Come to the Light


Sunday, March 26th, 2006
Lent 4B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
John 3:14-21

14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20 For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21 But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

I really didn’t realize how fast I was going.

Honestly.

I was in our minivan, and had, over the previous few months, pretty much ONLY been driving the Mazda; you know, the smaller, older, NOISIER car.

That morning I had been contacted by a sister church in the association that had let us know that they’d collected donations for the Hispanic ministry, and they wanted to know if they needed to run them down to us or could I come by and pick them up. I told them I could be there in just a few minutes. It wasn’t until a few minutes LATER that I actually walked out of the house to head up there.

I pulled out of the driveway and headed up route 3. The dip here down to Folley Neck Road is sort of like the take off ramp for a rollercoaster ride. You get up to speed REALLY quickly, and if you’re riding in a car that you’re not used to being in, and IT rides much smoother and quieter than the one you ARE used to riding in, well … it makes it really easy to lose track of just how fast you are going.

Radar guns are great at detecting just how fast THAT is.

It’s all about choices. I chose to accelerate pretty quickly that morning. I chose to not look too closely at the speedometer once I got to the top of the rise on the other side of the dip. I chose to let the car just cruise along, enjoying the smoothness of the ride and the quietness of the functioning muffler.

*******

Our passage this morning speaks to choices as well, both human and divine. As we’ve moved into and through this season of Lent, we’ve had opportunities to choose … to select what to dwell on … whether it has been to dwell on the fallen-ness of the nature that surrounds us, thus producing a world that is full of pain and conflict, or on the brokenness of a world at large, that would take a man who has dedicated himself to be a literal peacemaker in the name of Christ and kill him, only to turn around just a few weeks later and release his fellow team members relatively unharmed, or on our own fallen nature, that which is within us against which we struggle on a daily basis, sometimes with greater success than at others … but an ongoing struggle nonetheless … that gives us an idea of just what it was that Paul was speaking of when he spoke of the thorn in his flesh which he asked God to remove … a request that went unanswered, save for the admonition that God’s “grace is sufficient”.

What we are faced with in the passage, here now, today, but in truth, every single day of our lives, is the choices we make. It is not a one-time, set in stone rule that we will always make the best choice.

We know that third verse in by heart … how many of you repeated it with me in the King James version as I read it earlier? I was tempted to switch TO the KJV as I read it myself … I could even recite it to you in the Reina Valera Spanish version … but what does it MEAN???!!! That verse is probably the SINGLE most memorized verse of the New Testament, after ‘Jesus Wept’, maybe, but still … it would appear to be one of the most famous verses of the Bible. The reference – the name of the book along with the chapter and verse number, were made famous in conemporary American culture – or notorious, by a man who wore a rainbow wig and went to sports arenas back in the 70’s and 80’s – and made it a point to hold up a big sign that read ‘JOHN 3:16” – you could usually catch a glimpse of him at some point during the program if you watched the entire show … it was his way of witnessing to his faith in Christ. Whether you agreed with what he did or not, who can say how many people’s curiosity was piqued just enough to go look up the reference … and ultimately led to a relationship with Christ? The point is, to folks who’ve grown up in the church, that particular verse is not an unfamiliar one.

That carries its own risks, however, insofar as what is familiar to us also loses its power over us – we become immune to it. A very present example in our own congregational life is, perhaps, our congregational benediction … ‘to risk something big for something good’ … ‘too dangerous for anything but truth, and too small for anything but love’ … those are truly powerful statements if you stop and think about their implications, but we’ve been hearing them or saying them for the last two and a half years … maybe it’s time that we changed them up a bit … not that what they are saying isn’t valid, or true, or important … it’s a recognition that we can so easily be lulled into a sense of complacency about where we are and where we’re going that we lose sight of the fact that that road involves sacrifice. It will likely involve conflict, and trial, and tribulation … and may even involve the loss of something precious … something valuable, in exchange for the good that results … perhaps even the good that we have yet to discern …

The writer of John makes it clear, we choose, and God chooses. Light has come into the world, in the form of Christ. And the light is the light for all humanity. But does humanity, HAS humanity … taken the step to turn TOWARD the light? In some cases yes, thankfully. We see it, blessedly, every day, if we look for it … in the helping hand, in the gracious word, in the welcoming hug. In many, many, other cases, unfortunately, Christ has had little influence in the way people live their lives, in the daily living … in the moment-by-moment choices that ultimately determine the outcome of that particular life. We see it in the harshness, in the coldness, in the disconnectedness that can seem to be so prevalent today. The attitude of ‘that’s not MY problem’ … or … ‘and I should care because … ?’ it is in the compartmentalization of the human species as a whole that we lose sight of the fact that we are called to care for each other – whether the ‘other’ is across the room or across the border or across the globe -- that is actually irrelevant – we are still to express and practice the care of our fellow human beings.

*****

Have you ever wondered what the different colors of traffic signs are for - the yellow background with black lettering, versus the white background with black lettering? The yellow background is a warning of potential hazards … usually a curve or curves in the road, or an upcoming intersection – and the sign color is to advise that what it is saying is a recommendation – usually it is a speed indicator – 35 MPH or 45 MPH – as a RECOMMENDED safe speed … it is a suggestion, not a statement of law. That is reserved for the black and white signs. That’s how I made it click in my head when I saw a speed limit sign – if it is in black and white, I can tell myself – black and white, black and white. Force of law, force of law. Three words and three words. There’s a connection there that triggers a response, and … more often than not … I slow down. I remember that the sign isn’t just saying ‘this is a good idea, if you’d like to try it.’ – it is saying ‘this IS the LAW … follow it or ELSE you’re looking at $75.00 plus court costs, or a Saturday in traffic school.’

That day in December of 2003 I happened on an instance where my choice brought about a fairly quick consequence, but it’s not always that clear in other areas of our life. Some of our choices do present themselves in black and white – the options are that far apart – but in others, it’s not always that simple. We’ve heard others tell that life IS black and white. Life is lived in a universe where there is up or down, here or there, yes or no, and there’s never an allowance for the complications derived from living in a world that is experiencing both the pains of separation from God while at the same time groans towards a reconciliation that is in the making even as we speak. I would propose this morning that it is in SOME cases, an option to make a clear-cut decision, but not across the board. We’ve all been faced with situations where we’ve had to make distinctions between what would appear to be the lesser of two evils … or where the options we’ve had to struggle with have been so close together that the distinction really only comes into play internally – we long for the simplicity of being confronted with a choice as easy, as two-sided as observing the speed limit, but we are not promised that ease by Christ.

What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

There’s an ultimate choice to be made. There are principles at stake, and we can BASE our decision-making on the principles that will carry us through the process. We find that principle spelled out by Moses, at the end of his life, in Deuteronomy 30:19 & 20 -

19I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, 20 loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

Jerusalem will be celebrating 175 years of life next year, and this challenge still holds true today – it is the life we as a family of faith choose TODAY that will determine how we will live into the next 5, 10, 20, or 175 years as a people of God. Will we live an existence based on LIFE, and BLESSING or of death and curses? When our community thinks of us as members of this congregation, as a church, are we considered a blessing? Are we considered a place of grace, or a place of bitterness? Do people associate Jerusalem with conflict, or with healing, with exclusion or with a welcoming spirit?

I spoke at the beginning of both human and divine choices – we must base our choices on the choice that God made – to become flesh and to dwell among us as Jesus. Our decisions, our choices will all stem from the way we respond to God’s choice in Christ – to give God’s self for us.

Will we indeed choose life?

Let’s pray.

What’s In YOUR Temple?


Sunday, March 19h, 2006
Lent 3B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
John 2:13-22

13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. 15 Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18 The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

The Grizzly River Rampage was just being built when I went to work at Opryland USA, in Nashville, in March of 1981. It was one of the first water raft rides in the region when it opened later that spring. The mechanics of the ride were pretty extensive. There was a central lake, a couple of waterfalls, a tunnel under a mountain, and fake boulders along a particular part of the ride. The action of waves over a riverbed was produced by laying – and bolting in – logs every few feet along the river’s course. The point of the ride was to give folks the sensation of riding a white-water raft, with no guide and no danger of anyone suffering anything other than a good splashing at a couple of spots along the way.

