Living Questions


Sunday, September 25th, 2005
Pentecost + 19
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 21:23-32

23 When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, ‘By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?’ 24 Jesus said to them, ‘I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. 25 Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?’ And they argued with one another, ‘If we say, “From heaven,” he will say to us, “Why then did you not believe him?” 26 But if we say, “Of human origin,” we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.’ 27 So they answered Jesus, ‘We do not know.’ And he said to them, ‘Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.
28 ‘What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, “Son, go and work in the vineyard today.” 29 He answered, “I will not”; but later he changed his mind and went. 30 The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, “I go, sir”; but he did not go. 31 Which of the two did the will of his father?’ They said, ‘The first.’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32 For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.

It was a valid question.

Coming from the standpoint of the Chief Priests and Elders of the people, the combined ruling class (apart from the Romans) of the people of Judah, they were entirely justified in their minds to be asking Jesus by whose authority he did what he did.

Today’s passage skips ahead 3 whole chapters from where we were last week. We’ve moved into Easter territory. If I didn’t know it was the end of September I’d be looking for blossoms on the trees…

I’m not familiar enough yet with the background on the lectionary to be able to explain to you why the readings are set up the way they are, but there you have it.

The passage for today jumps in AFTER the triumphal entry, AFTER the cleansing of the temple, AFTER the Sadducees and Pharisees had already joined forces in recognizing that they had to get rid of Jesus. This is one of their initial attempts to derail him. In the coming few weeks, we’ll see other examples of their attempts to trip Jesus up, but we will get to those then. For now, we study the text at hand.

The issue is authority. Coming from the ruling authorities, it was not an idle question. It seems straightforward enough. “Jesus, tell us, by what authority do you come in here and get crowds clamoring at your entrance, and then come into the temple and run amok with our vendor/partners? Who gave you the right to do those things?”

In his response, Jesus demonstrates for us that he knew whom he was dealing with – and more than that – he knew where THEY were coming from, what was motivating their question, and he asked the precise question that exposed that motivation.

What is fascinating about the exchange is that, within a few deft sentences, Jesus pulls the situation into perspective for us. It’s been about three years since his cousin John was murdered, but the message he preached is still at this point, very much alive in the lives of the people. They have not forgotten what John preached and practiced.

Jesus asks the priests and elders, ‘did the baptism of John come from heaven or is it of human origin?” Admittedly, there are times when the Gospels present what can sometimes come across as an almost-cartoon version of the characters involved in the story of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, especially when it comes to the disciples. In this case, we catch a glimpse into part of the reason WHY the Elders of the people and the Chief Priests WERE who they WERE.

They were not naïve. They were not intellectually challenged. They understood the world they lived in. They had a lot to do with why it WAS the way it was. The thought process is spelled out, again, in just a few words, from the second half of verse 25 to the first half of verse 27.

‘If we say, “From heaven,” he will say to us, “Why then did you not believe him?” 26 But if we say, “Of human origin,” we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.’

Here we have their discussion – certainly among themselves – it would be interesting to know HOW Matthew got the scoop on what they were saying, wouldn’t it be? Perhaps an elder who later became a follower of Christ, or a temple priest who, like Saul, at some point later on came face to face with the risen Lord. In any case, here’s their dilemma. Jesus has them coming and going. There is no way they can answer this question and come away winners. The polling data is not coming back in favor of either answer.

You see, that was their whole point in asking THEIR question. They didn’t REALLY want to know the answer to the question they were asking, they simply wanted to trap Jesus into (in their eyes) blaspheming, or showing himself to be a delusional egomaniac. To the innocent passers-by, the general public, their question would be an acceptable one, and to not answer it would ALSO make Jesus look bad in the eyes of the people who had been indoctrinated into believing that everything the Sadducees and Pharisees and Elders and Chief Priests said could well be AND SHOULD BE taken to be the proclamation from the Lord God of Hosts, the Almighty himself. After all, they WERE the leaders and the scribes, were they not?

What they DIDN’T count on was Jesus knowing their hearts better than they did.

When the Priests and Elders come back at Jesus and refused to answer, he also refused to answer their question. The confrontation is a draw, sort of.

Jesus goes on to drive the point home.

He tells a story.

A man has a vineyard, and two sons. He asks one son to go out and work the vineyard. The son, who is probably sitting on his bed engrossed in reading the latest Harry Potter book, answers somewhat insolently, “I don’t want to.” And the father goes on about his business, maybe shaking his head and wondering what today’s kids were growing up to be. He comes upon his second son, who is playing a video game in his room. “Son, can you please go out to the vineyard and work it for me?” The second son answers “Sure Dad!” with an eager smile on his face, “be right there!” and turns back to his game and promptly forgets what he just said as he tries to get Mario to jump up to that next level…

Meanwhile, son number one has had time to think about how he answered his Dad, and realizes he really should go out and work the vineyard after all. He marks the page, sets the book down, and heads out to do the work requested.

Jesus’ question is simple: Which one of the sons did what his father asked? The one who said “no,” and then DID, or the one who said “yes” and then DIDN’T?

The answer was obvious to everyone there. Even though he initially refused, the first son to be asked obeyed. His actions spoke louder than words. The second son’s actions spoke louder than HIS words as well, only in a DISobedient manner.

I can see Jesus shaking his head and looking at the men standing in front of him. They just answered the question, but they are totally missing the point of the story. Even though they answered it correctly, they could not fit their brains around the notion that THEY were like the SECOND son, who paid lip service to his father, but in truth couldn’t care less for what his father expected of him, and chose rather to do things HE wanted to do.

They just didn’t get it.

Jesus tries to make them understand one last time – to shock them into awareness – in bringing up the tax collectors and the prostitutes who recognized their unrighteousness, sin, and separation from God and chose to follow him. Admitting their need.

As we’ve seen before, tax collectors and prostitutes were the epitome of what the Priests and Pharisees wanted NOTHING to do with. They were categorically unclean, beyond redemption, and therefore not worthy of attention, or time, or addressing, to say nothing of sitting down to a meal together.

That was, if you recall, what Jesus had gotten in trouble with so often before. For having treated people as … PEOPLE, regardless of what they’d done. His ‘socializing’ was what scandalized the self-righteous pillars of the community. The completely missed the fact that in engaging EVERYONE, Jesus called them into obedience to the heart of God. He did not leave wrong as wrong. He didn’t tell the woman caught in adultery ‘go on about your business’, he told her ‘this way your living is going to kill you … it almost DID, just now. Go and sin no more.’

Frank Stagg, New Testament professor at Southern Seminary, put it this way:

“Radical demand and limitless mercy come together in the teaching and manner of Jesus”

Radical demand. The word ‘radical’ means ‘root’. Think “Root canal”, think “radical change”, “the root of the problem”. Jesus is not playing around with window dressing when he deals with our lives. He is not making cosmetic changes so we will appear more acceptable to society… or to other churchgoers. He is dealing with our hearts, our innermost being.

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

What is our response to Jesus’ question? After all, Jesus is asking us the same questions today. That is why they are living questions. They are being asked of us today, and have been asked of every believer over the last two thousand years.

Who has the authority in your life? Are we going to pay lip service to the father, put on the good face, say we’re going to do this and that, eloquently describe what it means to be children of God, be a light to the nations, be a factor of change in our community, and then just come and sit on Sundays?

Or are we going to put our words into action, recognizing that we have failed and will fail time and again, but that isn’t the point. The point is that we are and can all be recipients of God’s limitless grace if we only ask for it! The message of the story is that it doesn’t matter what’s come before. There is a second chance and a third chance and a fourth chance for all of us. God’s grace does that.

God wants us obedient, not pretty.

Let’s pray.

Wages

Sunday, September 18th, 2005
Pentecost + 18
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 20:1-16

1‘For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. 3When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; 4and he said to them, “You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.” So they went. 5When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. 6And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” 7They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, “You also go into the vineyard.” 8When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.” 9When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. 10Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. 11And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” 13But he replied to one of them, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? 14Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” 16So the last will be first, and the first will be last.’

The cartoon that came this week was pretty funny. It’s from the lectionary comic strip “Agnus Day”, a play on the latin words that mean ‘the year of our Lord’, only Dei D-E-I, meaning Lord, is spelled D-A-Y for the strip. I get a weekly email that draws it’s inspiration from one of the passages to be read for today.

