m not sure what the children will remember of it, but it will always have a special place in both my and Leslie’s life.

You see, a little over a month before the picture was taken, I had lost my job. Although Leslie was working part time at Thalia Lynn, her salary was not enough for us to meet expenses, much less attempt to live on.

Though everything in me wanted to curl up and sleep for a week or more after I was dismissed, she wouldn’t let me. The very next day, I was sent to the employment office to fill out the necessary paperwork, and begin the process of securing a new job.

Exactly two months later, my next employer hired me. The story of those two months is the story of God’s unmerited, unexpected, and undying love, expressed through not only church members, but co-workers, friends from the day school where Hannah was attending, and even the staff at the credit union where we banked.

The director of the child development center at church offered me a temporary job in the kitchen, as dishwasher. I accepted, and even though it only paid minimum wage, it kept me in motion. I only ended up working there for a week, but I consider that time to have been critical to my understanding of what it means to BE God’s presence and grace in someone else’s life, and what it means to ACCEPT God’s presence and grace in your own life.

This is what I learned:

God has gifted you with a mind and a body, and has graced you with a place of service. That place of service may not always be the picture of paradise we always hope for, but it is where you are, and God is with you. Putting those two things together means that, in truth, regardless of where you are, God is with you, and you are therefore his ambassador, his representative. As such, when you act, God either acts in sometimes seemingly insignificant ways or doesn’t.

To speak of love in a Christian context is to attempt to put into words what can only be shown in deeds. If we say we love and don’t show it, the words don’t amount to much. If we say we love and show something contrary to that love, it does more than immediate damage. It creates a precedent of untruth that works against not only the immediate situation, but taints any future encounters.

The other thing I learned was to be ready to receive God’s grace from unexpected sources.

A friend from Church, a new Christian who had sung with Leslie in the praise team that plays for the contemporary service, called me from his job and let me know of a temporary opening as receptionist for the real estate firm with whom his boss shared a building. I started working for them at the beginning of December, and worked there for the next 6 weeks. During those 6 weeks, I saw a world I’d not been exposed to before. Real estate in a competitive market can be a cutthroat business. It may have been due to the season, but as Christmas approached, I witnessed God’s grace moving through those agents and brokers to a degree that I had not thought possible.

But then, as soon as I say that, I’m reminded of the verse in Luke 18,

‘What is impossible for mortals is Possible for God’.

I could go on about our experiences during those two months, about the members of our church who walked up to us with a hug and a Christmas card that included a check, or how bags of groceries seemed to appear either on our doorstep or in our Sunday school room, about the host of angels WE encountered that Christmas.

As the text says, beloved, we are God’s Children now. As a child, we are imprinted with our parent’s behavior.

Let it be so with us as children of God.

Paul says, What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is

Insofar as we become more and more like God, how will the love of God be manifested in us?

Dan mentioned taking on one prejudice to rid himself of during the season of lent. As we move into this new school year, perhaps we can take on the challenge as we approach Christmas and find that new way to love. That new way to be Christ in unexpected ways.

(read note – and refer to Gayle’s email)

Let’s pray

We Come In Faith

Sunday, August 3, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
(2 Timothy 2:22), I Corinthians 15:57-58

57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

I was pleasantly surprised by this week’s cover story in the Religious Herald: “A Missionary Love Story”. The picture is of Uncle John and Aunt Edith Parker, both retired missionaries, who served for 38 and 35 years, respectively, but in different countries: He in Chile, and she in Brazil.

If you had a chance to read the story, and I hope you did, you’ll know that Uncle John’s first wife, Aunt Ruby, passed away in February of 1997, after 54 years of marriage, and he and Aunt Edith, who’d never been married, were wed on October 25th of the same year.

Aunt Ruby and I had a special relationship. Not only was her youngest son also named Kenny, but also she and I shared the same birthday, July 13th. As it happened, we usually celebrated our birthday together, and she would always make her famous peanut brittle.

I always thought it was interesting, the way Uncle John and Aunt Ruby met. They were each appointed as single missionaries to Chile in 1941. Once there, they met and fell in love. Their courtship was carried out in Chile, and when they decided to marry, they had to resign and return to the States. If I’m not mistaken, I think they had the wedding ceremony IN Chile and even went on their honeymoon there before coming back here to resign as single missionaries and be reappointed as a couple back to Chile, where they spent the next nearly 4 decades serving as missionaries through the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

We are following the outline of II Timothy 2:22, and are on Faithfulness today. There is no doubt as to the faithfulness of all of the people in the story: John, Ruby, and Edith, and so many others like them who’ve given their lives for the cause of sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Their combined years of service speak to an aspect of faithfulness that is essential – longevity. There is a reason marital vows include the phrase “’til death us do part”.