It was my first job, and as a YOUNG 17-year old, I was put in charge of 14 Cuban refugees, serving as both their supervisor and interpreter. At the time, I hadn’t had much experience dealing with the Cuban Spanish dialect, which is full of colloquialisms and slang words that were totally foreign to me, so I spent as much time trying to figure out what they were saying as I did translating it into English for our boss.

We were assigned the task of cleaning up the riverbed and lakebed before the water was actually pumped in and the ride primed. With landscaping and the normal runoff from the surrounding area, the lakebed, which was only about 6 feet deep, was almost a foot deep in watery, smelly, gooey mud.

After some discussion, our supervisor decided that, rather than trying to get a front loader or a mini bulldozer into the lakebed, the best way to remove the mud was by hand, using shovels and a palette with boards closing in three sides, making it roughly into another shovel, one which was suspended by the construction crane already on site, lying almost flat, slightly elevated on the open end, to hold several shovelfuls of mud, which was then lifted out and dumped elsewhere, away from where it might find it’s way back into the ride course. It must’ve been late April at this point, shortly before the Amusement Park opened, and it was already hot and muggy.

Working in the mud and trying not to slip and to maneuver a shovel quickly enough to not lose what was mostly water to begin with, and keeping the palette from lying flat and emptying that watery mud made for some pretty frustrating moments, repeating, seemingly endlessly, the same motions, basically trying to get muddy water onto the palette at a faster pace than it was running off … had it not been for the sheer industriousness of those 14 men, all working together and THEIR realizing early in the process that it was going to be a matter of speed as much as of effectiveness, the job might not have been completed that day.

It did take pretty much all day, but by the end of it we were able to look at a lakebed that only had a thin film of muddy water on it, which would soon be drying into a dusty cover that could be swept up over the next day or two to make way for the ride to be made ready for the first guests.

The first people to ride the Grizzly River Rampage were company executives, who willingly offered to test the ride. What had not been completely worked out was the motion of a loaded raft in the running water, especially if one side of the raft were loaded down with pretty big men. A couple of the rafts caught up against the boulders, and the water rushing behind them swamped them, the channel was only about two feet deep, but the waves poured over the sides, and the riders ended up considerably wetter than they had anticipated.

****

In our passage this morning, Jesus is similarly engaged in clearing out the gooey, clinging refuse of first century Jewish religious worship. While living in Spain, and a couple of times in Chile, I was able to witness pilgrimages to shrines. In both places, there were people who were selling amulets, or pictures. There were mementos, cards, trinkets to commemorate the trip, and in some cases, for the pilgrims to deliver at the place of pilgrimage. I’m sure there was some money to be made by the folks selling the items, but it seemed to have been an acceptable part of the experience. There was perhaps an element of devotion, foreign as it may seem to our Baptist sentiments and views of the practice of faith.

In the case of the money changers and sacrificial animal sellers at the temple, there was apparently a somewhat less spiritual motive to their practice. Corruption had become the order of the day in the temple, thanks to the collusion between the religious leadership and the Roman government. Everyone got a piece of the liturgical pie. Everyone, that is, except the worshippers and pilgrims themselves.

I suppose you could say that they DID end up complying with the necessary requirements for ritual cleansing, but at a cost that made it a less and less frequent event – and in a system built on the need to meet those specific requirements in order to BE righteous enough to reach heaven, the fear of not being able to MEET those requirements was palpable. Judaism became a faith governed by fear and extortion rather than by faith and hope.

Jesus went on his housecleaning rampage as much to clear that fear from the minds and hearts of the pilgrims and worshippers as to actually get rid of the profiteers and racketeers who were taking advantage of them and reaping the benefits from it.

******

There’s a commercial where two people are shopping or eating somewhere, and they get to the point of paying and one reaches in their wallet or purse and offers to pay for it with their credit card from such-and-such bank, the other person makes some comment concerning the interest rate wiping them out. The comment triggers the crashing appearance of a horde of raging, smashing, pillaging and plundering marauders from the dark ages, Vikings or Visigoths, or some kind of barbarians, swinging axes and swords, mallets and balls on chains. They get right up to the person paying, who is completely unperturbed by their storming towards them, and he or she shrugs and says, “That’s okay; I’ve got a such-and-such card”. The entire army of yelling and screaming plunderers comes to a screeching halt and, throwing their arms up in disgust, they turn away and begin to ride or walk off. The announcer comes on and explains that the card has an incredibly low interest rate; the idea is that the interest won’t wipe you out like the mercenaries were getting ready to do, had you HAD a credit card from one of the OTHER companies. The final scene is usually one of those barbarians looking straight into the camera and growling, sounding something like a pirate, “What’s in YOUR Wallet?”

*****

When Jesus was asked about the temple, and what right or authority he had to have done what he did, his answer was, again, one that could be read as ambiguous were it not for John’s further explanation (something which John is known for, which sets him apart to some degree from the other Gospel writers). Jesus’ answer is a blatant foreshadowing of his death. What the people with whom he is talking take as a very concrete reference to the temple in which they are standing, John tells us in his expository paragraph,

“21 But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.”

That is a hallmark of Johns’, these expository passages, where he comes out and spells out for the reader what just happened. It is one of the things that set the Gospel of John apart from the other gospels.

Something else that sets it apart is the placement of the cleansing of the temple itself. In John, the scene is at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. He has just come from celebrating the wedding at Cana, where he performed his first miracle – the turning the water to wine.

In the synoptic gospels, the other three gospels, the cleansing of the temple takes place in the last week of Jesus’ life, right after the triumphal entry. Scholars have long debated a suitable explanation for that discrepancy. One school of thought, that would try to harmonize the gospels, in other words, merge them all into one continuous narrative, presents the possibility that there were actually two occasions on which Jesus cleansed the Temple. While it IS possible, each gospel only records it as having happened once during Jesus’ ministry. So the question becomes one surrounding the intent of the gospel writer. What was the writer trying to communicate? Was it chronology or theology? Was it more important to tell WHERE Jesus was WHEN or WHO Jesus was?

I would suggest to you that it was the second purpose that far outweighed the first in the minds of the writers of the gospels. It is much more important to communicate WHO Christ is than WHEN Christ was. The gospel word for us today is that, WHENEVER Christ WAS, Christ still IS WHO he is, our Lord, Master and Savior.

Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 6 that our bodies …

“Are a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.”

******

As we have been noting over the last couple of weeks, we are in the season of Lent, marking the approaching celebration of Easter, but going through the observance of Holy Week, the passion, crucifixion, death and resurrection of Christ. As the gospel writers – ALL the gospel writers – have written, Jesus cleansed the temple in Jerusalem. And in doing that, he redefined what the temple was. In John it is spelled out – “he was speaking of the temple of his body”. If we are to take our cue from Paul, then we need to make the jump from studying this as an historical event that Jesus took part in, to a spiritual event in which we are co-participants with Christ. He is in the process of cleansing OUR temple, MY temple. That is what being a disciple, a follower of Christ, means. Christ finds us cluttered, noisy with the incessant braying of the animals within us and the money changers who are only in it for themselves. His is indeed a righteous anger in light of what we have done, through our brokenness, to the temples that he intended us to be.

The Gospel of Grace is that he invites us to help in the cleansing. It is a free choice we make to open the doors of our innermost selves and let all the garbage out, in fact, we can help with the broom. We’ve all heard the joke – “I gave it up for Lent” – but behind the jest is a genuine desire to sacrifice and reflect on that intention and act of submitting to the Lordship of Jesus Christ – and what we are to be in the process of giving up is what Paul calls ‘die to self’ – we are giving up our brokenness and trading our sorrows for the joy of the Lord.

The question for us today, at Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton, is this: What’s in YOUR temple?

Is it envy? Is it unwillingness to forgive? Is it bitterness? Is it gossip? Is it gluttony? Is it racism? Or is it something darker, something smellier, something you dare not name in private, much less in public? Something that, as fast as you try to shovel it out, it always seems to leak back in – sometimes by drops, and sometimes gushing.