The two sheep, Rick and Ted (Rick's the one with the dark nose and the cup of coffee) are talking to each other, commenting on today’s Gospel reading.

“Let me get this straight.” Says Ted, “The last guys get paid the same as the first who thought they’d get more?”

“Yes,” says Rick.

Ted continues, “And Jesus is saying that this is a picture of life with God?”

“Yes,” Rick says again.

“Is it okay,” Ted asks, “to say that God is bonkers?”

“No” Rick responds.

And that’s where the strip ends. It’s rarely more than 3 or 4 frames.

But I have to tell you, since I first read that parable, I ALWAYS thought the same as Ted. On the one hand, I can understand the justification on the part of the landowner. It IS his money, his land, his property, and he is perfectly entitled to spend it as he wishes.

It’s the justice issue that I had to struggle with. The fairness issue: how can a JUST and FAIR God give the same reward to those who’ve done so little in relation to those who’ve done so much?

Any way you turn this story, it STILL seems unfair. Even allowing for the right of the landowner to do as he pleases. You see, IN that allowing, there is a human sense of disgruntledness. It’s a way of acknowledging, but still not agreeing with, what has happened. It is fundamentally unfair to pay someone who has spent a full day working the same amount as one who has only spent an hour working.

How can we reconcile that with our vision of a just God? How can we relate that response of “isn’t that what we agreed to?” to an extravagantly loving God, who gave himself for us in a way that it will take us our entire lives and MORE to understand?

As we saw last Sunday, it all depends on whom you identify with in the story. There are laborers who were hired early – at 6 and then at 9 O’clock in the morning, and there were others who were hired at noon, another group at three and another group at five.

For as long as I can remember, I always identified with the 6 O’clock or the 9 O'clock group. After all, I can’t remember a time when I DIDN’T go to church as a child. Neither can my parents, and I would venture to say that their parents before them were the same way.

The point is, as humans, we think in terms of the span of our lives and measure things in relation to that. So, our lifetime seems a long time. There’s an understanding, of course, at least on an intellectual level, that in the grander scheme of things, our lives AREN’T that long, but it is only on rare occasion that that piece of information truly sinks in and we grasp it. While our heads can understand the concept, it is not so easy for our hearts to do so.

I’ve thought that maybe a few of my friends who chose to follow Christ as teenagers might identify with the nine o'clock or the noon crowd. They understand the struggle of coming into a situation where there’s little or no common background to fall back on. Especially at that age, when so much other stuff is happening in and around them, to have to deal with becoming a Christ follower in the midst of all those other changes is definitely a daunting task.

Then there’s the three O’clock crowd. These we could identify with if we were to have come to faith as an adult. A goodly portion of our life has already gone by. We might have had some involvement around the edges of faith, or in the church, but nothing lasting, nothing true, until somehow, someway, Jesus came by, looked us straight in the eye and said ‘Come, follow me.’ If we live an average lifespan, there’s a chance we might be able to spend the second half of our life for Jesus, but there’s an equal chance that it might be considerably less time than that which we’ve already lived. So it goes.

Finally, we get to the five O’clock loafers. These are the folks who’ve just been hanging out all day. Not really doing anything, and just as the sun starts to get low in the sky, the man comes around and calls them into the vineyard to work. These are the lucky ones. The ones who get the nine o’clock crowd most disturbed when they find out they are all being paid the same wage. And rightfully disturbed! Bonkers! That’s a great word for it, don’t you agree?

But here’s where we get to the heart of the matter. What are we talking about, when we talk about the laborers who begin working in the fields at 6 or 9, and those who begin to work the fields at 5? What work is it, exactly? And what wage? What landowner?

I realized as I was going over this in my mind that as I was identifying myself with the workers who began working at nine, there was an unspoken word that sat at the back of the room and whispered to me “you DESERVE more because you’ve DONE more.” It’s that same voice that also can be heard to whisper “you’re BETTER than they are…” “you’re worth more, you count more, you’re respected more, you’re a more valued member of society … than they are …” it’s that insidious thought that ties in with our desire to EARN our way into the kingdom. That IS what the 9 o’clock workers were saying, after all, when they said, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.”

There we go again, wanting to create barriers where God is trying to break them down. There is something in us that wants to create these distinctions between people that simply are not there in the eyes of God. We want to be paid more, be recognized more, be valued more, be treated differently, than others. How else can we establish our worth?

How else indeed?

Let’s try this. Let’s recast the story, retell it, and this time, intentionally place yourself in the place of one of those 5 o’clock workers.

You are a day laborer. You get up, get your shower, get the kids up and dressed and ready for school, and then jump on a bus that is supposed to get you to the pick-up site, only it gets caught in traffic, there’s a big wreck on the interstate, and you end up getting there AT NOON. There’s still a huge crowd. Some people get picked up just as you get there, you wait a couple of hours, and another bunch get picked up ridiculously late in the day, it’s probably not even going to be enough work for them to be able to pick up something to eat on the way home, but they go anyway. Then, just as you start to look for the bus home, the man in the truck swings by again, and asks if you want to work, and you say yeah, of course. It’s going to put you home late if it turns into an evening project, but the kids have fended for themselves before, they know the drill.

You get to the vineyard, and get to work. It seems like just a few minutes later you are called in along with everyone else. You realize that the day is over. And you wonder how there’s any way that this is going to end up being worth your time and frustration, what with the bus and traffic and all … and you’re told to get at the head of the line, since you were the last to be hired.

You walk up to the foreman, and he hands you a Hundred and fifty dollars. You are stunned along with everyone else. Because everyone else, as they go through the line, gets the same amount. Those who you can tell from looking at them that they’ve been out in the hot sun all day, and those who are a little – only a little – less worn out – who’ve been there since noon, and then those who are only a little more rumpled than you are … and then there’s the rest of the group YOU came in with. You’ve hardly broken a sweat, and you look at each other and sheepishly grin, trying to hide the smile.

So what exactly are we talking about again?

Salvation, of course. Salvation and grace, here and now as well as there and then. The gift of life – true, abundant life – that God gives us freely. And here’s the secret to the parable:

Everyone came to work at five.

Paul reminds us in his letter to the Ephesians “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” (2:8-9)

There’s a sense of entitlement that creeps into our thinking when we first read the passage, a sense of just rewards that’s supposed to be followed in the parable. It’s ingrained in us, isn’t it? Even as … or especially as moral beings, it is right and appropriate to expect that to happen.

There are those of us who have seemingly worked long and hard all our lives for the landowner – for the Kingdom – and there’s something deep down inside that is telling us that because we did that, we should get a greater wage – a greater reward.

But we need to remember what we are talking about. If this WERE an earthly master, with workers in a field, then it would be understandable to expect that scaled pay – more pay for more work, less pay for less work.

But we’re not talking about an earthly master, are we? And we’re not talking about wages for working in a field. We’re speaking of eternity. We’re speaking of a God who is transcendent – whose thoughts are not our thoughts, whose ways are not our ways. We are speaking of an eternally loving, giving, suffering God who does not see our shortcomings and failures, but rather sees his beloved children and desires to give them ALL the most precious gift of all.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means that we have work to do. But the work we are to be about is the work of letting all the other laborers know that even though we’re starting work at 5 o’clock, even though we have done nothing to earn it, the landowner is paying everyone the same wage.

There is no room in God’s economy to stand on what we have done, what we’ve accomplished what we’ve added to the kingdom, because it hasn’t been our doing. Yes, we have been and are instrumental in that spreading of the kingdom, but we are not rewarded for that. We are rather rewarded for the love of God – BY the love of God – for us all.

And that is the heart of the Gospel. That is the gospel of Grace. That is the message we can bring. It’s not about whose been here the longest. This isn’t a race, and it’s not a contest. We’re not doing a fundraiser for the kingdom. If you get 174 or more converts you get a personal DVD player. Nope. This is a family. And we are all on the journey together. Supporting each other, encouraging each other, sustaining one another in humility and love. And the greatest reward of all is waiting for us all.

Let’s pray.

From Your Heart

Sunday, September 11th, 2005
Pentecost +17
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 18:21-35

21 Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ 22Jesus said to im, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. 23‘For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; 25and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. 26So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” 27And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, “Pay what you owe.” 29Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.” 30But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. 31When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32Then his lord summoned him and said to him, “You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?” 34And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. 35So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’

Where do we begin to talk about forgiveness in the Christian faith?

