Foundations

Sunday, November 16th, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Mark 13:1-8

1 As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!" 2 Then Jesus asked him, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down." 3 When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, 4 "Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?"5 Then Jesus began to say to them, "Beware that no one leads you astray. 6 Many will come in my name and say, "I am he!' and they will lead many astray. 7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. 8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

“Kenny, can you hear me?”

My brother, Jimmy, was on the other end of the line. I had just flown down the day before to Ft. Worth, TX, to accompany a former Journeyman friend, Phil Brown, and his youth group on a mission trip to the Rio Grande Valley. I’d flown in a few days early and was visiting another friend, Eloise Parks, before heading out on that trip, and Jimmy had called the afternoon after I arrived.

The connection was not very clear, and I didn’t understand what he said when he first told me why he’d called. I asked him again,

“Eric is dead”

Eric was Aunt Lala’s youngest son. He fell right between Jimmy and me in age. He’d been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, and had been fighting the ravages of the disease for over a year.

He was engaged to be married. He was learning to fly, and wanted to become a pilot. He was planning on moving to Australia. His whole life was ahead of him, and that June day in 1991, it all stopped.

I flew out the following day for a two-day turnaround trip to attend the funeral. My cousin Kim met me as I walked into their house. All we could do was hug and cry. The next two days were a blur. The church was packed with about 500 people. Afterwards, I flew back to Ft. Worth and went on the mission trip with the youth of Rheta Baptist Church.

But it simply didn’t make sense.

This past Tuesday morning, when I got to Riverside Tappahannock Hospital for my chaplaincy rotation, the morning had progressed fairly quietly. Though I’ve been called in on a couple of emergencies, for the most part I’ve not seen the hospital in anything other than a ‘normal’ mode. I stopped in to see Charlotte right around 11, and she greeted me with her usual smile, but her energy wasn’t there. She still reached up to return my hug, but once that was done she settled back into a quietness that I’d noticed the day before as well. After visiting with her for a few minutes, I went on about the day’s duties, driving up to the History Land Nursery worksite on Rt. 17 for a lunchtime visit, and then coming back through Warsaw and stopping in at the Health Care Center to visit Miss Annie and George Schools.

When I got home, it was probably about 3PM. About a half hour to 45 minutes later I was paged by the hospital. I wasn’t able to call immediately, and got another page about 2 or 3 minutes later. When I got through to the switchboard, the receptionist told me that they wanted me in the ICU, and put me through.

“There’s a family here that wants you to come. They have a family member that has expired, the family of Charlotte Lewis.”

I didn’t think I’d heard her correctly, and after taking in a breath, I asked if she had said that Charlotte Lewis had expired. When she said yes, I told her “she’s a member at Jerusalem, I’m her Pastor, I’ll be right there.”

Though the initial shock at the news of both of these deaths was similar, the dynamics surrounding the event were different in most ways, except one critical way.

Eric was as active as his illness would allow him to be at Hermitage Hills Baptist Church. He’d made a profession of faith several years earlier, and to know Eric was to know that he was a follower of Christ.

Charlotte was as active here as she could be. The last few years had seen her abilities diminish, but her zeal for being here and singing with us and joining in worship was untouched. Her life has been an example of living and being the presence of Christ to so SO many throughout the Northern Neck through the years, not just family.

In Eric’s case, if I had been aware of the severity of his illness I may not have been caught so off-guard at the news of his death. I may have been more aware of the risks involved, and how his treatment was going. As it was, though I knew he was not in good health, I had no idea how life-threatening his disease was.

Though on some level I’ve come to accept the fact that he is gone, there is still, an element of tragedy, of something having happened that should not have happened surrounding his death.

With Charlotte, the tide turns the other way for a couple of reasons. First, it is somewhat easier to accept death when the loved one is advanced in years. Especially in the case of someone who has lived such a life as to have our response be sorrow, of course, but a deeper sense of … appropriateness in the passing. Though there is grief, there is an appreciation in spite of the pain for what she has gone on TO.

Still, with both, there is a sense of unsettledness. I remember when I first met Leslie’s cousin John was at Kenneth Maccubbin’s funeral – Leslie’s paternal grandfather. One of the first things he said to me was that “death is the most unnatural thing in the world”. That comment has stuck with me ever since. Both events – the death of a young man and an elderly woman, expected to differing degrees, but still unpredictable in their abruptness.

In our text, Mark has just told the story of the widow’s mite, and Jesus has made the point that it is what you give from your heart that makes the difference in what you put in the plate. The very next scene, Jesus and the disciples are leaving the temple, and one of them turns to him and says ‘Look, Rabbi, at this glorious Temple! Look what we have for worship.” He was taking pride in what Jerusalem had to offer by way of glorifying God. Jesus didn’t take long to cut him down to size. “Not one of these stones will be left standing.”

The disciples spent most of their time with Jesus in a state of confusion, and this time it was no different. What was Jesus talking about? They walked all the way to the Mount of Olives before someone asked the question: What is the sign? How will we know?

Like all of us, they wanted a sign; they wanted to know ahead of time so they could be prepared for the end of the world. The Temple had stood for hundreds of years; they could SEE the symbol of their faith. So what sign that the end time had come would they see?

Jesus wanted the disciples to see his truth, so he warned them about false prophets who would seek to lead them away from his true path. Beware of those who tell you with absolute assurance that they have the final, exact truth about God’s plan. There will always be gurus setting themselves up as saviors who would rescue us from our fears about what’s going on in our world. The problem with gurus is that you don’t have to have any faith of your own. All you do is what they tell you.

Then Jesus described what is known as the end-time happenings. There will be wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes and famines. Those are supposed to be the signs of the end of the world as we know it.

The only catch to this list of apocalyptic signs is that they have always been happening. There is not an age in the history of the world in which there were not wars, earthquakes, and famines. So it is really hard to see one particular sequence of events as the true sign of the end of the world. Many have tried and predicted, but so far they have all been wrong. We just can’t know when the end time will be because we don’t control the magma boiling under shifting tectonic plates and erupting earthquakes. We don’t control old historical grudges when they erupt into war. We don’t control weather conditions that create drought and famine in Africa. Personally, I just don’t think any of us are going to get out o the responsibility of continuing to live our witness for the whole of our lives.

That means we are always living in the meantime. We are living in the meantime between the birth of Jesus as Messiah and the return of Christ in glory. And we want signs, too. We want certainty, and leaders who will tell us exactly what is going to happen so we can feel secure. We want somebody to be in charge, so life won’t feel so unsettled.

Hebrews 10:22 says, “let us approach (God) with a true heart” What is a true heart? It means we are supposed to be honest with God. We’ve all heard prayers of people who are speaking to those around them rather than to God. It is a temptation I have to struggle with every time I as a Pastor am asked to pray. A true heart takes us to God with all the mess-ups and mistakes we have made. Our hearts are cleansed by confession. Our bodies are washed in baptism. So we can be honest with God because we know we have been forgiven. We have the assurance of faith that we won’t be condemned by God, because through Christ’s sacrifice, we have been forgiven. Our hearts are pure before God. This is the foundation of our faith.

We heard earlier, in our responsive reading, the verse from Luke:

If you work the words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who dug deep and laid the foundation of his house on bedrock. When the river burst its banks and crashed against the house, nothing could shake it; it was built to last. (Luke 6:48, The Message)


So what are these words Jesus mentions?