I won’t ask you to name it. I am responsible to name those for myself in front of God. We are each responsible for that act. And it is in the act of naming them that we are – HOPEFULLY – submitting them to Christ’s cleansing action. With some, like the doves, he may just need to wave his hand. Others may take some kicking and shoving to move out.

What’s in YOUR temple?

Let’s pray.

Profit, Gain, and Forfeit


Sunday, March 12th, 2006
Lent 2B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Mark 8:27-38

27 Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” 28 And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” 29 He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” 30 And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. 31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” 34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

He went into the war zone intentionally, purposefully, fulfilling what God had called him to do: to build bridges of peace in the midst of chaos. He and his team members knew the risks. They knew they would be stepping into harms’ way, but what they also knew was that, whatever else they were going to be about, they were going in the name of Christ to offer – and hopefully bring about – peace in the only way that it will really stick – one person, one family, one neighborhood at a time.

They all understood that it was not so much WHO they were up against as it was WHAT they were up against – a lifetime, for some, of terror and violence, of giving and taking death and destruction, of being indoctrinated with a view of the world and of the rest of humanity as being unalterably corrupted, unfailingly cruel, and unwaveringly false in deed versus word. There was little or no room to consider that others might be speaking truth, coming in humble gentleness and humility to share a common bond, because there was – and is – no point of commonality for those who are living and breathing their isolating and individual worlds of hatred and pain.

*****

We find Christ in this morning’s text, having just fed another, second multitude, this time of FOUR thousand, walking along the road to the villages in the area of Caesarea Philippi, engaging his disciples in THE pivotal conversation of the gospel of Mark.

The pivot, defined as a crucial person or thing that is essential to the success or effectiveness of something, is what we find in Peter’s confession found at the end of verse 29. The gospel according to Mark has been leading up to this confession, and it is from this confession forward that the story takes its energy and focus to the inevitable conclusion.

We’ve read, or heard, the story before – Jesus asks the disciples who everyone ELSE says that he is, and after they give him the answers they’ve heard – John, Elijah, or an unnamed prophet in the tradition of the big names from Israel’s past – Jesus turns the question into a personal one – the use of the personal pronoun ‘you’ is emphatic in the question – “who do YOU say that I am?” And from the mouth of Peter we hear the pivot – “You are the Messiah” in Aramaic, “the Christ” in Greek, the word might be different, depending on your translation, the meaning is the same.

Hundreds, if not thousands of books have been written about this confession, the subtlety of meanings, the layers of meanings, the gloriousness of it, the simplicity of it, the faith it required, the courage it demanded, the truth that was in it … there is no shortage of wordage when it comes to dissecting scripture, or the theology underlying it.

Personally, right now in my life, I take the confession as a given. What is continually intriguing to me is the swiftness with which Peter goes from proclaiming the single greatest truth of the Gospel to being called Satan by the very man he recognized AS the Christ.

You see, right after the confession of Peter, Mark tells that Jesus first told them to tell no one about him, again, that “hidden Messiah” we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, and THEN he began to tell the disciples about how he, Jesus, would have to undergo great suffering, be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed.

Peter, who would understandably be a little upset at being informed that his Messiah, his King from the line of David, the anointed one who had come to save ISRAEL, to say nothing of the rest of the world, from the hated oppressor, ROME, takes Jesus aside and starts to correct him – clarifying for Jesus what it is he is supposed to be about to do – conquer, of course – and literally five verses after declaring Christ the Messiah, Peter gets rebuked and called Satan by his very same Messiah, for setting his mind on human things, not divine things.

Jesus then goes on to explain what that distinction is about, sort of.

“If anyone wants to be my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?”

*****

Another man died this week, and the news of his death coincided with the news of the first man’s death.

This man had at one point in his life achieved what some would consider the pinnacle of power – he was president of his country. He presided over one of the most horrific civil wars in an area already known for its sanguine history. Pictures from internment camps taken in 1994 in Serbia could just as easily have been taken in Poland in 1945, during the liberation of the Nazi death camps.

This man had gained as much power as he was going to achieve, in earthly terms, and he made it to that point using every means at his disposal.

Niccolo Machiavelli, an Italian philosopher and politician, who lived in the 15th century, wrote “The Prince”, a short pamphlet in an effort to gain influence with the ruling family of Florence. In it, the main character does anything and everything TO gain power – clever trickery, amoral methods, placing expediency over everything else in order to achieve his goal of ultimate power.

Waking up to the news of these two deaths yesterday couldn’t have better juxtaposed the point of what Jesus is talking about in the text – Tom Fox on the one hand, and Slobodan Milosevic on the other.

So how could the deaths of two men whom we’ve never met possibly affect our lives here, at Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

On one level, granted, they do not affect us. We knew neither of them personally, we only knew of them at all through what news we heard or saw or read over the last few years or months.

How can we be expected to be touched by their passing?

As with the death of any other person, we would first do well to remember both of these individuals’ families – however radically different environments they might well be in at this moment, they have both suffered loss.

But on another level, we would also do well to take heed of the lives of these two men. Which of the two bears the likeness of Christ more clearly? Which would we be more inclined to admire and model our lives after, and WHY? It might be an easy question to answer, or it might not. Which side do we fall on?

John F. Kennedy said, in reference to the space program, ‘we do the thing not because it is easy but because it is hard’. Sometimes as Christians, we find ourselves doing the easy thing. Coming to church on Sunday morning is a relatively easy thing to do. Sometimes we find ourselves compelled to travel thousands of miles away to a place we’ve never been, to a people we’ve never met, and try to communicate the gospel, by whatever means we can. That might be a hard thing to do. Some of us find the harder thing to do to be walking out the back doors of our sanctuary and live as if what we practice in here means something to the rest of our lives. We are not in an overtly hostile environment. Our lives are not in danger, at least our physical lives. But ultimately that was not what Christ was concerned about – what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? The New Living translation reads “How do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?” it is the transcendent that Christ is talking about – not only the life we have while we are here on earth, but beyond.

So the question for us this morning is this: Are we willing to die for Jesus, if dying means death to self? That is, after all, who we would be up against if we were to surrender fully to the Lordship of Christ. We sing about it and proclaim it and read about it. But when it comes down to it, do we LIVE it?

Let’s pray.

About Suffering …


Sunday, March 5th, 2006
Lent 1B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
1 Peter 3:13-18

13 Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? 14 But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, 15 but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; 16 yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. 17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil. 18 For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.

A husband and 13 year old daughter are killed in a terrible car accident. Fourteen years later, in a seminar with graduate students, the widow, a professor of pastoral counseling, is asked by one of the students how long it took her to get over it. Her answer in the seminar room was ‘a long time’. Afterwards, walking down the hall with a fellow professor, she turned to her colleague and asked if she should tell the truth; that you never get over something like that.

A Minister shares her most difficult wedding experience: to perform the wedding of a parishioner who, at the age of 62, was getting married for the first time. The woman had headed the search committee that had called the minister to pastor their congregation, and had become a trusted friend. Barely a week before the wedding, the bride to be was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and given weeks to live. She and her husband-to-be insisted that NO ONE know of the diagnosis. They wanted the joy of the wedding celebration to be an undiluted, treasured memory.

A different pastor shares with another the experience of walking through the valley of the shadow of death with a couple who lost their 2 month old daughter to an unexplained illness, after having been trying to have children for over a decade. He tells of trying to comfort the sobbing mother and to convince her to let go of her daughter’s body in the emergency room. The story opened a window to sharing his own grief experience of walking through his and his wife’s three miscarriages, and of his nearly losing his wife after their oldest child, a son, was born. The retelling of the story is … smooth, but not without emotional weight. It stuns his listener, a new pastor just starting out in ministry.

Can we come up with an objective, comprehensive definition of suffering? Probably not.

Is everyone’s suffering the same? No.

Does everyone suffer over the same experiences? No.

What does it mean to suffer? You tell me.

The fact of the matter is, insofar as there are, say, somewhere around fifty people in this sanctuary today, there are at least that many different ways in which we would all deal with suffering. There is no established pattern, there are ELEMENTS of grief that we might each experience, but not in the same sequence, nor with the same frequency, nor with the same intensity.

