Seeing The Kingdom


Sunday, June 11th, 2006
Trinity B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
John 3:1-17

1 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2 He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 8 The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? 11 “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you (all) do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 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.

Who are we trying to kid?

Honestly, seriously.

Who do we think we are? We claim to follow the teachings, in fact, we claim to LIVE the life of a man who lived almost two thousand years ago, who reportedly died on a cross and was buried and supposedly rose from the dead a couple of days later, and ascended to heaven some weeks after that.

He spent roughly three years walking around Palestine, gathered and taught a bunch of followers, and upset the establishment – both the political and the religious establishment – and THAT resulted in their condemning him to death.

And here we are, roughly two thousand years later, and we try to stand on those claims … you know, the ones where we are to be known by our love, or that if we are to be followers of Christ we are to be servants of all. We are to visit the sick and those in prison, we are to feed the hungry, clothe the naked; and sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t quite make it. And still, we continue to lay hold of those claims.

We live in a nation that claims to be Christian, but has the highest murder rate of any of the world’s most economically developed countries. We claim to have the highest standard of living, and yet there are millions of children who go to bed hungry each night within our borders. We claim to have the best medical care in the world, and we do, for those who can afford it. As a nation, our number one killer is heart disease brought on by terrible habits, not the least of which is one of the most sedentary lifestyles in the world, as well as a diet that is rich in calories and heavy on saturated fat, and short on the healthier stuff.

Sometimes I think we’d be better off dropping the claim to be a ‘Christian’ nation. I don’t mean that in the sense of rejection, I mean that in the sense of admission. I’m not so sure that the continuing move on the part of some who have gained and consolidated power over the last twenty-five years to impose on the rest of the population policies and statutes which I would immediately adhere to VOLUNTARILY but which are being made compulsory are going to turn the nation around.

I’ve studied our history, and though there are some events in the life of our country that signaled the change, I don’t know that there is really any single event that marked the turning away from a foundation of faith.

And yet, here we are, living in the knowledge that Hollywood seems to carry more influence around the world – in terms of what people perceive us to be through movies and television – than anything that might come out of any given church body.

So that would seem to make our job as Christians even harder – aside from our own frailties and shortcomings – we are working against the perception that American Christians are selfish, narrow-minded, provincial, and not interested in the fate of the rest of the world as long as we are warm (or cool, depending on the season) and fed and rested.

How are we going to counteract that? What are we up against? WHO are we up against?

Let’s look at our passage a little more closely. This exchange between Nicodemus and Jesus is one of the most extensive – and profound – conversations recorded in any of the Gospels. There is a wealth of information if we just take the time to uncover it.

Some scholars have suggested that Nicodemus was coming on his own – for his own purposes – since he came to Jesus by night. Others point to his use of the term ‘we’, as in ‘WE know that you are a teacher of the law’, to indicate that, though he might have had personal interest in approaching Jesus, in this instance he was coming as a representative of the established hierarchy – one that had become preoccupied with a rising young Rabbi who had acquired a following and, had already begun to upset the established order – along with the tables that belonged to the money changers in the temple. Most notably in the Gospel of John, Jesus cleanses the temple at the BEGINNING of his public ministry – the story is related just prior to this one, beginning in verse 13 of chapter 2.

A lot can be said in a few words – a title, especially, can tell you a lot about a person. In our own society, terms like ‘Doctor’, ‘Your Honor’, ‘Mr. President’ or ‘Reverend’ can say a lot in just one or two short words. Nicodemus is referred to as ‘a man of the Pharisees’, ‘a ruler of the Jews,’ and, later, by Jesus himself, as ‘a teacher of Israel’.

By calling him ‘a man of the Pharisees’, those who first heard the Gospel of John read to them, or read it themselves, would have understood that he belonged to the most deeply religious brotherhood in all of Judaism. As a ‘ruler of the Jews’, he sat on the supreme judicial body permitted by the Romans, the Sanhedrin, entrusted with the spiritual and moral leadership of the nation. As ‘a teacher of Israel’, he was a trained theologian concerned with the true understanding and teaching of the revelation given by God.

So we can figure out that Nicodemus was not a fly-by-night wanderer, who just happened by and made for a convenient object lesson through dialogue for the writer of the Gospel to fill out more of Jesus’ message. No, he really was after the heart of the Gospel. And it was in the dialogue that the differences between Nicodemus and Jesus – the old and the new – become apparent.

Nicodemus comes into the conversation as a pragmatist – a practical man – trained and educated and carrying on in the realm of the intersection of the divine and the mundane, but nonetheless, a realist – who focuses on the here and now, what he can see in front of him and what he can touch and feel with his own hands. Between verses 2 and 9, the Greek word that is translated for us as ‘can’ appears six times. His last question to Jesus ‘How can these things be?’ One scholar, William E. Hull, wrote: ‘They are the hallmark of a practical realist who was cautious, if not skeptical, of all efforts to transform human nature in the midst of this present life.’ (Broadman Bible Commentary, 1970, Vol 9, p. 239) It seems Nicodemus was not that different from us, then. We strive to understand what it means to live by faith, to walk in faith, and to trust in faith, and to trust the changing power of that, but … what percentage of the time do we fall back on our own understanding? Sixty percent of the time? Seventy? Eighty? Ninety? And how likely are we to allow for the unimaginable to happen?

That’s where Jesus was coming from in the conversation. Nicodemus was concerned with that which was possible, the human element; Jesus is coming from the point of view of one who knows about divine authority, over and above human ability.

Nicodemus began by admitting that Jesus COULD do signs, and stated that he wouldn’t be able to do them apart from the presence of God. And what is Jesus’ reply? ‘No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above,’ which walks them into the rest of the conversation almost talking past each other. Nicodemus is stuck in the material – how can someone go back into their mother’s womb and be born again? Jesus’ answer: “you’ve got to be born of water and of the spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit” To that, we hear Nicodemus scratch his head and ask ‘How can these things be?’

The essential absence of allowing for the possibility of what God might do was the hurdle that Nicodemus had to wrestle with. He was part of that religious brotherhood that, in it’s beginnings, was considered a radical upstart movement that emphasized personal holiness in a way that was foreign to the PREVIOUS religious establishment – Pharisees were the Jesus People of their day – the loose cannons, the young idealists, the mavericks.

Human nature hasn’t really changed that much in two and a half millennia. We go through cycles. We figure out what works, we adopt it, we live with it, sometimes for a long time, until things change and it stops working as well, or works, but only for a few of us, and then someone comes along and suggests some ways to change, and we look at the possibilities, and act on some, discard others, and it goes back to working again.

Are we allowing for the possibilities of what God might do, if we just let God DO – through us, with us, and in spite of us?

What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Next year we will be observing and celebrating our 175th anniversary as a congregation. Imagine what it would be like if Elder Thomas Braxton were to come back and walk through the front door of the sanctuary on any given Sunday Morning. Do you think he might be surprised by anything he saw? Would he turn around and leave the service because of it? How much has the worship and life of Jerusalem changed in the last hundred and seventy-four years?

Or do you think he would stop, take it in, and nod, saying ‘We’re keeping in touch – we’re speaking the language of the people.’ In preparing over the last couple of weeks, I discovered that when Jesus first read from the scroll of Isaiah, he read it in Hebrew, which even though it was the official language of the land, was not the language that you’d hear on the street or in day to day conversation. After the reading was done in Hebrew, it was then translated into Aramaic – the common language – a form of Hebrew – by either the person reading or by the attendant who brought the scroll out.

In some ways, that is what the church has had to do all along – the original message has remained unchanged – in the original language of Love and Faith, so to speak. But it has been translated into the vernacular – ‘the language of the day’ – time and time again. From Greek and Hebrew to Latin, or to English and Spanish, from 15th and 16th century English and Spanish to 19th century forms, and from there to more contemporary versions.

So how do we translate the truths of the Gospel into language that people today will understand? We can bemoan the fact that faith has taken a back seat in people’s lives, beat ourselves or someone else up over who is responsible for that, or we can put our minds together and figure out a way to speak so that people will listen.

Jerusalem has a good record of doing that – of speaking through action – through involvement in activities in the greater community, through food pantry donations, through meal preparation and deliveries, through making our facility available as a polling place, but what about the way we speak – actually speak about God and Jesus Christ? The terms and phrases we use are ones that most of us – having been reared in the church – are familiar with and can understand – but what about someone who was not raised in a faith tradition? How would they understand the invitation? How would they understand ‘giving your heart to Jesus, making him Lord of your life’ would they ask ‘how can these things be?’ just like Nicodemus?