In the late 1820’s, when Elder Thomas Braxton and the group of folks who came with him and began to meet and finally decided to establish ‘Royal Oaks Baptist Church”, and later changed that name to “Jerusalem”, the decision to constitute a church was one that was made with no ‘expiration date’ in mind. Faithfulness means open-ended commitment. Their decision was to BE CHURCH to each other. That commitment, that faithfulness, has continued since then, ultimately by all of us here today.

Our faithfulness to each other is, first and foremost, a reflection of our commitment to Christ. It is not the same as that commitment, but it goes hand in hand with it. In James we read ‘faith without works is dead’. In a way, that is saying ‘faithfulness in word alone is not faithfulness at all’. We must live out that faithfulness in our actions. Simply put, being faithful in church means being COMMITTED TO church.

I need to clarify something here. A corporate trainer I heard once differentiated involvement from commitment this way: a chicken is involved in breakfast; a pig, on the other hand, is committed to breakfast.

In the interest of general health and well-being, not to mention emotional and spiritual well-being, there is a difference between our commitment to Christ and our commitment to church. Being actively involved in the life of the church takes time and energy, as any activity would. In that aspect, it falls under the ‘on the 7th day God rested’ clause. Our commitment to Christ is of the heart and of the spirit. Our commitment to church is not ONLY of the heart and the spirit, but the body as well.
Therefore: your activity, commitment and involvement in the life of the church should go in cycles.

The human body is built to work in cycles. Circadian rythms, I think is what they are called. (If there is a biology major here today, perhaps they could help me out). The body has an active cycle, and a cycle of rest. That rest cycle is used to replenish and restore the body for the active cycle.

In that the church is the body of Christ, and we are part of that body, we also need to rest and alternatively, be active. It is reflected in the rotations we set up for deacons, for committees, and most other organizations within the church.

Faithfulness is reflected in the care we give each other, and the community around us. My sense since I’ve been here is that we don’t need to worry about that too much. Being a polling place at election time, participating in meals on wheels in January, providing for the needy through the food pantry, those are all evidence of faithfulness to the community. In the care we give each other, it would be reflected in how we arrange ourselves internally. In the meetings of the nominating committee over the last few weeks, that has come to mind. One thing that is taken for granted in a small congregation is that those who are active and involved wear many hats. One person with whom I spoke is involved in … at least 5 committees or organizations, and I don’t think that is terribly unusual within the congregation. That is why it is important to be intentional about resting from our labors. I’m not sure what that is going to look like for Jerusalem, but it does need to BE.

In academic circles, there is what is called a sabbatical. Every so often, a professor will take a hiatus from his duties in lecturing and will spend either a year or several months away from them – to study, to write, to reflect on what his or her work means, or find a new direction that he or she has not had time to explore previously because of those standing commitments.

Yes, there are lots of jobs to do, many responsibilities, even in a church this size. And there are people who step up to the challenge.

It has been encouraging to see the number and variety of names that are already in the nominating committee’s lists. As with any congregation, there are those names that show up repeatedly, but there are a solid number of other names that only appear once or twice. That is good in that it reflects a widely involved congregation. Be that as it may, perhaps it is time to reflect on what you have been doing for Jerusalem, or maybe, what you COULD be doing WITH Jerusalem.

In the end, our faithfulness begins with God’s faithfulness. Just as we love because he first loved us, we are faithful because he was first faithful to us. What we see time and time again in scripture is call and response. God calls, and we respond. God acts, and we react. God moves, and we move with God.
How is God moving in your life? Are you open to what comes next? Are you willing to step out of involvement and into commitment?

As Paul says, your labor is not in vain. What you do for the kingdom, whether it is as a missionary, as a minister, deacon, Sunday school teacher, committee chair, has significance, has meaning, has a place in the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God.

If you are here today and have been involved, but know that somehow, someway you need to be committed, your invitation is to first commit your life to Christ, to respond in faith to the author and finisher of our faith.

If you are looking for a place where you CAN commit, your invitation is to join with us in committing our lives, minds, and hearts to the furthering of the Kingdom of God.