“Come, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest”

“Come, take up your cross and follow me”

Jesus points to himself.

There is no assurance in anything else. Not in Buildings, the Temple at Jerusalem was utterly destroyed less than 40 years after Jesus told his disciples no stone would be left atop another.

There’s no assurance in status or wealth, in the parable of the rich young ruler, after accumulating all that wealth, the man dies in his sleep.

There’s no assurance in health or youth. Eric was an athletic young man when his disease caught him.

There is no assurance anywhere but in our faith in Jesus.

What does this mean for Jerusalem?

We’re in the process of setting a budget for next year. The realities are a little daunting, with projected expenditures outpacing projected giving.

We know that the foundation for this church is not in the fact that the cornerstones were well-laid, though that does play a part. We know that the foundation of this church is more than that – it comes from legacies of faith lived out by those who’ve gone before. The cloud of witnesses I spoke of last Sunday has been increased in the last week. It is from their witness that we draw strength. It is by their example that our faith is upheld. It is through their reliance on the providence of God that we can approach the throne of the almighty with pure hearts.

Let’s pray.

Such A Cloud

Sunday, November 9th, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Hebrews 11, 12:1-2

12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I last walked through the cemetery. I’ve wandered the headstones several times since I’ve been here, sometimes alone, sometimes with one of the boys or Hannah, sometimes early in the morning and other times in the middle of the afternoon or early in the evening.

Each time, I’m struck to a point of reverence. The lives that were lived, sometimes long and full, sometimes all too brief, call me into a reflection on what I would want to leave as a legacy.

Last Sunday was the day after all saint’s day. I neglected to mention it then, but I think it worked out well, since tomorrow we will be observing Veteran’s Day. How can we speak of the two together?
You need to know up front that I am not in favor of the pulpit being used to promote what has come to be known as “American Civil Religion”, that is, the pulpit and the church become an extension of and an echo to what is said or decreed in Washington, just up the road a ways. That is not what we as Christians, or as Baptists, for that matter, are called to do. Much the opposite, in fact, is the case. We are to stand for “Christ, savior of the world”, and work towards that. In fact, work towards Christ, Savior of (your name here), Jerusalem Baptist Church, Warsaw, and Richmond County as our immediate response to “Christ, Savior of the world”. That is what our role is: to “think globally, act locally.” More often than not, that will mean standing in opposition. Generally to what the world would have us believe, but occasionally, in opposition to what we would see coming out of our Government. There is, in truth, a correlation to us in our government’s approach.

What we will most often find coming out of our nation’s capital is ‘Washington, the savior of the United States’. I don’t mean that as a criticism, that is what the role of the Government is: to guard, promote, and sustain the United States of America. The guiding principle is and should be ‘Our National Interest’. It is safe to say that there are a multiplicity of opinions in the room right now as to what those interests are, or should be, or should go back to being. That is what living in a democracy is all about.

While we may live in a nation that has been heavily influenced, to put it mildly, by the Judeo-Christian tradition, it would be just as accurate to say that it has also been influenced by forces of materialism, hedonism, and, to use a biblical term: idolatry. I would not say that we live in a Christian Nation. Christianity is a personal, intimate, life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ, it is not an attribute acquired simply by virtue of having been born here. You can say you’re a citizen of the United States, you can say you’re a Virginian, you can say you’re a ‘from-here’, ‘come-here’, or in my case, ‘called-here’, but neither you nor I are Christian by birth.

What we dedicated ourselves to last Sunday was to nurture Mary Alyce and Mac Bronner in such a way that they will someday come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior, we didn’t ‘make them’ Christians. That will be something they will be working out, in the words of Paul, ‘with fear and trembling’ on their own one day. In a very meaningful way, we committed ourselves to making an impact on their lives for Christ.
Any time we reflect on those who’ve had an impact on us, we inevitably begin to speak of the generations that came before. In the 11th chapter of Hebrews, the writer is doing just that.
The Book of Hebrews was written in a time of great uncertainty for the church. The Christians of that day had lived through a time of terrible persecution. But with the reign of a more tolerant emperor, they enjoyed a time of relative peace and prosperity.

However a new emperor had come to power, an emperor who was hostile to the faith. Some of the members of the church were questioning their faith in God. They weren’t certain that they could hold on. So the writer of Hebrews wrote a sermon to help these fearful Christians maintain their strength as they faced a difficult and uncertain future.
This writer could have taken the direct approach, chastising the community for their unfaithfulness and browbeating them into spiritual shape. Instead, he reminded them of their history. He called the people to faith by reminding them of the stories of the fathers (and mothers) of faith, the ancestors that had kept faith in God alive throughout the ages. He told them the stories of Noah, and Abraham, and Sarah, and Joseph, and Moses, and Rahab, and many “little people,” whose names were unknown but whose perseverance ranked them among the great forbears of faith.

What we find ourselves doing when we review chapter 11 is that we begin to remember those who dedicated themselves to OUR formation.

Emma Key, my maternal grandmother, who made such an incredible impact on our lives by traveling to Chile to visit with us on the field, to try to understand what it meant for us to call Chile ‘home’.
Roscoe and Nell Park, my paternal grandparents, who exemplified for me what it meant to be a ‘rope holder’. In mountain climbing, or maybe it’s rappelling, (hunter?) there are rope-holders and risk-takers, and while my parents made the commitment and took the risk of traveling 8,000 miles from home, my grandparents made the commitment and became the rope-holders, securing and anchoring us all through times of uncertainty and sometimes danger.

Uncle Bill Carter, who took pride in keeping the seminary running smoothly, even with 40-odd MKs running amuck for two weeks during Mission Meetings.
Aunt Mary Jo Geiger, who exemplified the gentle spiritedness that gets so much more done with honey than with vinegar.

Gordon Turner, Leslie’s grandfather, ‘Grandy’. He never failed to have a sound word of advice, or a clever joke, or a story to tell. To this day, over 4 years after his death, there are still days when Leslie and I will look at each other and say ‘I wish Grandy were here’.
I draw up these memories of loved ones who’ve gone before with a similar sense of reverence as that with which I approached the names on the stones a few dozen yards northwest of here. Though I did not know them, I know they hold the same place in many people’s hearts today, as do the people whose names I just read through.
How are we to take this litany of faith? How do we respond to the richness of our heritage? Do we pass them by? Do we simply shrug and think, “those were other, simpler times, different situations, it wouldn’t apply here?” I think not.

“Don’t you remember?” the writer of Hebrews is asking? “Don’t you remember how God has worked in the past, how God has been faithful throughout the ages?” Don’t you remember when God changed YOUR life?

What does this mean for Jerusalem?

Chapter 11 is all past tense. It is a recounting of history:

4 By faith Abel offered
5 By faith Enoch was taken
7 By faith Noah … respected the warning and built an ark
8 By faith Abraham obeyed
20 By faith Isaac invoked
22 By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention
24 By faith Moses … refused to be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter
31 By faith Rahab … did not perish

Then the tense changes:

12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,

When Leslie and I got married, we had an announced elopement. We called people up and asked them what they were doing on the 18th of July, and if they’d like to come to our wedding. The service was informal, immediately after the Sunday morning worship service. We were supposed to limit it to immediate family and a few close friends. Leslie had … maybe 10 people there. Altogether, there were 47 people at the ceremony.