The suffering Peter is speaking of in the passage this morning is in the same ballpark, but coming from a different source. If it is true that we all experience pain and suffering, and experience it differently, it is also true that those things that CAUSE us to suffer differ from person to person.

Have you ever been accused of something you did not do, and been held responsible for it in spite of your protestations?

Except for a couple of times as a young boy, being unable to look INNOCENT of something that I actually did NOT do, and getting punished for it, I can tell you that I don’t believe I have ever had that experience. So right off the bat, I’m a little behind the curve.

That was something early Christ-followers were easily susceptible to. Being the ‘new religion on the block’, Christians were prone to being stereotyped and misrepresented, and maligned and flat out lied about on a regular basis.

What Peter makes a point of noting here is that, first of all, it is to be expected, this suffering. Not in so many words, perhaps, but there is a simple presupposition that, as Christians, we can expect to suffer, just like anyone and everyone else in the world. Nowhere does Christ in the Gospels, or Paul in his epistles, or any of the other new testament writers, for that matter, tell us that in following Christ we will acquire a ‘get out of jail’ card when it comes to going through life and miss the hard parts.

It is in our suffering, especially, as we read in this passage, if it is because of our faith, that we gain a sense of what Christ lived through on our behalf. The radical – the ROOT – difference, of course, is that his suffering was by choice, willingly taken on for our sake, and ours is a fact based on our nature as part of a … fallen nature.

The first witness of the Christian church was not through best selling books, or power worship anthems, or power point presentations, or big-budget movies on which they hung their message. The first witness of the followers of Christ was through their lifestyles. Apparently, at that time and in that place, there was enough of a change between the way they lived before they decided to follow Christ and afterwards that people sat up and took notice. Their actions spoke louder than any words they might have used.

Peter exhorts them and us to go beyond words, though. There are going to be times when the noticing will turn to curiosity, and the curiosity will turn into inquiry, and the inquiry will turn into conversation. And that is where we can so often fall short.

A reporter for ABC News commented that people are perfectly willing to share the deepest secrets of their intimate lives with absolute strangers, but completely shut down when it comes to talking about their faith.

Why is that?

Peter urges us to be prepared to make our defense to anyone who demands (or asks) from you an accounting for the hope that is in you – in other words, explain why it is that you live the way you do, treat others the way you do, speak to and of others the way you do. Could we do that? Maybe the question would be more revealing if we were to ask, could we do that COMFORTABLY? Or Could we do that in such a way that we didn’t come across as insincere, without using church language, without painting an unrealistic picture of what it is like to follow Christ as a day-in-day-out Christian, rather than a Sunday-only Christian.

What faith in Christ has always been about, true faith, genuine faith, transforming faith, has been about pointing in the same direction – hopefully more often than not – Eugene Petersen entitled one of his books in that way – A Long Obedience In The Same Direction. We truly are to act as guideposts – not only to others, but to ourselves as well. Sometimes, even though we may be DOING the right things, we still have to stop and think a minute about WHY we are doing them, and put that into words. We are, after all, social and communicative creatures. We not only communicate through actions, but through the word – spoken or written.

The word for ‘defense’ in verse 15 is apologia. It is where we get our word ‘apology’, of course, but it is only distantly related to the connotation the contemporary word has acquired. In the first century, the word apologia meant a defense provided in a legal setting – in court, in fact. It was a carefully and intentionally crafted statement or series of statements that explain the reason and purpose of something. In this case, faith in Christ.

The reason for our faith in Christ is grounded not ONLY in his teachings, in the wisdom and gentleness from the sermon on the mount, in the head-on collisions he had with the Pharisees and Sadducees in and around the temple and over the issue of the Sabbath laws, not ONLY in the witness of his miracles and healings, but ultimately, in his sacrifice, in his death, burial, and resurrection.

And it is in that knowledge that we began a walk this past Wednesday through the forty days of Lent. During this season of the year we set aside a little more than a tenth of our year to contemplate that aspect of the Gospel that most intersects with us on a daily basis. What it means to follow Christ. Does it make a whole lot of difference in the way I act, in the way I talk, in the way I think, to call myself a Christian, or does it not really seem to have a significant impact on what I would be doing otherwise?

If I were removed from the northern neck, and plopped down in the middle of, say, Brisbane, Australia, would something about my behavior clue others into the fact that I am a Christ-follower? I wouldn’t look drastically different from anyone else, and though I might speak with a noticeable accent, my words wouldn’t be radically different from those that would be used regularly by the locals. If I were to go through the regular daily activities of living – going to the grocery store, getting gas, going to the post office … how would people know I was a follower of Christ?

It is that thought that compels us as Christians to engage the world, not withdraw from it, to invite the conversation, to open ourselves to others’ stories, to gain an audience for our own.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means we can only do so much by lifestyle evangelism. People may know we come here, or are associated with Jerusalem, or are part of the Greater Jerusalem Community, but unless we have a way to share with them WHY we are like we are, why we do the things we do, WHY we participate in community fundraisers and meal deliveries, and Lenten services, and sunrise services, and offer a food pantry, and share in the meals on wheels program, it is not JUST because we are good neighbors, it is because we are God’s children and we recognize that we are not the ONLY ones who ARE God’s children. We are part of the inbreaking Kingdom of God, and as part of that, we welcome opportunities to gather with other members of the Kingdom and celebrate, observe, and usher in that Kingdom.

We will have that opportunity this evening as we host the first community Lenten service here at 7 PM, and over the next five Sundays, followed by the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services.

These are chances we have to be reminded of that wideness of God’s mercy that we sing about, to see ‘all the little children of the world’ the kids sing about, and to remember that Christ died for us all.

Let’s pray.

I Will Not Leave You


Sunday, February 26th, 2006
Epiphany/Ordinary 8B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
2 Kings 2:1-14

1 Now when the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. 2 Elijah said to Elisha, “Stay here; for the Lord has sent me as far as Bethel.” But Elisha said, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So they went down to Bethel. 3 The company of prophets who were in Bethel came out to Elisha, and said to him, “Do you know that today the Lord will take your master away from you?” And he said, “Yes, I know; keep silent.” 4 Elijah said to him, “Elisha, stay here; for the Lord has sent me to Jericho.” But he said, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So they came to Jericho. 5 The company of prophets who were at Jericho drew near to Elisha, and said to him, “Do you know that today the Lord will take your master away from you?” And he answered, “Yes, I know; be silent.” 6 Then Elijah said to him, “Stay here; for the Lord has sent me to the Jordan.” But he said, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So the two of them went on. 7 Fifty men of the company of prophets also went, and stood at some distance from them, as they both were standing by the Jordan. 8 Then Elijah took his mantle and rolled it up, and struck the water; the water was parted to the one side and to the other, until the two of them crossed on dry ground.

9 When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you.” Elisha said, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.” 10 He responded, “You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not.” 11 As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven. 12 Elisha kept watching and crying out, “Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces. 13 He picked up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. 14 He took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, saying, “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” When he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha went over.

“Aren’t you excited about your trip?”

“What trip?”

“The one in April – to see your brother in Chile.”

“Oh (pause) THAT trip … yes, I suppose I am, but I haven’t given myself permission to think about it much, there’s too much other stuff to do between now and then.”

The conversation took place on Friday in Towson, after Lucy Armetta’s funeral. It was odd in a startling way. Though I’ve been aware of the trip for several months now, it’s been on a back burner pretty much the whole time it’s been in the works.

(insert – from The Princess Bride, Prince Humperdink talking to Tyrone (the six-fingered man) “… you know how much I love watching you work, but I’ve got my country’s 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it, I’m swamped!”) -- if you haven’t seen the movie, I STRONGLY encourage you to rent it, or borrow it from us.

But, similarly, the daily responsibilities of serving you and the Latino Community have kept the trip on that back burner, and rightfully so.

What was startling about the conversation, I suppose, was that, first, it was on someone else’s mind, and second, that it WASN’T on mine. The last time I traveled to Chile, 15 years ago, it was the biggest thing on my mind for the full year prior to my departure.

The purpose of the trip, to perform my brother’s and his fiancée’s wedding ceremony, is in some ways just as significant as attending my parents’ last National Baptist Convention of Chile meeting before they retired from active missionary service, in some ways more so.