How would we answer them?

The disciples came from a lifetime of practicing their faith in one set way, and in knowing Jesus they opened themselves up to a radically different way that completely changed not only their point of view, but how they lived their day to day lives. Knowing Jesus will do that. It’s a risky, discomforting thing, to contemplate so much change.

The question is, are we willing to open ourselves up to that possibility in order to let others see the Kingdom of God?

Let’s pray.

Breathe Upon These Slain


Sunday, June 4th, 2006
Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Ezekiel 37:1-14

1 The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. 3 He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6 I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.” 7 So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8 I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. 9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” 10 I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude. 11 Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ 12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. 14 I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act,” says the Lord.

To see something that’s never been seen before. To DO something that’s never been done before, to EXPERIENCE something that no one has been through before … does that appeal to you?

I suspect that there might be one or two in the room who would eagerly nod “Yes, Please!” to the question. But most of us, I think, would be a little more hesitant to answer.

In part, I imagine, our hesitation would be due to the underlying question ‘IS there any such thing?’ – let’s allow for a minute that at some point, perhaps in the near future, we will once more venture into space and the likelihood of there being something out there that has not been seen before increases exponentially as we move away from the earth.

But, IS there something outside THAT realm – in other words, here on earth, that’s TRULY never been seen, or done, or experienced before?

One of the things that really hit me while living in Spain was the sense of history about the land. The first year I was there I lived in the northern part of the country, in Oviedo, Asturias, in the foothills of the Cantabrian Coastal range of mountains – the ones that keep the clouds and moisture from crossing into the central plains from the North Atlantic. The two missionary families I worked with had developed a routine over the years. Fridays were free days – ‘off’ days – at least the afternoons and evenings. Weather permitting, that almost always translated into an outing of one kind or another, either to the mountains or to the beach – not necessarily to go swimming – the water was pretty much constantly too cold for that – but just to be outdoors. Several times we went on hikes – serious hikes – into the mountains, and there never failed to be a reminder that where we were walking people had been walking and hiking for hundreds if not thousands of years. The rocks that protruded along the trail were worn smooth by the passage of tens if not hundreds of thousands of feet of … hikers … over the centuries.

During my second year, in Denia, on the Mediterranean coast, the road I walked to get to the retreat center and the home of the missionary family I worked with THERE was 700 years old. The ruins on the little hill in the middle of town date back to Roman times. Denia has been an inhabited location since at least 4000 BCE. The name of the town itself derives from the name of the Roman Goddess of the hunt, Diana. Her Greek counterpart, Artemis, was the same Goddess we learned about in our study of Acts, when Paul was in Ephesus his proclamation began to cut into the income of the artisans who made their living off selling figurines of the goddess, since Ephesus was the center of worship for her.

All that to say, you’ve heard the saying “the seven last words of the church are ‘we’ve never done it that way before,’” and to be honest, Virginia has a rep of being somewhat … shall we say, “Traditional” in its outlook. There’s a joke I heard shortly after we moved here: How many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb? Five: one to change it, and four to talk about how much better the old light bulb was. I think I’ve shared that with you before. If I have, please forgive the rerun. But it applies, doesn’t it? J

The point is this: Virginia has one of the longer histories of the states of the Union; certainly one of which to be proud for many, many reasons. We are, after all, getting ready to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of the first settlement at Jamestown next year, so we do like to refer to ourselves as the Old Dominion. There is something to be said for carrying a sense of self from where we’ve come. Having that, we can tend to venerate it a little too much. Yes, there’s a place for tradition, but it needs to be a PLACE, not the center.

And there’s almost always a downside. While there are things to be proud of in our history, there are likewise things we would prefer not to be reminded of from the same source, things, we’d rather leave unmentioned in the history books. And to a degree, that happens. It is, after all, the victors who write history. We would rather not dwell on the treatment of the Native Americans who inhabited these lands centuries before the English and other settlers arrived, or the treatment of slaves and former slaves before, during, and after the civil war. Or, for that matter, the racism that lingers even today in our society. History has another name: Legacy. It is that part of our past that directly affects us. We also use the term to refer to what WE leave for those who come after US.

Legacies can be good or bad, invigorating or debilitating, uplifting or a heavy burden.

So we come to the realization, just as Ezekiel did, that the task before us is one that cannot be initiated, cannot be engaged, and cannot be completed, apart from intervention on God’s part. Anything less will mean that the bones of our ancestors will continue to be just that – dry bones. We may dress them up in flesh and skin and perfect hair, and dress them well, but unless the spirit of God moves through these bones, they remain a rattling, white cage.

Today we celebrate Pentecost, the commemoration of the coming of the Holy Spirit on those disciples and followers of Christ who were gathered in Jerusalem 50 days after the resurrection and shortly after his ascension.

In that one event, the followers of Jesus began to realize exactly what ‘newness of life’ truly meant. We read in the second chapter of Acts that people from all across the Roman Empire were present in Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost, and when the Spirit came upon the disciples and other followers, they began to speak to each in their native language.

Can you imagine what it must have been like to be present on that day?

Imagine the city teeming with people, many more times the people who would normally be there, and as you walk through the crowd, you hear conversations in so many different languages that you simply lose count. It is almost too much to take in. There’s a part of you that wants them to all just go away. For things to go back to being the same people who are there year in and year out, the same faces, the familiar ones, the ones who talk and act and think like you. But it just isn’t like that anymore. Since travel became so much more DO-able – fewer bandits on the roads and pirates on the seas, with Rome’s ever-present punishing presence lurking around every corner and in every cove – people have been coming in droves to the annual feasts and high holy days. While on the one hand you can certainly understand that the people coming from hundreds and thousands of miles away are coming for the same reason as the folks who live just down the hill from the city, it is still more than a little discomfiting to have so many new people to keep showing up. They may be a fellow pilgrim, but they are SO different!

Then, in a rush, this THING happens. You’re not sure what to call it, but it’s something you’ve never experienced before, something you’ve never seen before, something you’ve certainly never DONE before. You find yourself talking to the man in front of you about what amazing things God has done in your life – about Jesus, and what he’s been teaching and showing you, and about life – NEW life – life unencumbered by the expectation of following the same rules you and everyone else in your family had followed since the time of your grandfather’s great grandfather’s ancestors, so many years, so many rites. And you suddenly realize that for the last several minutes you’ve been talking to him, this is a man with whom you’d not been able to communicate at ALL just an hour ago.

And you stop for a moment and look at each other and the realization dawns in each of you that this is truly something new.

So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Jerusalem is still a part of that Pentecost. The language we worship in was most likely NOT one of the ones spoken on that day. In fact, the vast majority of the languages of the world were not represented at Pentecost. So how is it that the Gospel is preached in over 200 languages around the world on any given Sunday?

It was in the sharing on that first Pentecost that the followers of Christ realized that what they had was a message for the whole world, not just for their brothers and sisters in Jerusalem. Jesus had told them shortly before that they were to go into Jerusalem and Judea. They were probably expecting that. But then he extended the command to Samaria, which was not where anyone DECENT would even WANT to go, and then to the ends of the Earth. Who knows WHAT you would find THERE?

So Jerusalem is looking around at the ends of the earth. That’s us. That’s where we are. We’re not at the center of the universe. We are, admittedly, the center of OUR universe, almost by default, but we dare not lose sight of the fact that there is a world out there waiting for us to bring the Gospel to them, UNKNOWINGLY waiting, maybe UNAWARE of the need. Aware of the emptiness and loneliness, but not sure how to fill it. That’s where we come in.

It’s not a question of THEM finding their way HERE, it’s a question of OUR stepping out THERE to meet them, to speak their language, to communicate in terms that don’t sound stilted or dated, that would cause an almost immediate shut-off of the hearing mechanism in the brain.

If God was willing to go from communicating through a high priest and the ritual sacrifice of animals to communicating face to face through God’s incarnation in Christ Jesus, it’s the least we can do to consider changing the way we speak to the world today so that we will be understood.

We have the capacity, we can modify all kinds of things – our music, our dress, even our language, if needed, but do we have the will?

The message will remain the same. The Gospel is the same – God is seeking to reconcile the world to God’s self through Jesus Christ. That will never change.

Will you pray with me and seek God’s direction in how Jerusalem can look at an old story in a new way? As we move into our invitation, let the invitation become a dialogue over the next few weeks, one where we will work together and pray together to follow God’s leading – to explore new ways of doing things – to treasure the past, to find that which we want to keep, and find that which we want to risk – that BIG thing that we will risk for something good.