We drew on this image – the cloud of witnesses, and asked everyone to gather around us – on all sides. It was, to put it mildly, a moving experience.

But that is what is happening here. The cloud of witnesses not only precedes us, but surrounds us as well. This cloud is alive and VERY present.

I won’t go on, except to say this: look around you. Who surrounds you? There are people in our lives who deserve our gratitude above all else, who have shown the way, blazed a trail for us to follow. Reverence is defined in the first instance as ‘A Feeling of Deep Respect, Love, and Awe.”

A verse from one of our hymns:

“O Beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life”

Which country do you love more than self? Is it temporal, or eternal?

I approach the cloud with reverence. They have given of themselves, sometimes to the final measure, and they are our heroes.

Let’s pray.

Who Are You Becoming?

Sunday, November 2nd, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Ephesians 4:25-5:2, 1 Cor 11:1

25So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. 26 Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and do not make room for the devil. 28 Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. 29 Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. 31 Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, 32 and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2 and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Yesterday morning, as I was standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes, Caleb and Judson got a hold of two balloons they’d gotten the night before and decided they were going to draw and write on them. While Caleb was working on his in the living room, I think, Judson chose to work on his right there in the kitchen. After a few minutes of intense, concentrated effort, he held up his balloon and declared “there! My PERFECT name!” (show balloon) (for text only readers: the balloon was yellow and had a couple of unrecognizable streaks on it ... one COULD have been a 'J'...)



We won’t be drawing on balloons today, at least not up here, but we will, hopefully, learn what it means to have a ‘perfect name’.

“Belonging precedes Believing precedes Becoming”

A brief review: two weeks ago, we discussed what it means to belong. Reading back over last week’s summary of the previous week, I think the quickest thing to do is to reread a couple of sentences from one of the paragraphs. For those of you who might not have been here, this is the message before last in a nutshell:

As we invite and welcome people into this fellowship, this family, this small part of the body of Christ, we are initiating the dialogue of faith between that person and God. We are making introductions between that person and Jesus. In that introduction, we are carrying out a dual role: we are both doing the introducing, and being introduced. Because we are Christ’s presence, and in that, we are carrying out the incarnational witness of the Gospel, in other words, through the living of our lives, through our words and actions, we, like Christ, are helping to break in the Kingdom of God.

To summarize last week: the title of the message was “What do you believe?” We didn’t go down a laundry list of items we believed. We are not a creedal people, though if we were to recite or read the Apostle’s Creed today, there would be very little if anything that we WOULD disagree with, I THINK. The question in the title is necessarily rhetorical. One of the central tenets of Baptist Theology, the single item that, as a Christian denomination, Baptists brought to the table, is the concept of Soul Competency. That is, each of us, as individuals, can receive, interpret, and respond to the movement of God in our lives, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. That includes what we each believe. While we can all agree on most things, I KNOW we don’t all agree on everything. That is why I didn’t pull out a laundry list. I thought briefly about changing the title to ‘When do you believe’ because I compared and contrasted Saul’s Damascus Road conversion experience to what may have been Timothy’s gradual, growing-up-in-the-church experience of faith, coming from his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice.

So here we are, at the end of the quote.

“Belonging precedes Believing precedes Becoming”

Today we get to ask ourselves the question: Who are YOU becoming? Who are we, each of us as individuals, becoming? And by implication, who are we, Jerusalem Baptist Church, becoming as a congregation?

It’s appropriate to ask this question in light of what took place earlier in the service with Chris and Cindy and Mary Alyce and Mac. As a congregation, we just promised that, “With God’s help, we will so seek to follow Christ ourselves, that Chris and Cindy will be strengthened and confirmed in their resolve and that Mary Alyce and Mac, surrounded by steadfast love, may be nurtured in the faith and strengthened in the way that leads to life.”

Put another way, whom are you allowing to shape you? Whether we like it or not, as parents and as members of the body of Christ, our children, and like them, folks who look to us as an example of Christ followers, whether from inside these walls or outside, are going to be following our example, or deciding if they want to bother with the Gospel based on the example we set.

That is a huge responsibility. In 1st Corinthians, chapter 11, Paul, in light of what was going on with the Corinthian Church, probably with some exasperation, puts it into just a few words:

“Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ”

Who do you see when you look in the mirror? Who has marked you with a seal? Do the eyes of Christ look back at you, or the eyes of the world? Who guides your thoughts? Who controls your actions? Who has made the biggest difference in your life? I confess that the person I see varies from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour.

There’s a song that came out several years ago, by a contemporary Christian trio of singers, Phillips, Craig and Dean, entitled “I Want To Be Just Like You” the refrain (chorus?) goes like this:

Lord I want to be just like You
‘Cause he wants to be just like me
I want to be a holy example
For his innocent eyes to see
Help me be a living Bible, Lord
That my little boy can read
I want to be just like You
‘Cause he wants to be like me

I never get through a hearing of the song without pretty much dissolving into a puddle.

The reason we celebrated with Chris and Cindy and their extended family as well as their own, young, nuclear family, is this: we are in community together. That means we share with each other. Through the living of our lives, through our words and actions, we, like Christ, are helping to break in the Kingdom of God.

As many of you know or have heard us tell, when Lucio and Domingo Perez, who work down at White Stone, back from Mexico and joined us here at Jerusalem for the first time since we first met them in March when we hosted the gathering back in September, Domingo opened his knapsack and pulled out a beautiful blanket. The colors on it are vibrant. It is a thick blanket. It is designed to protect and to warm. We have another piece of fabric that I would have brought with me if it weren’t, like, 14 feet long and a little wrinkled. We used it as a window treatment in Virginia Beach. It is almost gauzelike. If you hold it up to the light, you can practically see right through it. the image might be a little fuzzy, but it is there. Picture if you will, sheers covering a window on a sunny day.

Wynn Lewis, the former rector at Old Donation Episcopal church, in Virginia Beach, the dayschool where Hannah, Caleb and Judson went, loves to talk about ‘thin places’ in the fabric of this world, where we can catch a glimpse of what it will be like in the next world. When we speak of helping break in the Kingdom of God, that is what we mean: we are creating a thin place, where the kingdom of God is not only future, but present as well. The colors of the blanket we are surrounded by today, though beautiful in their fall splendor, pale in comparison to the colors we will someday see, but if we look closely, just like those sheers, the colors of the Kingdom come through.

Let me read again the first two verses of the 5th chapter of Ephesians:

5:1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2 and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

“Belonging precedes Believing precedes Becoming”

The question stands: who are you becoming? Maybe we should now ask who do you WANT to become?

Judson proudly declared, “my perfect name!” yesterday morning.

What is your perfect name? I’d suggest this: your perfect name is the name God gave Christ at his baptism, and has given us all, and the name by which Christ called us and Paul, in imitation of him, called the so many of the people he wrote to over the years:

We have, through belonging and believing, become a part of the body of Christ. As such, we become imitators of Christ, imitators in fact of God, who calls us to live in love, to love the unlovely, to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord Jesus until he comes again.

If you are here and are not yet named beloved, your invitation is to take on the name of Christ by making him Lord of your life.

If you are here and are already called by his name, but are looking for a local community of faith with which to join to grow to know him better, we would welcome you.

