Everything As Loss

Sunday, March 25th, 2007
Fifth Sunday of Lent
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Text: Philippians 3:4-14

4even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh. If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 7Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. 8More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. 10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 12 Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

We love it here.

We really DO love it here.

Not just in the sense of loving the scenery, or the relative peace of living in the country, the friendliness, the neighborliness. We love it here on a far deeper level than I think we are aware of on a day-in and day-out basis.

I don’t want this to sound sappy, but I hope you realize that we love YOU as well. That loving YOU is a huge part of why we love being HERE. We love spending time with you, talking to you, knowing you, knowing your families, and what’s going on with them, laughing and sometimes crying together, eating and meeting together, studying the Bible together, wrestling with the truths of scripture and those parts of scripture that are sometimes confusing. I treasure being able to be with you when you have to be at or in the hospital, or when you go through the loss of a loved one. Being able to BE present with you in those times is not in any way a burden. It is in the fullest sense of the word, a blessing. Yes, it can be hard, but blessings come in many forms.

We love it that you all are interested in how the kids are doing, how our parents and brothers and sisters are doing, and what is going on in THOSE relationships as well. There is a wonderful sense of family that comes from being asked about your relatives, their health, and just the regular daily-ness of life. We love that we are walking beside you on this pilgrim journey, working out our salvation “with fear and trembling”.

During our prayer and share times on Wednesday evenings, and especially here, on Sunday mornings, during the Pastoral prayer, to be able to voice concerns and praises, thanksgiving and worship is easily a highlight of the week for me. For those of you who haven’t been to a Wednesday evening service in a while, we’d love to see you, if you can make it. The time together can really fly by. During our sharing time before prayer, we go through new additions to our prayer list, and also bring up concerns or updates to the list – it is an open time of sharing, not very structured, because I believe that the praying is actually already taking place before the formal prayer is voiced. This past Wednesday we concluded our winter Bible Study just a single day over the mark – the first day of spring. This coming Wednesday as well as Wednesday of Holy Week we will be doing just a couple of more reflective Lenten-oriented devotionals. After Easter we will be digging a little into the Old Testament, probably looking at the Minor Prophets – most likely Habakkuk to begin with.

There’s this thing, though, that I have to deal with. Call it insecurity, call it trouble with self-esteem, whatever; I don’t always know if I’m doing things right or not. I HOPE I am, I THINK I am, some of the time, maybe a slight majority of the time, but not always. And I’m not saying this looking for affirmation, but simply as a point of information. Having said that, I need to let you know that when you DO say something in that way; encouraging, affirming, even constructively criticizing, it gives me a boost like you wouldn’t BELIEVE!

… What’s that, you say?

When is he going to get to the text? When is he going to get into the passage? Oh, that.

Well, in a way, I have been. You see, Paul was going over in his mind what it was he had to look back on and treasure, and appreciate, and hold in high esteem in his life. He had his Pharisaic heritage, that is, his faithfulness as a member of that Hebrew group that was intent on seeking and fulfilling all that it meant to be HOLY before God, as they understood it.

He had a lot to be thankful for, a lot to hold close, a lot to inform him of who he was.

So I’ve been working up to somehow telling you that, as dear as you ALL are to me, and as MUCH as I hold you ALL close to my heart, by the light of the gospel I have to be able to let this all go for the sake of the Gospel.

I’m not saying that that is in the process of happening. Thankfully, I don’t have any sense that I’m supposed to be anywhere else doing anything else than what I am doing. But it’s the attitude that I think we ALL need to cultivate.

It’s unsettling to think about. And it feels especially odd for me, having come from a life of observing my parents and other key figures in my life GET that … sense of call, to move from what they know to what they DON’T know … I would’ve expected my sense to be … more willing?

I think back to my late teens and early and mid twenties, when I was wrestling with what God’s call on my life was going to look like, having thought all along that I’d end up somewhere overseas, living a life similar to that that I’d grown up around. And I remember hardly giving a thought to serving a local church, much less a rural congregation, as their Pastor.

And now, it seems like it is what I was born to do, insecurity and all. I’ve learned in the last ten years to trust God in all things. Like Paul says, “not that I have already obtained this”, but it is at work in me.

So I’m working on learning to count all this as loss. As beautiful as it is, as wonderful as it is, as good a life as it is, if this were all ripped away from me tomorrow, would I find my faith intact? Would I find my trust still there? Would my center be Christ? Can I even phrase that question “Would my center STILL be Christ having not actually gone through that?

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Do you know someone who has gone through the ‘loss of all things’ that Paul talks about? Are YOU someone who has experienced that? I think it is safe to say that, above a certain age, we have all to varying degrees, experienced SOME loss in our lives, and as far as that goes, we have an IDEA of what it would be like to suffer the loss of all things … but we’re just not able to completely wrap our minds around that experience short of living it.

Paul’s point wasn’t to boast about what he’d gone through. His point was what was at his center.

10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death,

So the question for us this morning is that: what … or rather … WHO is at OUR center? Would we be able to write down a similar statement if we were to have given up what in essence was our ENTIRE identity in order to follow Christ?

How compelling is Christ’s call on our lives? Is it so compelling as to cause us to want to change even our very NAMES in order to signify how radical and complete the change has been? How much we are breaking from who we were prior to knowing Jesus, to who we are now that we DO know him?

Living in the area of the country we live in, especially living in the shadow cast by those who’ve gone before and who have been faithful in THEIR obedience to teach us and guide us in the way that leads to life, we are recipients of an incredibly rich blessing in the way of … an atmosphere of faith – not all, but most of us here today don’t remember a time when going to church wasn’t a part of our lives, we can’t remember a time when we didn’t consider ourselves ‘Christian’ in some way, even in a nominal way. We can easily recall things we’ve DONE that weren’t exactly … exemplary of what a Christian would say and do, but on balance, we have to ask ourselves the question: did becoming a Christian change my life all that much?

If your answer is yes, then there is much to be grateful for.

If your answer is no, we can study that from a couple of perspectives. There’s the perspective that we were so steeped in what it was to live the life of a Christian that the official ‘mark’ at which you made the decision to accept Christ was more a … confirmation of what you’d been growing to believe all your life.

The other perspective is that both the life you lived prior to professing Christ as Lord and the life you live now are neither very reflective of the Lordship of Christ. Simply put, in a moment of passion you promised, but you have yet to truly engage the life of a follower of Christ.

So the question is out there: Who is at our center? I ask it both on an individual level and at a congregational level. Is what you’ve done all your life, and what you continue to DO at your center, or is Christ? Is a hundred and seventy-five years of history and what we continue to DO BECAUSE OF THAT HISTORY at the center of Jerusalem or is Christ? In asking those questions, I don’t want to create a false dichotomy – an unnecessary division – in our perception of ourselves and our family of faith. I DO want us to examine – and reexamine – continually, if need be, the ongoing relationship we have with Christ. Not to be examining our belly-buttons, but to keep tabs on who we are as individuals and as a faith family. We must be willing to give an honest and humble assessment of ourselves at any time, to speak frankly about how we are going about this journey, especially now, in the season of Lent.

As we approach Holy Week, we are made more and more aware of our complicity in an event that took place nearly two thousand years ago. That on a spiritual level, Christ died for the sins that we’ve committed today and will commit tomorrow and the next day.

So we engage in a sometimes painful round of self-examination. It may feel like we are beating ourselves up at times. There can be an unrelenting quality to the exercise – in truth, I think we are all VERY aware of the ways in which we fall short of the mark; the words, the actions, the inactions that do nothing more than pound the nails into the tree at every turn. And as humans, we have this amazing ability to deny what is right in front of us, that blinds us to what we are doing. But with a little prodding, with a little coaxing, we CAN uncover our true selves, our fallenness, and our weaknesses.

In the darkening shadows, hear the good news of the Gospel: God’s grace in the blood of Christ covers it all.

Let’s pray.

What it’s like to be a Christian

by Hannah Park

Being a Christian is more than just being baptized and asking Jesus to be lord of your life. It means to change your actions of a sinner to a better person. To make better choices than some bad ones you’ve made before. But it can be hard sometimes. As a kid you could get tempted to do the wrong thing or make a bad choice, or to hate some other person’s action and just want to do something to them. But you have to stop and think for a moment what would God have done? How does God see this person? How can I handle this person nicely?

I remember only a couple of months ago when my class went to gym at school. Our teacher broke us up into teams of four. You know the one kid that will do anything to get attention by being annoying? Well that kid happened to be on my team. And he made me so mad by being so annoying, I wanted to scream and yell at him. I couldn’t take being on his team much longer so I asked the teacher if I could go to the restroom. While I was in there I prayed. I prayed for the Lord to help me see him the way He sees him, to help me be a better person to him. And you know what? I felt better. I went back in the gym and I was nicer to that kid even if he did annoy me sometimes. I tried to handle the situation as God would have handled it.

