As it Depends on You

 

Sunday, August 31^st, 2008

Proper 17A/Ordinary 22A/Pentecost 16

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Romans 12:9-21

Theme: ‘simple’ instructions

 

“⁹Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; ¹⁰love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. ¹¹Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. ¹²Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. ¹³Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. ¹⁴Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. ¹⁵Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. ¹⁶Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. ¹⁷Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. ¹⁸If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. ¹⁹Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” ²⁰No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” ²¹Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”  

 

Scripture – the Bible – is nothing if not varied.  If you look, you can find all sorts of stuff in there.  There are stories, wisdom sayings, poems, songs, terrible, angry diatribes, soaring words of hope and encouragement; there is history, political intrigue, there are outright soap operas, and there are jokes.  There are passages that we accept as being part of scripture but which we leave at that.  We rarely go to them to study or to unwrap to see what is trying to be communicated through them.  There are others that are simply mysterious – convoluted and so specific to one place and one time that we are hard pressed, even the best scholars, when we try to come to terms with what they could POSSIBLY mean.

 

And then there are passages like today’s reading. 

 

Beginning in the later 1800’s, when a story would break in one city and a reporter got the story, he would generally be one of many.  Communications being somewhat more limited at the time, it would often be the case that several reporters would have to share a phone or telegraph line to communicate with their headquarters, so it was not unheard of for them to be given a specific amount of time on the telegraph or on the telephone to transmit as much information as they could in the allotted amount of time before the next reporter had his turn.  That was where the headline originated – it was the first line received from the reporter in the field, it contained the most critical information:  who, what and where.  As the story progressed, more detail was added to fill in the gaps.  But the headline said the most important stuff. 

 

It may seem a little long, but in many ways, this morning’s passage can be read as a headline for living the life of a follower of Christ. 

 

To begin with they are pastoral words from a pastor’s heart to his yet-to-be- known congregation.  In a way, Paul seems to be packaging what lies at the heart of the gospel to get at least THAT across to the folks at the church in Rome.  Yes, this is not exactly at the beginning of the book – it may be more accurate to call it a summary, but it is one that more or less condenses the rest of the letter into these few sentences.            

 

“Let love be genuine” – simple enough, right?  Mean it when you tell someone you love them.  Express it in the way you talk about them, think about them, work beside them.  It CAN get a little harder, can’t it?  We can say we love someone all day, but when it comes down to sitting at the table together, or working on a committee, or sitting through a business meeting when we know we deeply disagree – THAT is certainly more of a challenge, isn’t it?   And yet, there it is:  the first thing Paul lists.   

 

Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good – it would seem to be an obvious choice.  But what is the first thing we lose when we get caught up in the throes of our emotions?  Perspective – or in another word – objectivity.  I don’t actually want to argue for complete objectivity.  We live in a world of individuals, and each of us HAS a subjective point of view.  I happen to believe that there is value in that.  I DO believe there IS an objective, value-neutral truth – that is, with any given occurrence there is a reality to the events that took place that would be a series of points of fact, that do not lend themselves to be spun one way or the other.  But the THING of it is, we are none of us value neutral observers.  To any given day, to any given comment, motion or action we each bring our respective understanding, experience, and shade of glasses, if you will.  So when we climb up on our soapboxes, or ride away on our white horses, wearing our white cowboy hats, we need to be reminded, there indeed IS good and evil in this world, but it is very DEFINITELY something that we need to check with others on before we call something good that, in different circumstances and from another perspective is most certainly evil.  That is part of the reason Christ called us to live in community.  It is the genius behind the concept of checks and balances.  If we keep in mind that we are not infallible, and that we ARE prone to misunderstandings, and jumping to conclusions, making fast, unfounded assumptions, as long as we KNOW that about each other and ADMIT it about ourselves, we’ll be able to extend grace to each other on those occasions when we go off and DON’T listen to our better judgment – that that comes from holding counsel.  That’s why Paul says “Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.” Because it is IN that mutual affection and showing honor that we find we are not so different, we are not so distant from each other, we are not so far apart in our ideas and ideals.

 

The next set of instructions just seem to run together so well –

 

¹²Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. ¹³Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. ¹⁴Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. ¹⁵Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

            

In cooking, there is a term:  reduction.  It is the name of a process whereby you begin with a large amount of something, usually liquid – a soup, or the drippings from a piece of meat or a bird that has been cooked, and you boil it down – you cook off some of the excess liquid – until what is left is full of concentrated flavor.  