Do we go back to the Old Testament and begin there, with the multitudes of times that God forgave the children of Israel – sometimes with some prodding from Moses – for wandering not only through the wilderness but also away from Him?

Or do we move forward, and begin with God and King David, who time and time again let his lower instincts get a hold of him, and yet, God still reckoned him a man after God’s own heart even at the end of his life?

Or should we go no further back than John the Baptist, preaching repentance for the forgiveness of sins to the people of Israel shortly before Jesus came on the scene?

What about only going so far back as the Crucifixion, with Jesus asking God to forgive them, because they don’t know what they are doing?

How many different places in scripture do we find forgiveness? How often is forgiveness the central point of the story, such as in today’s passage?

The events in the story in the text never actually happened … Jesus is again presenting a parable of the Kingdom. See there in verse 23, Jesus says, “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to…” That’s our clue to the fact that Jesus is again painting a picture of what God’s Kingdom is like.

So what do we have? We have a King, and a slave who owes him 150,000 years’ worth of salary. A talent, in some conversion tables, was the equivalent of 15 years’ wages. In short, Jesus wasn’t telling the story in a way that people could actually conceive of it truly happening – REALLY happening – in their context. It’d be as if I owed Governor Warner 4 Billion, 800 Million dollars, roughly. Give or take a few bucks. He was using exaggeration to make the point. The figure is an unreal sum, for an individual.

The central issue quickly becomes the actions and attitudes within the story. The King demands his repayment, the slave falls on his knees begging the King for more time to pay, the King takes compassion on him, and forgives the debt. He doesn’t work out a payment plan, he doesn’t reduce the debt, he voids it, eliminates it completely, erases it entirely.

Now remember, Jesus is painting a picture of the Kingdom for us. People are already assigning roles and names to each character in the story. Folks are listening in, cruising along, they’ve got their pens in hand, with their notebooks, and they’re jotting down the notes as they listen to the story.

The King, of course, is God.
Check.
The slave who owes him more than can even be imagined is … me.
Check.
Fearing the wrath of God for the debt owed, is DEFINITELY me.
Check.
Begging for time to pay it off, that’s gotta be me as well.
Check.
The King forgiving the debt? THAT debt?!
Wow.
If that’s what God is like, then yeah!
Check! I want that !

Unfortunately for us, the parable doesn’t end there. We follow the slave who has just had this huge weight lifted off his shoulders out of the palace, where he runs into another man who owes HIM twenty bucks.

We’d like to think that, having just experienced a once-in-a-lifetime releasing from an obligation that was going to be impossible to repay any other way, the man may have gained some perspective, may still be glowing from the magnanimity, the graciousness and generosity of the King, and would react almost instinctively in the same manner in which he had just been treated.

Not so.

What we have instead is someone who responds from a point of total disconnect with what he’s just lived through. He seemingly received the forgiveness, and then left the palace with the weight lifted, but his actions betray his heart, and show that what tears he may have shed were crocodile tears, never truly sincere.

So we come to the shadowside of the parable. The part that always makes me uncomfortable, because I don’t – I simply do not enjoy reading of the wrath of God.

Listeners at the time would be be-bopping along, checking off the items as they heard and identified them, and then they’d get to this part.

Slave runs into other slave who owes him money.
Check. Yeah, I can think of a couple of people who owe me.
Maybe not money, but certainly an apology.

Slave beats the one who owes him a couple of bucks and has him thrown in jail.
Oops.
Would I really do that?

What are we talking about?

Forgiveness. What are we talking about forgiving? Anything. Everything. Whatever.

There’s no qualifier. The parable mentions money, but the enduring truth in the story is the action, the attitude of forgiveness. And we find that, though this first slave received forgiveness from HIS master, he didn’t understand the concept, even having been the recipient of it.

Understanding the concept means that we are able to grasp the significance, the impact, the difference it has and will make in our lives and pass that on.

You see, forgiveness is not something that we just receive; it is something we extend as well. It is part of what we DO as Christians. It is not something we keep track of, either. That was the whole purpose of the parable. Not to tell us that we are to forgive … to a point, beyond that, we are not responsible for continuing to forgive. It is, again, an example of a counterintuitive aspect of the Gospel, something that doesn’t mesh with how the world works.

Here’s the thing. We need to decide, and it is the most important decision we will ever make. We have Kingdom behavior on the one hand, and what the world tells us to do on the other, and we are always going to be faced with the question ‘which will I choose?’

We can sit in relative comfort in this sanctuary and talk about it and listen to the issue being discussed, and nod in agreement with the ‘correct’ or ‘biblical’ answer, but what happens when we leave the room? When we walk out of the building and are confronted with:

A woman who climbs behind the wheel of her car drunk and slams into another car, killing an entire family?

A man who regularly beats his wife and children?

A man who sells drugs to addicts, and flaunts the law in the process?

Men who regularly declare that the United States is the great Satan, and maneuver and organize a concerted attack in which over 3000 people are killed.

A man with whom you had a disagreement in the midst of what turned out to be a heated meeting, and you ended up raising your voices and stomping out.

A woman who said some things about you that were hurtful and untrue.

A family that you befriended, but who later, for some unexplained reason, pulled away.

What is the Christian’s response to that?

According to Jesus, it is forgiveness. But not forgiveness for forgiveness’ sake alone.

Peter was asking his question from a literal by-the-book legalistic reading of scripture. Jesus turned the law around. In Genesis 4:23-24, the reference is established by which the number is invoked. Lamech is quoted as telling his wives, if one man was killed to avenge Cain, then seventy-seven will be killed to avenge me.

It seems to have established a pattern that is still followed to this day in the middle east. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. If you are identified as having perpetrated a terrorist attack on an Israeli, your family’s home will be bulldozed to the ground.

It is a cycle of violence that has been perpetuated for centuries, had been already in Jesus’ time. And Christ is calling us to break the cycle of violence. Because the purpose of forgiveness is to move beyond the event and seek RECONCILIATION.

How we forgive is a direct reflection of how we have perceived God’s forgiveness of our own lives. How we respond is a direct manifestation of how WE respond to God’s calling us to reconciliation to him through Christ.

That is where our heart comes into play.

If we have truly accepted God’s forgiveness in our hearts, it will show in our actions and attitudes towards others. We will seek justice, and not allow injustice to continue. We will seek peace, not war. We will seek harmony, not strife. We will seek reconciliation, not revenge.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means that we HAVE TO start here. The pattern of the great commission is just that, the pattern to follow. In Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.

So we start close to home, close to our own hearts, where it is sometimes the hardest. Let’s examine ourselves. Examine our hearts. The Psalmist writes ‘search me, O God, and know my heart’ and that must be our prayer today. God, uncover in me anything that I might have been hiding all these many years, and let me come clean. Give me the courage to speak in love to my brother or sister and seek forgiveness, in order to come to a reconciliation. Because it is only in being reconciled HERE that I will be reconciled with YOU in Heaven.

Let’s pray.

Wherever


Sunday, September 4th, 2005
Pentecost + 16
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 18:15-20

15 ‘If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. 16 But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 18 Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. 19 Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. 20For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.’

Again with the hard reads.

After a week that has been marked – and marred – by an almost-surreal viewing and experiencing of what the underside of our society is capable of, I was hoping for a chance to stand before you this morning and dwell on one of the nicer aspects of the Gospel. Circumstances and events over the last 6 days have proved that an impossible task. We go with what we have before us, and hope for the promise of redemption in the midst of desperation and sorrow.

The title of today’s message refers to that portion of this passage that I, at least, often quote in prayers. “Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” I don’t think I’m the only one that does that, but it is always good to be reminded of the context in which a phrase appears before we spend too much time quoting it by itself.

So what is the context of this phrase? It is at the conclusion of a passage where Jesus is explaining how a congregation should deal with someone in it’s midst that is out of … sync … out of step … I don’t exactly like the sense that those two words convey, that we MUST somehow conform to a preset idea of what we are to act, speak, and think like. I am too much of an individualist to do that comfortably. There is no expectation that we be cookie-cutter Christians. In fact, I believe the opposite to be true. God made us as individuals, unique and special in our own way, and there is cause for celebration within that diversity. It is a direct reflection of the richness of God’s grace and creativity. But there IS a unity of purpose that we are to exemplify, a unanimity in agreement about what we are to be about if we are to be considered a single body of believers. So we do need to study what Jesus is saying in order to understand where he was coming from and where he was going.