For me being a Christian can have its ups and downs; trying to be like Jesus is hard for me. I know it’s hard for everybody. Before I asked Jesus to be my savior I had to think am I willing to except him as my Lord? Am I going to be ready to have all my sins washed away? Will I be ready to go wherever God leads me? And I was. I wanted to become one of God’s children and I was ready to go where God would lead me. I was ready to become a Christian.

READ I Timothy 4:6-12

6If you put these instructions before the brothers and sisters, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound teaching that you have followed. 7Have nothing to do with profane myths and old wives’ tales. Train yourself in godliness, 8for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. 9The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance. 10For to this end we toil and struggle, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe. 11These are the things you must insist on and teach. 12Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.

Some people might think at my age that would be too much for an eleven year old kid to handle. But I just answer them nothing is too much for me to handle while Jesus is leading me all the way.

Being a Christian
by Caleb Park

I have always gone to church. Except the times when I have been sick, I have been in church all my life. Of all of the activities that have taken place at church, my favorites are the Easter Egg Hunt in the spring and Vacation Bible School in the summer.

Even though I have always gone to church, I knew that it was important for me to ask Jesus to be my Savior. I would think about this every time I was in church: when Daddy preached and when I was in Sunday school with Ms. Janie and Ms. Jane. The stories that we read in our Sunday school books have changed my life. A couple of weeks ago, at Mr. Frank’s and Ms. Joyce’s anniversary party, I was in the youth room and I prayed and asked Jesus to be my Savior. After I prayed, I called Mommy in and I told her and she cried. Then Mommy got Daddy and when I told him, he cried. I am going to be baptized in two weeks on Palm Sunday.

My mom and dad are helping me to realize that becoming a Christian is not one decision that you make on one day, it is a thousand decisions that you make everyday for the rest of your life. That means that I try to live my life for Jesus everyday. I have been trying to put that in my life. To be honest with you, that is not an easy thing to do.

For example, last Sunday I broke a window at the church where we had an Encuentro. I told my mom and she helped me tell Pastor Lee about the window. It was an accident and they understood that. I offered to pay for the window, but Pastor Lee said that it was an accident and I didn’t have to worry about it. What I did not tell my mom or Pastor Lee was that I had been throwing the ball against the side of the church building when the ball hit the window.

I’m not sure why I didn’t tell them right away. I guess I was afraid that they would get really mad. But the truth sat with me all week long. I finally told my mom the whole truth day before yesterday. I was still afraid but I felt like I needed to tell my mom the truth. It was hard, but I knew it was the right thing to do. Being a Christian didn’t make it easier, but being Christian helped me know the right thing to do. I have a feeling that there will be more times like that in the future, but I will always try to tell the truth.

What Being a Christian Means to Me

by Brandon Harcum

Good morning. I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today for Youth Sunday. I've already had a great time teaching the Men's Class with Caleb.

I will be reading scripture from John 3: 16 - 17. You can follow along in your Bible or just listen as I read.

16“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

I chose this scripture because it's one of my favorites and I believe it teaches a good lesson.

Before I was baptized, I gave a lot of thought to what it meant to be baptized. Would I be happy after I was baptized? Would I be different after I was baptized? How would I feel after I got baptized?

How many of you have heard of the ABCs of becoming a Christian? Some of you are probably thinking what the world is he talking about!

A stands for admit - you admit that Jesus is your Savior.

B stands for believe - you believe that Jesus is your Savior.

C stands for confess - you confess your sins and confess Jesus is you r Savior.

Pastor Kenny and my parents have influenced me greatly about becoming a Christian. They told me about their experiences being a Christian. My Vacation Bible School teachers Miss Frannie and Miss Linda also helped me learn about being a Christian.

During Cub Scouts, I wanted to earn a religious badge called God and Family. Pastor Kenny helped me with this. Pastor Kenny and I worked on a pizza. The crust and bottom of the pizza was the foundation which is our church. The sauce and the cheese are the people you love. Even though I was working on a badge for scouts, Pastor Kenny taught me even more about becoming a Christian.

My mom and my dad have taught me right from wrong and to make good choices. Mom and Dad have taught me not to give up (which believe me, they know I am very persistent).

An example of my persistence is the day we were all out in the boat and saw something in the water. I kept after Daddy to go closer to it. Then we realized that something was flapping in the water. I told Daddy lets go help it. Come to find out, a fish hawk was drowning. The fish hawk was in the water trying to get up to fly but could not. It wasn't caught in anything. So Daddy got an oar and stuck it underneath the fish hawk. The fish hawk grabbed on and we got him on the back of the boat. When Mom saw its claws, she would not let me pet him. Next thing you know, the fish hawk was in the water again. He had slipped off the back of the boat. So we had to do the oar thing allover again. This time he went in the bottom of the boat which was good. Both Mom and Dad were really worried that the fish hawk might attack and claw us. So my Dad drove the boat very slowly to the shore and put the fish hawk on top of a crab trap. Well, all these other fish hawks started messing with this fish hawk and I got upset all over again. So we had to go get it again and this time, we carried it to an old duck blind. The fish hawk was safe here because the duck blind had a top on it. Later that afternoon, I convinced Mom and Dad to go back out in the boat to check on the fish hawk. The duck blind was empty and the fish hawk was back on its nest. Every time we went in the boat for the rest of the summer, the fish hawk would follow us. My Mom and Dad said my persistence had saved the fish hawk and that God was with us that day. And God helped save the fish hawk. I gotta tell ya - Mom was NOT happy with the fish hawk in the boat when she saw its claws.

When I see Mom and Dad do something like this, I know they care. They didn't have to help the fish hawk but they did. I also know God loved us and the fish hawk.

Miss Frannie and Miss Linda in Bible School talked about team work and how we all need to work together. We had fun in their class.

I like going to church. I like Sunday School, VBS, Family night and I like helping with the suppers for other people.

Passport Kids Camp was an awesome experience for me. Miss Leslie got me signed up for Passport Kids Camp. Meeting lots of new people and making new friends was exciting. I really liked a guy named Patrick who was from Africa. I met Patrick the first time I went to Passport Kids back in 2005. Talking with him was interesting and fun because he talked about his life in Africa. I began to realize that living in Africa is much different than living here in America.

I know I am closer to God now and I have Mom and Dad, Pastor Kenny, Miss Leslie, Miss Frannie and Miss Linda to thank for it. I also have all of you who are my church family.

Knowing that God loves me is a great feeling. It's awesome to know God loves me and sent his Son to die for me. And to know that God did the same thing for all of us. I know God is with me every day. God is with me all the time where ever I am.

Please join me in prayer.

Dear God:

Thank you for loving the world and all who inhabit it. Thank you for sending your Son to die for our sins. Thank you for giving me the chance to teach the Men's Class today. Thank you for our church and all the people in it. Please take care of everyone. Thank you for loving us. Amen.

Common to Everyone

Sunday, March 11th, 2007
Third Sunday of Lent
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Text: 1 Corinthians 10:12-17

12So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. 13No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it. 14Therefore, my dear friends, flee from the worship of idols.
15I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. 16The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? 17Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.

Over the last few Wednesday evenings, we’ve been studying what it is that sets Baptists apart, and in doing that we’ve been more or less following the book “The Baptist Identity; Four Fragile Freedoms”. What we’ve been seeing through the study is that, overarching everything else … or perhaps underlying everything else, is a single concept that is reflected in the four chapter titles – and indeed in the subtitle itself – FREEDOM.

We’ve seen that the foundational concept that drove John Smyth and Thomas Helwys to establish that first small group of believers and constitute themselves into a church in Holland in 1609 was a desire to be able to FREELY practice their faith as they understood it, as they studied it, and as they lived it.

Over the last nearly four centuries, our Baptist predecessors proclaimed, defended, fought and died because of this understanding of what it meant to be a people of faith – freely choosing to become followers of Christ, freely choosing to read and interpret scripture for themselves, being guided by the Holy Spirit, freely choosing to associate as an individual with a body of believers and freely choosing as a body of believers to in turn associate with OTHER bodies of believers in their local area or across the world. At the heart of the Baptist understanding of what it means to be a Christ follower is the idea that Christ offers us a freedom that goes so deep and is so strong and so permeates our being that it suffuses – it spreads into – every aspect of our lives, and while it is a wonderful, liberating thing to experience this freedom we HAVE in Christ, it can make for some pretty unruly experiences … of which Baptist History is full.

So when we come to the letter Paul writes to his brothers and sisters in the church at Corinth, it is especially important for us to understand the fundamental issue that was at the root of the situations that Paul was asked to address by the folks there.