Let’s pray.

… In Truth


Sunday, May 28th, 2006
Easter 7B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
John 17:6-19

6”I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; 8 for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. 11 And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 15 I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. 16 They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.

They are, in my humble opinion, the most horrifying 20 minutes of any movie ever made. The opening sequence of ‘Saving Private Ryan’, for someone who has never been anywhere near combat, provide a gut-wrenching, heart-pounding, nerve rattling glimpse in a two-dimensional format of the absolute horror and chaos that was the three-dimensional reality on D-Day in Normandy for the first troops to land.

Watching that portion of the film, I was reminded of just how far removed most of the world today is from conditions then. There are, of course, dozens of places in the world where wars are raging and battles are being fought, besides the few that we are engaged in, but none of them seem to carry the weight of the future of the world on their outcome as did the battle of Normandy in June of 1944.

As we had opportunity to view the moving wall last week while it was here, and mark the names in their reading and the passing of the years by walking from one end of the monument to the other, and as we pause this weekend and especially tomorrow, we engage in one of the most significant acts a nation can undertake: to remember those who have given their last measure for something we enjoy here today of which there was no guarantee at the time of their deaths – whether that was the preservation of this nation, or the rejection of fascism, or the preservation of the balance of power to maintain peace in the world at large, while sacrificing it on a local level, there was in each case a lack of certainty surrounding the ultimate outcome.

To that end, when Abraham Lincoln said:

“ in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."

At the dedication ceremony of the cemetery at Gettysburg, he was speaking to the fact that all the words in the world will blow away like so much dust, but that it is in the actions taken by those who are wiling to put their lives at risk – to put their words into action, that brings about lasting and real change.

In some ways, the Gettysburg address was a prayer, spoken by the president on behalf of the nation, but it also served as an encouragement to the people who were there that day – to be so dedicated to the purpose of preserving the union and the nation, that the power of those few words have moved generations around the world.

Our passage this morning is also known as the Priestly Prayer of Jesus. It is spoken shortly before he is arrested, after he has spent the last several days, to not say chapters, teaching his disciples about what is to come, and as we saw last Sunday, teaching them about their ultimate purpose as well as HIS.

What was so radical about what Jesus did was very simply the way he approached God. Prior to his coming, the only method by which the Israelites could approach God was through the high priest, after offering an appropriate sacrifice.

It was through the sacrifice that two things were accomplished: first, the priest himself was made worthy to offer the sacrifice, and the sacrificial victim, say, a lamb, was consecrated – made holy – in the act of being sacrificed.

In the passage of the middle section of the prayer that we are reading today, Jesus is praying on behalf of his disciples, and what we come to see is that he is praying for ALL his disciples – those present then, as well as those to come … later, and now.

Have you ever been prayed over – I mean REALLY prayed over?

Our second semester at the Leland Center, in early February of 2003, I received word the day before our class met that my position at Stickdog Telecom was going to be phased out over the next six weeks or so. There were no plans to pursue a continuing career in the industry, because I knew I was going to be stepping out into something that I’d been preparing for …. my whole life. And even though there was a thrill of excitement about that, not having any idea of what that stepping out would LOOK like was more than a little unsettling. We had rent and bills to pay, and three children to feed and clothe, in addition to ourselves.

We got to class that night and in our opening few minutes we’d always gone around the room and allowed anyone to share any prayer concerns they might have. As Leslie and I shared our news, there was a spontaneous move on the part of our classmates and Brian Williams, the professor, to move in close around us and put their hands on our shoulders and heads, and everyone in the class either spoke or said a silent prayer for us – the sense of it was simply overwhelming. The words that were spoken to God on our behalf were not just encouraging, but empowering, and uplifting, and yes, on some level, challenging – in the sense that I felt that ‘this is an expectation that I need to live into – not in the negative sense of an expectation, but in the sense that it was simply TIME to do what needed to be done to follow God’s call.

This entire chapter is a single overheard prayer. What the disciples heard was Jesus asking God for himself, for them, and for the world of believers that was yet to come: asking for strength, asking for holiness, asking for unity, asking for boldness in love.

I guess the question comes down to how have we lived out that strength, that holiness, that unity, that boldness, as a body of Christ?

We as a nation have set aside a specific date to honor our war dead. Do we as Christians honor OUR … martyrs? Are we so uncomfortable with the idea that people have died for what they believed and even, TODAY, are dying for their faith, and yet, we sit in comfort and thank God for our blessings.

Abraham Lincoln called the people of this country to ‘increased devotion to that cause’ for which the men who were buried in that cemetery died. Is it so difficult to hear God’s call on our lives to increased devotion, to ever more courage, holiness, unity and love? Is it a call that we have become immune to, have we heard it so often that we do not even hear the words or ponder the implications?

Are we willing to explore the path that God might have for us as a church, as a body, to discover what it means to be ever more courageous, in speaking truth in the midst of a culture that seems to thrive on gossip and hearsay, on innuendo and outright fabrication. On a society that would rather get tied up in a discussion of what the name of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s baby girl will be rather than address the harsh reality of mass persecution and massacres in Darfur, Sudan, or in the real possibility that, working together, we actually DO have the capacity to end hunger in the world.

Do we have the courage to speak and live in holiness, upholding the sanctity of humanity, granted by God in the original blessing of the world, to a world that today would rather we lose ours by losing sight of the humanity of those with whom we do not see eye-to-eye on anything from the practice of faith to the form of a family, to the how we vote on issues that face the nation as a whole.

Can we as a body speak to … and even more … ACT in unity in spite of our differences? Can we, having come out of DIS-unity in our inception one hundred and seventy-four years ago, or even barely fifteen years ago, carry on the work of the Kingdom without grumbling and complaining? Will the world remember us – this congregation – for the love with which we cared for each other and those around us, or for bitterness and backbiting?

Can we do what Christ prayed for us?

I believe wholeheartedly that we can, and we will, and we must, if we are to lay claim to the name Christian.

Let’s pray.

Cause and Effect


Sunday, May 21st, 2006
Easter 6B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
John 15:9-17

9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. 12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

Another image seared into our collective memories: January 13th, 1982, an icy river, a snowstorm covering the nation’s capital, and an airplane struggling to take off with an impossible amount of ice on its wings slams into the 14th street bridge crossing the Potomac River into Washington DC, killing all but six of the people on board, and four people on the ground, trying to make their way home from work. Of the six survivors of the crash, only five made it out of the water alive. Of the sixth passenger, the Washington Post reported the next day,

"He was about 50 years old, one of half a dozen survivors clinging to twisted wreckage bobbing in the icy Potomac when the first helicopter arrived. To the copter's two-man Park Police crew he seemed the most alert. Life vests were dropped, then a flotation ball. The man passed them to the others. On two occasions, the crew recalled last night, he handed away a life line from the hovering machine that could have dragged him to safety. The helicopter crew - who rescued five people, the only persons who survived from the jetliner - lifted a woman to the riverbank, then dragged three more persons across the ice to safety. Then the life line saved a woman who was trying to swim away from the sinking wreckage, and the helicopter pilot, Donald W. Usher, returned to the scene, but the man was gone," ("A Hero - Passenger Aids Others, Then Dies." Washington Post. January 14, 1982.)

The "sixth passenger", who had survived the crash and had repeatedly given up the rescue lines to other survivors before drowning, was later identified as 46-year-old bank examiner Arland D. Williams Jr. The repaired span of the 14th Street Bridge complex over the Potomac River at the crash site, which had been officially named the "Rochambeau Bridge", was renamed the "Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge" in his honor. The Citadel in South Carolina, from which he graduated in 1957, has several memorials to him. In 2003, the new Arland D. Williams Jr. Elementary School was dedicated in his hometown of Mattoon in Coles County, Illinois.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_90#_note-0)

Isn’t it odd that an event that occurred twenty-four years ago carries so much more impact than one that carried a global, to not say universal impact just under two thousand years ago? It doesn’t seem in the least surprising, since we have pictures and video footage of what happened on that freezing cold day just a couple of hours north of here. You might think that if we had video or still shots from the crucifixion of Jesus it might carry the same emotional weight, but I suspect even if we did, it wouldn’t.

We would probably be distracted by his appearance. We all have an image in our minds of what Jesus looked like, and if we had an actual PICTURE of him, I suspect that the bulk of our time for a good long time would be taken up with getting OVER the fact that “he doesn’t look anything like what I pictured him!”