Jesus’ concern for the individual is evident. He described four options in dealing with a wrongdoer in the Church. None is motivated out of a legalistic sensibility, or in a punishment “mode,” but the main concern is to salvage and strengthen, not to expose, or dispose of someone who has done wrong.

Before getting into the steps described, it bears noting that Jesus expected the one who INITIATES the reconciliation, or the ATTEMPT at reconciliation to be the one who suffered the wrong, not the one who committed it. It goes against the grain of our culture, doesn’t it? To expect the victim, as it were, to bear the responsibility for correcting the wrong? Usually it’s the other way around. The one wronged has little to do but sit and wait for the one in error to (eventually) come and beg forgiveness. But then, this is the Gospel, the Kingdom of God, not the world. The very fact that the one who committed the wrong COMMITTED it leaves them impaired from recognizing the wrong they’ve done. Another way of saying it is that the person is not aware of the wrong they’ve committed for the simple reason that they don’t see that they did anything wrong. It’s an obvious answer to a sometimes vexing question. Why hasn’t he asked forgiveness? Because he simply doesn’t know he needs to.” Going to someone who has wronged you and letting him or her KNOW what wrong has been committed is the quickest and most direct way to get the issue resolved.

If that doesn’t work, the text goes all Baptist on us and says ‘take one or two others along with you’ – in other words, form a committee! If there is some resistance on the part of the one who committed the wrong to recognize the wrong, then bring a couple of people along who saw the same thing you did, and see if the corroboration from people other than yourself brings the realization home to the offender.

If THAT doesn’t work, THEN take the issue to the church, and have the church as a body address it. Frank Stagg, longtime professor of New Testament Interpretation at Southern Seminary, put it this way: “Concerned discipline is not antithetical (out of character) to the nature of the church, but proper to it. It is to be assumed that the same motive and spirit would govern the church as should govern the individual or committee (in reference to the small group of 2 or 3 coming in the second attempt) in seeking to gain the brother.”

Lastly, if even after the body as a whole has confronted the person and he or she remains … entrenched in denying any wrongdoing, then there comes a point when the church doesn’t so much withdraw from the individual, as it is that the church recognizes that the individual has withdrawn from the congregation, that there is no fellowship left there.

At first read, the comment Jesus makes about treating that person as a gentile or a tax collector seems harsh, and on some level, it is. It reflects the fact that Jesus spoke and lived and moved about in what was primarily a Jewish society. One occupied and governed by gentiles, but one in which the principal cultural ‘poles’ were the gentile and Jewish ones. But think about it. All things considered, it may not seem so harsh if we break it down.

First of all, three steps seeking reconciliation are presupposed. In other words, this is after some pretty exhaustive attempts have been made to reconcile with the person.

Secondly, it’s not so much an exclusion on the part of the church as it is a refusal on the part of the individual to ‘belong’ to the church.

Third, how DID Jesus treat gentiles and tax collectors? With kindness and openness. There was never a closed door when a gentile came to Jesus. Zaccheus comes to mind. The way Jesus treated gentiles and tax collectors more often than not got him in trouble BECAUSE he was kind and open with them.

For the church to recognize that one who refuses to listen is already an outsider does not close the door to his or her reception when he or she is willing to be received as a brother or sister.

Here’s the sequence: each of us is responsible for each other. The whole church is responsible for each member, and each member is responsible to the whole church. We are never more a part of a family than when we voluntarily become accountable to each other in love.

Verse 18 echoes what we heard Jesus tell Peter just a couple of weeks ago, but this time, he’s speaking to the church as a whole, not a single individual, but all of us. The emphasis is on the agreement between what is happening here on earth and what would happen in heaven. It’s a … testimony to that unity of spirit – UNDER the GUIDANCE of the Holy Spirit – that reassures us that if we are truly acting IN the spirit, we’ll ‘get it’. We will understand, we will agree. And God will honor that agreement, God will bless that agreement, that unity of spirit, that one-ness of purpose.

So we get back to the ‘two or more’ phrase. It comes by way of a discussion of what it means to be a member of the body of Christ on earth, and what that entails. The responsibilities are not easy. We are called to be a part of each other’s lives, not in a nosy, snoopy way, but in loving concern for our collective spiritual growth.

This morning we had a commissioning of our Sunday School workers and teachers. Some of you may have gotten out of the habit of coming to Sunday School. If the idea strikes you as childish, then think of it as – or call it – Sunday Morning Bible Study instead. Coming to worship is important, it might even be critical. Not to your salvation, but to your growth as a Christian. But if worship is important, what happens in Sunday Morning Bible Study is even more so. It is where you develop relationships with your brothers and sisters in Christ that, however long we make it, the Jerusalem hand of welcome doesn’t give you time to do. Besides, the choir starts singing and we have to get on with the service. Sunday morning Bible Study is where you develop your spiritual muscles and learn to be part of the community. It is where you exercise your brain and engage your heart, where you wrestle with the questions that this style of worship doesn’t always lend itself to allowing. We could try that sometime, but that’s a discussion for another day.

And what about that word, Wherever?

It’s a comprehensive word. There are no exclusions under wherever. Wherever means WHEREVER. If your Sunday Morning Bible study happens on Tuesday nights, more power to you. If it happens on Saturday afternoons, go for it. The thing is to be involved in a small group that readily and eagerly engages with the word of God and draws out of it meaning and relevance for living in today’s world.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means that we can think outside the box. Wherever can be just that. And the promise still holds. We gathered this morning and learned of the Conely family in our community having lost everything in a house fire. Things are already in motion to help them get back on their feet. As a congregation, we voted to send aid – above and beyond the individual contributions collected – to disaster relief efforts in the states affected by hurricane Katrina. Jerusalem may be a small church in numbers, but we are big at heart. When we gather, sometimes it’s not that many MORE than two or three … and the promise still holds. As a part of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, we join with over 1300 other churches across the commonwealth, in the name of Jesus, and the promise still holds.

You, as a Sunday School teacher, may have only one member show up on some Sundays. But remember: the promise still holds.

Let’s pray.

Tasting Death

Sunday, August 28th, 2005
Pentecost +15
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 16:21-28

21 From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to erusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.’ 23 But he turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’ 24 Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? 27 ‘For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28 Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.’

“Some standing here”

What was that again?

“Some standing here”

Will what?

“Will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Okay. (!?)

Let’s back up a little bit. We’re picking up right where we left off last Sunday, after Peter’s confession of faith – claiming Jesus to be the Messiah, the son of the living God. Jesus calls him blessed, a rock, and basically pats him on the back.

Next, we have Jesus beginning to explain to Peter and the disciples that he is going to have to go to Jerusalem, suffer, and die, then be raised from the dead on the third day. Peter, having gained a little bit of confidence from his recent exchange, takes Jesus aside and rebukes Jesus “what’s this nonsense about you having to SUFFER?” It is worth noting the tone in which Peter was talking to Jesus, the Greek word that we translate as ‘rebuke’ is the same word used in the rest of the Gospels in reference to demons and evil forces.

Jesus’ response to Peter is about as far from a pat on the back as you can get. Peter remains ‘the rock’ but goes from being compared to a foundation stone to being an obstacle, a stumbling block! Funny how within such a short span of words the same rock can become two radically different things. And Jesus doesn’t call down blessings on Peter, rather, he calls him Satan! So, gee, Jesus, tell us how you REALLY feel about Peter at this point! Don’t beat around the bush, out with it!

Reading scripture is always a daunting task. As Baptists, we’ve touched on one of our best additions to the theological endeavor before: Soul Competency: the idea that each individual has within him or herself the ability to respond to the movement of the Holy Spirit in them through the study of scripture, to enlighten and inform, inspire and challenge. So I am constantly surprised by the way there is a world of meaning in the smallest phrase.