 

These verses are a wonderful reduction of whole chapters that Paul has written before or of which Jesus spoke during his ministry.  To rejoice in hope is to stand in the face of what would be a hopeless situation and say “this will not kill the hope that I have found in Christ my Lord.”  To be patient in suffering is to understand that there is something to be learned through suffering.  Whether the lesson is for the one suffering or for the ones who surround the one who is suffering, there is something to be gained through the experience.  Admittedly, it can sometimes SEEM a senseless suffering, but we must stand on the promise that we read just a few chapters back, in Romans 8:28, where Paul writes “we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”  This is part of that thought – a distillation of it. 

 

“Persevere in prayer.”  In simple words, Paul is saying “KEEP PRAYING!”  The WAY you pray – the words you use, the way they are put together, the flow, the expressiveness, the beauty of the way the words come together, that is ALL secondary.  It is the act of prayer – the engagement of the Spirit – the coming into the presence of the Lord with a humble, troubled, aching, yearning, thankful, pleading, longing heart that makes the difference, that begins to effect the change in our spirits that results in a change in our lives. 

 

Contribute to the needs of the saints, extend hospitality to strangers.  Bless those who persecute you: bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.   

 

Now he’s beginning to move outside of the individual, into the community.  These instructions provide us with an image of how we are to be in fellowship with each other.  They truly are simple instructions for living the life of faith.  Live in harmony with one another.  We ALL want to do that, but sometimes we don’t want to accept what needs to happen in order to DO that – so Paul goes the next step and spells OUT at least two ways TO do it: 1. Don’t be haughty – don’t be stuck up, conceited, and 2. don’t respond in kind when someone does something bad to you.  It ties in with Christ’s enjoining us to be ‘in the world but not of it’ that we find in John 17.  The world functions on hierarchies and on retaliation and revenge.  They are so caught up in worrying about appearing weak that the last thing that comes to mind when we are attacked is to do something GOOD in return.  There are chains of command, lines of responsibility, due processes, and pecking orders.  Jesus spoke of one head – him, and one body – us.  We work together.  This – the church – is NOT to be another example of one person ordering everyone else around.  This – this living in community, in fellowship, in communion with each other is a study in self-giving, in mutual support and encouragement, in being subject each to the other under the Lordship of Christ.  This is not a place where power is to be wielded over others, but a place to live out our service of love for each other.  

 

What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?  It means that living out our service of love doesn’t stop with those names on our rolls or the families pictured or named in our directory.  It extends beyond the walls of this building, beyond the borders of this county, this commonwealth, and this nation.  That is why Jesus said Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.              

 

The last section of the passage speaks to how that service of love for each other will unfold in the world at large.  And that, in and of itself, presents a challenge of a whole different sort from the one we deal with when we are trying to love the person we’ve grown to know and appreciate over the years, sitting beside them in worship, praying next to them at family night suppers, standing next to each other at baptisms and funerals.  We have an understood and accepted commonality of experience when we talk about loving someone who lives three miles down the road from us.  To understand and accept that Jesus calls us to love and accept the one who lives 3 THOUSAND miles away across the ocean or across the continent CAN present a huge challenge, but not an insurmountable one. 

 

Jesus sat across from and spoke to the most unlikely person a Hebrew man in good standing would have been expected to be seen with:  a Samaritan woman, and in the course of that conversation he spoke to her of a common thirst that crosses all barriers of race, and culture – even of religion:  it is the thirst for God – for the life of God that we all long for and try to fill so unsuccessfully with other things:  with noise, with things, with busyness, with gossip, with food, with any number of things that in no way and by no measure of success come even close to meeting our need for God in our lives!  THAT is the commonality of experience that we share with ALL of humanity – no matter WHERE we are, no matter where we live, no matter what language we speak or what culture we grew up in.  And THAT is the deepest bond that can draw us together into this understanding of mutual need that we ALL share with the rest of the world!  We are no less needy for having been raised in a society that provided a relatively safe haven for that need to be met.  We ARE, because of that, even MORE constrained to share that message and opportunity for that life with the world around us at every opportunity.

 

Let’s pray.  

Conform vs. Transform

 

Sunday, August 24^th, 2008

Proper 16A/Ordinary 21A/Pentecost 15

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Romans 12:1-8

Theme: Living out our individual gifts through the Holy Spirit

 

 “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. ²Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. ³For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. ⁴For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, ⁵so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. ⁶We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ⁷ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; ⁸the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.”

 

There’s a problem with Paul’s letter to the Romans.  SOME would consider it a problem.  Others most likely wouldn’t.  It just depends on where it catches you.   This is it:  there’s too much there. 