If you are here and are already a member, and are still wondering what your name is, know that it is this: “you are my beloved son. You are my beloved daughter.”
“beloved.”


Let’s pray.

What Do You Believe?

Sunday, October 26th, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Acts 9:1-9, 2 Timothy 3:3-7 (Matthew 5:33-37, Romans 12:9-18)

Acts 9:1

Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. 3 Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" 5 He asked, "Who are you, Lord?" The reply came, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 6 But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do." 7 The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. 8 Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. 9 For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

2Ti 1:3

I am grateful to God--whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did--when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. 4 Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. 5 I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. 6 For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; 7 for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.

“Belonging precedes Believing precedes Becoming”

Just to review, last week we began to look at the components of this statement. Our question last week was “Where do you Belong?” Hopefully, the answer to that question for most of you here today is ‘Here’. But if not here, the answer, regardless of where you find your family of faith, is definitely with and to Christ. Our scripture passage last week was from the fourth chapter of Gospel of Matthew, the scene was on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, the event, Jesus’ calling his first disciples; Peter, Andrew, James and John, the sons of Zebedee.

What we found last week is that, before they grew to believe, the disciples were welcomed into fellowship with Jesus through his invitation to join him. It is that same invitation that Christ continues to extend to us and to everyone today. Insofar as we invite and welcome people into this fellowship, this family, this small part of the body of Christ, we are initiating the dialogue of faith between that person and God. We are making introductions between that person and Jesus, but in that introduction, we are carrying out a dual role: we are both doing the introducing, and being introduced. We are Christ’s presence to them, and in that presence, we are carrying out the incarnational witness of the Gospel, in other words, through the living of our lives, through our words and actions, we, like Christ, are helping to break in the Kingdom of God.

Belonging precedes Believing precedes Becoming.

The first ‘step’ in the series, so to speak, is to experience a sense of belonging. As the saying goes, you only have one chance to make a first impression. The same is true – especially true – for church. I know of no other place where the perception of a group as a whole can hinge on the actions or words of a single individual – and not necessarily the Preacher - to the degree that it does in a church setting. That is why it is SO critical to be nothing we are NOT in church. That is, don’t say or do anything IN church that you wouldn’t say or do OUT of church. To turn it around: Don’t say or do anything anywhere else that you wouldn’t say or do here, between these walls. What is the most common accusation launched at the church? What is the most common reason given for someone NOT being involved or becoming active in a church? That it is full of hypocrites. Let’s work at nipping that in the bud. Biblically, Jesus puts it this way in Matthew 5:33 and following (part of the sermon on the mount):

33"Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, "You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.' 34 But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 Let your word be "Yes, Yes' or "No, No'; anything more than this comes from the evil one.

Paul puts it beautifully in the 12th chapter of Romans (for those of you who were here for the Associational Brotherhood meeting, forgive me for reading this passage again, but it is one that doesn’t seem to lose any of it’s power through repetition):

9 Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; 10 love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11 Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. 13 Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. 14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. 17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 18 If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

It could be said in a simpler way: Be Real; being a part of a family of faith is an ongoing act of trust. Not only are we trusting God to guide and direct us as a congregation, as well as individually, but we are trusting each other with each other’s lives, cares, worries, fears, and in some cases, secrets and children. It’s usually a point of pride to be able to say ‘what you see is what you get’. Let that be true of us here at Jerusalem. Let’s be that transparent, that open, that welcoming. But it doesn’t stop there, because there is more to it, more to this being church to each other, than that. Belonging is the beginning place, but we come to the heart place.

We come then, to believing.

Our opening scripture presents us with two images of coming to faith, coming to the point of believing in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The first is probably the most famous. It is Saul’s conversion experience on the road to Damascus. It is so famous, so well-known, that the phrase ‘a Damascus road experience’ can be found outside of faith communities, and still carry the same connotation. It means having an experience so dramatic, so radical, that it marks you for life. Perhaps some of us here today in this room can claim to have come to faith through a similar experience. In those cases, it is easy to pinpoint the day, date, and time when we ‘got saved’.

Probably for others, the reference to Timothy is more appropriate: “a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.” Paul doesn’t mention Timothy’s wild days as a teenager, or how he used to chase around town in a chariot, throwing empty wine jugs out the back. What we have is progression. The faith of your grandmother and your mother, that is now yours.

I wonder if there was a time when Timothy didn’t remember being surrounded by faith? Please correct me (later ) if I’m wrong on this, but I don’t believe we have a direct reference in Scripture to how old Timothy was or if he was even born when Lois and Eunice first became followers of ‘The Way’, which is what the early Christ followers were called.

If he was a toddler, or a very young child, his experience may have been very similar in that respect to that of many of us here today. It’s not that you ever didn’t believe, it’s more an issue of … waking up one day and realizing ‘I really DO believe’. You may not be able to get any closer to the day or date than maybe give a general idea of how old you were at the time, but the truth remains the same. Sometime before that, you didn’t believe, but after a certain time, you DID, you stepped forward on this road, this pilgrimage of faith, and in the words of Robert Frost, “took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

For the disciples, that coming to faith had a specific turning point, similar in many ways to Paul’s meeting with Christ on the road to Damascus. It came after the resurrection. In the Gospel of Matthew, we read a short passage, verses 16 & 17 in chapter 28, just before the much better known great commission:

16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.

There is another passage, not so short, which I will summarize; Mark 9, verses 14 and following. The story is of Jesus coming upon the disciples surrounded by a crowd and arguing with some scribes. When he walks up to them he finds out that the disciples had attempted an exorcism. When questioned, Jesus answers “All things can be done for the one who believes”. The father of the boy then cries out, with a cry that echoes with all of us here:
"I believe; help my unbelief!"

What do we do with doubt? Is there a way to escape it? Hebrews 11:1 says

“faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”.

That doesn’t seem to leave room for doubt. In truth, it doesn’t. But what we need to remember, what we need to accept and incorporate into our self-understanding, is that we are inconstant beings. Not a single one of us, as close as we may come, are one hundred percent all the time. Speaking for myself, I can reel off several areas in my life where it would be wonderful if I were constant. Granted, self-perception is not always the most objective view, but it is what we work from by nature, and that is what comes through to me in the cry of this helpless father, who’s spent most of his son’s life looking for help, someone to rid him of the demon that had been plaguing him since childhood. He is saying, in fact, “Lord, I believe, but I know myself and I know that I won’t ALWAYS believe. I rely on your Grace to get me through those times.”

Jerusalem can be all of them, the Damascus Road and the ‘cloud of witnesses’, such as Lois and Eunice for the people who come through that door and don’t know Christ, who haven’t had an encounter with the living Lord through the lives of his followers. Jerusalem can also be the place that welcomes the person who is wrestling with doubt in the midst of faith. Here’s the thing: we don’t know which it will be for any given individual. We do know this: we are called to obedience, we are called to love, and we are called to share.

It is just that sharing that we will explore next week.

For now, for some, we are at the turning point.

C S Lewis was an avowed atheist well into his early adulthood. The only description he gives of his conversion experience is this: one day he went out for a walk, and between the time he left and the time he returned he knew that God was real. Somewhere along that walk, he came to faith. He specifically says, there was no dramatic event; it just happened that he began the walk as an atheist and ended it as a believer. If you are here today and woke up not sure, but now, somehow, someway, something has turned that uncertainty to certainty, your invitation is to consider this time and place as the opportunity to make that certainty – that step of faith - public.