The trip 15 years ago was mostly a look back, over the previous 27 years. This trip is a look forward, towards a new life together for two people who found each other again after nearly two decades apart.

My Father sent me the wedding ceremony (in Spanish) that he used during his time in Chile. He performed several weddings over the years, and reading over it after I opened the envelope on Thursday, I could hear his voice in my head speaking the words.

What we find in the text this morning are words that echo, on one level, sentiments similar to those we hear in a wedding ceremony. Elijah and Elisha, Senior and Junior, so to speak, are walking through the story of succession whereby the mantle of authority that rested on Elijah’s shoulders ends up on Elisha’s. The story is marked by three’s. Just a few verses earlier, in the first chapter of 2nd Kings, we see Elijah praying for – and receiving – fire from heaven to destroy 100 soldiers sent by King Ahazia – two sets of fifty, and the third set is led by a captain who pleads with Elijah to come with him to answer the King’s request, and Elijah is told by an angel to go with THAT man, and that company of soldiers, to deliver God’s message – of judgment – to the King.

The second set of Three’s is here, in our passage. Did you hear it in the reading? Three times Elijah tells Elisha to wait for him while he goes somewhere – to Bethel, Jericho, and the Jordan River. Each time, Elisha’s answer is the same -- “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.”

The story is a powerful portrayal of the bond between a father and son, a master and student, a mentor and his disciple … the faithfulness – and even stubbornness – with which Elisha doggedly sticks by Elijah, speaks to a love and a commitment to remain with the beloved – even knowing of the impending separation.
Another ‘three’ we find is in the men who come out to meet Elijah and Elisha as they approach each place – it bears noting that there is not only geographic significance to the places mentioned, but there is also spiritual significance as well – in light of the fact that the point of the story is prophetic succession – the three places, Bethel, Jericho, and the Jordan, were centers of learning – schools, as it were, for prophets … for the spiritual and religious leaders of the day. In the act of going to each of the schooling places, Elijah is setting the stage, in a way, for Elisha, his successor, to take his place. And the men with whom they come in contact KNOW what is going on. They know what is getting ready to happen … apparently someone had leaked the news that Elijah was getting ready to be … translated … is the term the commentary used. He was going to go from earth to heaven and ‘not taste death’, and it seems to have been common knowledge!

I can just picture a few of them sidling up to Elisha a few minutes after he and Elijah have arrived, and asking him out of the sides of their mouths, “Don’t you KNOW he’s going to be taken from you today??” Elisha’s answer is, of course, another affirmation of loyalty … and on repetition, I think, acceptance.

The “translation” itself is bookended by a picture of Moses. It is a way of connecting Elijah to Moses. A way of telling the people of Israel “this man, this prophet, is important in the same way that Moses was important”.

After having visited the three schools, as they are walking away, they come to the River Jordan. Elijah takes off his Mantle, rolls it up, and strikes the water. What happens? The water separates. The two walk through without getting wet. Hmmm … where have we read that before? J

The last conversation Elijah and Elisha have is a final request for wisdom; the rising pupil stepping into his master’s shoes. And the event happens. This ‘translation’ – the chariot of fire that separates the two men, and Elijah gets carried up, up into heaven.

The picture of the grief of Elisha in the wake of Elijah’s departure rings true to anyone who has lost someone deeply admired and loved.

“He grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces”

This past week has been full of both unexpected as well as expected separations due to death. The extended Schools family suffered the loss of three of their own.

As humans, we live in the knowledge of our own mortality. Sometimes events conspire to make us especially aware of it, as they did this last week. Most of the time, the death of an older sibling or family member is, whether expected or not, understandable. And though we may be shocked by its suddenness, we can wrap our brains around the idea that there is a sequence of events that take place in our lives, and the final event that takes place here on earth is death. That understanding, that foreknowledge, may or may not ease the pain of the loss. Sometimes relief overpowers the sorrow, sometimes not.

Even knowing in advance that the separation was going to happen, even expecting it, part of Elisha still fought against the knowledge, still mourned the loss of his friend and mentor to the point of causing him to ask “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?!” and to tear his clothes in two, just as he probably felt his soul had been torn in two when Elijah was taken.

After that, we have a beautiful scene of moving on.

Before the translation, before Elijah is taken, the statement made by the parting of the waters of the Jordan is to make the connection with Moses. But in repeating the parting of the water after the parting of his master, Elisha is portraying for us what it means to move ahead, to move into the new existence, the new reality without Elijah to guide him. The waters of the Jordan are just as surely separating the time Elisha had WITH Elijah from the time he would have WITHOUT Elijah, just as they were separating from each other, if only temporarily, to let him pass between them.

The trip in April will be a relatively quick one – seven days. I’ll be leaving on a Wednesday evening and returning the following Wednesday morning. In that space of time, my family and I, along with Marianela’s family (Mane for short), will be marking a starting point, a turning point, a crossing point as well – in both Jimmy’s and Mane’s lives, where they will be stepping into a future – a new reality in which they move forward together.


“As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.”

It is what they will be telling each other, in front of God, family and friends, witnesses of a joint commitment – a promise and a vow that reflects the promise made to us by Christ himself, before HE ascended, the words are recorded at the end of the Gospel according to Matthew, shortly before HIS ascension:

‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’

Let’s pray.

All Things


Sunday, February 5th, 2006
Epiphany/Ordinary 5B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
1 Corinthians 9:16-23

16 If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel! 17 For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. 18 What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel. 19 For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. 20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. 21 To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. 23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.

During the Revolutionary War, both the Loyalist and the Revolutionaries offered freedom to slaves who fought for their side. In the movie ‘The Patriot’, Mel Gibson’s character, Benjamin Martin, forms and leads a militia that includes a slave who has been assigned to that duty by his owner. As the movie progresses, we hear the slave mention how much longer he has to serve before he has earned his freedom. As that time draws nearer, so does the climax of the movie. At last, the big battle looms, and the slave is still with the militia. One of the other men in the platoon comments to him that his time is up – he’s finished paying off his freedom, he’s free to go.

The slave, Occam, played by Jay Arlen Jones, answers “I know. I’m here of my own accord now.”

It is a small but significant moment. A line was drawn in his conscience, and in crossing it, Occam went from being a slave to being a truly free man.

What is the difference between doing something which you are obligated to do and doing that same thing out of your own volition, by your own choice – your own free will?

Paul is exploring that question in the beginning of today’s passage. He’s trying to explain to the church in Corinth why it is that he does what he does – why he travels around from city to city preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, usually risking rough treatment (to put it mildly) on the part of the Jews to whom he always went first, as well as from the gentiles, to whom he went next. Why he does it for no monetary compensation and what it is that compels him to keep on keeping on.

Of course, he answers his own question: What is his reward? “Just this: so that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights IN the gospel.”

Paul is in the middle of trying to get it through the heads of the folks at the church in Corinth just what it means to be a follower of Christ. In a single word, I suppose, it could be summarized as ‘submission’, a turning over of yourself, mind, body and spirit, to the will of God, releasing the hold you have on your own imagined control over your life and trusting God to work in and through you.

Yesterday, after our presentation at the RASnet conference, we stayed around and had an opportunity to talk to both a few of the people who attended as well as some of the other presenters. In the course of a couple of the conversations, Leslie used a phrase to describe our ministry to the Latino community on the Neck: “We’re FRAUDS, we don’t know what we’re doing! We’re making it up as we go along!”

I’ve heard her say that lots of times. I’ve even said it a couple of times myself. On one level it makes me cringe to hear it, but on another level I’m thinking “that really IS the truth!”

What is it that makes me uncomfortable? It’s not that we’re entirely clueless about doing this ministry. We come to it with experience and with heart, but I live in a culture that values competence, and competence is achieved through preparation, and preparation is achieved through dedication and hard work, which usually means studies, at least in ministerial circles. It all ends up providing you with a deep sense of accomplishment, in some cases, a really GOOD, DEEP sense of accomplishment, like “really proud of yourself” good and deep.

That’s not a bad thing. Not necessarily. There’s nothing wrong in enjoying your accomplishments.