 

You may have become aware of it as we’ve been going through Romans over the last couple of months.  Generally speaking, the passages we’ve been reading are several verses long.  And what usually ends up happening is that I will focus on a phrase, or a particular verse within a passage, or a central idea within the thought being expounded on, and more or less let go of the others.  There’s a reason for that; it is actually a calculated move.  Romans is one of the ‘meatiest’ letters of Paul.  There is very little “fluff” in it.  That may go without saying, if you are at all familiar with it.  But what ends up being the case is that we COULD, if we wanted to, spend … at the very LEAST several months, if not several YEARS going through this letter phrase by phrase, paragraph by paragraph, even word by word.  In case you are wondering, I don’t plan to do that!  Yes, we’ve spent the better part of the summer going through it, but as you’ve seen, we are just covering parts of it here and there.  If you remember, I think for the first Winter Bible Study we did after we moved here, we studied Romans, and even then, we knew going in we weren’t going to exhaust it.  That is why we go back and touch on things time and time again – in some cases, because of new readings – new ideas that come through in a new way after reading the same familiar passage, in others simply because we knew we were going to come back to “the other part” of a particular passage later – sometimes months, sometimes years later.  The point is, although we have touched on parts of different chapters in Romans, beginning in chapter 3 at the beginning of June, and continuing today as we are in chapter 12, you can count on coming back through these same chapters at some point in the not-too-distant future.  It is a treasure trove of faith and practical application and understanding to help us in our daily endeavor to get to know God through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.  

 

So, on to the text:  I want to deal with the CON-form vs. TRANS-form issue up front – the thought that prompted the title to today’s message.  First, definitions:  to conform means “to be the same as or very similar to something or somebody, or make something similar”, while to transform means “to change somebody or something completely, especially improving their appearance or usefulness, or to change completely for the better”. 

 

Now:  how is Paul using the words?  In relation to what our relationship to God is supposed to be like, or to affect us, influence us … over and against the relationship we are to have with the world around us.  He says it outright:  to allow the Spirit of God to transform us (to change somebody or something completely, remember?). 

 

The question that MIGHT pop into your head when you hear that is, hopefully, “what does that LOOK like, this ‘transforming of the mind’?”,  and how can we tell the difference between it and what being ‘conformed to this world’ looks like?

 

It used to be simpler.  But then, everything was at some vague point in the past.  Life was simpler when we were children – that goes for all of us.  It’s an accepted paradigm.  For almost anyone, our childhood is nowhere near as complicated as our adulthood.  Yesterday as we were driving back from the retreat at Camp Crossroads, Leslie looked over at me and asked if there was any way we could simplify our life.  She had been remembering watching the pictures at our anniversary luncheon, seeing pictures from inside the parsonage shortly after we moved here, and noticing how little stuff there was around the house.  This time of year we become even more acutely aware of the busyness of our life, especially as we go through the backpack and school supply collection and distribution process.  I answered “I’m sure there are, I just can’t think of any at the moment.” 

 

Her comment may have been prompted by a daily devotional thought we both subscribe to – it is from a website established by the Church of the Savior in Washington DC – it’s called ‘inward/outward’, and yesterday’s devotional was from Richard Foster’s book Freedom of Simplicity.  I’ll tell you right now that I’ve not read the book, but after reading the excerpt, I have it on my list to get as soon as possible.  In the few paragraphs that were quoted, Foster tells of reading a book by another author, Thomas Kelly’s Testament of Devotion.  I think I just added that to my list of books to read as well.  To make a long illustration short, what Kelly proposed and Foster resonated with was the need, the ability, the desire to live out of the center of our lives – what DO we center our lives around?  Is it work?  Is it school?  Is it church activities, committee meetings, responsibilities, or is it our relationship with our Lord? 

 

Foster tells of realizing that he spent a LOT of his time doing good, noble, meaningful things, but being miserable and exhausted because of it.  He knew how to say yes, but based it primarily on what would make him look good.  He was neglecting an inner connection with God that needed to be nurtured and maintained.  He tells of his first decision to begin to put the practice of Christian Simplicity into action.  He decided to set aside Friday evenings for his family.  Shortly thereafter he received a call from a friend asking if he’d speak to a group the following Friday evening.  He hesitated, then said ‘no’.  There was a pause at the other end of the line, and after what seemed to be a long time, his friend asked if he had another commitment, to which he simply answered ‘no,’ and didn’t elaborate on the why of the negative response.  He writes that they exchanged a few other ‘pleasantries’, as he called them, and the call ended.  Foster wrote that he doubts his friend even remembers the conversation, but to him it was a world-changing event.  There’s a comment section on the website where you go to read the full devotional if it doesn’t, like this one didn’t, fit in the email that goes out, and the first or second comment made was a disagreement with one small point – that Foster did indeed have another commitment on that Friday evening – with his family, and through them, with God.