The Corinthians lost sight of what that freedom they found in Christ meant for them.

They were surrounded by every conceivable iteration of religious, social and physical practice that their first century society could come up with, and when Paul stepped into that mix and said “Christ sets you free FROM ALL THIS” they stopped listening at the word “free” and from there, took off on their individual wild goose chases, largely depending on what experience they were coming out of.

Paul’s stay in Corinth is estimated by scholars to have lasted about a year and a half … which would seem to be plenty of time to get some grounding established within the church, especially considering he wasn’t working by himself – Timothy and Silvanus and Priscilla and Aquila were with him, and Phoebe came from nearby Cenchreae; and after he left, Apollos, a Missionary from Alexandria in Egypt came to continue the instruction of the newly formed church.

Even with all that, the folks in the Corinthian church still ended up having to ask Paul about a number of issues:

1. What to do about some concepts that had been held onto by some people who were formerly devoted to the mystery religions, what later came to be known as Gnosticism in the early church;

2. How to deal with the sexual immorality of a particular couple in the congregation;

3. How to handle disputes and disagreements within the membership;

4. How their faith in Christ translated into how they lived together in marriage;

5. What their faith in Christ meant in the face of being offered food to eat that had first been sacrificed to idols in one of the multiple temples that filled the city and surrounded them;

6. How they were to practice their spiritual gifts;

7. How they were to observe the celebration of the Lord’s Supper;

8. Questions about the resurrection of the dead;

9. And finally, questions about a special offering that Paul was gathering to send back to the followers of Christ who were gathering in Jerusalem.

Paul had his work cut out for him when he began to dictate the reply from Ephesus to send back to them.

The passage this morning comes from that part of his reply that is dealing with the problems surrounding the questions about eating food sacrificed to idols, which is actually a pretty lengthy section, beginning in chapter 8 and going through the first verse in chapter eleven.

The situation is this: the idea that idols are no more than the material they are made of – bronze, gold, wood, stone, whatever – and don’t pose any sort of threat by way of supernatural or divine retribution if one does not appease or obey these supposed (lower case g) ‘gods’ is a concept that those who first received the gospel of Jesus Christ from Paul ‘GOT’. They understood that, whatever following may have developed over the centuries around Aphrodite or Hermes or Zeus or whatever other gods might be around, when it came to ultimate significance – what mattered in the end – none of THEM made a difference – only Christ did. So there was no real issue when it came to dealing with the ‘apparent’ spiritual significance of dealing with them. Since they were not real, there were no consequences to, for example, eating the meat of an animal that had been sacrificed to one of the pagan gods just down the street, and the priest or priestess turned around and sold it to make some money to support the temple staff. I imagine the sign at the stand said “Fresh roasted bull; 100% organic, purified in the fires of the great and mighty Zeus; provides 100% of the daily recommended dose of ‘Zeus Juice’ for those who worship him! It keeps you going when you have to ride herd on all those other, lesser gods!”

The problem arose when people who still BELIEVED to some degree in the strength OF those other gods, who had begun to express interest in the new Jesus faith and began to come around to their meetings and were attracted by what they saw … then saw one of their new friends stop at that stall and buy a quarter pound Hermesburger with extra onions. Although they were moving away from what they had taken for granted as being fact all their lives, there was still a part of them that had yet to overcome all that baggage, and in fact, was still so entrenched in the belief that eating that meat infused the person with the essence of the god to whom it was sacrificed that it didn’t make sense … it seemed that these Christ followers who were eating this food were wanting it both ways – covering all their bases, as it were.

It’s hard for us to really get into their skin, I think, because of the specifics involved. I looked through the phone book, and nowhere in the Northern Neck is there a listing for a temple to Zeus, and I haven’t seen any ads in the Northern Neck News for fresh-sacrificed Zeusburgers, on buy one get one free special at Food Lion.

So let’s see if we can put these same temptations into our context:

What I HAVE seen are ads on Television for “chat lines”, where you are invited to talk with local singles and really have “fun” – usually by beautiful young women who are breathing the commercial at you more than speaking it. I’ve seen movies on the top shelf at the movie rental store that are MOSTLY covered, but there is just enough of the title showing to give you an idea of what might be on that video tape or DVD … I’ve seen magazine covers that present the physically beautiful body in situations that turn it into so much meat on the sacrificial altar of lust and base desires, with total disregard for the worth of the individuals pictured. I’ve heard talk shows on the radio as well as on television that celebrate the depravity of the human mind – that give equal standing and weight to voices that espouse hatred and bloodlust and encourage the dehumanization of our fellow human beings so as to make it easier to allow atrocities to become more and more and more acceptable. I’ve heard interviews with proponents of ideas that center on a man being the ultimate determinant of his fate. I’ve seen shelves and shelves of bestsellers that propose to their readers that we are, in a word, divine in our own right. I’ve seen books that claim to explain all the mysteries of the Bible – which would, of course, provide the person who reads them with the ultimate knowledge – what’s going to happen when, and where, so having that answer, that special knowledge, that BIG SECRET will give you the POWER to be in the KNOW, and ready when the time comes.

Most references to this passage focus on the words of verse 13:

13No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

It's a nice thought. You may have heard it rephrased as the saying "if God led you to it, God will lead you through it."

I would invite us to read the two statements that straddle these two sentences … for just this time skipping over the two sentences of verse 13.

12So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. … 14Therefore, my dear friends, flee from the worship of idols.

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

Let’s read on:

15I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say.

Paul is saying “THINK FOR YOURSELVES!” In this context, he’s saying “Don’t be taken in by the prevailing … MOOD … the accepted NORM …” THAT accepted norm tends to be WAY off base, when it comes to discerning what is TRULY meaningful and what TRULY matters in this life!”

He goes on:

16The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? 17Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.

Paul began the argument against eating food sacrificed to idols in chapter 8, way back, by saying that in fact, yes, as Christ followers, freed from the lies of idolatry, we are free to confront and ignore and in so ignoring tear down the presuppositions that surround the acceptance of those idols. We are free to basically say out loud that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes. We can call a spade a spade.

What his argument comes around to, though, is the reality that we each are at a different place in our pilgrimage … in our faith walk with Christ. Some are sprinting ahead, taking in and assimilating what it means to be a Christ-follower as fast as we can run. Others of us are coming along at a steady pace, taking in and digesting each bite, realizing the full implications only after careful deliberation and much study and prayer. Others of us are straggling along behind, sometimes gaining momentum and coming even with the rest of those who are walking along the way and sometimes stumbling and falling back … seemingly struggling with what sometimes seems like insignificant issues that nevertheless occupy the lion’s share of our devotional time.

Paul highlights the fact that – no matter where we are on the road – that we eat the same bread – that we share the same cup, that we share the same Christ. We who are many are one body.

That means that we cannot expect all of us to be at the same place in our spiritual journeys. That we are to bear with each other, encourage each other, help each other along, hold each other accountable, live alongside each other in this freedom that Christ gives – the freedom to BE so much more than the world expects us to be. To surprise our neighbor with an unexpected – and maybe even undeserved word or act of friendship and kindness, to confound the person who has just had a horrible day with a totally random act of selfless giving that will renew their faith and show them that there truly ARE people who SAY they are Christ followers and LIVE like it as well. And give that honor to Christ’s presence in their life – in other words – that will unpretentiously give the credit where credit is due – humbly acknowledging that were it not for the transformative power of Jesus being Lord that that … whatever… would most likely not have taken place. Claiming Christ as Lord carries not only enormous freedom, but enormous responsibility as well.

Let’s pray.

My Beloved

Sunday, March 4th, 2007
Second Sunday of Lent
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Text: Philippians 3:14-4:1

14I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
15Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you. 16Only let us hold fast to what we have attained. 17Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. 18For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. 19Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. 20But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. 21He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.
4Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.

The music is almost not there at the beginning, just a high steady note on the strings … then the voice over begins; “These are the voyages …” the confident voice of command, enunciating the mission:

“…to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life, and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before!”

The music swells, and the last word is almost shouted, and the Spaceship Enterprise flashes by the screen moving at some multiple of the speed of light.

It was a regular Saturday evening ritual in the dorm room or in Claude’s den, to have supper ready and be sitting in front of the television come 7 PM, such was the draw for me of the Star Trek: The Next Generation television series. You’ve heard me speak of it before; of the different characters, the conflicts that they were confronted with in dealing with either newly-discovered species or with some internal problem … watching those same episodes when they come on now, they seem pretty cheesy, but at the time, the special effects and production values were state of the art.