If you are here, and are or have been committed and active, your invitation is to examine that, and search your heart, and find if it is time to rest, or time to reengage in this community of faith, rested, and ready to bring renewed energies to the task at hand.

Let’s pray.

Theirs Is The Kingdom

Sunday, July 27, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
(2 Timothy 2:22), Matthew 5:1-10

5:1 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: 3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5 "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6 "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7 "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. 8 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 9 "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 10 "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Righteousness” is an unsettling word.

More often than not, it comes with the word “self” in front of it and is, of course, a negative term. Webster’s defines self-righteousness as being righteous or moral in one’s own opinion. We could dwell on self-righteousness easily for the next 20 minutes and leave here feeling all the better for it. Being self-righteous is certainly not a desirable character trait, and we’re usually much more likely and able to identify it in others as opposed to ourselves. But it is that way with any given sin.

What I’d like to concentrate on this morning is what it means to BE righteous, and perhaps touch on what we can do to hunger and thirst for righteousness.

What is the big deal about righteousness, anyway? Why fret over it? Why pursue it at all?

If we are to be a people called of God and called by God’s name, as Dan mentioned last Sunday night, then we need to understand who God is.

God is, first and foremost, Holy. That is a theological term. It is also an ethical term, but it was a theological term first. Holiness is the distinctive thing about God. It is that which, more than all other things, makes God God. God is Other. God is God and not human.

A Jewish Rabbi was asked what the essence of Judaism was, and after a moment’s thought, he replied, “Ethical monotheism. God is not only one; he is also ethical. He is just and requires justice of those who believe in him.”

Men, women, and things are not holy within themselves. They become holy because they are dedicated to God. The people of Israel were holy, not because of any virtue, goodness, or gift within them, but because God had chosen them to be his people.

Yet the term holy was ethicized. That this could happen tells a lot about Judaism and Christianity. It indicates the heavy stress both religions put on morality, and how the theological and ethical are bound together. The theological and the ethical belong together the way the back and palm of my hand are bound together.

When we say that God is holy in an ethical sense, we say that God is just and righteous.

God is Just. When we say that God is just, we mean that he is faithful, trustworthy, and responsible. God wants life ordered with equity and fairness. God becomes angry when the strong take advantage of the weak and the rich exploit the poor.

God is righteous. Although God’s righteousness and justice mean essentially the same thing, God is spoken of as being righteous much more frequently than as being just (see Ps 7:9; Jer 9:24). The reason is likely that righteousness expresses relationship better than justice does.

The righteous person God calls each of us to be is a two-directional person who is right with God and right with his neighbor. Therefore, justice or righteousness is relational in nature.

The relationship through which we, as a fellowship of believers, are called to pursue righteousness, to BE righteous, is that relationship we have with God through Jesus Christ. I’m not talking of salvation as such here, though that is an integral part OF the relationship we have with Christ. I’m talking of what it means to live out that salvation, to live out the righteousness that we are granted by faith in Christ.

Rosa Parks was asked years after the event, why she sat down in the front of the bus that fateful day. Her answer was not “I wanted to address the issue of racial injustice in the United States”, nor was it “I wanted to start the civil rights movement” it was, “I was tired”. One gets the sense from her answer that she wasn’t just talking about her feet, but about her heart and her soul as well.

Being righteous means being so in tune with the Spirit of God that we are able to discern what grieves him, and likewise are grieved over the same injustice. The righteous person is in right relations with his or her brother or sister BECAUSE OF a right relationship with God. Such a person is socially oriented. Humans are social beings. We seek the company of others like us. Generally speaking, we do not live in solitude. We require SOME degree of interaction with our fellow human beings. God’s call to be in relationship with him is also a call to be in community. In doing that, we are called to preserve the place and wholeness of the community, meeting the demands of communal living.

The challenge to us is immunity.

If you live with something long enough, you begin to take it for granted. You forget that it is there, you consider it a part of everyday life. Women who have been in abusive relationships, when asked why they didn’t leave, often reply “I didn’t know it could be any different.” We become immunized to the wrong that is in the world. Partly, that is one way we protect ourselves. We philosophically look over the day’s news and end up saying “and that’s the way it is”, when God has called us to acknowledge that that may be the way it IS, but that’s not the way it needs to stay.

In Luke 4:18 we find Jesus announcing his ministry at the synagogue:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,”

We cannot, must not ignore the prophetic element in God’s call to follow Christ.
We are in the position to recognize an injustice and call a spade a spade, regardless of who it is perpetuating the injustice.