Jesus told Peter he was a stumbling block TO HIM. Jesus was gaining a fuller understanding of what he was in for on arrival at Jerusalem. He UNDERSTOOD the sacrifice he was going to have to make. As we know from the accounts of his prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus did not easily embrace his sacrifice. He struggled with it. Perhaps it was his struggle with the prospect of what was to come that prompted the angry reaction to Peter – the statement about setting his mind on divine things, and not on human things. We tend to react more strongly to things with which we ourselves struggle when we see them in others, or are reminded of those things by others’ comments. And he was trying to convey to the disciples in the short time remaining of just how serious this journey they had begun together WAS. So he tried to spell it out for them when they (and Peter) didn’t get it when he told them what was going to happen to HIM.

‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

What does it mean to lose our lives for Christ? How can we lose our life, if we in fact GAIN it in giving it up to the Lord? We sometimes joke about our crosses to bear, but in truth, that is one of the more serious statements we will ever encounter. Don’t get me wrong, I still laugh at the jokes, and don’t want to stop hearing them, but it is important to recognize the depth of the meaning of the term. It is a direct reference to the Cross that Christ bore for us – and our responsibility to do likewise – inasmuch as we are able – for the life of the church.

As followers of Christ, we are called to obey his commands. What does it mean to take up our cross and follow him? You don't have to make up ways to carry a cross...just be honest, loving, compassionate, forgiving, merciful, a servant, and you'll find plenty of crosses.

Leslie and I were joking last night, if I had chosen the Episcopal reading of the passage we could have stopped at verse 26, and be done with it, but NO. So we are back to those pesky last two verses of the chapter:

27 ‘For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28 Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.’

Here’s the issue with these two verses. Verse 27 seems to be a description of the final judgment. However you view that event, or believe it, the imagery is fairly familiar: Son of Man, angels, glory, the Father, and repayment for what has been done. It certainly rings some bells if you’ve spent any time reading or listening to discussions about the book of the Revelation to John, or for that matter, any of the other gospel accounts where Jesus speaks of his return.

The problem comes in with verse 28 following directly behind verse 27. Jesus describes an event that looks like a prediction of the second coming, and then tells the people he’s talking to that some of them ‘will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.’

Can you tell what the problem is?

If he meant the second coming, and it hasn’t happened yet, and all of the people he was talking to have since died, what did he REALLY mean?

As I was reading in preparation for the message, I read the prevailing thought of scholars, SOME scholars, I should say, who state that what Jesus was referring to in verse 28 was that some of those present, namely, Peter, James and his brother John, were present six days later at Jesus’ transfiguration, and it was THAT vision of Jesus transfigured that they saw before they tasted death that Jesus was speaking of when he mentioned the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom. It was a kind of preview of what the kingdom will look like.

I would love to tell you that that makes perfect sense to me, and that the verse and chapter numbers were added just in the past 500 years, and that it makes SENSE to connect the one with the other. And I wouldn’t be misleading you. It DOES make sense, and it does work better together to connect the two verses that way instead of the other.

But we aren’t always going to have perfect understandings. If the first disciples were slow to understand, we need not be troubled if we are also slow to understand. Spiritual growth takes place slowly and painfully. Our spiritual journey takes a lifetime. Even as we near the conclusion of that journey, our understanding is less than complete. Paul says, "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face" (1 Cor. 13:12). That is not an excuse for complacency, but does acknowledge our humanity.

So what do we do with verse 27 in conjunction with verse 28? Could Jesus have been talking about something other than physical death? Could he perhaps have been talking about spiritual death instead? John tells us ‘what has come into being in him (Jesus) was life, and the life was the light of all people.’ (John 1:3-4) Could Jesus be referring to HIS life, indwelling, enriching, empowering, encouraging, invigorating, spurring us on, so much so that the death that surrounds us, that yaps at our feet, that we see around us every day, hear about in the news, read about in the paper, THAT death, though so present in this world, will not touch us?
Do we taste death in this life?

We experience death, physical death, in any number of ways. We read of car bombings in Iraq on a daily basis, just last week we read of two plane crashes within a few days of each other. This morning we learned of the death of a woman who graduated from Farnham High school with Edythe. We open the paper Richmond Times-Dispatch on a daily basis, or the Northern Neck News on a weekly basis, and read obituaries for people we know and many more we don’t. We are faced with the death of our bodies on a regular basis.

Can we distinguish hearing of and reading of and living through physical death and the fact that, if we are in Christ, we will not taste spiritual death? Paul speaks of death as sleeping, and that is the image I’d like to leave you with today.

For Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton, What do those words – tasting death – mean? To do that I need to put it in a negative sense. How are we going to be a part of helping people to NOT taste death? It goes back to what John said, “in him was life, and the life was the light of all people”. We are the body of Christ. We represent the Lord Jesus. We are his hands, and feet, his shoulders, his lap. If we are about the business of breaking in the Kingdom of God in this world, then we are conduits. We are avenues of Grace. There are avenues, and there are boulevards, and there are streets, and there are alleys, and there are pathways. Each has a greater or lesser capacity for … traffic, as it were. What would you consider Jerusalem to be? Here’s a hint: our capacity is not defined by our size. It is not defined by the number of people who sit in this room on Sunday mornings. It is defined by the ability of each of us to respond to God’s grace in our lives, but not respond like a mirror. We don’t shine God’s grace back to God, we shine God’s grace to the world around us.

We are called to be God’s people, showing by our lives his grace, the hymn goes. One in heart and one in spirit, sign of hope for all the race. Let us show how he has changed us, and remade us as his own, Let us share our life together as we shall around his throne.

Let’s pray.

On This Rock


Sunday, August 21, 2005
Pentecost + 14
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 16:13-20

13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ 14 And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ 15 He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ 16 Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ 17 And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ 20 Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

Thinking back, it’s hard to imagine NOT feeling the way I felt. But I realize, intellectually, that at some point before then I DIDN’T feel that way, and I came to the full realization of the emotion in the context of a quiet, post-dinner conversation with a couple of close friends.

When the time came to make the statement where and when it counted, I found myself a little short of breath, having forgotten to breathe, and shaky, jittery, for the same reason. There was a cacophony of emotions welling up inside of me, because I knew that what I was going to say was going to have far-reaching consequences, for at least the foreseeable future, if not for the rest of my life.

But I went ahead and made the confession anyway.

It’s an interesting word, confession. If we think in legal terminology, we immediately think of … guilt. If you confess, you are stating that you did in fact commit whatever … crime or misdemeanor of which you are accused.

In religious terminology, we most often, I suspect, think of confession in the sense of the sacrament, one of those duties you have by which you spend time with either a priest or a confessor and … do something similar to what the legal term refers to – confess sins – both serious and less-so – in order to receive absolution for them.

As a matter of practice, we here at Jerusalem who have attended the baptism services that we’ve held over the last couple of years have also witnessed a confession. Just before the candidate is lowered into the water, we ask the congregation to “hear now the confession of faith,” and that confession is proclaimed simply and clearly:

“Jesus Christ is Lord!”

It is the earliest identifiably, uniquely CHRISTIAN statement. It is at the heart of what sets Christians aside from any other religion or faith practice.

It is the statement that early Christian martyrs were asked to recant or deny or risk losing their lives over. For many, it was their last word on this earth.

It was the password written in the sand in the form of a fish by which early underground Christians identified each other through times of persecution. (The fish was said to symbolize the baptismal waters, the loaves and fish that Jesus used to feed the five thousand, and Jesus’ own declaration to the disciples to become 'fishers of men'. The Greek word for fish, icthus, is an acrostic consisting of the initial letters of five more Greek words, which briefly but clearly described the character of Christ and His claim to the worship of believers: 'Iesous Christos Theou Yios Soter' which translates as 'Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior'.)

To say Jesus Christ is Lord is to set the world on its head.

What is it about that statement that would seem to be so counterintuitive … so obviously incorrect to the world at large? In simple terms, it is a refutation of what would seem to be an objective fact. Jesus was crucified. Jesus died. Jesus was buried.
The world stops there.

Most of the time, ANYTHING and anyone stops at the grave. “Jesus is Lord” does not logically follow “Jesus was buried.” And you know what? It’s true. There is a critical intermediate statement: “Jesus rose from the dead.”

It was that critical, pivotal, NECESSARY statement that brought on so much antagonism – and even today, we find folks who still dismiss it out of hand. It simply does not fit into their world view. THAT IS TO BE EXPECTED.