I’m a fan of science fiction. I enjoy a good thick book with lots of technological wonders and preferably lots of strange looking aliens. Now it is mostly for pure escapist enjoyment that I pick one of the books or movies, but I am still stirred by the possibilities that are presented … what IF … we COULD zap ourselves from one side of the planet to the other in a couple of seconds, what if we could speak to a computer and have a cup of 'earl grey, hot,' materialize in front of us? I suppose it speaks to the basic hope that I hold inside. But what has always been missing has been the in-between stage – the part where it explains how we get from HERE to THERE.

Usually, with the science fiction that I’ve read or watched, the in-between involves the near-destruction of the world as we know it – if not the ACTUAL destruction of the world as we know it – and what is left is a remnant of humanity that goes on … after the vast majority of the population has died or been killed off. Not a very hopeful view of the near future of humanity, is it? To base the advancement of the human species on the premise that, first, we get rid of all but those who are the smartest and strongest, or who in some way are away from the ‘great unwashed masses’ of humanity.

It reminds me of a Far Side cartoon where a scientist has filled a blackboard with equations and scientific notations – covered the left side of the board with all this stuff that seems to be leading somewhere, and on the RIGHT side of the board there is an amazing result – and square in the middle, the critical piece of the formula, was the outline of a cloud with the words ‘and then a miracle happens’ in the middle of it.

The critical piece was not there.

Paul’s tone in our passage this morning is almost imploring. His letter to the church at Philippi has always been one that has been highlighted by the way he expresses his love for the people there. Scholars believe that Paul was writing near the end of his life, when he was in something of a contemplative mood – looking back over his lifetime of mission work for the Gospel. It is apparent on reading the letter that the Philippians had a special place in Paul’s heart. There is, in this passage, an expression of a nearly overwhelming need to communicate the critical piece between now and then to the people of the church at Philippi.

And it is not a piece of concrete, hands-on, insert tab A in slot B kind of information. It is simply a reminder: ‘our citizenship is in heaven’.

An interesting thing, citizenship; you don’t lose it unless you renounce it. It stays with you, no matter where you are, or where you go. And it is, for the most part, recognized by whoever it is that you are around, whether they care to or not. It is a part of your person. It is not determined by something you wear or carry, by how you dress, or don’t, but by who you ARE.

In our case, as members of the body of Christ, it is a matter of WHOSE we are as much as WHO we are. Because you see, as followers of Jesus, we have given ourselves to the life of the Kingdom, to the work that will bring forth the presence and work of the Holy Spirit on the earth until the Lord returns.

Paul’s plea to the Philippians to ‘stand firm’ is phrased as a reminder, a theory in the face of the fact that they were currently living in the reality, albeit temporary, of an empire that held the ruling Caesar as divine, more often than not, allowed and in fact encouraged the worship of a whole pantheon of gods, and could be brutal in shutting down anyone who spoke against the governing outlook from Rome.

Paul’s concern was ultimately with the eternal, as is ours, but it was expressed in very real life-on-earth terms. The competition from false teachers, and pagan doctrine, and any number of other distractions to the pursuit to which God has called us is serious and real. There are an overwhelming number of distractions to the task at hand on any given day – and when we actually turn TO that task, the distractions only seem to increase.

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

It means that, very simply, we need to focus on what it is that God has for us to do, and while doing it, never lose sight of the hope that we have in Christ, who has granted us citizenship in heaven. Our task, if you will, is no small endeavor.

We are to change the world, to help break in the Kingdom of Heaven, to take part, in some way, in the reconciliation of humanity to God. To follow Christ in the most faithful way we can, with our whole heart, soul, mind and body. Jerusalem has a history, and it is one that includes both the doing of that and the falling short of that. That is part of what happens in a fallen world. We don’t have an unbroken record on either side. What we DO have is a legacy of faith that continually calls us back to Christ, back to the Bible, back to the good news and to the reality of the Grace of God available to all humanity through Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray.

With Unveiled Faces (Manuscript)

Sunday, February 18th, 2007
Epiphany 7
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Text: 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
We are being transformed

12Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, 13not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. 14But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. 15Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; 16but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. 17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

4Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. 2We have renounced the shameful things that one hides; we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God’s word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God.

Paul lived in the reality of an ongoing, vibrant, interactive, transformative relationship with the living Lord. Do we?

Paul compared his faith background; zealous, yes, dedicated, yes, given, yes, to what he had now, AFTER meeting the risen Lord, and in his mind it was like comparing apples and oranges. The two were so far apart for him experientially that he could hardly even put them in the same category.

We live in a society that among its strengths counts religious pluralism – freedom of religion – to be a cornerstone. As members of that society, or at least as a people who live surrounded by that society, that CULTURE, and particularly as Baptists who have historically defended that freedom, in order to practice and follow what we understand to be the command of Christ to persuade and convince, not force anyone to espouse a faith in order to arrive at a genuine faith, it is part and parcel of defending that freedom that leads us to respect each individual’s right to practice his or her understanding of faith – or lack of faith, in the hope that IN and FROM that freedom that person WILL be persuaded, whether by their own study or by the humble persuasion of our lives if not our words, into a relationship with Jesus Christ. One of the side effects OF that understanding is that we tend to sometimes blur the distinctions between faiths. It’s an easy thing to do. After all, there are, among the three main world religions, different as they are, a few core principles that are shared.

One of those is respect for life. The ‘rule’ to not commit murder that we find in the Hebrew passage of scriptures that WE call the ten commandments is also found in the theology of both the Christian Church and the Muslim faith, terrorist attacks notwithstanding. There are others. A high view of scripture, given that for each of our faiths those scriptures differ, a belief in a sovereign God who is to one degree or another involved or interested in what is going on in the world. And the need to ‘get the word out’ as it were, about just how God is doing that, or expects that to be done, depending on who you talk to.

Obviously, that last point is where we spend a lot of time crashing into each other. So our respective societies have chosen different ways of dealing with that particular issue. While it is not illegal to BE a Christian in a particular Muslim country, or in Israel, it IS illegal to CONVERT to, or CAUSE someone to convert to, faith in Christ if you are a citizen of that country, if you belong to the majority faith. What would seem to us a strange contradiction is in fact a reflection of the view of what it means to belong to the faith community as a member of a Muslim or Jewish Society. What we take for granted, what we have no memory of being without – freedom to believe as we want, to practice our faith as we feel led, and to speak of our faith to others SEEKING faith, is a foreign concept in many many countries around the world.

Paul’s presentation of the Gospel to the people of Corinth struck a chord in their hearts that they immediately grasped – especially with regards to the freedom that we find in Christ. We are free – and through the Holy Spirit empowered – to live a life DIFFERENT from those who came before us, those who live next to us, those who are above us who may or may not attempt to impose one or another precept on us. Our freedom is a spiritual freedom that transcends the boundaries established by human minds – and cultures, and religions.

That is what Paul is talking about when he speaks of living in the glory of God in Christ with unveiled faces.

The opening words of today’s passage are the continuation of the argument he presents from the beginning of chapter 3 – he is speaking of what it means to live in the faith and sure hope that we have in Christ – not based on our own worth or merit, but based on the worth and merit of Jesus Christ, who stands in our place before God. It is THAT hope that he is talking about when he says

‘Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness,’

There is no place in Paul’s understanding for the uncertainty of wondering if you are or are not ‘right with God’ at any given moment. It’s actually pretty simple. You either are or you are not, based on whether or not you show evidence of the Holy Spirit acting in your life – through the way you treat others, through the way you act, through your words, through your lifestyle. The two go hand in hand – IF the Spirit is there, it’ll be obvious. If the Spirit is NOT there, THAT will be obvious.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

I guess the question is this: HOW are our faces veiled? What veil do we choose to wear, when we don’t necessarily want anyone to know that we are Christ followers? Or do we not do that?

As many of you know, some Mexican friends of ours were involved in a car accident on Wednesday morning. Thankfully, nobody was killed, but to look at the car is to look at twisted metal and shattered glass and see what a miracle looks like. Wednesday evening as one of the women was being tended to by her nurse, the television was on in the room, so I decided to check and see if there was a Spanish language station included in the selection available. I came across the travel channel. The program was of somebody who was touring around what appeared to be a medieval city somewhere in southern Europe, it seemed to be Italy. The scenery was nice, the buildings were old and obviously historic, so I left it there (there wasn’t a Spanish language option available). Just a few minutes after I left the television tuned to that station, that program ended, and the next one to come on was the World Poker Tour. Apparently this contest travels around the country and hosts playoffs, with several dozen tables playing at the same time, and as the winners of each table get sorted out, the remaining winners eventually get to play at the championship table, and that is the one that makes the program. You’ve heard the term ‘poker face, or game face?’ These people have it down to a science. They divulge NOTHING. The table is set up with cameras that allow us to see what each player has in their hand, but you couldn’t tell it from looking at their faces.