But the point is this: when we see the reality of what it means for someone to give their life for a friend, or in the case of Arland D. Williams Jr., giving your life up for a small group of basically, strangers – there is a lasting impact on us simply as humans – a mark on our psyche that creates a lasting impression on us for what it means to be human, the frailty of life, and the heights to which heroism can take us.

If you’ve not had a chance to yet, I strongly urge you to visit The Moving Wall – the replica of the Vietnam War Memorial that is currently set up on the grounds of Rappahannock Community College. Whatever differences there might be in our nation about that war, there is an awareness on the part of visitors to both the original monument in Washington DC or to the replica of the fact that to one degree or another, any number of the soldiers whose names appear on the wall died in the act of defending or protecting their fellow soldiers, committing acts of bravery that were at least equal to those of Arland Williams.

Now, imagine yourself telling either one of those stories – either of someone you knew who died in Vietnam under those circumstances or of your friend and co-worker Arland Williams, just a few years after it had happened, only the story you are telling is of Jesus of Nazareth, whom you’d come to know intimately after following him around Galilee, Nazareth, and Judea for three years prior to his execution, and you realize with full clarity that what he did he did by choice. He did it not only for you, but for anyone and everyone you happen to tell the story to.

He did it for the Roman guard who is holding you prisoner, he did it for the local synagogue’s priest who agitated the crowd to the point of creating the disturbance that landed you in jail for supposedly inciting it, he did it for your cellmate, who has been telling you his history of insurgency against the Roman occupying army over the last fifteen years. He did it not just to prove a point, but to make a way where there was none before.

You remember with unusual clarity those last few days before he was taken prisoner in Jerusalem, when it seemed that all he did (aside from clearing the temple) was talk and talk and talk … and you couldn’t turn away, and you couldn’t quite understand what it was he was saying at the time – it wasn’t until just a few days later that things started to click for you … and the clicking became a thundering hammer in your head as the pieces fell into place and you realized just who it was you’d been hanging out with, and what he meant when he said “blessed are you when men persecute you for my sake …”

And you’ve been thinking about that whole ‘abide’ idea … and you want to get across what JESUS meant when he told you to abide in him … he wasn’t telling you to get lost in his being, he was telling you that if you abide in him, he will abide in YOU – you wouldn’t stop being YOU – and HE wouldn’t stop being HIM. You’d be a part of each other – because part of what he treasured about being with you was that – BEING with YOU -- it still catches you by surprise – when you’re just sitting and thinking about those days – yeah, there was a lot of walking around, and a lot of the things he said were confusing at the time, but even in the middle of his sometimes oh-too-frequent exasperated sighs and shakes of his head, he was still smiling at you – he was still looking at you with all the love in the world in his eyes – laughing at your jokes, singing along with you as you sang the old songs around the campfire, praying beside you in the synagogues you visited before they started kicking you out … it still surprises you that he genuinely ENJOYED spending time with you, even if it was just sitting on a rock chewing on sunflower seeds and talking about life, God, and humanity.

And you remember the last and the lasting things. His asking you to take care of his mother, and her to take care of you like the son you had become to her… and that time when he said “this is my command, that you love one another as I have loved you.” And you begin to realize that that was where it all started. That’s where it all gets its beginning. This whole business of the good news you’ve been telling for the last umpteen years.

He wasn’t telling you to abide in him to gain some kind of secret communion with him, he was telling you to abide in him so that you could see what it is like to love your neighbor – your fellow human being – no matter what rank they hold, no matter where they are from, no matter what language they speak, how much money they make or don’t make, no matter if they are clean or dirty in whatever way you want to think of those terms – whether physical or emotional or spiritual – he made that perfectly clear sitting by the well and talking to that Samaritan woman that one time, or when he told that story about the Pharisee and the tax collector praying … it was never about how you appeared in man’s eye, but in God’s eyes, because you see, he wasn’t looking at you with just a man’s eyes, but with God’s holy ones.

So you lock onto some memories, but that is the most treasured of all. The way he looked at you. And in being beheld, you KNEW, just KNEW, that you were also being loved and accepted, and challenged, and called all at the same time.

You never really get over something like that. And what is amazing to you is that you are able to share the experience with others, because in being known, in being loved, you find that now, with God’s Holy Spirit guiding you, you are able to know, to love, to share. You are the one being the catalyst of God’s Kingdom that Jesus spoke about so much.

But it’s hard sometimes. When you are spit on, when you are yelled at, or worse, when you are simply not noticed, not heard, ignored. That is when it is hardest because while you do all you can, beyond a certain point it’s not up to you because it’s not ABOUT you.

It’s about Jesus.

Let’s pray.

Abide in Me


Sunday, May 14th, 2006
Easter 5B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
John 15:1-8

1”I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. 2 He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. 3 You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

Preaching around a national holiday can be both a blessing and a curse. There can be so many factors to take into consideration when one prepares FOR Sunday, to say nothing of being open and sensitive to what it is God might have you say in the particular scripture passage. There is a real issue with whether or not one is even going to incorporate the day being celebrated into the message to be delivered, especially if the holiday in question doesn’t have any directly faith-oriented connections. Mother’s day is, thankfully, not really one of those. We have multiple examples of women – mothers – in scripture who have in one way or another exemplified what it means to be a woman of God so that there is plenty to draw from when we go TO scripture to fill in that picture.

We have the examples of Mary and Elizabeth, whom we read about this past Wednesday evening in our midweek Bible study, and we have Sarah and Rebekah in the Old Testament, Paul speaks of Lois and Eunice, Timothy’s mother and grandmother, in terms that give a strong idea of how faithful they were.
But what happens when we are faced with a situation where the mother in question is … less than exemplary? What do we do, how do we address the family with the mother who is in prison, or who has abandoned them, or who neglects and abuses her children? How do we respond to that family on mother’s day?

We deal with the same issue when we celebrate father’s day. There are, we would HOPE, more mothers and fathers who would give THEMSELVES for their children than not, more who would feed them the last morsel of food off their plate rather than eat it themselves. More who are still uncomfortable with the instruction given on the airplane as it taxies to the takeoff about placing the breathing mask over their OWN nose and mouth BEFORE placing it on their child’s, even though they understand and agree with the need for that instruction.

But we live in a world that sometimes screams at us that things are not the way they are supposed to be. We live in a world where a mother WILL drown her five children, where a mother WILL sell her daughter to get her next fix, where a mother WILL feed her children oatmeal every meal while she feasts. We live in a world where a mother would choose an abusive husband and ignore the reality that the abusiveness extends beyond her to her children, and so her children’s children are condemned to a life of abuse as well.

In the last week or so I’ve seen several poems come across my desk about motherhood, extolling her virtues, telling of how strong she is, how able she is to handle the many different duties that fall to her. Funny stories that talk about how God actually created Eve first, and then agreed with her to create Adam, and they would keep it ‘their little secret’ and let him believe HE was created first, and is the stronger and smarter of the two. The kicker in THAT particular story is that God looks at Eve and winks at her and says, “It’ll be our little secret, just between us girls.” I’ve read beautiful pieces that speak of the qualities of a woman, the nurturing, comforting, caring, and encouraging aspects of a woman’s character.

And guess what? For each phrase, for each image, for each quality, I’ve found myself nodding and saying, “Yep, that’s Leslie … AND Angela, AND Momma, AND Grandma …” Those women who have had some influence on my life … well, not just SOME, but a LASTING impact on my life have all, at one time or another, embodied to me the fact that they were more than they could ever imagine themselves to be.

Knowing full well it is a terrible, unhealthy habit, we do, nevertheless, try to put our best face on whenever we go out in public, especially at Church, don’t we? Do we so easily forget that that is a practice that is anything BUT Christian? Walter Wink, professor of biblical interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City, wrote in an article in the magazine The Christian Century, several years ago, about the passage we have before us this morning. In it, he says the following:

For me "abide" once meant: Think only of Jesus. Drown out all other voices. Choke down the rebellion. Manhandle the resistance. For me, it all added up to a religion of repression … But we grow with the text. I had somehow mislearned to regard the command to abide as a personal admonishment. I took the "you" as singular. My God and me, and all that. But that "you" is plural, providing a rich image of the body of Christ, of Christ seeking a body in the world. Had I thought of it as plural, I would have understood it as a reference to the church … I once heard the bit about "bearing more fruit" as a demand that I get cracking and strain hard to bear much fruit if I wanted Christ to abide with me. Then I was taught that I was justified by grace and needed no works, so I forgot about the fruits. Now I begin to hear it as a simple promise: trust yourself to the water and let the current take you where you need to go. The water will both bear you up and accomplish God's purposes. This has been a great stress reducer, to the degree that I have lived it. (Christian Century, April 20, 1994)

I used to secretly step back whenever I heard a preacher say, “You can’t be a Christian outside of church.” My thought process was something like this: Being a Christian means following Jesus. Being a Christian means accepting him as Lord of your life. That is about as personal a thing as can be, so how can that NOT happen EXCEPT in a highly personal, individual way? We MUST be able to be Christian by ourselves because that’s where it … starts.