If you are here today and have been surrounded by that ‘cloud if witnesses’ all your life, and know that today is the day you can say ‘I really DO believe’, we would welcome you.

If you are here today and have BEEN a part of that cloud of witnesses, or have already been ON that road to Damascus, your invitation is to continue in the faith that was first in Lois, then in Eunice, then Timothy, and uncounted others between then and now, and to strengthen the bonds of love and trust in this small but vital part of the body of Christ.

The special invitation today is for those who struggle with doubt. The struggle is part of our humanity; it is not a reflection on the strength or weakness of your faith. That you are in struggle with it is a sign that your faith is active, alive, and growing.

Let’s Pray.

Where Do You Belong?

Sunday, October 19th, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 4:18-22 (cf Mk 1:16-20, Lk 5:1-11, Jn 1:35-51)

18As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea--for they were fishermen. 19 And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." 20Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 21 As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. 22Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.

There’s a quote I heard the 2nd week of class, that has stuck with me ever since, and which I would like to explore today and over the next two weeks. It is this:

“Belonging precedes Believing precedes Becoming”

I’d like to expand that, looking at the lives of the Disciples. Today we’ll be looking at what it means to belong.

‘Making your way in the world today
takes everything you’ve got
taking a break from all your worries
sure would help a lot
wouldn’t you like to get away?
sometimes you want to go
where everybody knows your name
and they’re always glad you came
you want to be where you can see
our troubles are all the same
you want to be where everybody knows your name.’

Though I’d really rather not compare a Church to a TV version of a Boston Bar, the lyrics to the theme song from ‘Cheers’ touch on a very basic human trait.

In his Republic, the Greek philosopher Plato stated that ‘man is a social animal’, and that in order to thrive, man must live in community with others. In other words, humans are wired to be in association with other humans.

On some level, there is an element of Imago Dei, the image of God, in that trait. In that God created us to be in fellowship with God, as well as with each other, that is an aspect of the divine nature that we can share in when we are in worship, fellowship, or any other type of communion with each other. That is why, any time we are together, if you look closely, you can catch a glimpse of the Kingdom.

Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville was a place that welcomed me with open arms. With everything that was going on in my life at the time, the people in that congregation first and foremost welcomed me into their midst, did not shy away from my questions, did not shun me for my sporadic attendance, and were genuinely always glad I came.

When was the first time you consciously realized that you ‘belonged’ somewhere, or TO something or someone?

In some instances, that realization that you belong comes gradually.

I remember about 4 years ago walking down the hall at Thalia Lynn. We’d been members there for about 5 years at the time, and as I went down the hall, I began to greet the people I passed. I was walking from the Preschool wing to the Sanctuary, and on my way back to the Preschool wing, it dawned on me that I had greeted almost everyone I met by name. More significantly for me, I had been greeted by name. I realized that day that I belonged at Thalia Lynn.

In other instances, the realization is a little faster in coming.

My friend Stacey tells the story of meeting his wife for the first time. He had joined the Summer Missions Drama team for Kentucky Baptist Student Unions, called Son Share. Kim had joined the Music Team, and on the first evening, all the teams were together for a debriefing/devotion time after having spent the day working on their different programs. As Kim walked out of the room at the end of the evening, she walked past Stacey and ruffled his hair, and said something innocuous, like, “Good night, Stacey”. “Right then I realized I was going to marry her,” he told us. On some level, he realized at that moment that they ‘belonged’ together.

This immediateness, the turning from a lifetime of one thing towards a lifetime of something else, seems to have been the hallmark of the way in which people responded to Jesus’ invitations. It was no different with the disciples. In calling them to follow him, Jesus was telling them ‘you belong with me’.

Have you ever known someone with so compelling a presence that you hang on his or her every word? Or perhaps you have found yourself in the position of being that someone?

It is at he root of the human spirit, this wanting to belong. In developmental terms, beginning around the age of 4 or 5, we go through a stage where this belonging becomes all-important, so important, in fact, that it is at this point that we develop the ‘us and them’ distinctive. In order to belong, in order to belong to something, there must, by definition, be those who do NOT belong to that same thing. It is beginning at this age that we see clubs forming, usually formed down gender lines.

As adults, the shadowside of this longing for belonging is that, in order for there to be a sense of belonging, there must be a distinction between those who belong and those who do NOT belong. We can witness this disassociation throughout history; sadly, it is most in evidence in church history, see it displayed in graphic terms in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, in the ethnic cleansing campaigns in Serbia and Croatia, in the massacres that have occurred in central African nations, and, lest we think ourselves above all that, in our own history we see it in the racism and the resulting civil rights conflicts of the 50’s and 60’s, and even in continued attitudes we find but do not speak of so readily today.

We’ve seen it rise in our own denomination. ‘Theological diversity, functional unity’, once a hallmark of Southern Baptists, the understanding that ‘you and I may disagree on some areas of faith and practice, but that is not going to keep us from doing church together’, has been replaced by current leadership demands of “Theological Unity being the ONLY way to functional Unity”, a shift to a view where the understanding is now ‘if you don’t agree with me on every single issue, be it spiritual, moral, or political, you are an infidel’, seemingly ignoring decades of historical evidence to the contrary. It is the darkest shadowside of belonging … to want to be ‘in’ so badly that you separate yourself from the richness and beauty of the wonderfully diverse ways in which different traditions and different ideas can come together and give us a fuller and clearer and more detailed picture of who God is.

What does this mean, then, for Jerusalem? How does the disciples’ response to Jesus invitation to join him affect us today?

It affects us like this: last Sunday I stated that when we are doing the work of the church, when we act as Christ’s body in the world, we are active participants in the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God. Does it need repeating that when Christ was on earth, during his public ministry, he was breaking in the Kingdom of God? When we invite – and more importantly, when we WELCOME into our midst – strangers, and estranged friends, and families, and folks who do not have a church home, or folks who’ve never been invited TO church in their lives, we are in fact extending Christ’s invitation to his disciples.

Belonging precedes Believing precedes Becoming.

The Disciples first were welcomed into fellowship with Christ. As was the custom of the day, if a teacher took on disciples, it was a 24/7 classroom. The disciples lived with the teacher. The disciples spent the next 3 or so years with Jesus. For us here that means that those whom we invite will be able to see us BE Jesus at any given moment. It is called incarnational witnessing. We live our lives as Jesus would have lived his.

It is, of course, a tall order. But it is the first step in the process – this welcoming – this giving a sense of belonging to one who has for whatever reason NOT found a place to belong. Earlier in our worship service, in fact, at the very beginning, after we sang “We’re marching to Zion”, we had an opportunity to express that welcome, to tell someone ‘you belong with me’ – it is listed in the bulletin as “Hand of Fellowship & Greetings”. We cannot minimize the importance of that event as a part of worship. In churches that observe a more liturgical form of worship it takes the form of the ‘passing of the peace’. It can also be expressed communally in a call and response – “The Lord be with you” – “and also with you” - “lift up your hearts” – “we lift them up to the Lord”.

There is a comforting quality in knowing that that part of the service is coming. It is not just a formality; it is a statement of belonging. Recognition that we are all part of one body, following, with Christ as our head.

Our challenge today as a church is to maintain, no, more, to increase that welcoming spirit.