One of my favorite television dramas is ‘The West Wing’. In one episode last year, a new member of the staff finds himself facing the president for the first time in a hasty and unbeknownst to him, predetermined meeting. The President rattles off some supposed policy statement, and the man, petrified, starts to agree and walk away, but hesitates, and still shaky, stands his ground and with humility, respect, but ultimately steely resolve, speaks up against what the President has just said. The characters stare at each other for a moment, and the President breaks the standoff by saying, “speak truth to power, good job”.

How often do we find ourselves in a similar position, maybe not in the white house, or a Hollywood sound stage, or for that matter in the line at the grocery store, but fail to say anything?

Last Tuesday I drove to the history land nursery site on Newland Rd, and got there a little earlier than usual. Jesus, the foreman, who has made it to the last two gatherings we’ve had, was driving a small tractor across the drive as I arrived. He motioned me to come over to him and I did, and I sat down next to him. We rode over to a gas tank so he could fill up the tank of the tractor, and as it was filling, he asked if he could share something with me, a bit of constructive criticism. He told me that he’d heard from some of the men who are there that I seemed too timid, too hesitant in my devotionals, and that he didn’t know if that was due to uncertainty with the language, or the subject matter, or what, but that it would be better received if I were a little more forceful, more self-assured in my delivery.

It brought to mind all those instances in Acts where we read of Paul or the other apostles speaking boldly of the Gospel of Christ. So I am working on my delivery at the devotionals, convicted by the words of a fellow pilgrim.

I mentioned at the beginning of the message that we need to understand who God is. We’ve been discussing righteousness throughout; did you know that the word righteousness is used 223 times in the Bible? Even though righteous is a relational term; it is not a term that would draw people close TO God on first reading.

We are agreed that the Bible is God’s word, but there are few attempts to define God in the Bible. It is almost as if the Bible as a whole is trying to give us a picture of who God is, and succeeds in presenting Jesus to us, but hardly ever attempts to explicitly put it down in words.

In the New Testament, there are 3 attempts. Three simple words each. John 4:24: God is Spirit. 1 John 1:5: God is Light. And 1 John 4:16: God is Love.

What is it that compels us to attempt righteousness? What is it that calls us out of our sin and into that right relationship with God? What else but his love? And that love best expressed in the face and person of Jesus.

If you are here today burdened by your sense of unrighteousness, perhaps you are feeling that call of a loving God who is telling you “it is not your righteousness that I require, but your obedience in following me through my son Jesus.” We invite you to take on HIS righteousness, and to follow him as Lord of your life.

If you are here and have already claimed that righteousness in following Christ, your invitation is to turn that righteousness to Justice. Live out that right relationship not only with God, but with your fellow man. If you would like to do that with this body of believers, we would welcome you.

If you are here and feel like you have been immunized to injustice, that you’ve developed a jaded eye to the world and how it is, your challenge is to shed that scales and see the world as God sees it, a broken, hurting, place that even now groans for the coming Kingdom of God, and to join in the inbreaking of that kingdom.

Lets pray.

By Water and the Spirit

Sunday, July 20th, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton, VA
Matthew 3:11-17, Romans 6:4

I have a question for you:

What does God do when someone is baptized?

Baptism is an “ordinance”. In Baptist doctrine, that means it is a command given by our Lord, which we follow out of simple obedience to the Great Commission we find in Matthew 28:19 to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” It is one of two, the other being the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, or Communion, which we celebrated last Sunday. As things have worked out, we will be celebrating the second ordinance this afternoon at the Coates’.
In our passage, we find Jesus asking for Baptism.

Why would Jesus of all people ask for Baptism?

Why would he even feel it necessary to follow where John had led hundreds if not thousands of others before him to be baptized for repentance from sin? If anyone didn’t need this, it was Jesus. If anyone KNEW he didn’t need this for the same reason as all the others who were going through it, it was Jesus.
John was aware of that. He was aware of his own sin, when he looked at Jesus and says, "I need to be baptized by you, and you come to me?”

In his following statement, Jesus redefined the purpose of the act of baptism.

"Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness."