And that was where my thinking stopped, for a while.

Becoming a Christian, beginning to take on the life of Christ IS a highly individual thing, it begins in the innermost heart, but it doesn’t stop – it CAN’T stop – it MUSTN’T stop there. The simple truth of it is that Christ calls us by name, but doesn’t call us to go it alone. THAT is what the world would like us to do, to see, to feel, and to practice. Being followers of Christ MEANS living in community, living in service, living in communion with each other. THAT is where we can’t be a Christian on our own, because, just as the first disciples remained together after Christ’s resurrection and ascension, and formed a community of faith that began to live out and grow those seeds that Jesus had been planting over the previous three years, so we are to bear with each other the joys and sorrows that we encounter on this broken world. Just as Walter Wink said, the ‘you’ in the passage is PLURAL, not singular. Jesus was speaking to us as a BODY, not as individuals.

Yes, of course, there is individual aspect, an individual responsibility – we DO each stand individually in Christ, but the burden, if you want to call it that, of living out our faith is intended to be a shared one, because we are all called to the same task—that of proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed.

Each of those women I named earlier, whether from scripture or my own life, would be the first to admit that they were nowhere near what those poems made them out to be. That they see themselves as much less than what the authors painted them to be. And it is true for each of us: we are much less likely to extend to ourselves the grace that we so easily extend to others: the grace of forgiveness for being flawed.

So we celebrate Mother’s Day. We rejoice in the fact that some of us have mothers who, flaws and all, became, nonetheless, for us models of faith, models of selflessness, models of what it means to live out our faith up close and personal – in the most unrehearsed stage we have – our families.

If we are, on the other hand, one of those who did not have that experience, but whose mother has been someone other than the woman who brought us into the world, then we rejoice and give thanks for THAT woman – that adoptive mother, that school teacher, or Sunday School teacher, or aunt, or neighbor, or grandmother, who stepped in when stepping in was required and molded us into the person we are today.

It is a special and perhaps rare blessing when we can look at both of our parents and see God in them. Just as the Psalmist portrays God gathering God’s children as a mother hen who gathers her chicks under her wings, we can see in our mothers the attributes of God that are not limited to, but are highlighted IN our mothers: the nurturing, the caring, the compassion.

A few years ago, at the awards ceremony in which he received an Emmy for his work in children’s television, Fred Rogers, “Mr. Rogers”, stood up and asked the audience for ten seconds of silence. In those ten seconds, he asked that those listening silently give thanks for the people in their lives who helped them become who they were. I would propose a slightly more directed prayer – to God, for the women in our lives who through presence and in their absence, helped us see who God is, and who we are in God’s eyes.

Let’s pray.

Why Do You Believe?


Sunday, April 23 2006
Easter 2B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
John 20:19-31

19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” 24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” 26A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” [PAUSE] 30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31 But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

It’d been fourteen years. For someone who is 42, fourteen years is still a pretty long time. I’m beginning to gain a sense of perspective on it, but it still represents a pretty sizeable chunk of my time so far on earth.

I shared with some of you some of my fears in traveling to Chile at the beginning of the month, being worried about feeling out of place, of being disconnected, of no longer feeling like I did while I was growing up there – as though it was the most natural thing in the world for me to be there – that I BELONGED there.

That was why it was with an incredible sense of relief that I walked out of the customs area of the airport and started walking along the concourse without seeing my brother Jimmy in the crowd. I wasn’t worried. I knew where I was, I knew I could find my way, and I knew where I needed to go if for some reason they weren’t able to get to the airport.

They came through the doors I was approaching and we climbed into the van they came in and started back towards Santiago. They were in and out of the parking lot in less than 15 minutes.

Digital cameras have done wonders for my picture-taking. Ours is about 4 years old. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that high-end cameras do, but it does have one really cool thing that we found early on. When you take a picture, the image stays on the viewfinder screen for about 10 seconds. In that time, you can review your shot and decide if you want to keep it or not. If you don’t, there’s a button just to the right of the display window that serves a dual function – it will help you white balance, if you are using the camera in anything other than the automatic mode, and it will, with a single push of the button, let you decide if you want to keep the picture you just took. If you don’t, all you do is push the ‘set’ button at the lower left and the picture … goes away.

The settings on the camera allowed for four hundred and four pictures to fit on the memory card we have in it. When I left for Chile on the fifth of April I had room for three hundred and eighty-five pictures, since I’d forgotten to download the pictures we’d taken at Caleb and the other second graders’ performance at school the Monday night before I left.

You’d think that would be more than enough room to take all the pictures I wanted, wouldn’t you? You’d be right, THIS time. I did have a few frames left when I got back, but it was less than 70, if memory serves. I took some … shall we say “interesting” pictures while I was there. I took pictures of cars in traffic, blurred shots of city parks as we drove by, a street vendor selling ‘barquillos’ – a baked tube similar to an ice cream cone in texture with ‘manjar’ – caramelized sweetened condensed milk – packed in the middle of it. I took sequential pictures of a trolley climbing up to the observation area on San Cristobal Hill, overlooking the city, so that if you click through them really fast you can see the car climbing towards you. Never mind that the camera HAS a video setting, where I could have ACTUALLY recorded the trolley COMING up the hill.

I also took some other pictures that are a little harder to explain. I took pictures of the church where my friend and fellow MK Todd and his wife attended the funeral of their two year old daughter after she drowned in their pool right before Christmas of 1999. I took pictures of my feet walking on the sidewalks of my old neighborhood. I took pictures of the bell tower of the catholic church that is two blocks from where we used to live, as I approached our old house, I also took pictures of the block in FRONT of our house, which used to be full of older apartment buildings, stores, several houses and a theatre. The entire block has been razed. They are getting to build something else, most likely a couple of larger, taller apartment buildings. I took pictures of the view from the front of our house up the street, towards the park, where the weekly open air market – the feria – came and set up, and I took pictures of the mountains I grew up with as a constant backdrop, always reminding me that there was something bigger out there than me.

And I took a couple of pictures of myself reflected back in a convex mirror that had been set up so that people pulling out of their driveways could see if someone was coming down the street or the sidewalk.

You see, it’d been so long, and my sense of connection with Chile had grown so tenuous that I wanted to have some kind of proof that I had actually BEEN there. So I have this picture of a mirror, with the blue sky behind it, and me reflected in it, holding the camera.

Proof is a big deal when it comes to some things. Proof was a big deal to Thomas. Actor and Playwright Craig McNair Wilson put it this way:

If Thomas were alive today, [he’d be from] Missouri. His favorite phrases were, “Oh Yah?” and, Really?” and “”You’re kiddin’!” Some folks believe anything they hear. Not Thomas. He wanted a second opinion. He wanted to hear it from a more reliable source. Thomas also said, “Seeing is believing.” When Thomas finally saw Jesus – after the resurrection – Jesus said, “Not seeing, yet believing – that’s believing!” (YHWH Is Not a Radio Station in Minneapolis And Other Things Everyone Should Know, Harper & Rowe, San Francisco, 1983)

Let’s unpack the story a little more. Last week we read from the gospel according to Mark that Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome …

“went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Remember, we talked about that being the place where it seems like the earliest rendition of the Gospel according to Mark ended? There were no resurrection appearances, there was no Emmaus Road, no Peter running to the tomb … and no Thomas.

Here today we jump straight TO that story. John goes directly from the scene at the tomb, much richer in detail and dialogue than the Mark account, and puts us in the upper room with the disciples, who are still quaking in their sandals in fear of the Jews – the ones who had just worked it so that their master, their Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, would be crucified and killed, and as far as they knew, was still laying in the tomb. It bears mentioning that even though the disciples had been told that Jesus had arisen, that news alone had not transformed them. They had received the word from the women after THEY left the tomb, but that could be explained away as a hysterical hallucination. The empty tomb could just as well be the work of grave robbers.

And in that first appearance, Thomas was not there.