We read in the New Testament of Jesus having 12 disciples. Consider us the equivalent of the 12. Our responsibility here is to learn from the master. At the end of his public ministry, our role will change. We will see that next Sunday.

If you are here today looking for that place to belong, where you can bring yourself just as you are, with no pretense, with no mask, stepping out on faith and into a family of faith, we would welcome you. We know someone we’d like you to meet. His name is Jesus.

If you are here today and have already met Jesus, but are looking for a place in which you can get to know him better, then we would also welcome you.

If you are here today as a member of this congregation, your challenge is to be as welcoming and as the Holy Spirit prompts. We say Christ meets everyone where they are. That means WE meet everyone where they are, with open arms, with tender hearts, with listening ears.

Lets pray.

Our hymn of invitation is ‘Jesus is tenderly calling’. Perhaps we can look up from the nets of our daily lives long enough to hear his voice.

Come To The Table

Sunday, October 12, 2003 (World Hunger Day)
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
1 Corinthians 11:23-26

23 For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." 25 In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Empanadas de Pino, Queso, y Ensalada Chilena.

That was our Lunch last Monday. My brother Jimmy was visiting us on a break from School up in Pennsylvania, and Leslie decided to make a Chilean meal while he was here.

Empanadas are a kind of Chilean pocket sandwich. Pino empanadas are a meat pie. The meat mixture is made up of browned ground beef and onions, seasoned with cumin, thyme, oregano, salt, pepper, and paprika. After most of the cooking is done, you add raisins to the mixture and let them plump up with the juices from the meat. Then you take a couple of spoonfuls of it and wrap it in dough and either bake or fry it. The baked kind can be as big as half of a large dinner plate, and constitute a meal in themselves. Empanadas de queso are made with cheese, usually a white cheese similar to Monterrey. Those you definitely deep-fry.

Ensalada Chilena – literally, Chilean Salad, is simple: thinly sliced tomatoes and onions, tossed with a little olive oil, lemon juice, and liberally seasoned with chopped cilantro and salt and pepper.

We gathered around the table, gave thanks, and Jimmy and I just soaked in the smells of home. A bite into the salad transported me back to those Asados - open-pit barbeques – we were lucky enough to enjoy at mission meetings in Temuco, in southern Chile. There was usually a side of beef, a
sheep, and a pig that ended up suspended on spits over a 15 x 15 foot pit,
and the salad was a required side dish. Empanadas are one of the national dishes of Chile, along with Cazuela de Ave, a chicken stew, with potatoes, carrots, and a kind of pumpkin in the broth.

To my family, my brother, sisters, parents and I, those are all comfort foods.

Comfort food that I’ve come to add to that list since I’ve gotten married: Pineapple cheese casserole, the first time I heard it described, my reaction was ‘no, thanks!’ but after tasting it, it became a standard at any holiday meal or special occasion. Tomato sandwiches in the middle of summer, when the tomatoes are perfectly ripe, and the bread is fresh, and there’s enough mayonnaise to make it a challenge to keep the tomato between the bread. Squash casserole, made with sour cream, it usually doesn’t last beyond two days in the refrigerator. Or Creamed Hamburger and rice, one of the simplest meals to prepare, but the emotional comfort it brings goes so far beyond the simplicity of the tastes that there is simply no comparison.

Aunt Lala, my mother’s middle sister, and Uncle Ray, lived in Nashville Tennessee for years, and always had the biggest table I can remember. Stan, Kim, Brad and Eric, our cousins, and for several years, 4 additional Park kids would join her either around Christmas or Thanksgiving, or really, whenever we could fit in a weekend trip to Hermitage.

“Y’all come!” was all we needed to hear to run down the hall or up the stairs from the den, to sit and eat and joke and laugh and try to follow fifteen conversations at once.

“Y’all come!” meant it was time to feast, to quench our thirst, to satisfy our hunger.

Out from all this, Jesus is calling us to his table.

“Y’all come!”

But what does he call us to?

He promises to quench our hunger and thirst, as he promised the Samaritan woman at the well, but hunger and thirst for what?

He offers himself, the bread of life, and the water of life. But which life? The life I’ve just described? We live in a country and an area within that country that can at times and to many of us, feel like just this side of heaven. If we were to scratch just a little beneath the surface, though, we would probably find otherwise.

One of the surprising benefits of parenthood has been rediscovering children’s books. We’ve introduced Hannah, Caleb and Judson to ‘Green Eggs and Ham’, as well as to other classics, like ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, or ‘Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day’ and Shel Silverstein’s ‘The Giving Tree’. One of the joys of parenting has been to discover new children’s books, like ‘Bedhead’ or ‘I Love You, Stinkyface’, or to find books that, though designed for children, have something to say to adults as well … I think, in retrospect, that is the genius of Children’s Literature anyway, that the books and stories have something to say to those being read TO as well as to those doing the reading.

We have one book, a simple little paperback that has action prayers, songs, and prayers for mealtime. Flipping through it, Leslie came across a prayer from Nicaragua that caught her off guard. We pray it occasionally around the table at home:

O God,
Bless this food we are about to receive.
Give bread to those who hunger,
And give hunger for justice
To those of us who have bread.

Today we observe World Hunger Day.

We live in a world of harsh, sometimes horrible realities.

Enough grain is produced in the world to provide every living person with two loaves of bread a day, and yet, nearly one in six of us goes hungry.
• More than 840 million people in the world are malnourished—799 million of them are from the developing world. More than 153 million of them are under the age of 5.
• Six million children under the age of five die every year as a result of hunger.
• Of the 6.2 billion people in today’s world, 1.2 billion live on less than $1 per day.
• The amount of money that the richest one percent of the world’s people make each year equals what the poorest 57 percent make.
• Virtually every country in the world has the potential of growing sufficient food on a sustainable basis. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has set the minimum requirement for caloric intake per person per day at 2,350. Worldwide, there are 2,805 calories available per person per day. Fifty-four countries fall below that requirement; they do not produce enough food to feed their populations, nor can they afford to import the necessary commodities to make up the gap. Most of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa.
And finally: The death toll from hunger is horrendous. Each day, 32,000 children die from hunger. That is not counting men and women, only children.

We distributed rice bowl piggy banks this summer during vacation bible school. The money that is collected in them will go to world hunger. It doesn’t depend on massive donations from a few select multimillionaires or corporations. The genius is, with enough participation, small gifts from a large number of churches and people accomplish the same goal. It may not seem like a lot, but it can make all the difference.
Paul is addressing the brokenness of the world, made apparent in the church at Corinth, when he reminds them of what the Lord’s supper was supposed to be: a proclamation. ‘For as often as you eat the bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.’

We are, in observing the Lord’s Supper, communing, that is an action verb. As a body, as a community of faith, we are proclaiming the central truth of the Gospel. Christ’s death for the world. Christ’s death in our place. The second part of that last sentence is critical: “Until he comes”. That is saying a couple of things. First: Christ is no longer dead. So, the proclamation is not only of his death, but also of his resurrection. Second: Christ will come again. And this is critical: we are a part of his return. When we do this, when we act as Christ’s body in the world, we are active participants in the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God.

Let’s Pray.

(Communion)

26 While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, "Take, eat; this is my body." 27 Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you; 28 for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 29 I tell you, I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." (Matthew 26)

This is our time of invitation. Christ invites each of us to the table. Whatever we bring to it, we are welcomed. It is what we take from it that will change the world.