There have been a few occasions when Leslie or I have been asked to speak at different places, and it turns out to be a ‘dead room’ it can sometimes feel like a poker game is going on standing in front of a crowd like that. It is immeasurably encouraging to be able to look out at your faces and see responses – smiles, nods, frowns sometimes, cocked heads, or to hear your responses – sometimes a quiet or not-so-quiet ‘amen’, or a vigorous nod of the head, or a big smile, a laugh, listening is an active thing – yes, it can be a passive thing as well, we all know that, but to engage in active listening is to be communicating back and forth – acknowledging what is being said, or responding in such a way as to communicate your own perception of something – it is in a sense an unveiling of our faces to be engaged in this dialogue, because the ministry of proclamation really IS an ongoing dialogue. Sometimes the other side of the conversation is verbalized after the service, in a phone call, in a conversation that picks up later in the week or on a Wednesday night, but most consistently it is a dialogue that takes place even now, as we are here together in this room.

That boldness that we find through Christ allows us to take those veils that can so easily go up between us, keep us apart, keep us separate, keep us at a distance from each other, not allowing us to really be able to look into each other’s eyes and see what is in our lives – the hurt, the struggle, the pain, yes, but also the joys and laughter, the humor and gentleness that reminds us how alike we really are, and even when we find we ARE different, we are still sons and daughters of God, beloved of the begotten.

Let’s pray.

With Unveiled Faces (Actual)

Sunday, February 18th, 2007
Epiphany 7
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Text: 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2

12Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, 13not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. 14But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. 15Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; 16but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. 17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.
4Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. 2We have renounced the shameful things that one hides; we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God’s word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God.

Paul lived in the reality of an ongoing, vibrant, interactive, transformative relationship with the living Lord. Do we?

Paul compared his faith background; zealous, yes, dedicated, yes, given, yes, to what he had now, AFTER meeting the risen Lord, and in his mind it was like comparing apples and oranges. The two were so far apart for him experientially that he could hardly even put them in the same category.

We live in a society that among its strengths counts religious pluralism – freedom of religion – to be a cornerstone. As members of that society, or at least as a people who live surrounded by that society, that CULTURE, and particularly as Baptists who have historically defended that freedom, in order to practice and follow what we understand to be the command of Christ to persuade and convince, not force anyone to espouse a faith in order to arrive at a genuine faith, it is part and parcel of defending that freedom that leads us to respect each individual’s right to practice his or her understanding of faith – or lack of faith, in the hope that IN and FROM that freedom that person WILL be persuaded, whether by their own study or by the humble persuasion of our lives if not our words, into a relationship with Jesus Christ. One of the side effects OF that understanding is that we tend to sometimes blur the distinctions between faiths. It’s an easy thing to do. After all, there are, among the three main world religions, different as they are, a few core principles that are shared.

One of those is respect for life. The ‘rule’ to not commit murder that we find in the Hebrew passage of scriptures that WE call the ten commandments is also found in the theology of both the Christian Church and the Muslim faith, terrorist attacks notwithstanding. There are others. A high view of scripture, given that for each of our faiths those scriptures differ, a belief in a sovereign God who is to one degree or another involved or interested in what is going on in the world. And the need to ‘get the word out’ as it were, about just how God is doing that, or expects that to be done, depending on who you talk to.

Obviously, that last point is where we spend a lot of time crashing into each other. So our respective societies have chosen different ways of dealing with that particular issue. While it is not illegal to BE a Christian in a particular Muslim country, or in Israel, it IS illegal to CONVERT to, or CAUSE someone to convert to, faith in Christ if you are a citizen of that country, if you belong to the majority faith. What would seem to us a strange contradiction is in fact a reflection of the view of what it means to belong to the faith community as a member of a Muslim or Jewish Society. What we take for granted, what we have no memory of being without – freedom to believe as we want, to practice our faith as we feel led, and to speak of our faith to others SEEKING faith, is a foreign concept in many many countries around the world.

Paul’s presentation of the Gospel to the people of Corinth struck a chord in their hearts that they immediately grasped – especially with regards to the freedom that we find in Christ. We are free – and through the Holy Spirit empowered – to live a life DIFFERENT from those who came before us, those who live next to us, those who are above us who may or may not attempt to impose one or another precept on us. Our freedom is a spiritual freedom that transcends the boundaries established by human minds – and cultures, and religions.

That is what Paul is talking about when he speaks of living in the glory of God in Christ with unveiled faces.

The opening words of today’s passage are the continuation of the argument he presents from the beginning of chapter 3 – he is speaking of what it means to live in the faith and sure hope that we have in Christ – not based on our own worth or merit, but based on the worth and merit of Jesus Christ, who stands in our place before God. It is THAT hope that he is talking about when he says,

‘Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness,’

There is no place in Paul’s understanding for the uncertainty of wondering if you are or are not ‘right with God’ at any given moment. It’s actually pretty simple. You either are or you are not, based on whether or not you show evidence of the Holy Spirit acting in your life – through the way you treat others, through the way you act, through your words, through your lifestyle. The two go hand in hand – IF the Spirit is there, it’ll be obvious. If the Spirit is NOT there, THAT will be obvious.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

I guess the question is this: HOW do WE veil our faces? What veil do we choose to wear, when we don’t necessarily want anyone to know that we are Christ followers? Or do we not do that?

When we are asked, “How are you doing?” do we answer “Fine, fine!” when inside we are crumbling? One of the most significant events in my spiritual journey was walking into a sanctuary where, when people asked how I was feeling, I could tell them honestly and it would engage in conversation. They would respond, they would actually expect me to tell them how I really WAS feeling, whether I was happy or sad, whether I was despondent or angry. The place of honesty is critical within the freedom that we have in Christ.

As many of you know, some Mexican friends of ours were involved in a car accident on Wednesday morning. Thankfully, nobody was killed, but to look at the car is to look at twisted metal and shattered glass and see what a miracle looks like. Wednesday evening as one of the women was being tended to by her nurse, the television was on in the room, so I decided to check and see if there was a Spanish language station included in the selection available. I came across the travel channel. The program was of somebody who was touring around what appeared to be a medieval city somewhere in southern Europe, it seemed to be Italy. The scenery was nice, the buildings were old and obviously historic, so I left it there (there wasn’t a Spanish language option available). Just a few minutes after I left the television tuned to that station, that program ended, and the next one to come on was the World Poker Tour. Apparently this contest travels around the country and hosts playoffs, with several dozen tables playing at the same time, and as the winners of each table get sorted out, the remaining winners eventually get to play at the championship table, and that is the one that makes the program. You’ve heard the term ‘poker face, or game face?’ The table is set up with cameras that allow us to see what each player has in their hand, and if you were looking at their face, with somebody who has a pair of fours … not that I know that much about poker … I don’t know if a pair of fours are any better than a pair of eights, except that the number is higher or lower, whatever, you wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at their faces what is going on … of course, that’s part of the game – you bluff – but it reminded me of how we can do that so easily. In some ways we’re encouraged by our society to hide our true feelings, to distance ourselves. Those veils we put up, cheerful, everything’s fine, people don’t want to necessarily – at least we’re given the impression – people don’t necessarily want to know how you are doing.

What an opportunity to be different, HERE, isn’t it? That when we approach each other and greet each other during the Jerusalem Hand of Welcome – although that’s a good starting place, because the service progresses, wouldn’t that be wonderful if that lead to a conversation after the service, where you can share together and pray together, cry if need be, lean on each other. It is an opportunity to strengthen and form the bond that Christ charged us with: to BE the body of Christ, to be there with and for each other, to share in the joys, to share in the sorrows and the pain, to share in the laughter. When we respond in the freedom that we understand Christ gives us, then we become … frankly, we become vulnerable. A lot of us are uncomfortable with that concept, no matter who we are talking to.

But in becoming vulnerable, you share your frailties; you share, perhaps with someone who has the same need of being encouraged, of being built up, to be strengthened. There is a small miracle that happens when hearts and minds are joined, whether in prayer or in laughter, where both were separately weak, they are together strengthened, and that is a sure reflection of the Kingdom breaking into the world.

Let’s pray.

Credo

Sunday, February 4th, 2007
Epiphany 5
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
1 Corinthians 15:1-11

1 Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, 2through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain. 3For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. 7Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. 11Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.

Why are we here?

I don’t mean that in the rhetorical, theoretical sense, I mean literally here, today, sitting and standing in this sanctuary? What compels us, if anything, to come together on Sunday mornings and sing and pray and give and read and listen, and then come back week after week?

Is there something in our genetic makeup as humans that calls us out in search of something greater than ourselves, some greater consciousness that we can call ‘God’ and feel safer for being in his good graces? Is that the thing that Saint Augustine called the ‘God Shaped hole’ in us?