 

As Leslie Sanders touched on last Sunday, and as we are all aware with the distribution of our Nominating Committee report, and our upcoming special called business meeting, we are in that time of year where we gear up to jump into the fall season of activities, with a new year starting, with, in some cases, new responsibilities, new roles, new duties among all the different things that have become part of what we call ‘the life of the church’— through which we are trying to figure out what it means to be workers “together with God” in this endeavor to break in the Kingdom of God on Earth.  It is a high and noble calling.  It’s a worthwhile effort.  It is to the benefit of our community and in a small way to the benefit of the world. 

 

But I think we do seriously need to ask ourselves, not in a selfish way, but in a realistic way, Paul calls it ‘not thinking of yourself more highly than you ought to think’ is what I am doing, what I have offered to do, coming out of a sense of duty, of a sense of responsibility, of requirement, or is it coming out of a heart full of gratitude for what God has done in my life? 

 

I fully realize that can be a dangerous question to ask 3 days before we vote on the Nominating Committee report, but I think it is a necessary question to ask.  If we are engaging in an activity that is going to reflect as ‘the life of the church’ and all it does is drain the life out of US, because it imposes on us a sense that ‘we do this to please man, and not God’ then maybe we need to NOT be engaged in that activity.  I honestly didn’t have any particular in mind as I wrote that, it was just something that needed to be said. 

 

Over the last couple of days, at the retreat we attended, the speaker mentioned a book that I began to read several months ago, but have yet to finish:  it is called ‘The Simple Church’, by Thom S. Rainer and Eric Geiger.  In it, THEY boil down the purpose of the church into three simple goals:  Love God, Love Your Neighbor, and Serve Your Community.

 

Paul speaks of the church as the body of Christ beginning in verse 4 of the passage.  He names just a few of the gifts we might see within the body of believers.  His exhortation to the believers in Rome and to us here is to use those gifts for the purpose of glorifying God. 

 

What does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton? 

 

It means this:  if what we engage in, as individuals, as an organization within the church, or as a family of faith doesn’t fall into one of those 3 simple categories, then perhaps we need to rethink its place in our life as a community.  I’d like to draw your attention to verse 5.  Paul writes:

 

“… so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another”   

 

“Individually we are members one of another”.  Paul is speaking to what it truly means to be part of a community of faith.  We have traditionally called ourselves a church.  That is an entirely appropriate term.  We call ourselves a community of faith, a family of faith, and that is fine as well.  And we have also called ourselves a ‘body’.  With the prevailing ethos of our society being one of business and organizations related on whatever level to THAT, when we use the term ‘body’ in the corporate sense, it seems we have … turned it into a soulless term, a term devoid of physicality, if you will.  We’ve lost the connection that is evident if you take the words at face value. 

 

If we are the body of Christ, think of what that means in terms of your own body: a hand, an arm, a leg, a foot.  Think of your right hand as Sam, and your left hand as Elwood.  Think of your eyes as Helen or Edythe, your legs as Frank, or Cliff, your feet as Soozin or Joyce.  Think of your heart as Margie, your lungs as Linda and Hilda … we are each an integral part of this body – not in a corporate, business sense, but in the flesh and blood sense of being a valued and valuable part of what this body needs to live – to move, to breath, to think, to ACT, to do.  

 

In a lot of ways, that is what this sheet of paper, this list of positions and responsibilities is trying to put in black and white for us AS A BODY.  So as we think in terms of what we do as a part of Jerusalem church, I would invite us all to frame those thoughts in terms of what a body needs to survive, to thrive, and to grow.                     

                              

 

Let’s pray.  

Speaking The Truth in Christ

 

Sunday, August 3^rd, 2008

Proper 13A/ Ordinary 18 A/ Pentecost +12

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Romans 9:1-5

Theme: Lost Opportunities and the redemptive action of God

 

 “¹I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit— ²I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. ³For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh. ⁴They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; ⁵to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.”

 

Can you hear the anguish in his voice?  Yes, he SAYS as much, but can you read into the passage this morning the profound sorrow that Paul must have struggled with his entire ministry?  Having once been on THAT side of the divide?  KNOWING what it was like to NOT see Jesus for who he was and realizing as each day passed that more and more of his fellow Hebrews were going on with their lives in some cases INTENTIONALLY turning their back on what to him had become as plain as the nose on his face?  That the long-awaited Messiah had come, and they had rejected him so completely as to turn him over to their Roman oppressors to hang him on a cross to die a blasphemous death? 