Right there we need to stop. I suspect we have more in common with Thomas than we might care to admit, but here is one thing that is fairly objective – in other words, neither here nor there on the value judgment scale – let’s have a show of hands, was anyone in this room present at this first appearance of Christ after his resurrection? See? We, like Thomas, were not there when Jesus first appeared to his disciples. So is it any wonder that we encounter some of those same reactions that Thomas had when we present the story of the Gospel to an otherwise unbelieving world?

How is it then, WHY is it that we believe? Or do we?

Thomas’ response to the reports from his fellow disciples – and their response to HIM – would serve us well as an example of how to treat skeptics in our midst. In the other three Gospels, Thomas is simply named among the other disciples as they are listed. In John, we have his character developed in a way that prepares us for this scene: in 11:16, after Lazarus has died, Thomas is almost as impulsive as Peter has been shown to be, encouraging his fellow disciples to go with Jesus to where Lazarus is buried so that they, too, can die with him, in order to believe. In 14:5, after Jesus has told the disciples to not worry, that he is going to prepare a place for them, Thomas comes out with the classic thick-headed response – we don’t KNOW where you’re going, how are we supposed to know that? In short, we have a picture of a man who was loyal to a fault – doggedly loyal is the way the commentator put it – willing to die for his Master, and somewhat slow on the uptake when Jesus started speaking in conceptual terms rather than concrete ones. Thomas was nothing if not literal-minded.

What is interesting to note is that, despite his disbelief of their report of Jesus’ having appeared to them, Thomas was still part of the fellowship a week later, when Jesus made his second appearance. To be honest, I would think most of the other disciples probably recognize that, had THEY not been in the room when it happened and seen him with THEIR own eyes, their reaction to the news would have been similar if not the same as Thomas’.

And then there’s the conclusion to the passage. Most of us know it by heart. Jesus answers Thomas’ request to put his fingers and hand inside the wounds he bore by walking right up TO Thomas and saying “Okay. Go for it. Here they are, have at it.” Thomas’ confession is recorded with no mention of whether or not he actually touched Jesus. It would seem that it is NOT necessary, after all, to actually touch the wounds in order to believe.

Jesus’ question to Thomas after his resounding confession – “My Lord and My God!” – is one that we are confronted with in some cases each day of our lives. “Have you believed because you have seen me?”

The blessing is for us to receive in Christ’s next statement: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

So let’s go back to the original question: Why Do YOU Believe?

Can you say you have not seen Jesus?

In Matthew 25 Jesus tells us that when we feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, welcome a stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit those in prison, we are doing it to HIM, not just those who are at that moment suffering.

And if, at some point in your life, you have received that presence through a visit, through a gift, through a meal, a drink, a word of welcome, can YOU truly say you did not see Christ in that person, offering that grace in the name of our Lord?

Can you truly say you have not seen Jesus?

Jesus was letting the disciples know, in these appearances, that although he was in fact still the same person they had known and followed for the previous three years, their relationship was changing – he had been, up until the day before – a physical presence, someone with whom they could sit and speak face to face, toe to toe, eye to eye. For these few brief days and weeks, Jesus continued to interact with them on that level, but in the course of that time, he was making it clearer and clearer to them that he was now more than he had been – as Thomas confessed – he was now Lord and God.

As the Gospel spread, more and more people who had never had a chance to meet Jesus personally, as the disciples had, came to believe. Think about it, all these people believing in a man they’d never met, whom they wouldn’t recognize even if he DID appear to them, but who they accepted … on faith … as their Lord and Savior.

Is it that different for us today? Whether you find it easy or hard to believe, there’s a place for you. Perhaps you’ll step into our midst and say ‘I have to put my finger … there before I believe.’ That’s okay. Or maybe you’ll step into our midst and come right out with ‘My Lord and My God!’ … and that is welcomed as well. Either way, just like Thomas, Jesus will meet you where you are.

Let’s pray.

The Sabbath is Over


Sunday, April 16th, 2006
Easter
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Mark 16:1-8

1 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” 4 When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 6 But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” 8 So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

The Gospel according to Mark is a challenge in many ways. It is blunt. It’s almost staccato-paced delivery is short on style as well as abrupt in manner. Read through the text and you will find more uses of the word ‘immediately’ within the span of the 16 chapters than in any of the other gospel accounts. Mark is not nearly as well written as is Matthew, nor as detailed as Luke, nor as theologically profound as John.

What Mark DOES have is immediacy. There is a sense as you read it that you are almost right there, in the middle of the action, as it were. It’s a short read. It can be read from beginning to end in the course of a couple of hours, at most, usually less.

So the writer has told the story up to this point, zapping Jesus here and there throughout Galilee and Judea, healing, preaching, teaching and walking, always walking. It stands to reason, actually, since, other than an occasional boat trip or a ride on a horse, or a donkey, walking was THE primary form of locomotion in first century Palestine.

And the style of writing doesn’t actually change as it draws to the end of the story.

There’re some pretty interesting things going on at the end of the Gospel of Mark. With the version authorized by King James at the beginning of the 17th century, scholars of the day who worked on that first English translation of the scriptures worked with the manuscripts they had available at the time. Those they had at their disposal included the text of the Gospel through verse 20 of chapter 16. Since that time, Biblical scholars have approached the text in different ways, in addition, further discoveries have uncovered earlier manuscripts than the ones with which scholars were working at the turn of the 1600’s.

The oldest manuscripts that have been found of the Gospel of Mark ALL end with the last verse I read a couple of minutes ago.

8 So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

It is, don’t you think, something of an inauspicious ending to the greatest story ever told? It doesn’t have the sweeping majesty we find in the Great Commission at the end of Matthew, or the fantastic scene of Jesus being taken up into heaven we have at the end of Luke, or the oddly introspective comments at the end of John – about the fact that Jesus did many other things, and that if they were all written down, the world could not hold all the books that would be written.

Mark is generally agreed to be the earliest Gospel written. It was put down in writing between 50 and 70 AD, in other words, within the generation following Jesus’ public ministry, death and resurrection. The person who wrote it is most likely the person who actually lived through the events described. It almost has the feel of someone trying to put everything down before they forget it, in some ways. It’s a very human rendition of the story of Jesus; a very earthy tale of a sometimes unearthly series of events.

So let’s just take at face value for a while, the assertion of Biblical scholars that the last twelve verses of Mark were not there during the first, say, fifty to a hundred years that the gospel was being copied and circulated around and read to the groups of believers who were popping out all over the middle east and southeastern Europe.

What kind of an ending is that?
What kind of an ending is that?
What kind of an ending is THAT?

There’re are no resurrection appearances, there’s no doubting Thomas saying he’ll believe only when he can place his hand in Jesus’ pierced side, and put his fingers in the nail holes in Jesus’ hands. There’s no Peter running to the tomb, to be confronted by Jesus. There’s no gathering of followers, or a mention of Jesus’ appearing to more than 500 of them before his ascension. There’re no travelers on the road to Emmaus meeting up with Jesus and having their hearts burning within them as they listen to him explain the scriptures.

Nope. None of that. Mark is not interested in making the telling of the Gospel literature. He is more interested, it seems, in getting the stories down in such a way that the reader, or the listener, is confronted in as close a way as possible with that with which the writer himself was confronted – not just with the Christ who practically ran from town to town, faced down injustice, hatred, prejudice, sin, and showed through his acts and words what God wanted for this world from the beginning, and for US – his children, from OUR beginning, but also with the RISEN Christ. Who through that single act proved all he’d said to be true.

I think the writer of Gospel meant for the telling to end that way: abruptly, suddenly, without warning, without flourish, without fanfare, without any of the usual clues you’d get if you were simply reading the story.

But it changes if you read it as a part of an ongoing story … a story that really HASN’T finished … it hadn’t finished when the first author dictated the last word back 20 or 30 years after Jesus’ resurrection, the writer knew that the people who would hear the gospel read to them would readily step up and continue to tell the rest of the story. What had happened SINCE the women fled from the cemetery, the first evangelists with the news that Christ had risen, that he was going to meet them in Galilee … only THEY, the readers, and hearers, would insert the name of the place THEY met Christ at that point in the story. For some, Christ met them right there in Jerusalem, on the day of Pentecost, for others, it was 15 years after that event, somewhere on the coast of Syria, or on one of the Greek Islands, or in the interior of Turkey, or in Damascus, or on Crete, or Cyprus, or in Rome.

You see, the Gospel writer didn’t want to tie everything up in a neat little package because his experience of Jesus was anything BUT a neat little package.