I remember watching documentaries about Stone Age tribes on islands in the south pacific, or in the interior of the Amazon jungle, and almost invariably at some point in the commentary, the religious practices are explained. There’s usually a priest or a shaman or some designated person who serves as an intermediary between the tribe and their respective god or gods … this person tells people what they are to do or not do, and how they are to please that god.

I ask myself are we that different? Is our version of god and our intermediary just a little more cleaned up and less inclined to expect a ring through our noses in order to be happy with us?

What is still an oral tradition for those tribes – not yet having their language in writing – is what we have had for almost two thousand years – Holy Scriptures. And there is a finality to seeing something in writing that somehow seems to lend it more weight than simply the spoken word.

I wonder if there are members of those tribes who are just going along because that is WHERE THEY LIVE, because it’s their family, because if they didn’t go along it would be noticed and frowned on. Is it our ability to disassociate our minds and hearts from what is coming out of our mouths that makes us … better than them? More advanced? Other words come to mind, and they are not necessarily expressions of admiration.

If their expressions of religiosity are on some level parallel to our own, then we are not that far apart in terms of a sense of need, of longing, of reconnection (re-ligion – re-tieing) to our creator. The difference is, of course, notable in the direction of our efforts. It was this difference in direction that Paul was addressing with the Church in Corinth as well. There is human endeavor and there is divine intervention.

In today’s passage, we find Paul beginning to deal with what is at the heart of his letter to the church in Corinth, that is, the fact of the resurrection of Christ and it’s implications for their lives – and ours as well – he was going to the heart of the Gospel. What the Gospel actually turns on. Another way of putting it: this event, this resurrection that we will begin to move towards in a specific, intentional way as we approach and move through the season of Lent, leading up to the celebration of Easter, this event is what turns the story of Jesus from an insignificant historical footnote to a cosmically transformative cataclysm.

Paul is dealing with the specifics of the situation in Corinth, but it is difficult to tell from the way he writes to whom he is directing his arguments. The words, and the way he uses the words, are rare in the rest of Paul’s writings, so there is no solid point of reference in terms of comparing it to what he says in other letters to get an understanding of what he means with them here.

He is, in a sense, putting his faith on the line – he is saying ‘this is what I received, this is what I believe, and this is what I taught – delivered is the word actually used – to you when I was with you.’ All in the face of reports that what he had taught – that core of the Gospel – had been cast aside for ideas that fell more in line with what the citizens of Corinth were used to hearing and believing all their lives. For example, that there was no resurrection of the body, that it was only the soul that was immortal, that Christ had risen in spirit only, and that we should not expect anything different. That our resurrection in some sense had already occurred when we became a follower of Christ. It disassociated the belief from the living, and the result was that it gave them permission to do just about anything they wanted.

These contradicted what were central beliefs to the early church – those that were most clearly and most quickly identified as fundamental to the faith. Scholars believe that the latter portion of verse three through the end of verse five actually are a quote of those beliefs:

That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5and that he appeared to Cephas …

The Latin word ‘Credo’ means ‘I Believe.’ It is, you may have guessed, the same word from which we get the word ‘Creed’ – usually used to refer to one’s belief system or worldview. Most of us have heard of the Apostle’s Creed, or the Nicene Creed, but as good Baptists, we have not committed them to memory, since we, historically have stood on the principle of ‘no creed but the Bible’ when it comes to such things. And yet, it is important to periodically, if not continually, delve into what it is that makes us DO what we DO, especially on Sunday mornings, if for no other reason than to make sure that we are still engaged in exercising our faith through exercising our minds and hearts, not simply going through repetitive motions each week.

So what do we believe as individuals, as members of this family of faith, as members of the universal church, as followers of Christ? Do we really, truly believe that Jesus was beaten, crucified, died, and buried? Do we truly believe that God raised him from the dead on the third day?

If we do believe those things, what implications does that have for our lives? How is that going to play out in how we carry on, on a daily basis?

What does saying that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Let’s look at just those two things – that Jesus died, and that Jesus arose from the dead.

The first is a statement that is more related to life as we know it from an earthly standpoint. We have, almost to a person, been faced with the death of someone we know or love, we know what it is like for someone to be there, talking, laughing, and singing alongside, hugging, whatever … and a short while later to NOT be there, seemingly irretrievably gone.

There is nothing we can do or say that will bring them back to us. As time passes, we move on as best we can, sometimes with a gaping wound in our lives, and sometimes with a not quite so painful … space … where before we shared a meal on a certain night of the week, or a phone call at a particular time of day, now there is silence. That is what the first statement resonates with inside of us when we hear it.

The second statement is different. “Jesus arose from the dead.” How crazy is that? How contrary can you get? There is nothing we know that is as final as death. And yet, here, at the core of the Gospel is this statement that is basically saying that it ain’t necessarily so. That death is not the end, but in a proportional way, it is more of a beginning. To say that Jesus arose from the dead is to turn OUR reality, OUR limited, fragile, shortsighted, self-absorbed, provincial, anthropocentric world view on its ear and say “maybe there really IS more to life than I’ve assumed there was ‘til now.”

Saying and believing it means opening ourselves up to possibilities that we can’t even imagine, which could end up putting us in places we’d never expect to be – whether that be HERE, standing in this pulpit on Sunday mornings, or talking to a stranger at the post office, or in the hardware store, striking up a conversation for no good reason other than because you just felt like you HAD TO speak to them in a friendly, compassionate way. And in the course of the conversation to make a connection, to make a difference in the way that person’s day was going, and give them a sense that they truly are not alone, just as we realize we are not alone by coming and being a part of this community.

The audacity of the Gospel is to proclaim a reality that we can only see dimly, if at all. To proclaim in faith that this is not the final reality, where we are right now, but that it is a temporary one, a passing moment – the writer of James calls this life ‘a mist that appears for a little while, and then vanishes’.

To believe the Gospel is to believe that what we do here matters, yes, but that what is to be is the truth of our existence. That the Kingdom of God is higher and deeper and broader and stronger and MORE than we can even imagine, but that it IS THERE.

The invitation today is to live in THAT reality, and in THAT living, bring IT into THIS fragile one.

Let’s pray.

A More Excellent Way

Sunday, January 28th, 2007
Epiphany 4
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
1 Corinthians 13:1-13

1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Confession time again. If you are keeping track, this is, I think, the fourth time I stand in front of you and reveal another frailty. What? So few, you may ask? Don’t worry. There’s more where this came from. (smile) I have to measure them out … I plan on retiring here, so we’ve got a while to cover them all.

The confession is that, more than usual, I am keenly aware of my inadequacy in approaching the subject matter this morning. We are talking about agapē love. For those of us here who have heard it before, no in-depth explanation is necessary, except for the purpose of refreshing the memory. For the rest of us, here’s the shorthand version of the forms of love:

In English, we have one word for the multiple variations of the emotion we call love; and that word is LOVE. We would just as soon love an omelet for breakfast as we would love to hear from a friend whom we haven’t heard from for years. We love the smell of bacon frying and we love the way that dress looks on you. We love you more than anything in this world, and we love the taste of chocolate syrup on vanilla ice cream. We love our country, we love our president, and we love our town. We love our pets, we love the way the new window treatment looks, and we would love to have the opportunity to tell you about the love of God in Christ.

Who said English is a complicated language?

In Greek, the Greek of the New Testament, there are FOUR words that we translate as love. The first is Erōs. You probably can make the connection as to what type of love that refers to – it is the love of deep desire, passionate aspiration, and sensuous longing. It often has a sexual or physical connotation. Neither the noun form of the word nor the verb form of it – eran – ever appears in the New Testament.

The next is storgē and the verb stergein – they concern the kind of affection we find in a family. Plato writes that a child stergein his parents and his parents love him. THESE words for love never appear in the New Testament, although the adjective philostorgos, brotherly affection, appears in Romans 12:10, which brings us to the third form of love found in the Greek language and, unlike the first two, also in the New Testament: The noun is philia and the verb is philein. They are used to describe different kinds of love throughout the New Testament – philein, the verb form, is used 33 times and Philos, the noun form, is used 29 times. They are the most common words used for love in Greek culture and literature.

The fourth one is the first one I mentioned earlier – agapē. What is interesting about this word is that it is used only rarely in Greek literature of the period, but it is the most widely used word for “love” in the New Testament and in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures that the Hellenistic Jews – those Jews of the diaspora – who moved out and away from the land of Palestine – and may not have been able to speak, much less read Hebrew – the Septuagint was their translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.

In that, the verb form of the word – agapan – occurs approximately 200 times. The noun agapē is used there 19 times. The verb agapan is used 130 times in the New Testament, and the noun agapē is used almost 120 times.