 

Yes, there was some positive response, even some glimmer of hope from the church in Jerusalem, but the folks who were coming out of Jerusalem were coming out with a stunted understanding of what had – again – been made clear to Paul – that Christ had come not ONLY for the Jews, but for the Gentiles as well, and the Gentiles were ‘getting it’ much more readily than the Hebrews were. 

 

Can you imagine?  Can we imagine for a few minutes what it would be like, to belong to a group of people who had documented proof that God – the Lord God Jehovah, creator of Heaven and Earth, had entered into a covenant with them and called them his own?  What would it feel like to belong to that select a group of people?  What would it be like to grow up with your identity completely undergirded by the understanding that YOU are part of the elect, that you are one of the chosen people, from the tribe of Israel. 

 

I suspect it would give you a certain air, a certain confidence, a certain attitude – to be so blessed.  I’m not sure we can relate completely to what that might feel like … but then, maybe we can.   Maybe we are not so different from our Hebrew Brothers and Sisters in first century Palestine. 

 

After all … with a few exceptions, I think we can say that the majority of us here today cannot remember a time when we weren’t somehow connected to church folk – somehow we got the message that belonging to a church meant you were “in.”  And since it has been an element of our own individual “universes” all our lives, it isn’t that different from what the Hebrews experienced on at least ONE level. 

 

This is what  Paul was lamenting:  that with all the rich heritage the Jewish people had received over the centuries, by way of the prophets, scriptures, songs, worship, the whole shebang, so to speak, when the time came to really understand what it was all about, they just didn’t GET it.  It didn’t register with them that all that they knew was leading up TO Jesus. 

 

Let’s not forget, Paul didn’t get it either.  Not right away.  As you remember, he spent a good deal of time PERSECUTING the followers of Christ until he actually ran INTO Jesus on the road to Damascus one day.  There’s a reason we call it a ‘Damascus Road Experience’ when someone undergoes an epiphany – a revelation SO intense that it transforms one’s entire life to the point of becoming a totally different person from the one you were the day before – so much so that a NAME change may be in order – THAT kind of transformation is what Saul – now Paul – HOPED for for everyone of the tribe of Judah, but never saw happen. 

 

Since father’s day, when Judson made HIS profession of faith, I’ve had a few moments to contemplate the fact that there is an immeasurable degree of comfort in the knowledge that if something were to happen to one, some or all of us – the Park family – tomorrow, there would be cause for grief, yes, but there would be a degree of consolation in knowing that that death would not mean eternal separation from one another.  Please understand, while I BELIEVE in eternal life, it is not the sole focus of the reason I follow Christ and have received him as Lord and Savior – that has to do as much with what we can do in this world FOR God as what happens to us beyond this world, after our lives are spent. 

 

So we are faced with Paul being willing to give up HIS place in the Kingdom for the sake of the salvation of his people – it weighed that heavily on him.  His statement that he could wish himself accursed and cut off from Christ for the salvation of his people echoes a similar emotion expressed by Moses to God, while wandering in the wilderness.  He, Moses, recognized that the people of Israel had sinned so profoundly that God was justified in his condemnation of them, and yet, he interceded on their behalf and asked God instead to blot HIS name out of the book of life instead – to cut HIM off – and allow through his sacrifice for the redemption of the Israelites. 

 

Hmmm … sound familiar?

 

What does it mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton – meaning, I hope this is understood – what does this mean for us as the people who make up this congregation named Jerusalem?

 

There is a central aspect to the life of a disciple – of one who is seeking after God’s own heart, who is WANTING to do God’s work, who is, in our terms, WANTING and working to be Christ’s presence here and now that overrides pretty much all others – and that is to be a living sacrifice.  As people given to God and to God in Christ, and to God in the Holy Spirit, we are just that – GIVEN.  We are no longer our own.  We belong to someone else.  And that someone else, of course, is Jesus.  Belonging to Christ means we are more about doing what God wants than what we want.  It means that the FIRST question we ask is “what would God want me to do/learn/say/be?” in any given situation.  And by any given situation, I mean that as broadly as it sounds.  ANY – GIVEN – SITUATION.  Wherever, whenever, with whomever we are with.   

 

You see, as his church, as Christ’s body, WE are the ones that are going to be carrying out his redemptive work in the world.  We TELL about his redemptive ACT in history, but we LIVE out his redeeming LIFE through the way we live our own.  It’s that simple, that profound, that demanding, that all-encompassing.  We are the ones that the world will look to and say ‘Oh, so THAT’S what it means when someone says ‘God Loves You!’  The question is, what is the ‘THAT’ they will be talking about?                    

 

Let’s pray.  