This past Thursday afternoon I drove to the airport in Richmond and dropped off a package, a manila envelope that held some letters and other documents that needed to get to Chimalhuacan, Mexico. I came home that evening and began tracking it online. It left Richmond that evening, was in Ohio just after midnight, and by midmorning the next day it was in Mexico City. It is now just a few miles from its final destination. It’s amazing how manageable a neat little package is if you know what to do with it.

As humans, we have a tendency to think that if we understand something, then, what is the term? If you know something inside and out, you are considered to have MASTERED the subject. The Gospel of Mark makes it clear that what he lived through was something that, though experienced, did not lend itself to complete understanding, did not submit to being ‘known’ in the fullest sense of the word – though God DID make God’s self known THROUGH Christ, at some point this side of heaven we cease to understand. And that point came this past Friday. When the package we thought we understood, the package of platitudes and good thoughts and reasonable and appropriate ideas on treating others with respect and kindness, and standing up to falsehood and vanity and pride and whatever other sin you’d like to fill in, all that fell away when Jesus took the cross upon himself and told the writer and the readers “this is for you, THIS is how much the Father loves you”.

And he did away with our need to meet requirements, to fulfill expectations, to follow a set of laws in order to be acceptable to God. The children he so deeply loved had been struggling – for centuries – to reach across an infinite gap. A gap so deep and so wide that only God God’s self was able to cross it – through the cross.

The radical Gospel of Jesus is that the Sabbath is over. There is no need for a sacrifice that was completed once and for all time. There is no need to meet strict rules of cleanliness and holiness because we take on Christ’s own holiness when we ask him to be Lord of our lives.

The cost of following is another thing. Salvation is the gift, discipleship is the cost, but it is in no way a hidden cost, unless you come into the relationship unwilling to accept the consequences of MAKING Christ what the word means – LORD of your life. Christ calls us to a life of service, of sacrifice, of giving, and of loving.

So what does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means that we need to live out the fullness of what it means to say that the Sabbath is truly over – we need to get rid of any vestige we may cling to of trying to somehow EARN our way to worthiness. I can say with full confidence that there is not a single one of us in this room who has gained worthiness of salvation through being a good person, through being involved in church all our lives, through memorizing passage after passage of scripture, or better yet, through memorizing all the hymns in the 1956 Baptist Hymnal (except for the third verses, of course).

It means that we rest – we rest in the assurance of pardon that we find through Christ, we rest in the knowledge that God loved us so much that God made himself human in order to be with us, and call us to God’s self.

A short while ago we shared in the baptism of Brandon Harcum. As Baptists, we do not believe that the act of baptism itself is anything other than an outward representation of what the inward self has done – died to the world, and risen in Christ – it is an echo of the resurrection of Christ himself. It is a commemoration, a signal event in the life of the believer. It marks a continuing, public commitment to follow Christ. The observance of the ordinance gives us an opportunity to reflect, to ponder, to review our own commitment made when WE followed Christ in asking him to be Lord of our lives. While the waters themselves hold no power, we do want to make that same water available to you at the conclusion of the service in these two bowls on the communion table. The invitation is to come forward and, whether with a brief prayer, or by dipping the tips of your fingers in the water and returning to your seats, you can, IF YOU WOULD LIKE, make a publicly quiet statement of your faith. I realize that this is not a very Baptist thing to do, and it’s not. But we want to recognize the need to publicly profess a faith that we sometimes practice a little too privately.

Aside from that, our invitation time is, as always, an invitation to make a decision public that you’ve already made in private, whether during this service or before; to ask Christ to be Lord of your life, to join with this family of faith on the journey to which Christ has called us, or to work at putting aside our own Sabbaths, whatever they may be.

I will be standing at the front if you would like to come share that decision with me or with the congregation.

Please stand and sing our hymn of invitation, Oh How I love Jesus.


WORDS OF DISMISSAL

Now you are freed,
Let loose
Upon and unsuspecting world
That assumed
Nothing happens here.

The music sung
The preacher has said the best he can
The clock has rounded its circuit
And now no further conformity
Restrains you.

The world waits
With nonchalant welcome,
Not knowing that
You reached for
And touched
GOD!

And now you are free,
Let loose
To break upon the earth
With a Holy surprise.

Heart Cries, Heart Prayers


Sunday, April 2nd, 2006
Lent 5B, Evening Lenten Community Service
Warsaw United Methodist Church, Warsaw
Psalm 51:1-12

1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment. 5 Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me. 6 You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. 7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.

It was late March, 1988, near as I can remember. The text was Luke 15, the story of the man with two sons. That is how Jesus introduces the parable: “There was a man who had two sons” … it’s commonly known as the parable of the prodigal son … but the main character is the father.

The speaker was Steve Shoemaker; the location was Crescent Hill Baptist Church, on Frankfort Avenue in Louisville, KY. That morning, the worship service seemed to have zeroed in on me personally, for the full hour and fifteen minutes that it lasted. I was not raised in a tradition that observed or practiced worship liturgy in the sense that we are observing this evening – the prayers, the collect, the confession, the pastoral prayer, in Chilean Baptist tradition, you start the service with a 45 minute song service, followed by a 45 minute prayer service, and ending with an hour or more preaching service. So when I began attending Crescent Hill, and joined in the congregational prayers and readings, and listening to the pastoral prayers intentionally crafted to address the needs of the congregation, they struck a chord deep inside, and on that particular morning the worship seemed to be tuned to my heart specifically.

***

Don’t you think it’s interesting that in the Psalm, the writer does not specifically name his or her sin? Yes, we have the superscription, the explanatory subtitle assigning it to David, as having been written by him after Nathan exposed him to himself with regards to the adulterous affair he had with Bathsheba, which we can find in all it’s sordid detail in 2 Samuel 12, but in the text of the psalm itself, there is no spelling out of what sin the author has committed. What is most evident in the reading of the psalm is that the author is VERY aware of the WRONGNESS of what he has done, of the RIGHTNESS with which God would judge, and the inevitability of that judgment.

We speak of hellfire and brimstone preaching, and in some circles, it is frowned on … even demeaned, made fun of. While it is not “my cup of tea”, there is something to be said for it. It makes us aware, if we are at a place where it touches on our life, of just how slimy we can be. Of just how broken we are. Of just how far from the mark we can fall. We are very good at separating our actions and motives from those we observe in others, however similar the outcome may be. We leave the timber in our own eyes to point out the splinter in our brothers’ and sisters’.

We all judge. As much as we may fight against it, and even train ourselves not to, we stratify ourselves and those around us. Just listen, sometime, to the inner dialogue that takes place while we’re watching the news on TV, or listening to it on the radio, or reading the story in the paper. The dialogue is usually sprinkled liberally with phrases like “I would never” … “what were they thinking?” … “I can’t imagine…” … “If they’d only STOPPED …”

There’s an element of objectivity that we can all develop, that we can all employ, but there is an equally strong element of SUBjectivity to which we are all susceptible, of which we are not necesarilly aware, which plays into our sense of self-worth, to boost our ego, more often than not. It plays itself out most readily when we try to rationalize something we want to do but are less than certain of its ethicality, to not say outright sure of it being the WRONG thing to do. And yet we do it.

And that is where the author of the Psalm was on point when he did not mention the sin. He did not mention it because the sin itself was immaterial. The attitude TOWARD the sin, the fact that it was recognized that, as John Durham wrote,

“Whatever its motivation, its passion, its effect, in self and in others, it is always basically and finally a sin against God, against God alone. As it is God who is the norm and reason for humanity’s righteousness, so it is God against whom every sin is an attack, to whom every sin is an affront. This is not to say, of course, that no others are hurt by the sin, one’s self, indeed most damaged of all. It is to say that whatever the harm to neighbor or self, it is God who suffers most of all and always … it anticipates the concept of the Servant-Redeemer who suffers, and indeed Christ’s death on Calvary as well.”

The writer knows God. One might argue the fact, based on the acts, if they were noted, but they are not. So we find ourselves sneaking our own experience into the text. “THAT’S how I feel about having done thus and such or about having said this and that … about NOT having spoken up in that meeting when I KNEW I should have …” it is that element of universality that draws us into the Psalmist’s lament.

How do we know he knows God? It’s in the first verse of the prayer:

“According to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy” …

This person knew whom he was approaching … and knew the condition in which he was approaching. If it WAS David, then he realized how horribly he had acted. When it IS us, then we are so very, very aware of just how much wrong we’ve done. And yet, we call on the goodness of God, on the love and mercy of the one who made us and called us his own.