What is it about this word that eliminates it from common use in the Greek language? Why are the other forms of love so much more visible in the context of normal, regular, secular Greek life?

I think we could find a similar situation if we went over the uses of the word ‘love’ in our own culture and literature as well. After all, in that paragraph I read to you earlier, listing some of the ways in which we use the word ‘love’, you caught a glimpse of how the word can be used to express a whole range of feelings.

It would be an interesting exercise to try and come up with different words in English for the different kinds of emotion we now generally call love to be expressed. We do try to qualify the emotion with words such as ‘like’ and ‘esteem’ and ‘appreciate’, and to a certain degree, they serve the purpose, but it’s not always the case.

But this morning we are characterizing the love of God for humanity as defined in the person of Jesus Christ. Let me say that again: the love of God for humanity as defined in the person of Jesus Christ. What the seventy scholars who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek and what Paul had an opportunity to do in using the word agapē to describe the love they were talking about was to frame the use of the word into a context that would communicate as clearly as they could make it communicate what that love was like. There is an element to that love that is distinct from the others in this particular passage. The form of the word calls for the adjectives that Paul is using to describe it to be put into tenses that speak to the essence of the emotion – to the essence of the love – they are not simply nice things being said about love – let me read it to you this way:

4Love is BEING patient; love is BEING kind; love is not BEING envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It is not insisting on its own way; it is not BEING irritable or resentful; 6it IS not REJOICING in wrongdoing, but REJOICING in the truth. 7It IS BEARING all things, BELIEVING all things, HOPING all things, ENDURING all things.

Can you see the difference in the reading? This form in which the words are written are a description not simply of an emotion, but of a way of living, a way of acting, a way of BEING that goes beyond simply SAYING you believe something.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

We can say we believe in the love of God. We can sing about it, pray for it, read about it, teach about it, and even preach about it. But, as Paul himself said, if we don’t HAVE what it is we are talking about, we’re nothing. Clanging bells, noisy gongs, so much hot air. The catch is, what he goes on to say is even more than that – we can put it into action – you’ve heard me preach about how the love we profess is not simply an emotion, but it is a word that denotes action – we can go through the motions – feed the poor with the food off our tables, clothe them with the clothes off our backs, we can be the final arbiter in matters of faith and practice for the Rappahannock Baptist Association or even the Baptist General Association of Virginia, and have people lined up at our doorstep to get an answer to their up-until-now unanswerable questions … all that and more … but if we don’t have the love of God in our hearts, it’s not worth another first-century Greek term: piddly-squat.

Agapē is used to express the spontaneous, creative, caring love that is expressive of God’s nature and that extended to undeserving humanity in Christ. People who accept God’s love are empowered by the Spirit of God to live thankfully and obediently in response to God’s love and thereby live by the love that redeems them in Jesus Christ. It becomes their love, but it is the gift of God’s love. It is not their … OUR work, but God’s gift. We do not gain it, we receive it. It comes not through self-assertion, but through self-surrender. Love evokes faith and faith evokes love. Love is the aim of Christians because they have died and been raised with Christ, and because love is given those who give themselves to the Spirit.

Love is centered in concern for others. Love is the principle that controls the exercise of all gifts: love creates unity, not division. To follow the way of love – the more excellent way – is to follow the very nature of God God’s self. Agapē is the most excellent way because it is grounded in God. Love is God in humanity.
(Raymond Bryan Brown, The Broadman Bible Commentary Vol 10, 1 Corinthians, Broadman Press, Nashville, 1970)

Let’s pray.

The Body Is One

Sunday, January 21st, 2007
Epiphany 3
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
1 Corinthians 12:12-31

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. 14Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? 18But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many members, yet one body. 21The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; 24whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, 25that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. 27Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. 28And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. 29Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? 31But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

During our training as journeymen, way back in the dark ages of the mid-80s, our group of 65 candidates was divided into teams of varying sizes, with different goals set for us each week. One team I was in was asked to come up with a multi-media presentation for one of our devotional times in the evenings. We gathered, and those of the group who at that time had already decided on a career in ministry, suggested we do a slide show – back when they were still 35 mm SLIDES that you put into a tray that ran through a projector – based on our passage this morning. The rest of the group served as models for the pictures that were taken to provide the visual representation of the text as Paul walks us through what it means to be a part of a whole.

There were, course, poses of people trying to show themselves to be a hand, or a foot, or an eye, and at the same time to look down on some other member of the body. It was still pretty close to the 70’s, if you ask me.

It was not the first attempt at a more-or-less dramatic representation of the ‘many members, one body’ passage of first Corinthians.

The point was, and is, that this has been a centerpiece of our understanding of what it means to be a part of the body of Christ because it so clearly states the realities of existence AS a member of the body.

We recognize and understand that as much as we differ as individuals, however we see things differently, or even use different terminology, phrases, and titles, we are STILL all members of the same body – the body of Christ.

The congregation of the church at Corinth was about as multi-anything as you could GET at the time; racial, ethnic, cultural, religious. There were Greeks, Romans, Jews, Asians; there were former pagans, disciples of Aphrodite, the prevailing ‘church’ of Corinth, and Jews who still held to most of their own religious practices. There were former Greek Stoics, former Roman emperor-worshippers, and as there likely are everywhere, nominal members of the majoritarian popular church – folks who wouldn’t say they WEREN’T disciples of Aphrodite, but who would just as soon roll over in bed and go back to sleep if at some point the religious holiday called for an early-morning trek to the temple at the top of the mountain overlooking Corinth. Think melting pot on steroids. Think people from both sides AND ENDS of the track meeting weekly if not more frequently for worship and to try to learn about what it means to follow Jesus.

The results were … in some ways predictable. Conflict, certainly. Cliquish behavior, yes. Lack of accountability to one another in the spirit of Christ: yes. Openly immoral behavior: sadly, yes.

What is interesting, though, is that, in spite of everything that is going on, all the sordid detail of it, Paul never stops calling the church in Corinth the body of Christ. They never lose that status. Even with all the infighting, with all the bickering, the shunning, the outright enmity, the presumption remains that the church is still the representation of Christ to the half million people of the city of Corinth.

As Raymond Bryan Brown puts it, “The Corinthians ARE the body of Christ. The church … exists through the work of Christ. The Corinthians do not create the body of Christ but manifest it because they confess Christ in obedient faith by accepting the benefits of his death and resurrection. The church is the body of Christ because it draws its life from him.”

In other words, we are not the body of Christ because of who we say WE are, we become the body of Christ when we are united in proclaiming – AND LIVING – who HE is.

There is a simple obviousness to the fact that there is diversity in this room. We can look around and see differences that are apparent – by the way we dress, by the way we act and speak; differences of origin – from around the country or around the world, in some cases. There are other differences we are aware of because we know each other – differences in education, training, employment. And yet, we gather together and sing the same songs together, read the same scriptures together, pray similar prayers together.

There are people who would look at us from the outside and call us, basically, a white anglo-saxon protestant church. I would hope we would bridle at the name. Not that we AREN’T basically that, but more at the fact that we KNOW OURSELVES to be much more multi-faceted than that. We know ourselves to be … shaded here and there with some pretty distinctive colors. The experiences of our lives that have colored our perception – that have in some cases enriched our existence and in others have tainted it. We find ourselves touched, infused, tinted with a whole rainbow of experiences that makes us much more three-dimensional than a simple name can describe.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

What we come down to in the midst of that understanding, is that differences are there. They are, for better or worse, part of who we are as a family. We have either learned to live with them and love each other anyway or we have moved on. We have found that in that diversity there is strength. There is the strength and encouragement we can find when we have gone through something that we might at first believe ourselves to be alone in, only to discover that there are three other people who’ve gone through the same thing and survived. There is the understanding acceptance recognized when we are so deeply ashamed of what our lives have become and yet we long for a community to embrace us in spite of that, as we try to pull that dissolute life back together, and find ourselves among caring brothers and sisters who do not judge because THEY were not judged – or who perhaps WERE judged, and from THAT experience found the meaning in the biblical injunction against doing just THAT.

As a body, as the hands and feet and mouths of Jesus Christ in Emmerton, Warsaw, Richmond County, the Northern Neck, Virginia, the United States and beyond, we have it in our power to be a haven, to be a refuge, a safe place away from a world that would sooner serve as judge, jury and executioner when faced with the frailties of human existence; a world that would likelier scoff at sincere attempts to right the wrongs, straighten up, de-tox, clear the air, clear the name by someone who has recognized they are not who God created them to be, and are setting out on a journey towards redemption.

The question for us here this morning is, who will we invite along on the journey?

Let’s pray.