What Jesus is saying, and what convinced John to go ahead and baptize him, is that this is the next step. This is what needs to happen now. The event marks the beginning of Christ’s public ministry. In a sense, it marks Christ’s commissioning to service. In the passage, we also find the presence of the trinity – the Body of Christ, the words of the Father, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

If we turn to Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, chapter 6, verse 4 and following, we find the model for baptism that has been dominant in the church since the 4th century:

4 Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For whoever has died is freed from sin. 8 But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

Paul goes on to describe baptism as our symbolic death to the old life, to sin, and rebirth to new life in Christ, free from sin. It still carries with it an element of John’s baptism, in that it represents the cleansing from sin, which comes with repentance, but it also speaks of what we are alive TO: ‘So we too might walk in newness of life”

What we find in both passages is very simply the presence of God. What George Beasley Murray calls a ‘rendezvous of grace’ – God has agreed to meet us in Baptism. In that we are called to unity with Christ, through his death, burial and resurrection, suggests that God has said, “When you do this, I will be there”.

Today we will be observing two points in the lives of members of our community of faith where this is happening.
In baptizing Hannah, we are observing only the second public step in her lifelong pilgrimage to follow Christ. The newness of life she is beginning to experience spiritually is not that far removed from her own newness in this world.

In baptizing Soozin, we are reminded more of Christ’s baptism. When Jesus spoke of the baptism he was requesting to be performed as a way to ‘fulfill all righteousness’, that term is a direct reference to the will of God. It is ‘the next step’ which follows a lifetime of steps that have already shown a faithful sensitivity and obedience to that will – and to the leading of the Holy Spirit in her life. When she came up here a few weeks ago to join, ask for baptism, and in rededication of her life, it was a humbling moment for me. To see a life already dedicated be Re-dedicated is a challenge to us all to find new ways by which we can follow Christ.
In a couple of days, we will observe a third instance of this newness of life.

Most of you know that Fox Schools passed away this past Friday. On Tuesday, Beulah Baptist Church and Jerusalem Baptist Church, both families of faith to which he belonged while with us, will celebrate his passing into the new life, which awaits all of those who have given their lives to Christ.

This is what it comes down to:

John said “but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; … He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

In joining Christ in his death, burial and resurrection, we welcome into our lives the Holy Spirit, who brings to us not only life, but who also works in us to purify and refine us – makes us into who God intended us to be. It is an unfinished task while we are on earth. The Glory of which we are a part is not made fully evident until we reach up from that last resting place, grasp the hand of him who led us and preceded us there, and are lifted up into eternal newness of life.

If you are here today and have not yet followed Christ, your invitation is to be buried to sin and death, and to be reborn in newness of a life of commitment and obedience to Christ and his Lordship.

If you are here and have already dedicated your life to Christ and followed him in baptism, your invitation is to grasp again that sense of the newness of Christ in you. If you are looking for a church home, a place of service, and people with whom you can work alongside for the Kingdom, we would welcome you.

If you are here and have long since followed Christ in baptism, and ARE a part of this family of faith, your invitation is to be an encourager to those who come after you, to be an example and to live out Christ in such a way that you are transparent and HE is Apparent, to anyone with whom you come in contact.

Let’s pray.

Just a Gift

Sunday, July 13th, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton, VA
Mark 14:17-31

Steve accepted the gift of a brass and copper rooster I'd brought him with grace and an introspective, quiet air. Holding the small wall hanging, he asked, “Did you know the rooster is a traditional representation of Peter? It was used by the early church as a reminder to all of us that, at some point in our lives, we are guilty of betraying Christ.”

My first reaction was “Gee, Steve, it's just a PRESENT!” but I was taken aback by the comment, struck by it's truth, and surprised at the simplicity and directness of the symbolism. It had turned a passing act in a friendship into a searing moment in memory, reminding me of just how likely I was to betray our Lord.

In the passage, Jesus has just uttered a conversation stopper. He has gathered his disciples in the upper room, and is sharing the Passover meal with them. He knows it is probably his last night to be with them, and he knows, with more clarity and certainty than anyone else in the room, what the next hours will mean to him and to them.

It is at the beginning of the meal, he shocks them all by telling them that one of those who is sitting around the table with him, who is dipping his bread into the same bowl with him, will betray him. That act, the dipping into the same bowl, would not be something unusual. In Biblical, as well as modern-day Palestine, it is part of the tradition that everyone share from the same, central bowl at the table. The identification of the betrayer as someone who is dipping his bread into “the same bowl” was as much an indictment of all as of one of those who were gathered that evening. Their reactions are predictable. After all, they’ve been following him around for the last 3 years, watching him heal, preach, and teach. Each in turn responds, “Surely, not I?” There seems to be an assumption on their part that things would continue the way they had been going all along.