Nothing

 

Sunday, July 27^th, 2008

Proper 12A/ Ordinary 17 A/ Pentecost +11

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Romans 8:26-39

Theme: God’s Love as Unstoppable Force

 

 “²⁶Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. ²⁷And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. ²⁸We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. ²⁹For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. ³⁰And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.

³¹What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ³²He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? ³³Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. ³⁵Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ³⁶As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” ³⁷No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. ”

 

“We.”   He used the word ‘we’.  Right there at the beginning of the passage, in verse 26.  The VERY first thing he says, of course, is ‘The Spirit helps us in our weakness’ – that is all good and well.  But then he comes out and says “WE” don’t know how to pray as we … in today’s English, we’d be more likely to use the word “should”.  The proper form is ‘ought’, but there you have it. 

 

Let me remind you, this is Paul, the apostle, some would say the architect of the church – not the foundation, but the architect – the one person who is singly responsible for the spreading of the Gospel throughout the Roman Empire.  I should probably qualify that, shouldn’t I?  The person with whom we are most familiar – through his writings that are preserved in the New Testament, and who is best known as being one of if not the first missionary to the gentiles. 

 

And here he is admitting that he doesn’t know how to pray.  I know, sometimes people use the ‘we’ form in order to not come across as too preachy, or to not appear as though they are setting themselves on a higher level of understanding than the people being spoken to.  But Paul doesn’t seem to be doing that here.  He keeps using the first person plural pronoun in the discussion throughout the rest of the passage – he HAS been using it up to this point, and continues to use it later.  Compared to other writings, he doesn’t seem to have any trouble in using the second person ‘YOU’ – just browse through his letter to the Galatians, or the Corinthians.  No shortage of ‘You’s’ there!  No, it seems pretty clear Paul is talking as much about himself as he is about any of his readers. 

 

His point is that, beyond a certain point, we are incapable of expressing what is in our hearts and in our souls when we approach God in prayer.  We have had those moments, all of us have, I suspect, where we begin to voice a prayer and our words become sobs.  Tears and cries replace dry, closed eyes and formed words.  There is an admission of the fact that when it comes to communicating with God, we can go far with our own words and thoughts, but there is a more elemental, a purer, a more profound communion that takes place between the Holy Spirit dwelling in us and God. 

 

In the next verses, Paul SEEMS to be changing the subject – twice – first we hear ‘All things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose’, followed immediately by what again, seems to be a tangent at best – the discussion about God’s foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification. 

 

Six weeks ago, at the end of our joint Vacation Bible School with Farnham Baptist Church, Rodney Morrison, the Pastor there, and I were talking about what the summer was shaping up to be, and I mentioned that I was starting in on a series that would last several weeks and take us through the letter of Paul to the Romans.  He looked at me and smiled and asked how I was going to handle the predestination passage.  I made a joke about maybe being sick that Sunday, and we laughed, but he came back and said “you ARE going to have to deal with it at some point.”  And you know what?  He’s right. 

 

I think the word is scarier to us than anything else.  The phrasing Paul uses, and the TENSE used – the past tense – gives all the impression that Paul is talking about something that has been established and set in stone and is unchangeable. 

 

The first thing that needs to be said is that Paul is speaking in a way that is trying to define God, or God’s activity.  By definition, human language – whatever language – is ultimately inadequate to the task of speaking of God.  We are finite, God is infinite.  We are limited in our knowledge, our perception, our understanding, and our capacity of conceptualization when it comes to God.  And God is none of those.  I would suggest that we need to be reminded of that as a type of disclaimer before delving into this or any other in depth conversation about what God is about the business of doing.                 

 

That having been said, and understanding God to BE infinite, all knowing, and all powerful, it should likewise be understood that God does, in fact, know who will choose to follow him and who will not.  That is primarily due to the fact that God is not limited to a linear experience of time – in other words, God does not experience time sequentially, like we do.  For us, fifteen seconds ago is in the past, now is in the present, and fifteen seconds from now is in the future.  God is outside time – beyond it, above it, unbound by it.  To an observer within the timeline, it would almost seem to be the case that, in translating that understanding that God knows who is going to believe in him and follow him back into “linear time speak” (so to say) we would say ‘he knew from the beginning of time, he knew before we ourselves did’ which is accurate, but can be misunderstood.  Yes, from our perspective, God DID know from the beginning of time what the end of time would look like, but the key phrase is “FROM OUR PERSPECTIVE”.  WE add the sequential element to that thought. In God’s time, God just knows, period.  There is no timeframe because time does not exist in eternity. 