The trouble arises when what you’re dealing with is the eternal and the divine.

It is easy – terribly easy – after having a good day – say the sermon comes out better than it seemed as it was being prepared, or the Bible Study generated some of the best discussion you’ve heard in a long time, or that visit in that home turned from a quick stop-in to a long, meandering, deep conversation that touched on the whole life of a person – one of those conversations you don’t get to experience too often in this life. It’s scary how easy it can be at the end of the day to lay down in bed and think ‘I did well today’.

Do you see the problem? I did well today.

Yes, there is DEFINITELY an element of preparedness that goes into living a Christian life, an element of intentionality in rising each morning … set in ‘receive’ mode, as it were, developing a sensitivity to the leadership of the Holy Spirit – wherever it may take you – and being willing to DO or GO wherever he takes you.

But it is, ultimately, GOD who is doing the work.

The prayer attributed to St. Francis – The Peace Prayer – gets to the heart of that calling – the sense of being used by the master.

"O Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace!
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is discord, harmony.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sorrow, joy.

Oh Divine Master, grant that I may not
so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life."

The question before us today is, how much do we adhere to what Paul is describing that HE did and St. Francis put into the words of his prayer in response to what God has done for us?

Are we following this ‘way of Jesus’ solely in order to reap the benefit of the afterlife? To avoid the ‘lake of fire’ and eternal damnation? What is our primary motivator?

As you know, I spend a considerable amount of time taking people places, through the RBA Hispanic Ministry, whether it is to Doctor’s appointments, WIC appointments, Court appointments, or to or from the bus station or airport. I also spend time with folks in the ER, both in the role of chaplain as well as interpreter. Not a trip goes by, not a visit goes by, where I am not offered cash for the time or distance covered. The Latino community has become accustomed to having to pay for incidental services – usually charged by someone either within their own ranks or a local who has some connection to them.

To be able to help, to be able to fill that gap, and to do it in the name of and for the love of Christ and to have an opportunity to TELL them that THAT is why I am doing it – and to refuse their offer of payment – is completely freeing. It is, for me a direct reflection of what sharing the gospel should be, and it draws us closer together. It is an opening to relationship and conversation.

I explain why I am doing it and ask not for payment, but for friendship – and for responsibility. I was talking to Cecilia Simmons this morning, and she was talking about coming up against the same thing. Her request is for whomever she helps to respond responsibly with what they have been entrusted.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

How are we going to respond to what God has entrusted us with?

Maybe we should stop and consider just what it is that we’ve been entrusted with.

Paul refers to it later, in what we call his second letter to the same Corinthian church, chapter 4 and verse 7, as a treasure in jars of clay – earthen vessels. The treasure is the Glory – the Love of God in the face of Christ.

We, the folks sitting in this room, and millions of others sitting in similar settings all over the world, have been entrusted to GO to the rest of the world with the love of God in Christ. That is both empowering and overwhelming.

I’m not always up to the task. I’m not always ‘in form’. In fact, I’m SO not in form that whenever it DOES happen, I realize pretty quickly that it’s not me folks are seeing, but rather Christ in me. And the ‘me’ in that sentence really IS a clay jar … flawed, imperfect, weak in places, clunky in others, but all in all, very mortal.

THAT part of me, when I’m honest with myself, is perfectly comfortable saying “I’m a fraud; I DON’T know what I’m doing. But I go one step further and complete the thought – “because it’s not ME who’s doing it, but Christ in me”. I couldn’t have come up with the idea that I would be Pastoring Jerusalem Baptist Church, serving as an associational missionary to the Latino Community, going to school and helping raise three kids … that has been God’s doing. And if you ever hear me take any of the credit for that, please kick me gently.

My point is this: We are all here by God’s grace. Paul did what he did by the grace of God. We draw our very breath by the grace of God, and it is for us to rely on that grace to respond to his love by loving and caring for our community – our fellow man – whatever their ethnic background, whatever their cultural background, whatever their faith background. Paul spoke to that directly – to the Jew he became a Jew, to those under the law he became as one under the law, to the gentile he became a gentile, to the weak he became weak – I think he’d probably qualify that last one and say that would be a given. But he did this: he met people where they were, WHEREVER they were – and introduced them to Christ.

Can we do the same thing? Can we introduce ANYONE to Christ? Can we, like Paul, be all things to all people? Daniel Carro, the convener of the multicultural catalyst network where we spoke yesterday morning, described the stages of Cross-cultural skill:

Unconscious incompetence, (don’t know, don’t care) – at this level, one is not even aware of differences in culture and frankly, it is not a matter of concern. The approach is one characterized by the phrase, “if you don’t like it, tough”. One is only concerned with one’s OWN understanding in any given situation. There’s only ONE way to see or understand something.

Conscious incompetence, (know, don’t care) – at this level, one is aware of the cultural differences one encounters, but is not interested in bridging them. It is a socio-centric view, where one’s own culture is viewed as the only viable, important, and worthy culture.

Conscious competence, (know, care) -- at this level, one is aware of those differences, and is working to overcome them – in other words, one understands that there is a different point of view, a different understanding, and is trying to understand it in order to connect with the other person.

Unconscious competence, (don’t know, care MORE) – this stage is marked by an almost-instinctive awareness of the other’s culture – there is a sensitivity to the other’s point of view that automatically triggers an unconscious response where one finds those points in common with the other culture, or in their absence, manages to understand and connect with the other person in a very natural, uncontrived way.

Though the terminology applies to cultures, it can just as well apply to points of faith. How much do we relate with those who have no faith, or who have wandered from faith? Can we identify with that struggle for meaning, for self-understanding, for identity, or maybe the question is, can we admit to that struggle ourselves? Can we put ourselves in someone else’s shoes instinctively, intentionally, purposefully, in order to reach them in a way they will understand?

Isn’t that what God did for us, in Christ?

Let’s pray.

The Mind of God


Sunday, January 22nd, 2006
Epiphany/Ordinary 3B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Jonah 3:1-10

1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2 “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” 3 So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. 6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8 Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. 9 Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.” 10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

What is the single most astonishing aspect of the story of Jonah?

Ask any self-respecting 6-year old what the most amazing part of the story is and I would bet you a dime to a donut that he or she would say “The Whale!!”, or if they have read up on their Hebrew, “The Big Fish!”

There are several distinguishing features to the story, coming at it from a purely literary standpoint.

If you read through the other books of either the Major or Minor Prophets you find long passages – whole sections of the books that are written in verse – literally poems or song lyrics that are oracles against Israel or against the opposing or occupying nation. In Jonah, except for the prayer he speaks from the belly of the fish, we find an unbroken prose narrative – more like a modern-day short story than a poem – that tells the story from beginning to end – in chronological order, with little if any poetry.

As for Jonah himself, he is never called ‘the Prophet Jonah’ – ANYWHERE in the story. You know the story. In the first two verses of chapter one, we read where God tells Jonah to “go immediately to Nineveh and cry out against it”.

So what does Jonah do?

Picture this: Jonah is in Israel, on the southeastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea.

The ruins of ancient Nineveh are in what is today Iraq. In fact, they are across the river from a city that has frequently been mentioned in the news – Mosul. Anyway, Nineveh was across the river from present-day Mosul. Which if we had a map up here you could see is to the north east of Israel, where Jonah received the message.

Jonah, unlike the other prophets we read about, finds the nearest port, Joppa, and immediately books passage – not to Nineveh, which would in fact be an overland route, but in the OPPOSITE direction. In fact, as FAR in the opposite direction as he can go – a couple of the places with names similar to the word we read as Tarshish are in southern Turkey or as far away as Spain – the other edge of the known world at the time. Either way you look at it, Jonah wasn’t interested in following God’s orders.

Makes you wonder what it was about the assignment that Jonah didn’t like.

God does not sit back and watch Jonah run. Or rather, Jonah tries to run, and God chases after him. God sends a storm to stop the ship in its tracks. It scares the sailors so bad that they turn away from the gods they had worshipped up until that point and turned to God. Even so, the storm doesn’t abate. Meanwhile, Jonah is down in his cabin sleeping through the storm of the century. The sailors run down and get him, and he confesses that the only way they are going to get rid of the storm is to get rid of HIM. He KNOWS he’s the reason FOR the storm in the first place.