I know there are those who still claim to be Christian and deny the resurrection, and thus the divinity, of Christ, my inclination is to still keep the conversation going with them as brothers and sisters, but to do so with a quizzical look on my face, asking ‘WHY do you still consider yourself Christian?’ To me, faith is at the heart of belief. And it is that step of faith that it takes to say ‘Christ is risen’ that then leads to the confession that we share with Peter in today’s text: Jesus Christ is Lord. Peter’s words proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah, the Savior of the Jews. When we as Gentile Christians proclaim ‘Jesus Christ is Lord,’ we are saying to Jew and Gentile, to Atheist or Agnostic, to Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and anyone else who would care to listen, that Jesus Christ is Lord of OUR LIVES.

No one and nothing else is.

Supposedly.

When it comes down to it, to say it is one thing. To live it is entirely another matter. Words can indeed be cheap.

So how loud are our actions speaking?

How apparent is it, here, today, in Emmerton and in Warsaw, that Jesus Christ is Lord of the lives of the people who call themselves Jerusalem Baptist Church?

I realize we live in a generally, maybe a better word would be ‘loosely’ Christian society. By that, I mean that we live in a society that is, at least superficially, acquainted with the ‘look’ of Christianity: a church with a steeple every few miles, if not blocks. Groups of people gathering in and around them periodically throughout the week, cars parked in the parking lot, occasionally a special sign standing out front announcing some special event or speaker. Perhaps, as in the case of Jerusalem, the building serves as a polling place during elections, or as a shelter in times of inclement weather, or if it is an inner-city church, as a community center during the week, or a soup kitchen for the homeless.

Those are expressions of what Christianity has come to be expected to ‘look’ like, in a wholesome, benign, community-oriented view of the role religion plays in society, but what does it really truly mean to say and believe that Jesus Christ is Lord? The role we play in society and the role Christ plays in our lives might sometimes strain each other. We endeavor to be good citizens and ‘good Christians’ in a non-intrusive, low-key way.

When you say Jesus Christ is Lord, it means that when you say and believe the same thing, you are given to it. It is not so much a part of who you are, it IS who you are. You are defined by the Lordship of Christ in your life, not the other way around.

Here’s the dangerous and tricky part. Insofar as we are each different from one another, the Lordship of Christ is going to look different in each of us. sometimes to greater or lesser degrees of difference, but different, nonetheless. Sometimes in small ways, but sometimes in different, more obvious way.

So how are we going to live with those differences?

I believe that question is at the core of how we are going to view our identity as a family of faith, and it is going to color our surrounding community’s view of US as a family of faith – as much as I dislike the concept of litmus tests, if there ever was one that was appropriate, this is it.

Growing up in Chile, I remember hearing testimonies of people who would walk in off the street into a service, and in the course of their sharing, they stated that what drew them to the church in the first place was the love that the members shared among themselves – and with those outside the church. The fact that they were claiming Jesus as Lord of their lives made a difference in how they LIVED their lives.

You may be thinking that I am stating the obvious, but there is a time when the obvious must be restated, reemphasized, re-kindled in our hearts.

And there is a time when we ALL need to be held accountable to what it means to claim Jesus as Lord.

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

It means that we are not exempt, either from failing to live out what it means to claim Christ as Lord, or of excelling in that same thing. In other words, we end up on either side of the spectrum. Sometimes we hit the mark, sometimes we don’t.

Please take that as a given, not as a criticism. I’m intentionally using the ‘we’ there.

It is in how we respond to those moments when one or another of us fails that marks us as Christians. Do we respond in judgment, in rejection, or in compassion and sorrow? There is a time for each, as the writer of Ecclesiastes says, and we, as people of a post-Easter faith must live in the light of that understanding – of that Lordship.

My confession was relatively short. I stood and took her hands in mine and said “I tried to think of a funny way to work in the phrase ‘as you wish’ into the conversation, but all I could come up with is ‘I Love you.’

And that, just as saying – and MEANING ‘Jesus is Lord’ when I was 17, has made all the difference.

Let’s pray.

Ins And Outs

Sunday, August 14th, 2005
Pentecost + 13
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 15: (1-9), 10-28

1Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2‘Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.’ 3He answered them, ‘And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4For God said,* “Honor your father and your mother,” and, “Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.” 5 But you say that whoever tells father or mother, “Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God”,* then that person need not honor the father.* 6 So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word* of God. 7 You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said:

8 “This people
honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
9 in vain
do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.” ’

10 Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, ‘Listen and understand: 11it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.’ 12Then the disciples approached and said to him, ‘Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?’ 13He answered, ‘Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. 14Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.’ 15But Peter said to him, ‘Explain this parable to us.’ 16Then he said, ‘Are you also still without understanding? 17Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? 18But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. 19For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. 20These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.’ 21 Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 22Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’23But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’24He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ 25But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’26He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ 27She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ 28Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.

We’ve all had them.

Days when we would rather not have gotten out of bed. Days when it seems like everything is going wrong. Days when either we can’t seem to get anything through our heads or across to anyone we’re trying to explain something to for the umpteenth time. It sounds like Jesus may be having one of those days in this passage.

Sometimes we catch a glimpse of the humanity of Jesus that is SO human that it is in jarring contrast to what we’re accustomed to assuming Jesus was – a loving, gentle savior, always calm, cool, and collected, always ready to rattle off the perfectly appropriate saying or scripture. It is a dangerous thing, to forget the complexity of what is involved in God coming to earth and dwelling among us.

Yes, there is a simplicity to the Gospel that cuts through all the other STUFF that we may want to throw up to defend our lives, such as they are, but there is at the same time the issue of how his humanity – his FULL humanity – played itself out in his ministry.

Exasperation is a fully human emotion … placed by God, and part of who WE are and who Jesus is.

So we have the setting. We’re still following the story, after the death of John the Baptist, after the feeding of the 5,000, after the walking on water, after the healings that Jesus performed in Gennesaret. None of these events took place in a vacuum. Word got around, as it always does, by word of mouth, and I suspect in a surprisingly short amount of time, for the limited technology available in first century Palestine.

These incredible miracles have just happened, and Jesus has been healing people in numbers – not just here and there, in isolated incidents. And what do the Pharisees and the scribes do? They try to divert the attention from the wonders that have been witnessed and experienced and point out that the disciples are breaking the rules by not washing before eating. Jesus lets loose on them. Can you hear it in his words? (read v 7-9)

Jesus then turns to the people to whom he’d been ministering, and the lesson begins. Only the disciples are more concerned at how the lesson reflects on the Pharisees and scribes than they are on the actual lesson itself. They seem to get so agitated by how upset Jesus’ comments made the Pharisees that they didn’t hear what Jesus was saying, so much so, that we find Peter, who just that morning had walked on water, asking Jesus to explain it to them again – you can almost hear him saying “ah, sorry Jesus, I got distracted there for a minute and missed what you said … something about blind guides? Could you repeat that for us?”

Jesus’ answer leaves nothing to the imagination. In his earlier statement, he says it fairly plainly, but … in a way that is … acceptable in mixed company. This time around, there’s none of that, in fact, Jesus gets graphic: “are you still without understanding” seems to have been a nice way to translate what in the Aramaic is surely something closer to “did I stutter? Whatever goes into your mouth passes through your body and comes out smelly at the other end?? It’s what comes out of your mouth – the words you speak, that are the true reflection of what is inside your hearts and minds. THAT is where your righteousness or defilement is determined. What you eat has very little to do with anything.” He goes on to list, after starting with evil intentions, he lists or alludes to the breaking of the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth commandments. If you need to look it up, compare the list in verse 19 with Exodus 20: 12-16. He’s saying that all those horrible things don’t come from outside our bodies, they come from inside our hearts. THAT is where they are born.

As we’ve studied, both in Sunday morning Bible study, Wednesday evenings, and throughout our discipleship times, the focus of the religious practices of the Pharisees and Sadducees had been lost. They had lost sight of the whole reason God had called them into relationship with God’s self: for fellowship. In so frantically trying to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’, they lost sight of the very one who’s presence they were intended to seek: God. And in losing sight of the purpose, their hearts became hardened to the reconciliatory message of the Gospel.