 

I believe Paul is expressing the fact that there are those who will choose to follow Christ and live for God, who will make a difference in this world for the Kingdom of God, who will eventually pass from this world to the next, and be glorified with Christ in heaven – regardless of what suffering they go through in their lives here on earth.  The heart of his argument here is what comes at the conclusion of the passage – beginning in the very next verse – verse 31. 

 

The question he poses in verse 31 connects what has come before to what comes after.  First, He’s presented the idea that the Spirit helps us in times of weakness and that he intercedes on our behalf with “groans and moans too deep for words”.  Second, he summarizes the fact that our salvation is, in fact, a “done deal” – something God already knows.  And here he gets into the third part – what, if anything, can separate us from the Love of God?  The short answer is: Nothing, but I like the way Paul says it much better, because that is what is CAUSING the Spirit to intercede for his brothers and sisters reading his letter in Rome.  They HAVE, in fact, EXPERIENCED hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword.  They are still facing the probability of being confronted with any and all of those.  The resounding conclusion that Paul comes to is one that has given comfort and courage to generations of Christians all over the world. 

 

³⁸For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. ”                                  

 

So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton on July 27, 2008? 

 

I’ll pose it to you as a question:  what are we?  If we take these verses to heart, we could be either conduits or dams of God’s love.  The first providing a channel through which the love of God flows freely, the latter being a bottleneck for it, keeping it from spreading across the world and who knows, probably changing it into something resembling the coming Kingdom of Heaven.  Which would we rather be?  If we already know that nothing in all creation can separate US from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, then do we even dare CONTEMPLATE the outcome of hoarding God’s love for ourselves and NOT sharing it as freely and as openly, as frequently and as unashamedly as possible? 

 

Just as nothing can keep us from the love of God, nothing can keep us from doing that – absolutely nothing.         

 

Let’s pray.  

Bearing Witness

 

Sunday, July 20^th, 2008

Proper 11/ Ordinary 16 A/ Pentecost +10

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Romans 8:12-25

Theme: Setting ourselves free to will and to live

 

 “¹²So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— ¹³for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. ¹⁴For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. ¹⁵For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” ¹⁶it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. ¹⁸I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. ¹⁹For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; ²⁰for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; ²³and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

 

 

We continue this morning in Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, picking up where we left off last week.  And this passage speaks directly to what our faith family is living through alongside the Coates’ since Thursday.    

 

That phrase at the beginning of verse 18:  “the sufferings of this present time” came to mind yesterday as I stood by Helen’s bed in the hospital.      

 

I realize that can mean many different things to each of us, but it was made patently clear that at one point or another those sufferings, whatever they are, give way to ‘the glory to be revealed’ to each of us. 

 

Paul was writing a word of hope and encouragement to a people who had undergone what for us would be unimaginable persecution and suffering, who were still reeling from it.  It is unclear if they were still undergoing the worst of the persecution – this passage would seem to indicate that they were still dealing with SOME degree of it – but it IS clear that they were intimately familiar with the suffering he is speaking of. 

 

Let’s back up a little bit, to verse 14:  (read vv 14-17) Paul is saying something incredibly comforting, incredibly empowering, incredibly liberating.  To people who had felt abandoned – who may have actually BEEN abandoned by their families after their decision to become followers of Christ, he is saying that they do still have a heavenly parent – a loving God who has taken them as his own.   To those who were LIVING out the reality of being slaves to their Roman masters, Paul is saying that though they might be slaves here on earth, they are not just not slaves in the eternal realm, but they are children – beloved children – of the master of creation – and in being children, they become heirs – fellow heirs with Christ – and heirs of what?  Heirs of the unspeakable riches that come with being loved and known and accepted completely by a God who defines love through giving himself up for us.  

 

The hymn “Family of God” carries that phrase in its lyrics:  “Joint heirs with Jesus as we travel this sod, for I’m part of the family, the family God.” I can hear my cousin Rob and Uncle Babe standing next to the piano as Aunt Elaine played it, singing at the top of their lungs.  We hardly ever had a family gathering that didn’t somehow, someway wind up with part or all of the family standing around a piano somewhere, singing about being a part of a family beyond those of us gathered there. 

 

That phrase ‘Abba, Father!’ that Paul quotes in verse 15 is one that I’m sure has been explained time and again as we’ve read and studied Jesus’ use of the term;  Abba is the word for ‘Daddy’ in Aramaic.  We can hear it as one of the earliest words to form on the lips of babies in first century Palestine:  (Abba, Abba, Dada, Dada).  It is the sound of complete trust, complete devotion.  It is the sound of the absence of fear. 

 

That is the relationship that Paul was praying for the folks in Rome to have with God.  By extension, that is the relationship he wants US here today to have with God.  One that we KNOW and UNDERSTAND to be with a loving, caring, giving God who WANTS to be in relationship with US at LEAST as much as WE want to be in relationship with HIM.