It is, after all, a slightly implausible story. And it gets stranger.

Jonah goes overboard and lands in the belly of a big fish. He then spends three days and three nights, according to the text, in that belly, and it is from there that he recites a prayer of thanksgiving to God that could have been pulled directly out of Psalms.

Have you ever watched a couple exchange sweet nothings to the point of nausea? You know the kind, where they are sickly sweet to each other, and all you can do is roll your eyes and work at holding your lunch down? Jonah’s is such a beautiful prayer that the fish just can’t stand it, and literally VOMITS him out onto the beach – the same shore that he left from just a few days earlier.

HERE is where we pick up the story this morning. Notice the numerical qualifier in the sentence: ‘word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time’. THIS time, Jonah obeyed. Reluctantly, yes, but he DID obey. Picture it. Jonah is a hayseed prophet going to a major metropolitan city, a center of commerce, culture, and military power, and God tells him “I’ll tell you what to say.” Jonah doesn’t get any talking points to review and memorize on his trip TO Nineveh. He doesn’t have an opportunity to craft the message, to work out the wording, the inflections, the pauses. He’s just told to GO.

So he does.

He gets to Nineveh, and the text describes it as a huge megalopolis. Last year when we visited Mexico City, there was no single place where you could be and take in the whole city. There’s a big telecommunications tower in the middle of the city, right next to the Zócalo, the central plaza, and it’s pretty tall, but I’m certain that even from the observation platform near the top, you still wouldn’t be able to view the whole of Mexico City – if for no other reason than the smog that is produced by the cars, taxis, trucks and buses that the 18 million or so inhabitants drive and ride around in. Nineveh is described in similar terms.

‘An exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across.’

Modern archeology is a wonderful thing. Surveyors and archeologists are able to reconstruct and bring to life all kinds of places from history. They have, in the last 30 years or so, excavated at least part of Tell Nabi Yunus – the Muslim name for the site – ‘Ruin of the Prophet Yunus - Jonah’ – you see, Jonah is part of Muslim tradition as well – and the whole city is about 3 miles long, with a perimeter wall about 8 miles around.

Why do you think God would describe it as an exceedingly large city that would take three days to cross if it is only 3 miles across? There are a couple of alternate explanations.

One is that the ‘city’ referred to is actually the equivalent of the ‘greater metropolitan area, including suburbs and the surrounding counties’ – which comes out to about a 60 mile circumference, which would be about right for a three day trip by foot.

The other alternative is that cities in the ancient middle east – well, even in the MODERN middle east, for that matter, tend to have incredibly concentrated centers of population – houses jam packed together, with tiny alleys in the place of streets, that twist and turn and zig and zag, making the prospect of getting through them a true challenge to KEEP it to a three day trek.

The other understanding is wholly different: that the exceedingly large city is more a reflection of two things – the success of Jonah’s efforts and the breadth of God’s mercy, than of the actual physical dimensions of the place.

Jonah shows up at the city not knowing the local language, not REALLY wanting to be there, and with a short and simple message: “Forty Days and counting until Nineveh crumbles!”

Here is a Jewish prophet proclaiming a message in Hebrew to the entire population of a city that hardly needs to take notice of his entire country. And what kind of success does he have? Disproportionate.

‘The people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.’

And this repentance – it didn’t stop with the grass roots population – word got around, and it extended up to the king himself. When HE heard, he took off his royal robes, put on sackcloth, and covered himself with ashes. And he had a proclamation made – that everyone and everyTHING in Nineveh would express repentance – picture animals wearing sackcloth and dusted with ashes – and everyone and everything went on a fast – all to convey to God their true repentance from their evil ways. “Who knows?” the king says, “God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”

The last verse in chapter 3 would seem to be the end of the story. God saw what they did, and changed his mind about the calamity he was going to bring upon them, and he did not do it.

But there’s a whole other chapter to the story. It’s got to do with Jonah’s reaction TO God’s mercy on the Ninevites. Jonah’s not pleased with God’s change of mind. Read a little further – in speaking with regards to HIMSELF and HIS run from God at the beginning of the story, he fled to Tarshish because he knew, speaking to God,

“that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.”

He goes on to ask God to kill him, since he’d rather die than go on living in the knowledge that God would be merciful to a people like the Ninevites.

There are times when Hannah will try to convince us to do something – or let HER do something – and will be … just a little dramatic in her presentation – makes us want to go “Oh, Camille!” – I can just picture God doing the same thing in response to Jonah’s comment there – “Oh, Jonah!”

The story goes on to a conclusion that involves a plant, a worm, a hot east wind, and Jonah again asking God to let him die.

The point is, God’s mercy and grace abounds in such a way that we can’t even begin to understand it. The words of the hymn – there’s a wideness in God mercy – speaks to that – in truth, we can only see what applies to us, and sometimes we’re given a glimpse of how broad the love of God is.

The shadowside of that knowledge is to stop at the application we receive – and assume that God stops there as well.

Jonah’s story parallels that of the people of Israel and Jesus. God sent love incarnate into the world through them, and they didn’t accept it – they ran from it to the point of crucifying him. And then when God overcame THAT in the resurrection, that Grace and love flowed well beyond the boundaries that they had expected – and we have been blessed because of it.

Let’s not box the love of God in.

Let’s pray.

God of grace, none of us are beyond your reach. In Jesus Christ you have sought and found us. Through him you call us to speak your redeeming word of love. Some of us answer willingly. Others pull back in reluctance. Some can respond impulsively dropping their nets and leaving everything else behind. Others can respond only through your repeated patience and your long-suffering love. Whoever we are, receive us into your love, enlarge our hearts and minds that we might serve you lovingly and logically. Give us the grace and good humor to see your hand in all things and make us useful in your sight. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

http://www.day1.net/index.php5?view=transcripts&tid=246
(Rev. William Carter, PCUSA)

Can Anything Good Come Out Of …?


Sunday, January 15th, 2006
Epiphany/Ordinary 2B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Text: John 1:43-51

43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” 47 When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” 48 Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” 49 Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” 50 Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” 51 And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

The prospect of letting them walk out into the world is sometimes simply terrifying. That is as starkly clear as I can put it when it comes to the children. When our friend told us almost eleven years ago that we would be living the rest of our lives with our hearts walking around outside our bodies, she was not kidding. The thing is it gets HARDER, not easier, as they get older. That’s because, just like us, the longer we live the more we become aware of the ugliness that can so quickly rear its head in the world, and the higher the chance that they will run into it.

A few weeks ago, before Christmas, Hannah came to me and told me about some boys in school who have apparently decided that teasing her and making fun at her expense is one of the ways they are going to spend their time. She told me about how it made her angry, and upset to the point of wishing she were bigger than they are so she could get back at them. It brought back vivid memories of my own, of being similarly teased as a child by stronger, bigger and faster boys and my heart ached.

Even here, in rural Virginia, in an area where it is still relatively safe to leave the door unlocked, we are visited by violence and exposed to the underside of human existence. Granted, it’s not with the same frequency as in other more urban settings, but in some ways that makes it all that more shattering. Our community was faced with that violence just this past Thursday, in the death of a local man. A fellow pastor, who recently moved here from one of our larger metropolitan areas, put it this way: “it’s no different from the big city.”

For me, the fact of violence in our midst is more a reflection of human nature than it is a result of the environment in which we happen to find ourselves.

In our text this morning, we find an example of that fallen human nature. We’re at the beginning of the Gospel according to John, and Jesus is selecting his disciples. We know from previous readings and lessons and stories that, if nothing else, the disciples WERE spectacular examples of human frailty; sometimes petty, sometimes argumentative, sometimes just plain thick-headed, not always so brave, or honorable, or clear-thinking; in short, no different from you and me.

Philip is the first to appear, and John has Jesus speaking just two words to him: “follow me”. Philip turns around and has a few MORE words for HIS friend Nathanael. To him, Philip says: “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” And what is Nathanael’s response? Is it, “Great! Take me to him!” or, “REALLY??? FINALLY!!! Where is he? Quick, let’s go!”