Whatever He Tells You

Sunday, January 14th, 2007
Epiphany 2
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 2:1-11

1 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3When the wine gave out, the other of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” 5His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. 9When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom 10and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 11Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

Most of you have heard at least some part of the story of Leslie and Hannah’s trip to Hueyotlipan, Tlaxcala, Mexico at the end of November of last year to help out as well as to participate in the celebration of the 15th birthday of the daughter of one of the men we work with through the associational ministry to the Latino community here on the northern neck. Hueyotlipan is a small town; it sits on a hillside at a bend in the road in a rural part of the state. There are smaller hamlets around it, and further off, some larger towns and cities. Hueyotlipan itself has a population of about 5000 people, and ten percent – 500 of them – were invited to the celebration for Berenice, Mundo and Carmen’s daughter. Quinceañeras, the birthday celebration – it’s more than just a party – are a BIG deal in Mexican culture. This one was already in the planning stages when we first met Mundo back in 2003. Today, we are reading about an event that was even bigger than this Quinceañera. Marriages in first century Palestine were arranged years in advance, so there was plenty of time to work on the guest lists, arrange for the catering, order the flowers, reserve the halls … well, none of that probably factored in to the REAL weddings in Cana, but … you get the picture. They didn’t have television, or movies back then, few people could read, so there were precious few ways to really have a good time. The party that accompanied a marriage ceremony was a BIG deal, and this one was on the point of heading south quickly and catastrophically.

This past Wednesday evening, in our mid-week Bible study, we had as our text the transfiguration of Jesus from the Gospel according to Luke. It is found in the 9th chapter, beginning in verse 28 and continuing through verse 36. We find there a telling of the events that Peter, James and John witnessed on a mountain one night while Jesus was praying. Most of us are familiar with the story to some degree – Jesus is praying, he begins to change – his clothes turn brilliant white, his face shines, and he is suddenly accompanied by two other glorified beings – Moses and Elijah. It is a pivotal moment in the lives and faith of those disciples, in that what they have been slowly becoming aware of over the course of the public ministry of Jesus is made patently, physically clear to them – which is that Jesus is in fact God incarnate – the Son of God – come to the world to redeem us and draw us to God’s self in the ultimate act of self-giving.

The events we’ve read about this morning are somewhat on the other end of his public ministry. The transfiguration is linked to the week of Christ’s passion and death, THIS miracle, the turning of the water into wine at the wedding feast of Cana, is the inaugural sign of Christ’s ministry, following his ‘encounter’ with John the Baptist. I say ‘encounter’ for a reason; an interesting side item; John’s gospel is the only one that entirely omits a DIRECT reference to the actual baptism of Jesus, though it does have all the elements of the other Gospels included in the scene – John and his disciples out in the wilderness, people flocking to him to be baptized, and a meeting with Jesus, just no baptism per se. No dove descending, no voice from heaven declaring ‘this is my son, in whom I am well-pleased’. It presents an interesting question into how the author of the Gospel viewed and wanted to portray Jesus – he DOES have John the Baptist delivering the story himself – HE witnessed the dove descending from heaven, HE explains the reason for baptizing Jesus – “that he might be revealed to Israel” and John the Baptist twice testifies as to who Jesus really is – the son of God, and the Lamb of God (in chapter 1, verses 34 and 35).

There is a theme that is woven into the Gospel narrative of John – a juxtaposition of presentation and rejection – in other words – something happens, a miracle, a healing, a changed heart and life, a sign, a confrontation in which it is made clear (in hindsight) who Christ is and what his purpose is here on earth, followed by a rejection, a turning away of just the people to whom he has come – and it is present even here, at the wedding at Cana.

What’s interesting about the miracle of the water being turned into wine is that there is no big … what’s the theological term for it? … oh, yeah: no big HOO-HAH over the fact that Jesus turns about 180 gallons of plain old well water into the best wine the guests at the banquet had ever tasted. There is a logistical element to this – a lack of publicity, if you will. The mother of Jesus (did you notice she is never named in the story?) mentions that they are out of wine. Jesus turns to her (some would say ‘on her’, and says something that can be taken several different ways on several levels – he calls her ‘woman’, not ‘mother’ or ‘mo-om’ or ‘momma!’, but ‘woman’. It could be read with a cold inflection, or a distanced one, but the fact of the matter is, the word could be used with infinite tenderness, as Jesus himself uses it in chapter 19 verse 26, when he commended John to his mother and his mother to John as he was on his way to the cross. Just as he did then, he is also doing here – he’s redefining a relationship, but this time, it is a more personal one – one that is closer to home for him. He IS talking to his own mother, but in addressing her as ‘woman’, one commentator puts it, he is telling her that “in order to gain him as a savior, she would have to lose him as a son.” (William E. Hull, Commentary on John, Broadman Press, Nasvhille, 1970)

So Jesus rebuffs his mother’s efforts to get him to do something – pretty blatantly turns her down, tells her he doesn’t have anything to do with it.

And then does exactly what was probably in her mind to begin with. It does seem odd. But if you think about it, it’s not a singular event. At the beginning of chapter 7, Jesus’ brothers suggest he go to Jerusalem. He rejects the proposal, but then goes. At the beginning of chapter 11, Mary and Martha the sisters of Lazarus send for Jesus to come before Lazarus dies, and he doesn’t, but then a couple of days later he DOES. What is going on? Is Jesus being wishy-washy?

The correct answer is, of course, no.

Jesus is working on a threefold determination in responding to these situations: first, he is not to be guided SOLELY by human pressures, even when based on genuine need, he has to relate the problem to his understanding of the will of God in a given situation, and deal with the situations and the issues at hand on a MUCH deeper level than those who are IN trouble can imagine. He wasn’t indifferent to even the most common or even misguided requests. He was quick to discover creative ways by which to set those concerns being expressed in a redemptive context – that would, if you will, bring out the lesson of his being there in the first place – of what God is doing and is WILLING to do.

So what deeper purpose would be served in providing wine for a wedding party in Cana, once all the other stuff had been finished off?

There are three words at the beginning of verse 2 that can clue us in to the reason. It says Jesus had also been invited to the wedding, but not by himself – Jesus AND HIS DISCIPLES are there.

This was as much a lesson for them as it was a pleasant surprise for the other wedding guests.

Wine, in the Hebrew tradition, is closely associated with Joy. It was a good gift of God to gladden the heart in Genesis 27:28 and Psalm 104:15. When the land was devastated and the vineyards destroyed in Hosea 14, Jeremiah 31, and Zechariah 10, the joy that wine brings became a future hope. In the new age spoken of in Isaiah 25, the Lord was expected to make a feast of wine on his holy mountain.

This is why Jesus compares the Kingdom of God to a banquet or a wedding feast in Matthew chapters 8, 22, 25 and 26, or refers to his followers as friends of the bridegroom in Mark 2:19 or just a little bit later, in John 3:29. To the consternation of the religious establishment, he openly celebrated the joy of God’s salvation with tax collectors and sinners in Matthew 11. At Cana, the disciples saw that when Christ intervenes, humanity is surprised by Joy.

Closely connected to this joy, in fact, linked to the image is the idea of abundant joy. The prophet Joel wrote repeatedly about wine being sent as a divine gift, one which would be present in large quantities, to the degree that the mountains themselves would drip sweet wine (2:19, 2:24, 3:8, respectively).

But it is also true that wine was not only associated with abundant joy, but with sorrow and suffering as well. Its color suggests blood; in its production, grapes are crushed in a winepress, and according to Psalm 60:3 and 75:8, drinking the dregs of the wine of suffering was a form of divine punishment. Jeremiah combines this image with the kindred concept of the cup, so we end up in Jeremiah 25:15 with the phrase ‘cup of the wine of wrath.’

Even here, at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus is signaling what the other end of his ministry would entail; his suffering and ultimately his death.

The joy that was experienced at Cana was short-lived. It was the anticipation – a brief glimpse into the enduring joy which we will know only when we ‘drink new in the kingdom of God’ (Mark 14:25).

Mary told the servants to do whatever Jesus told them to do. She didn’t put words in his mouth, she didn’t presume to. She simply trusted that he would fulfill his purpose. And the servants responded as she asked them to. They did exactly what Jesus told them to do. Senseless as it may have seemed, there was no hocus-pocus wand waving performed over the jars. Jesus simply told them to fill them up with water, and then told one of them to take a ladle and draw from one of them and take it to the steward, who drank of it and tasted the riches of the kingdom without even realizing it.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

The wedding guests didn’t realize what they were in for when they showed up for the celebration. Do we? And are we willing to do what Jesus asks us to do, no matter how unusual it might seem? Are we willing to do the unexpected for the celebration to really kick into gear?

(Communion)

Let’s pray.