We do that as well, don’t we? We get into the automated mode, occupying ourselves with the regular, predictable, expected, and less-obtrusive aspects of living out our Christian Walk … we have our regularly scheduled meetings, our appointments, our gatherings, with the same people, reviewing the same issues, arriving fort the most part, to the same conclusions, and find ourselves slipping into autopilot. It is when we are confronted with the unexpected that we are made aware of our hidden weakness.

It really doesn't take any effort at all, does it? We’ve all had those moments, the ones we’d rather forget. The harsh word to an innocent child, the disengagement from someone who obviously, desperately, needs us to become Christ to them, to reach out with a helping, caring hand, and feed, or clothe, or just listen to them, or an action, taken in direct opposition to what Paul called “that which I want to do”, that tears at the very essence of Christ in us, and betrays him to a world that may only have that single, fleeting chance to see him through us. We’ve all had those times when we knew, as soon as the moment was passed, that we’d been Peter, and we can almost hear the echo of the cock’s crow dying in our ears.

It is utter darkness, to be confronted with one's weakest self.

But the story doesn’t end with Jesus telling them that one of them will betray him. Neither, for that matter, does the meal.

In the Gospel of Mark, it is AFTER this darkest moment, AFTER Christ has acknowledged the betrayer in their midst, and despite that, that he picks up the loaf of bread, blesses it, breaks it, and passes it to his disciples, "Take; this is my body" and follows that with the cup, saying "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many”. Mark seems to be pointing out the proactive nature of God’s grace. Before Peter has denied him, Jesus offers him the wine and the bread. Christ’s invitation precedes our sin. He knows our weaknesses, he understands that we will fail, yet he still extends the invitation to remain with him at the table, to join him and to eat of the bread, drink from the cup, to share in the coming of his Kingdom. In Luke’s account of the last supper (22:32), We find Jesus telling Peter that after he has turned back, he will go on to strengthen his brother’s faith with his own. Jesus not only knew that Peter would deny him, but that he would also become the pilar of the early church that we read of today.

This week in Vacation Bible School, the theme has been Jesus, our greatest treasure. In the last session before the closing on Friday, the question was posed: if Jesus is OUR greatest treasure, what treasure can we bring Jesus?

The answer, of course, is the treasure of our lives; our hearts, minds, and souls.

We have an opportunity to respond in kind.

Peter’s vehement statement to Jesus that “Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you” proved to be hollow in the short term, but just look at what Peter did after he turned back. It was through the power of the resurrection that Peter’s denial and Christ’s forgiveness and acceptance of him on the shore of the sea of Galilee that Peter became the anointed missionary and evangelist, who brought thousands to join the church that we read of in Acts. Tradition has it that Peter ultimately DID die for Christ.

The disciples did not know on Thursday night that Sunday was coming. We here have the unspeakable grace of knowing what happened. We stand on this side of the resurrection, and can claim all the joy that comes from that.

The Jewish understanding of remembrance is different from the Greek, and western understanding. Remembrance in western tradition is a more superficial event. It is strictly recalling a memory, an intellectual exercise. In Jewish tradition, the event is in a sense, relived. Christ is calling us to relive the moment. We’ve been revealed as capable of betraying him, and yet we are still welcomed at the table, because ultimately, Christ knows our best selves as well as our worst. Christ calls us to communion with him and to remember that, in spite of what we know we are capable of, his grace, his sacrifice, his love, has covered it all.

That copper and brass wall hanging was just a gift, but with a few words, the gift had been transformed into a treasure, perhaps for the recipient, but most certainly for me.

It is in those few words that this ordinance becomes a treasure. We gather to proclaim Christ’s sacrifice. His broken body, his shed blood. There is little to rejoice in for that. Jesus’ pain and suffering should have been our own. Yet he willingly took it on himself, and bore our punishment, and offers to us his eternal life. We are reliving that evening. We’ve been revealed, unmasked, and at the same time invited. We are still guests at the table, and it is truly cause for joy to come to the table and accept the invitation to the feast. There is still a solemnity to it in that, if we accept the invitation, we are invited to follow Christ – to carry his yoke. To suffer his passion, his COMpassion, to live as he lived, to love as he loved, and to give as he gave – fully and completely – our lives to God.