Then, as quickly as it happens sometimes, Jesus leaves and goes further north, into Syrian territory. We have a situation that is echoed later by the woman who was possessed by a spirit of divination, whom we read about in Acts chapter 16 a couple of Wednesdays ago, who followed Paul and his companions around for days, crying out “These men are slaves of the most high God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation!” Here in Matthew we have a gentile woman calling Jesus by a name that would mean much less to a Gentile than to a Jew in those days – “Son of David” – the name for the Messiah. And just like the possessed woman would several years later, this woman does not let up. There is something to be said for the mothering instinct, the drive that would make a woman humble herself, go to the extreme she does, to do something for her demon-possessed daughter. It gets to the point that the disciples even urge Jesus to send her away, because she is such a bother.

What happens next is hard for me to read. Current sensibilities cringe at the way the Gospel has Jesus inferring that the woman before him is comparable to a dog begging for scraps at the table, when he has seemingly more important people to tend to in the house of Israel. Our sense of equality, if not, simple politeness, rears back at the suggestion.

But let’s look a little more closely at the event. Are there similar situations we can point to in the scriptures? Yes, several times throughout the Old Testament we have Prophets convincing God to do something other than what was originally intended. This is similar in that Jesus states first that he was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel. The woman insistently asked for help, and Jesus responds with what is harsh in today’s language: it’s not fair to take the children’s food and give it to the dogs. Then comes the turning point. The woman takes Jesus’ own analogy and turns it around: even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.

Growing up, we had two dogs, one after the other. Neither of them were inside dogs, so we didn’t have to worry too much about it, but on those summer mornings when we ate breakfast out on the patio, under the wisteria canopy, we invariably had Rascal sitting at our feet, begging for anything we would give him. And he WOULD take ANYTHING. He knew where the good food was, and he also knew where to go to get it. ME. I probably shared more breakfast food with Rascal over the 5 years I stayed in the house before coming back for college than I can recall, but it was his insistence that ended up breaking me down.

The kids try to do the puppy dog eyes today when they REALLY want something from me, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t, but it is always a struggle.

It is hard to say no when you love someone.

I think Jesus may have been compelled by his love, combined with the woman’s persistence, as well as her cleverness. It is interesting to note that Jesus uses the same response, “Let it be done” as he did with the Roman Centurion and his son in chapter 8 of Matthew.

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

This week we had our Vacation Bible School. Most of you were aware of it, many of you participated in it in some way. Most of the children who came are children we know. Some attend church elsewhere, but some don’t. We tend to focus, to gravitate naturally, on and to those with whom we have something in common. Children who know the language, know the routine, as it were. The ones who know what is expected of them. It is harder to do that with people and children who come from a background that is devoid of those same touchpoints, those who DON’T know where the Old Testament or the New Testament are, those who DON’T almost automatically know that correct, the ‘Church’ answer to the questions, those who DON’T know what is appropriate and inappropriate to say and do ‘in church’. A tantalizing thought is that, in his humanity, Jesus was discovering his purpose as he went along. Perhaps this, along with the encounter with the Roman Centurion, brought Jesus to the point of realizing that it WASN’T just to the children of Israel that he was bringing the good news of the Kingdom. So we’d LIKE to say, along with Jesus, “we’re here for the people who know … or SHOULD know”, but with Jesus, we are compelled to go beyond that, beyond the safe confines of this room, out into Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth … and take the Kingdom of God with us, TO them.

Let’s pray.

Ghost … Holy Ghost

Sunday, August 7th, 2005
Pentecost +12
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 14: 22-33

22 Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. 23 And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, 24 but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. 25 And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. 26 But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out in fear. 27 But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’ 28 Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’29 He said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. 30 But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ 31 Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ 32 When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. 33 And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’

The bumper sticker says it all: “Think you’re perfect? Try walking on water!”

It is interesting that in our culture, even today, it is an almost universally recognized reference.

Walking on water only happened once, and we have before us who it was and when: Jesus, in the passage for today, immediately after having preached the sermon on the mount and feeding thousands of people with two loaves and five fish. Parallel stories are in two of the other Gospels: Mark chapter 6, beginning in verse 45, and John, chapter 6 as well, beginning at verse 16.
Last Sunday we read about one of the most famous miracles that Jesus performed; the feeding of the five thousand. Our passage this morning picks up right where we left off, in fact, the very next verse. The people have eaten, everyone is satisfied, and the disciples have collected 12 baskets full of leftovers from the bread and fish that was what was for supper.

Jesus tells the disciples to climb into the boat and go on ahead to the other side of the lake, towards Capernaum and Bethsaida, about three or four miles by water, and HE heads back up the mountain to spend some time alone and in prayer. If you remember from last week, that was what he was intending to do before the crowds descended on him.

As the night progresses, the disciples have been rowing and working to get to the other side, but a wind has come up, and is battering their little boat and tossing it around in the waves. It is NOT helping them get to where they are heading. They exhaust themselves trying to make headway against it. It gets so bad, that the disciples begin to fear for their lives. At some point early in the morning, they look towards shore and see Jesus walking towards them.

What was their reaction?

“It’s a Ghost!”

And they were even more afraid. (I get a mental image – 7 grown men in a boat screaming like little girls …)

How did Jesus respond?

In the same way that God responded in the Old Testament any time God made God’s presence known, in the same way that the angel greeted the shepherds, in the same way that we find so many other places where people encounter the divine presence and don’t expect it: “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

As Christians, we claim to be a people of faith: living by faith, believing in Christ, trusting in the Lord. An essential part of our faith believes in the ongoing presence of the Lord in our lives, individually, through the Holy Spirit and through the physical presence of the faith family with which we associate.

Let’s ask ourselves a serious question: Can we truly believe that Jesus is with us always (Emmanuel), even when all evidence suggests he is not? The impression we get from the text is that the disciples, even after having watched Jesus perform the miraculous feeding just a few hours earlier, lost sight of the fact when they were confronted with the overwhelming nature of … nature, in this case, and we have the disciples in a boat, on a lake, tossed around with very little control over where they were going.

One of the oldest symbols for the church is a ship. In fact, the part of the sanctuary in which the congregation sits and stands during worship is referred to as the ‘nave’. Nave comes from the Latin “Navis.” which means, literally, “boat” or “ship.” We are, as a group, as a congregation, as a family, all in this ‘boat’ called ‘Jerusalem’ together. Sometimes, the seas around us are calm. Sometimes, they are not so much. And there are times when the storm we are struggling through is of our own making. That is the nature of the church. Some would say that is the nature of the Baptist Church, but I am fairly certain that we wouldn’t have to look very far to find that all congregations to one degree or another suffer from self-inflicted storms now and then. It is interesting that the word used by Matthew to describe what the boat was going through was the word ‘basanizo’, which means tortured or tormented. A word that is more descriptive of what a PERSON would go through, rather than a ship or vessel of some kind.

If you remember from our studies in Mark, there’s another piece to this passage that echoes other passages found throughout Mark: the word ‘immediately’. It was the first word in verse 22, it appears here again, and once more just a couple of verses further down. That ‘immediately’ brings to mind for us what Mark seems to be conveying in his Gospel, that things were happening all the time, that Jesus and his disciples were on the move, stopping here, immediately going there, then suddenly over to this other place, a pack in motion.

In the middle of the storm, when the disciples cry out in fear, Jesus doesn’t immediately calm the storm. He immediately speaks to the disciples and tells them to take heart, I am he, do not be afraid.

There are times, and I’ve done this many times, when, in the midst of a crisis, my first prayer will be for God to wipe the cause of the crisis away completely. It’s almost an instinctual thing. Remove the danger. Take away the problem, the pain, the agony. When maybe what God wants is for me to go through the pain, through the struggle, in order to move closer to him, to be more like him.

And we have Peter’s action. Peter’s stepping out of the boat to go to Jesus. As I’m sure most of you have heard before, As long as Peter focused on where he was headed, he kept going. It was when he was distracted BY the storm – the wind, the waves, the rain, and the clouds that he began to sink.

How many times over the years have we looked back and realized how distracted we’ve become from what our most important calling has been?

Let’s back up a little in the passage. Jesus tells the disciples to get in the boat and go to the other side of the lake. He had a purpose for sending them on ahead, perhaps to meet someone, or to begin telling people of his coming. It is, if you will, a small commission. In fact, if we read on after the selected text, we find that Jesus did in fact spend some time in Gennersaret, and healed a whole slew of people. Long and short, he needed them to go on ahead of him to spread the word.