 

And it is for that love that Paul reminds us our spirits bear witness alongside the Spirit of God to the world around us – not only TO the world, but also BESIDE the world.  He speaks of Creation as being in the process of giving birth – how much more graphic can you get than to talk about groaning in labor pains? – And what is being birthed in creation is what is being birthed in each of us – the Kingdom of God! 

 

And here is where he is speaking to us today:  he says that Creation is not the only thing that is groaning, but that we are as well – we who have the first fruits of the Spirit – in other words, we who have … for lack of a better way to put it, a more DIRECT communion with the Spirit of God – groan towards the redemption of our bodies, waiting for that adoption by God. 

 

That speaks to the hope we live in.  The promise of God’s presence gives us hope in what would otherwise be hopeless situations.  It brings us peace in the middle of terrible circumstances.  It calms our spirits in the face of life-changing trauma.  It gives us patience when by rights we could be knocking down doors and walls and yelling and screaming for answers. 

 

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton? 

 

It means that we live out the hope, the peace, the love, the patience, the kindness, the gentleness, the self-control that we read of as being the fruits of the Spirit – that same Spirit of God that we live out of that makes us children of God.                       

 

Let’s pray.  

Life and Peace

 

Sunday, July 13^th, 2008

Proper 10/ Ordinary 15 A/ Pentecost +9

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Romans 8:1-11

Theme: The act of living in the Spirit

 

 “¹There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ²For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. ³For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. ⁵For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. ⁶To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, ⁸and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. ⁹But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

¹⁰But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. ¹¹If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

 

We continue this morning in Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, following his discussion/exposition/argument/presentation that is one of the most if not the most compelling explanations of what the life of a Christian can be like – SHOULD be like – in relation to sin and righteousness, law and grace.

 

The opening sentence of today’s passage – that first verse of chapter 8 – “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” is one that we need to come back to time and again and again – if for no other reason than to remind us of just what it is that the Grace of God has done for us in the person of Jesus Christ.  That single sentence sums up what the RESULT of accepting the Gospel of Jesus Christ does for us on an individual level – “there is therefore now NO condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” He didn’t say you’ll only receive half the condemnation you deserve, or a quarter, or a tenth … there’s no room to waffle with this one.  No condemnation is NO condemnation. 

 

I happen to be one who believes that all our emotions are God-given, anger and guilt, grief and sorrow included.  I believe there is an appropriate use – a necessary function – that those emotions play in our emotional health and in the healthy dynamics of our relationships.  What I also believe is that in the brokenness of the world as it is, the challenge we face in putting those emotions IN those appropriate contexts and healthy dynamics is MUCH more difficult – not impossible, but much more difficult – to achieve than if the world weren’t so skewed. 

 

Why am I saying that?  Because the phrase ‘No condemnation’, in its absoluteness, COULD grow in us a sense of being able to live a consequence-free life, and that is FAR from what Paul is arguing. 

 

Paul is speaking in spiritual terms, primarily.  He does go on to continue to juxtapose – to contrast and compare – the spirit and the flesh – and further down in these verses he spells out in words what we saw so clearly … ACTED out in Judson’s baptism at the beginning of the service this morning.  Dead to the body of sin, alive to life in Christ.  Having the LIFE of God in us THROUGH the indwelling Holy Spirit, we truly do become new creations.  Despite the fact that we still may sin, that is not what is counted when God looks at us.  What is counted is whether or not we have taken on the presence of Christ in our lives. That supersedes every other measure that we or anyone else may try to impose on us through guilt, or shame, or coercion of any kind.

 

That is what I believe is fundamentally the greatest hurdle to people accepting the Gospel – and the reason Christ said we should be as children. 

 

Have you ever received an extravagant gift from someone you hardly know?  Say, someone just out of the blue pays off your mortgage, or sets a new car in your driveway, or maybe for these days, sends you a gift gas card for the car you already own – and the card never runs out, and you never see a bill. 

 

Now, have you ever seen a child who had a problem receiving a gift?  As we get older, it may come pretty quickly.  But have you ever seen, say, a three, four, or five year old who turned down a gift that was offered to them? 

 

That is the secret of the Gospel, if it has one.  It is a gift so extravagant that the only way we may BEGIN to understand it is by accepting it as though we were just beyond our toddler years. 

 

Because the gift of life and peace IS huge.  It IS beyond our ability to grasp the depth of love that compelled it.  And it IS again what we solemnly celebrate and proclaim when we gather at this table, with this bread and this wine.                           

(Communion)

 

Let’s pray.