Benediction:

May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
May God give you Grace never to sell yourself short,
Grace to risk something big for something good,
Grace to remember that the world is now too dangerous for anything but truth, and too small for anything but love.
So, may God take your minds and think through them,
May God take your lips and speak through them,
May God take your hearts and set them on fire
Through Christ our Lord.

Closing hymn:
Blest be the tie that binds (1st verse)

Redefinitions

Sunday, October 5, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Matthew 12:46-50

Last Sunday I made a passing reference to how Christ was expanding our understanding of who our family is when he said in Matthew chapter 25, verse 40:

'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.'

Today I’d like to revisit that.

46 While he was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to him. 47 Someone told him, "Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you." 48 But to the one who had told him this, Jesus replied, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" 49 And pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."

September 23rd, 1989 is a day that I will mark, consciously or not, as a watershed date in my life. On that day, the woman whom I’d been dating for the previous year and a half, with whom I had planned to spend the rest of my life, asked to end our relationship. Though I had dated briefly in college, I’d never been in what you could call a ‘serious’ relationship. This one had been, in a word, serious.

I was undone.

It was up to that point, the single most devastating event of my life.

I spiraled into a deep, dark, depression. I was attending classes at Southern Seminary, but stopped. I’d been attending Crescent Hill Baptist Church, but stopped. I stopped talking to my hall-mates, and would come back to my room from my part-time job and curl up on my bed and sleep until nighttime, when I’d wake up and cry until the next morning, when I had to get up and do it all over again. I stopped eating, lost weight, and finally decided to withdraw from Seminary altogether.

I remember tearfully talking to my father, who was back in the States on a short trip, and asking him if he’d understand if I withdrew “for a while”, little suspecting that the “while” would turn out to be 12 years.

In February or March of that year, I had been invited over to a friend’s house for dinner. At the time, Claude was more a friend of my sister’s than of mine, and ten years my senior. We hit it off. Claude had graduated from Southern in 1980, and was a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, a trained counselor, and the director of a program that assisted clients with chronic mental illness manage their illness and try to live as normal a life as possible. In the course of the evening, he offered to let me rent a room from him. It didn’t hurt that he was an audiophile, and had a ‘music & video room’ with several thousand dollars’ worth of music and video equipment in it. But that was the least of my concerns in agreeing to move in to the house on Field Avenue.

Jim and Janet, Stacey and Kim, Sue, Jim and Nanci Carol, Jay and Kay, and Claude. When I was at the lowest point in my life, they became family to me, and more. I can honestly say that if it weren’t for them, I would most likely not be here today. There were other friends, David Johnson, who at the time was studying at Golden Gate Seminary, north of San Francisco, and Phil Brown, who was living and working in Little Rock, AR. If you’ve ever spent any time on the phone with someone who is depressed, it is not an enjoyable experience, and certainly not an energizing one.

One comment stands out from a conversation with Sue, my friend whom I mentioned a few Sundays ago, who is hoping to adopt the teenage brother of the two girls she and her husband have already adopted. She looked at me and said “Kenny, we are here for you, always. But there are things that no one can go through with you, things that you are meant to go through alone.”

We have biblical examples of similar friends. Jonathan and David, in the Old Testament, Jonathan risking his life to warn David of HIS father’s coming attempt to murder him. In Luke, chapter 4, we have the paralytic and his four friends who lowered him down through a hole in the roof so he could get to Jesus. What is striking about the encounter is that the passage reads ‘when he saw their faith’ (v 20) he spoke the healing of the man who was paralyzed. It wasn’t based on the paralyzed man’s faith, but on that of his friends, that seems to have prompted Jesus’ act of healing.

Last night Jerusalem witnessed something like that. We hosted a fundraiser for Sylvia Jones. Chances are, there were more people here who knew Sylvia than didn’t, and after the evening was over, I hope we could all claim to be her friends, besides being sisters and brothers in Christ.

There are people who come into our lives who are there by divine appointment. Perhaps unknown to them, but apparent to us, in their presence, we are made that much more aware of the presence of God in a real, physical way in our lives.

I’ve lived it. I suspect that, if we paused a moment and thought about it, most of us in this room have experienced it.

I’ve shared this before, on a Wednesday night, but in reference to my family of friends that rallied around me through those dark times, I can truthfuly say that they were my salvation. I don’t mean I was saved through them, per se, but Christ’s love reached me through them, in that they were Jesus to me. They lifted the roof off the cave I’d crawled into and instead of lowering me INTO it, they pulled me OUT of it.

This is what we mean when we say that you cannot be a Christian and not live in community – in communion – with a fellowship of believers. There is, of course, an individual element to faith. Each person has to come to that saving knowledge of Jesus, the Holy Spirit steps in and acts on a person’s heart uniquely, in ways that no one else can relate to, and in that, the transforming of the mind takes place- the internal changing of direction of one’s life, from moving away from God to moving towards God. The Holy Spirit redirects, or redefines our lives. Our reason for being changes from trying to live our lives for ourselves to living them for Christ.

Jesus was in the habit of redefining. He redefined the law in the sermon on the mount. He turned ‘thou shalt not kill’ into ‘if you are angry with your neighbor you’ve as much as killed them’. He turned ‘thou shalt not commit adultery’ into ‘if you look on someone with lust, you’ve already committed adultery in your heart.’ He said ‘you’ve heard it said, ‘love your neighbor and hate your enemy’, and turned it into ‘love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’ With this last example, we have a very real opportunity to respond. A couple of weeks ago, someone broke into the Church. Our response needs to first be to pray for whomever it was that did it.

Though Jesus redefines ‘family’ in the text, he does not do it in an exclusionary way. In other words, he does not cancel out what defines immediate family. Though my friends became my family in my time of crisis, my family was no less a family to me because of it. There were distance issues involved – my parents were still serving in Chile at the time, and my middle sister Becky and brother Jimmy were the only ones that were nearby. The redefinition that Jesus embarked on was to broaden the meaning of the term.

‘Whoever does the will of my Father in Heaven.’

There’s no secondary qualifier. Whoever does the will of my father in heaven and speaks my language. Whoever does the will of my father in heaven and looks like me. Whoever does the will of my father in heaven and shares my political views. No. It is a very simple statement: WHOEVER.

We live in a broken world. We’ve lost what it means to be true family. As many of you know, October is Domestic Abuse Awareness month. There is no better example of what it means to be fallen than to see what happens when abuse is present in a home. Whether physical or emotional or sexual, domestic abuse tears at the heart of the family. Trust that should under gird the foundations of a family is broken. I’ve known too many close friends who are still as adults learning to rebuild their trust … sometimes not in their human parents, but in God and Christ. That is why I always thank God on Mother’s day and Father’s day for parents who make it easy for us to understand God as our HEAVENLY parent.

We come then to our time of invitation.

If you are here today and are longing to be able to trust someone with your life as you’ve never trusted anyone before with it, your invitation is simple: come to trust Jesus as your Savior. Though there may be an instant change in your heart, this may just as well be a first step towards learning to fully trust not only him, but to again trust your earthly family.

If you are here and are looking for a place where you can join friends who are willing to tear up a roof to bring a friend to Jesus, we would welcome you.