What is it that brings us to the point of recognizing our sinfulness? A dear friend quoted a saying to me earlier this week: “when you get to the end of your rope, you tie a knot and hang on”. It is a somewhat overused and trite saying, but only for those who have not felt that scratchy, rough rope slipping through their hands at what sometimes feels like an ever-increasing speed.

Several months ago, I was driving to one of our Hispanic friend’s house in the Hague area, and as I turned down her road, I noticed a woman walking toward the main highway. After stopping at the destination, I headed back up the road, and passed the same woman walking determinedly towards the highway. I stopped and asked if I could give her a ride anywhere. She asked if I would take her to the gas station just a few miles down the road. As we drove down the road, I found out that the reason she was going there was to try and find a ride into Richmond for an urgent errand. As it worked out, I was able to free up the afternoon and make that run with her. She was at the end of HER rope, and by stepping out and walking down that road, God set in motion a way to bring her some relief. The conversation to and from Richmond ranged the gamut of human experience, from the joys and frustrations of child rearing to the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’, as Shakespeare wrote.

I think we all have similar stories to tell – times when we weren’t planning on being somewhere, or doing something, and yet, in finding ourselves in that particular place at that particular time, we end up being in the presence of Grace, or if we are fortunate, we find ourselves being the CONDUIT of that Grace, or maybe even, possibly, if we are VERY fortunate, the RECIPIENTS of that Grace.

It is comforting to me to know that King David is still considered the greatest king Israel ever had. He is still referred to as ‘A man after God’s own heart.’ Sometimes we stop and shake our heads … and wonder how that could apply – after some of the things David did … not just the episode here ascribed, but other things as well, the rages, the murders, the lying … you wonder if God might have set the bar a little low by setting the definition by David.

That was what I experienced that Sunday morning in the spring of 1988. As Steve told the story of the prodigal son, the dialogue that was going on inside me was one that more closely followed the psalmist’s plea as we’ve read here tonight. I was made aware in the course of that hour that it was God whom I’d sinned against, ultimately. It was God from whom I needed to seek forgiveness, in addition to setting things right in the relationships involved. “And when his son was still a long way off, the father saw him and ran to him and threw his arms around him” and covered his face with kisses … and the calf was slaughtered, and the celebration ensued…

The truth is, David isn’t the one defining who is a person after God’s own heart. He’s just an example. The point of the moniker is to highlight the fact that we can all be ‘after God’s own heart’ – whatever our particular mistake, misstep, error in judgment, loss of perspective, however we want to euphemize our sin, we find ourselves approaching the presence of the Holy one and seeking forgiveness and redemption. We all have the chance to utter this cry, this prayer from our heart of hearts – our ‘secret heart’ as the psalmist wrote.

And the mystery is that we can, and the mystery is that God will, and the holiness of the moment is translated into joy and gladness, cleansing, and communion.

Lets pray.

A Kind of Death


Sunday, April 2nd, 2006
Lent 5B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
John 12:20-36

20 Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. 21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22 Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23 Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor. 27 “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30 Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33 He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. 34 The crowd answered him, “We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” 35 Jesus said to them, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. 36 While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.” After Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them.

Did you notice it as you came in this morning? Sometime during the day on Thursday or Friday, our Easter harbinger, that little sparrow that makes her home on whatever wreath happens to be hanging on the front left door settled in for the next few weeks. I had started to wonder if she might not come back this year, since she’d been here earlier, it seems, the last couple of years. No eggs yet, but the nest went up in record time.

Have you enjoyed the warming days, the sunshine, the blooming trees and flowers? I realize for some of us with seasonal allergies, spring is a mixed blessing, but I guess we can’t have everything, huh?

Watching the fields start to turn green with the shoots coming up, when just a few weeks ago they were brown and bare, and the trees likewise, watching bare scraggly branches grow heavier and heavier and fuller and fuller with buds of leaves and flowers makes a clear parallel with what our passage includes this morning. Jesus is presented with a request from the Hellenized Jews – that is, Jews who lived outside the Palestinian homeland of the people of Israel, who had been raised exposed to the prevailing culture of the previous several centuries – the Greeks – one which still, in Jesus’ day, and in decreasing increments over the next three hundred years, would influence the ROMAN culture, they have come asking for an audience with Jesus.

Who they direct the request THROUGH is telling – Philip first and then Andrew, whose names were both Greek, and who were both from Bethsaida, a town that, though within the borders of Palestine, was nonetheless a Hellenized city – it was on the northern boundary with Syria, and because of that proximity to such a strongly Hellenized culture, it had become Hellenized as well.

What’s interesting about the encounter is that we’re never told if Jesus met with them or not. The gospel is silent with respect to the question of whether or not these particular Greeks met Jesus. Instead, we are given Jesus’ response to the request – “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” – the thing is, that glorification he was talking about was not what we would normally consider a glorification – were we coming from a worldly perspective – he was not made famous through the adulation of crowds, through becoming the political and military leader of the people of Israel, through the defeating and eviction of an occupying army, but through his loneliness and isolation – and ultimate rejection – from his own people.

Jesus was glorified – and the world was judged – by and through his death.

That would seem, as Paul said, to be foolishness to the gentiles, and a stumbling block to the Jew.

In all honesty, it WOULD seem to be that. Think about it. How could the execution – as a common criminal – of the leader of a scruffy band of religious nuts possibly have any lasting impact on the world? It would stand SOLIDLY to reason that once the event was done and over with it would be left behind in the rapidly-fading dustbins of history.

What was different about this, then? What made it significant? What set Jesus apart from all the other religious zealots who came before him and who appeared after him?

Just this: Jesus was who he said he was.

As I’ve said before, if we are to hold to the central truth of the Christian faith, it is that God was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s self, and that manner of reconciliation was through his self-offering, God’s self-sacrifice in Jesus, God’s building the bridge that spanned the gap between God and humanity so that the relationship could be reestablished. God made a way for us to once again encounter the creator of the universe in a personal way, to walk together side by side.

24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Here’s a perfect picture of the reason Christ died – not JUST for his own people – the Jews, but also for the rest of the world. That was why it wasn’t so important to know whether or not those Greeks that came looking for Jesus at the beginning of the passage spoke to him or not – it was in his answer – in his description of the death of a seed – something we see evidence of all around us as spring … SPRINGS forth – all around us… Jesus died in order that ALL might receive salvation through him.

Jesus wasn’t speaking, though, only of HIS OWN death. He was speaking of the nature of discipleship. What it means to follow Christ. We read a similar passage a few weeks ago, from Mark 8, and indeed, it’s a recurring theme not only in the Gospels, but in Paul’s writings as well. To die to self, to give up one’s own life for the life of others, for the life of Christ, is the daily office, if you will, of a disciple, of a follower of Christ.

In describing it as his own death, Christ ended up confounding those who were listening to him. The concept just couldn’t be grasped by the ones who had spent so many years looking for one thing, only to be faced with the very thing they were looking for – in a form completely the opposite of what they were expecting.

32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33 He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

When Jesus said those words – ‘lifted up from the earth’ – it was a literal description of what would be happening to him on the cross. Jesus knew what he was facing. He knew the kind of death he would be suffering. And yet, even in the full knowledge of the kind of death he would die, he willingly accepted it.

What does that mean, what does that imply for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton today; knowing what kind of death is to be expected, what kind of death WE have to die in order to follow Christ?

It means we don’t back away from the commitment, we don’t shirk the responsibility, we don’t shrug off the duty of examining ourselves DAILY … we read about it in our responsive reading a few minutes ago – ‘blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me’ that is a prayer we must pray daily, not just when we are feeling especially sinful. And it’s not purely an introspective exercise. It can’t be. The ‘seed bearing fruit’ through being sown requires what? ACTION! The act of sowing – whether by hand, by machine, or by heart, is one that comes part and parcel with being a disciple of Christ. In dying to ourselves, we are giving our lives to Christ. In giving our lives for others – in meeting needs, in a helping hand, in giving a ride to a friend for her doctor’s appointment, in giving another a ride to the hospital, or the grocery store, in working out the details to have running water in the building when the well goes out, and just as true, in being willing to PROVIDE that water to neighbors, we are living out what it means to give your life to Christ through serving others than ourselves.

So we will, HOPEFULLY, not get in the way of lifting up Christ – and drawing all people to him. Jesus made a point of NOT distinguishing who he was doing it for – not for the Jews alone, but for the whole of HUMANITY.

So our calling is both specific and general. Specific in terms of where we are to carry out the acts that will point people to Christ, and general in terms of whom we are to carry them out FOR; RIGHT here, RIGHT NOW, and FOR EVERYONE.

Let’s pray.