No, it’s none of those. What we find in Nathanael’s response is an example of how the establishment and religious leadership were going to respond to Jesus generally as he became more well-known during his ministry. His response was: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

It is one of the single most destructive tendencies of the human heart: Judging – and PRE-judging someone based on either superficial or even irrelevant information is as violent to the human psyche as any blow dealt by a closed fist or an open palm.

Our lesson today comes from Philip’s next statement:

“Come and see.”

He didn’t start an argument, he didn’t try to convince Nathanael directly, all he did was ask him to come and see for himself. I think Philip knew what Nathanael was feeling, because I suspect Philip himself had to go through the same process. Philip himself was a Galilean, just like Jesus. And in first century Palestine, there was a definite sense of place in society determined by where you were from. As a Galilean, Philip had grown up with the understanding that Nathanael expressed. In modern terms it might be called an inferiority complex. Seeing yourself as all-around LESS than someone else. In the worst cases, that someone is ANYONE else.

But Philip overcame that weight that was pulling him down. He understood on meeting Jesus that there was an element of worth in everyone – and the epiphany for him was that he discovered that in himself. Christ called him out of his regular existence and with two words invited him to enter into relationship with him.

The lesson for us here this morning is that, just as Philip introduced Nathanael to Christ, we are likewise to introduce others to Christ. The question of course is how do we do that if Jesus is not just around the corner? Granted, we ARE in Jerusalem, but … just not THAT Jerusalem. J

In the passage just before this one, Jesus called Andrew and Simon Peter to follow him. We heard Chance read part of it yesterday evening when he shared at the brotherhood fish dinner.

They are in Bethsaida, which in the first century was a Jewish town – more or less – it was a very GREEK town for the most part. The inhabitants most likely spoke both Aramaic, the form of Hebrew common for the time, as well as Greek. Galilee was on the northern ‘border’, so to speak, of what was considered Judea “proper”. Beyond it was the even more heavily Greek influenced areas of what are today Syria and Turkey.

Though they were under Roman rule, the language of the common man, the language of commerce, was still Greek. It would make sense for Jesus to select his disciples from an area where Greek was spoken in a Jewish context, for that was who Jesus was intending to reach. Jesus was coming from a Hebrew society, but was well aware of the reality of the culture of the day – the agglomeration of Greek and Roman practices and societal structures and mores required that those who would become Christ’s disciples be able to communicate in the language of the people to whom they would be sent. The disciples were just who would be needed to mediate the Gospel of Christ between the Jewish and Greek worlds.

Back to that question: where are we going to find Jesus in this day and age in order to introduce people to him? Well, that’s the rub, as Shakespeare would say. You’ve heard me say it before: the original – and still appropriate – meaning of the word ‘Christian’ is “little Christ”. That means no more and no less than that we’re IT. WE – both individually and collectively ARE the Christ to whom we are going to introduce people. So how can that be?

How can we even pretend, especially as we are at times painfully aware of the many ways in which we don’t even come close to being imitators of Christ? When we make the wrong choices, when we think those dark thoughts, when we let those jagged words come out of our mouths and cut into the heart and crush the spirit of the loved one, or the child, or even worse, that stranger, the person we don’t even know and whom we will probably never see again?

Well, who better to deliver the Gospel of grace to a broken world than broken people who have received and experienced that grace themselves?

Who better to put into words and actions just how it feels to know what it is like to be loved by Christ first, and have that love call us out of our brokenness into a relationship with him? Who better to understand what it is like to recognize that, however much the world tells us how useless, how unworthy, how broken and unfixable we are, there is someone who loved us enough to come to earth, became human just like us, and is teaching us how to live – even today, even now even here.

Let’s pray.

Observing Ordinances

Sunday, January 8th, 2006
Baptism of Christ B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Mark 1:4-11

4 John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 6 Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7 He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. 8 I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” 9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 and just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Welcome to the New Year.

It’s been a … difficult time for us, hasn’t it?

We are now two fewer than we were two weeks ago.

Though it had been a while since either Annie or Hazel were able to be actively involved with us on a regular basis that did not make them any less a part of the family.

And in their passing, we find ourselves grieving not only THEIR absence, but the absence of those who have gone before them, Berry and Ray, Fox and Charlotte, Mary Jane and Irene and Chunk and George, Edna, Margaret, Bill and William, Pearl and John -- because on some level that’s what we do when we come to a place that marks an event – marks the passing of time – whether it is another funeral or whether it is the ending of one year and the beginning of another. Whether it is a cultural practice or something we are hardwired to do, it is in the turning of the year that we look back on what has been and for better or worse look forward to what’s ahead. I don’t mean that in a negative sense, I mean it simply as an observation, that in looking ahead, some look toward the future with glee, others with hope, others with apprehension, and still others with despair.

Some look toward the future with a combination of all those emotions. Some will even experience the full range of those emotions … the families of the 12 miners in Sago, West Virginia lived through an utterly devastating 3 hour ride from one end of that spectrum to the other just this past Wednesday.

So it is with some of that same mixture of emotions that we turn to the text this morning. And find in it an equal blend. A passage that, in its familiar phrases, has rays of hope, and promise, and joy, but mixed in with those we find foreboding – shadows of what is to come.

We are, after all, coming at scripture from this side of the resurrection. We can never forget that. If we are to be true to our faith, we cannot separate scripture from the fact of the resurrection – and the ultimate hope and joy that we find promised to us in that.

So we come into the Gospel – the story of Jesus “According to Mark” – KATA MARKON that is how the earliest manuscripts are entitled – not ‘The Gospel of Jesus Christ, according to Mark’, but just ‘according to mark’ – it almost sounds like someone’s shorthand notes – telegraphed for the reader to understand at a glance whose version of the story he or she is reading.

We’ve just come through Advent, reading in Matthew and Luke the beautiful story of the birth of the Christ Child. Those wonderful passages where the Angel visits Mary and then Joseph, then the shepherds in the fields, and the wise men coming from the east … the narrative is as important a part of the stories of our faith as any. But Mark has no time for any of that.

Mark jumps into the story with Jesus as a full-grown adult – at the beginning of his ministry, marked, as we know, by his baptism by John in the river Jordan.

And as we read of Jesus being baptized, we read about his coming up out of the water … which presupposes that he had to go DOWN in the water beforehand.

Two weeks ago yesterday, on Christmas Eve, the ordinance of baptism was observed in this sanctuary – in this baptistry right behind me. A family from our community had asked to be baptized, and we were glad to provide the place for them to do that together. It was a short, sweet ceremony, with a total of seven people in attendance, counting the three who were baptized. It was a first for me in at least three ways – a first baptism indoors, besides my own, a first where a whole family was baptized, and a first with so few people in attendance. It made the event feel very intimate – very relaxed, and deeply meaningful.

As Baptists, what do we believe about the act of baptism? What does it symbolize? In going beneath the waters of baptism, and coming up, we signify – we note – we affirm – that we have repented from our sins – from our old way of life, and rise in the newness of life that Christ offers by forgiving us those sins – baptism itself carries no special power – it is a purely symbolic act – but it is powerfully so.

When we look at Jesus’ baptism, the perpetual question to be asked is ‘why did he do it?’ He was the one person in the world who DIDN’T need baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and yet he submitted to it. Why?

One answer is because he wanted to identify with the people he was preparing to minister to. Jesus’ baptism was another aspect of Emmanuel – God becoming flesh and dwelling among us. He became like us so that, ultimately, we could be like him.

The other answer is one that we see from here – from this side of Easter. Jesus’ baptism was a foreshadowing of his own death, burial and resurrection.


So even from the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus was proclaiming the heart of the Gospel – the cross – his OWN sacrifice – but not only his death, but also his resurrection.

And it is in the observation of the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, that we also signify, affirm, and proclaim – that same Gospel message. That Christ gave himself TO us through his teaching and FOR us through his sacrifice.

Just as the services we held here last Sunday afternoon and this past Tuesday were solemnly joyous, so it is any time we gather to celebrate a baptism or share communion together – the occasion to remember the Lord’s death and burial is solemn, but it doesn’t stop there – it is joyous because through both we also complete the story – the joyous resurrection that broke the hold of death on our lives.

(communion)