If you are here and are already a member of this extended family, you invitation is to break out of the mold. To breath in what the spirit of God has made your family and to live out that broadness – that directly reflects how broad and deep, and powerful the love of God is.

Lets pray.

The Least Of These

Sunday, September 28, 2003
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 25:31-40

"31When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' 37 Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' 40 And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.'

“If my father dies, I’ll show them some personal stuff!”

It was a passing conversation at the water pick-up spot at Kilmarnock Baptist Church yesterday afternoon.

The woman pulled in behind me as I was loading some water into my car to deliver to the Hispanic workers at the Pride Of Virginia Oyster and Bait Plant outside of White Stone.

There were no attendants, and as she stepped out of her car, she asked if we were supposed to load our own water. I explained that yes, we were, and then helped her load a couple of boxes of water. As I was doing that, she asked if I knew where she might be able to pick up some ice. When I told her I wasn’t sure, but thought there might be a place in town closer to the food lion, we began to talk about everything that has been going on over the last 10 days.

As we began to talk, her frustration was evident. Within a couple of minutes, I knew that she was from Wicomico Church, she still had no power, was one of the ONLY people in the town who didn’t, that she has a 92-year-old father who suffers from congestive heart failure, and a husband who is recovering from heart surgery, if memory serves. I asked if she had stopped to speak to any of the crews that were working on power lines around the area, and she had, and the man with whom she’d spoken had taken her name and address down and added it to a list from which he seemed to be working. She wondered aloud what she needed to say to make it clear to them what constitutes an emergency. I commiserated, commenting that, though it is difficult, it’s not so bad unless you are involved in a critical situation like she was, and that things change a LOT when you start to deal with ‘personal stuff’. Hence, her comment about what would happen if her father died.

I asked her if she had eaten lunch, and she had not. I explained that she could go into the basement, there at the church and either eat there or get the meals to go. She said she wished she had known about the meals earlier, since she’d just come from the tri-star supermarket and had bought things to make lunch. I let her know that dinner would also be served beginning at 5 and going until 6:30. She left no less frustrated, but hopefully a little relieved by having shared her burdens.

I need to tell you all that this whole experience has humbled me – again.

I’ve realized that I really don’t need a lot of what I have. That life is possible without access to the Internet or email, or cable, or air conditioning, that there are still ways around the loss of indoor plumbing.

I’ve learned that to give really IS better than to receive, but that receiving has its upsides.

I’ve learned to appreciate a cup of coffee in the morning, especially when it is made possible by a friend’s lending their generator to power the refrigerator, and freezer, and oh, there’s an extra outlet, let’s plug in the coffee maker, and while we’re at it, why don’t we bring the little TV in and let the kids watch a movie on tape.

To give, to be ABLE to give, really is a blessing.

As a church, we were able to provide shelter to people here, downstairs, and over at the parsonage on the day of the storm. Even without power, or running water, the light of Christ was still shared, and I don’t mean by the candles alone. If you have a minute, read the note in the bulletin about that. To Kayla and Amber, thank you for being examples of Christ-likeness, in watching and mopping and wringing and replacing the towels that kept most of the water out.

On the morning after the storm, I got out and drove around. It really was striking how beautiful a day it was, after the kind of day Thursday had been. I drove down Sharps Road, and was amazed at the way people were working together to clear out the worst of the debris. Some heavy equipment, tractors, and lots and lots of chainsaws were getting the job done. Some of the men and women had on official uniforms or vests, but most of them did not. Most were just … neighbors and friends, taking care of each other.

The passage this morning speaks to that.

'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;’

Think about that for a minute. Those who have done what follows, they will inherit the Kingdom of God –

Here’s another 25-cent word: eschatology. It means the study of the end times. Generally, we hear the term ‘Kingdom of God’ and think ‘Oh, Heaven’.

That’s not how Jesus spoke of it. He spoke of it being immediately present.


Luke 17:20 Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, "The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; 21 nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There it is!' For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you."

Some translations have the word ‘among’ as ‘within’.

If we are to be living out this faith, this belief that Jesus really does change lives, then it is evidenced through our actions.

It would be naïve to think that everyone I saw helping everyone else over these last 10 days and say that each and every one of them was doing it out of Christian love. There were probably those who were simply doing it because they were raised right by their parents. There are, I’m sure, others who were doing it out of a sense of duty or obligation. Certainly many of the police, rescue, and emergency crews were doing it because that is part of their job description. I can only hope that the majority of them did not and are not doing it ONLY because of that.

But we are gathered here today not because of hurricane Isabel. We don’t sing the hymns we do because it feels good to do good. We don’t give of our time and finances because we know that it will be for a good cause, or put to good use.

We do this, we gather, pray, sing, and give, because it is one part of our worship. We do that other, out there, reaching out, sharing, caring, giving, feeding, clothing, cooling, powering, sawing, dragging, cleaning, because it is as much a part of our worship as what we do here on Sunday mornings between 11 and noon.

Jesus is saying that in doing these things, to the least of these, who are members of my family, we are doing it to him. I’d like to just touch on a couple of points here: the first is this. In my mind, in remembering this verse, what I remember is ‘if you’ve done it to the least of these, you’ve done it to me.’ But I left out a critical bit: ‘who are members of my family’.

What is Jesus saying about his family, about the family of God? Is he stretching the meaning of who is to be included in that family?

I’m not going to give an answer here today. It’s just a question to ask yourself, reflect on, and decide … who IS my family?

The other point is this, and it is spoken from experience.

When you are on the receiving end of one of these actions, you don’t think of yourself as being in the role of Christ. What becomes obvious to you is that the person who is caring for you – who is bringing that food, or drink, or visiting, or … welcoming you, is the incarnational witness of Jesus Christ.

A week ago Saturday, I received a phone call from Jesus. He was inviting Leslie, the kids and I to come over and take showers. His VOICE sounded like Elwood, but the spirit behind the words was all Christ.

The end result is that, whichever side of this event you are on, you experience Christ.

Driving down Rt 17 on Thursday, I drive by at least a dozen churches. This one happened to be down somewhere between Gloucester and the Coleman Bridge. In the past, it has caught Leslie’s and my attention. It sits an empty lot away from another church building, and we can’t help but compare the messages that appear on their respective marquees.

Thursday was no exception. The first, the larger of the two, had a simple message:

“Clothes and Free Dinner, 5-7PM Tonight”

The next, had a little more involved message:

“Praise the Lord, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people”

Having just spent the previous week dealing with the aftermath of Isabel, my first response was “hands down, I’d rather stop at the first place”. Not that there’s anything wrong with the message on the 2nd marquee … it’s a question of appropriateness to the context.

Which of the two would have drawn you in? I suspect that, had the woman I met yesterday driven by, she would have opted for the first church as well. People in need should rightly tend to those needs first, or be helped with meeting those needs.

My first, judgmental reaction was, ‘that second church is a little disconnected from the situation around it than the first. Let’s take care of people’s physical needs first, THEN we can talk about praising the Lord.’

As I was preparing, I looked up the second marquee’s scripture reference, and found it to be the first verse of Psalm 117.

The first words of the second verse slapped some sense into me:

2 For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the LORD endureth forever. Praise ye the LORD.

There is a place for both messages on the marquees of our lives; I trust that we will never separate them from each other, because ultimately, they both are saying the same thing.

Let’s pray.

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.