The storm blows up and they become frightened. They become distracted. They can’t seem to handle the crisis. How often have we had that happen in our own lives as individuals, as a church? We begin a project, set aside time and funds, and somewhere down the line, we get sidetracked by something else that has come up, by a conflict that makes us give up on that first goal?

Peter’s stepping out of the boat was an act of courage, and faith. In the midst of the conflict, the raging wind, and the crashing waves, he began to get his bearing again, and they led him straight to Jesus.

What happened next? We all know because we all identify more with his sinking than with his walking. He began to notice the wind and the waves and he became afraid again.

Grace steps into the story in the next word uttered by Peter: “Lord, save me!” And here we find another echo from Mark: Jesus IMMEDIATELY reached out his hand and caught him.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church?

The word from the gospel is that even in the midst of squabbles, in the midst of conflict, in the midst of tensions and storms blowing from either outside OR inside, we can STILL call on God. We can STILL call to Jesus, and our call would do well to be “Lord, save me from myself, make me more like you!” We can’t expect to always be successful. We are, as I’ve said before, still human, with human weaknesses and frailties, but we have an arm to grab hold of, a hand to hold, that is more than capable of pulling us up out of the stormy seas that our lives can so often become and bring us to stand alongside him, and alongside each other.

And that is what God has called Jerusalem to be – disciples, standing alongside each other – to strengthen and encourage, as well as to hold each other accountable – but to be on this journey TOGETHER.

All the disciples remained in the boat, and they were still heading in the same direction. May we go and do likewise.

Let’s pray.

Filled

Sunday, July 31st, 2005
Pentecost +11
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 14:13-21

13 Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. 15When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.’ 16Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’ 17They replied, ‘We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.’ 18And he said, ‘Bring them here to me.’ 19Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. 21And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

You may remember my sharing with you about my Cousin Eric’s sudden death in 1991 a couple of years ago. I remember lying on the couch at my friends’ house, reeling from the news, trying to imagine what my Aunt, Uncle, and other cousins were going through. I remember wondering what it would feel like if it were ME getting word that MY younger brother had died. Eric had developed ulcerative colitis over the previous two years or so, and while we knew it was serious, we did not realize just HOW serious. Jimmy, Becky, and I were living in Louisville at the time, Eric and Aunt Lala and Unlce Ray were living just outside Nashville, and though we saw them on occasion, we had not seen them in several months at that point.

The Elliotts, Aunt Lala, Uncle Ray, and their kids, were in many ways the family we had grown closest to over the years. At one time or another, three if not four of us Park children had lived with Aunt Lala on a temporary or even not-so-temporary basis. It was with them that I stayed after graduating from college, for the few weeks between that and the time I flew to Richmond to enter Journeyman training in 1985 before heading off to Spain.

Christmases during college were here and there each year, but whenever we wound up at the Elliotts’, at least for me, there was more a sense of home there than in most other places, as much as I loved the rest of my extended family.

So I can only imagine what it must have been like for Jesus to hear of his cousin John’s not just death, but murder. We only get a brief glimpse of the grieving Jesus in the beginning verse of today’s passage: 13 Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. I know when I heard of my cousin’s death, I mostly wanted to be with family, to cry with my brother, to hug my aunt. But since I was away from them all, I just lay stunned on the couch. Eloise, my friend whom I happened to be visiting with when the call came in, was there, and VERY present, but I needed to be alone with my thoughts and memories for at least a while, to begin the process of adjusting to what it was going to be like from then on out without Eric around.

I suspect that might have been what Jesus had in mind, when he “withdrew to a deserted place by himself.” The problem is he did not get a lot of time to BE by himself when he got there.

This was not long after the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, and he was the hottest thing going in prophetic voices in first century Palestine. Word was getting out about the way he taught, the way he spoke, the way he was turning the establishment on its head (always a good thing if you are working from outside the beltway, or outside the temple, as it were), and people were flocking to see him. When people flock, they leave precious little time to ones’ self. There’s a chance that the folks who followed Jesus to the deserted place hadn’t heard about John’s death, but it seems unlikely, in view of the fact that John was, in his own right, a fairly popular prophet, even though he spent his time ‘crying out in the wilderness’. The likelier scenario is that they heard, they knew of the connection, and they wanted to see how Jesus was going to respond.

What they got was Jesus being more concerned for their welfare than for his own. To those of us who have grown to know Jesus over time, it is not surprising in the least to hear that. After all, we know the end of the story. We know that this sacrifice, though significant, deserves no more than the passing mention at the beginning of the passage, and does not need revisiting in later verses. It pales in comparison to the greater sacrifice Jesus made at the end of his earthly ministry and the culmination of his time here on earth among us – FOR us.

The belief that Jesus performed miracles is a basic tenet of most of our faiths. Jesus performed two types of miracles: healing miracles and nature miracles. The first are miracles in which he healed a person of an illness, or raised them from the dead, or cast out a demon or a legion of demons. The second are those miracles that affected not so much PEOPLE directly as they did some aspect of nature. A sudden storm on the Sea of Galilee, a fig tree that did not have any fruit on it, or in this case, we have a huge crowd of people with no food to eat. The aspect of nature is a single meal brought to him that consisted of five loaves of bread and two fish, over which Jesus performed the acts of taking, blessing, breaking, and giving … and giving … and giving. And the miracle of the feeding of five thousand men, and probably as many as ten to fifteen thousand women and children in addition TO those men, took place.

To put it mildly, this is a significant event, in not only the ministry of Jesus, but it BECAME a signal event in the life of the early church. It is the only miracle that appears in all four gospels (Mark 6, Luke 9, and John 6). There are variations, of course, in the retelling of the story, but the central story remains. Jesus took what was a clearly inadequate meal and turned it into something that satisfied thousand of people.

There is the view that the miracle was actually one where the generosity displayed by the little boy prompted people to pull out their own lunches and share it with those who had less or no food of their own. I will allow that to be a possibility, but a distant one at best. The fact that each gospel tells the story essentially in the same way lends credence to the fact that how we read it is how it happened. We are a people of faith. We believe in miracles, whether they can be explained by highly unlikely natural phenomena or not, we believe in a God of miracles, a God who led people out of Egypt, across the sea, through the desert, against seemingly unbeatable enemies, and against pretty much all odds, established the people of Israel as the people of God.

There’s a continuity to understanding God through the miracles that keeps things together for us. Miracles broaden the picture of what might be. Of what God can do. We read of the miracle on the Sea of Galilee and hope is born in us that God will calm our inner storms and struggles. We read about the fig tree and Hope that God will treat our weakness and character flaws in a similar way, or that we will at least be able to overcome them and move on in a some way like that. We read of the healing of the sick, and find hope in the promise that we will one day be free of this earthly shell.

Here’s a thought: Jesus performed the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand in direct response to the news of his cousin’s death. In his grieving, in his sorrow for the loss of his beloved brother, his response was not anger at Herod, but compassion for the people who were in front of him. Note the almost passing comment in verse 14 – he had compassion on them and cured the sick.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Christ’s response to death is to affirm life. Christ’s response to the injustice of the arbitrary taking of an innocent life is to better the lives of those who are afflicted – with illness, with disease, with hunger. The folks who were standing in front of him were there because they’d heard about John’s death and they wanted to see what Christ would do.

Jerusalem finds itself in a similar place. We are confronted by a world that is watching – our local community—the people we run into each and every day; our neighbors across the street or next door, folks we run into at the ball field, or at Wal-Mart, and though it may be an unspoken question, it is nonetheless a question that is present: What are you, Jerusalem, going to do in the face of … what? How many things can we list here? Neglected children, left on the side of the road. The sudden death of Boy Scout leaders while pitching a tent. Drug trafficking, not in some far off South American country, but right down the road here.

Are we filled? Are we truly filled with the spirit of God to the point that we can focus on THEIR needs, and not our own? Can we trust God in that way? We say, and read, and sing about God taking care of us, but does the way we live our lives continue that lesson? Does it speak of a seemingly reckless reliance on the grace and bounty of God to do as God promised, or are we saying one thing with our mouths and another with our lives and wallets?

Can people look at Jerusalem and say that we are living as Christ taught? If we were to ask the question, can we live with the answer?

My hope is that yes. My sense is that, if asked, most people would say that yes, MOST of the time, we are, after all, fallible. We are not yet perfected. My suggestion is that we venture into the question, and respond to the answer we receive as Christ did.

Let’s pray.