Marked With a Seal

Sunday, July 12th, 2009

Ordinary 15B

Text: Ephesians 1:3-14

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. 5 He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace 8 that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight 9 he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. 11 In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, 12 so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. 13 In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; 14 this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

“Thank you”

Leslie and I stopped and looked at each other and smiled.

“She’s saying ‘thank you!’

Well, to be exact, it was more like ‘dankoo’, and it was very softly spoken, but the timing and inflection were unmistakeable. Leslie ha just placed her plate in front of her. Hannah was maybe a year and a couple of months old at the time - just starting to speak intelligibly. We were sitting down to supper in the dining room in the house we were living in in Norfolk, the house for which Leslie’s grandfather, Claude Kenneth Maccubbin, had served as his own general contractor. The dining room was a later addition to the house, and as such, was small, maybe 8 feet deep by 14 feet long, with dark pine paneling.

From the very beginning of our relationship, Leslie and I have been mindful of the power of words; of how words can build up or tear down, how they can bond two people together or drive them apart. As part of that, we are pretty intentional about saying ‘please‘ and ‘thank you‘ when we ask something of each other.

As Hannah began to speak her first words, a lot of what she was doing, just as other children do, was imitating sounds - the TONE of our voices more than the specific sounds our lips and tongues were making. But that was one that she picked up early, and used often, and it is one that, I hope, we as members of this family of faith, learned early and use often.

In our doxology this morning, not simply the Gloria Patri we sang after the offering was taken up, but in our worship through the singing of hymns, you may have caught something of the general theme running through the hymns: Praising God for our salvation through Jesus Christ.

As we read today’s text, what strikes me is the tone of praise and thanksgiving that permeates nearly every part of it.

Whether Paul is blessing the Lord for what God has done, or for what God has given us, there is a relentless expression of thanks in all this first section of his letter to the church at Ephesus. After reading it I sat back and asked myself, how often do we stop and simply praise God -- and thank God for what he has done for us?

We spent this past week in Vacation Bible School focusing on one country, Malawi. and were made aware of the sometimes harsh conditions that exist there, especially as they relate to the gathering and use of water. I cannot tell you how proud it made us to step back at the end of the week and see that in the space of five days, about 40 children and 40 adults from two small country churches collected $1,400.00 to send to the organization called WateringMalawi, so that they can use that money to purchase and install 7 treadle pumps, which will help irrigate gardens and provide food year-round for the families of those villages!

These last few days have also helped to remind us of the part WE play in God’s action in the world. We are not simply here to receive God’s blessings, though we do. We’re not here to enjoy the benefits of living in a land that is blessed with and abundance of water, though we do that too. We are at the same time blessed and called to BE a blessing. Just as God’s covenant with Israel was to both receive and extend a blessing, we are likewise called to that same task.

As I’ve said before, we do that, and we do that well for a faith family of our size. Through our community involvement, participation in various programs and ministry opportunities on a local level we can humbly say that we are about the work of the kingdom. On a larger scale, through our participation in statewide and national and international efforts, we can lay claim to being a part of the greater outreach to the world on behalf of Virginia Baptists, but more importantly, on behalf of Jesus Christ.

But there is a downside to all that involvement, all that activity. Becoming so busy being about the work, we can sometimes pretty easily forget, as the saying goes, to stop and smell the roses. That is, to stop and appreciate, literally, what God has done for us. And I mean that as much in the universal sense -- what God has done for us as the whole world, as he has for how Paul puts it, for those who “were the first to set our hope on Christ.”

You may have also picked up on some particular phrasing in the text, phrases like “he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world”, or “He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ”, “he has made known to us the mystery of his will”, and “In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things” These are all terms that would be understood in the normal course of events to be terms having to do with election, separation, words that speak of a special place, a special relationship between ‘us‘ and God. I would ask us to consider for a few moments this morning, who is the ‘us‘ Paul is speaking of? In simple, concrete terms, insofar as Paul was probably thinking as the words went down, I feel pretty confident in saying that he was talking about the people he was writing TO and the people he may have been WITH when he was writing them. I’m not sure Paul was really thinking that those same words would still be around nearly two thousand years later, being studied and broken down, compared with his other writings and delved into by scholars across the world and across the ages, but on THAT scale, insofar as he was writing to that larger cloud of witnesses, Paul was including all of us as well.

But even in that, we can read the word ‘us‘ emphatically, as in,

“He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world” or “he destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ”, “he has made known to us the mystery of his will”, and “In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance.”

I would invite us to think a little differently about this subject in this way. We, the people in this room this morning, are for the most part, fairly certain of where we stand in our relationship with God. At least we have a handle on what comes next.

The theologian George W. Stroup offers five insights into this passage and the subject of election:

First, election is “a statement about the wonder of God’s grace in Jesus Christ…It is above all else an affirmation that the God Christians know in Jesus Christ is gracious beyond the wildest reaches of their imaginations.”

Second, election is about God’s sovereign will, not our actions—our text notes in verses 5, 9, and 11 that “God’s choosing or election is rooted in the good pleasure and mystery of God’s counsel and will.”

Third, Christ is to be the “looking glass” in which Christians should consider their election, as God’s election is always through Christ. Stroup points to Jean Calvin and Karl Barth, who claimed that by looking at the life of Christ and seeing the grace and mercy of God, we should be assured that we are included in God’s promises.

Fourth, election “reminds Christians that they are adopted children of God;” this adoption is a gift, not a right.

Finally, we must be mindful that God’s election “does not make Christians ‘special’ in relation to other people, but calls them to specific tasks of serving God and neighbor.”

It isn’t about ‘us’ and ‘them’ - about exclusion - it is about INclusion -- it is about being called to community - as adopted children - and we are ALL eligible for adoption! No matter our age, our history, our present status, or how we think of ourselves. God welcomes us all -- and calls us all.

And it is in that reference that we would find it in us to speak, sing or pray from the depths of our hearts in praise and thanksgiving to God for what he has made available – not JUST to us, but to all of humanity through Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray.

Content with Weaknesses

Sunday, July 5th, 2009

Ordinary 14B

Text: 2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Theme: Accepting our limitations so that we may rely on the Lord

2 I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. 3 And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows— 4 was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. 5 On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. 6 But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, 7 even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. 8 Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, 9 but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 10 Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

When is weakness a virtue? In a world that is established on the exercise of power, the predominance of might -- military, industrial and economic -- we are hard pressed to find anyone who would say something to the effect that, “Weakness is a good thing.”

The meaning of virtue was one of the prominent ethical discussions in the writings of ancient intellectuals. So-called "virtue lists" abound in classical literature; they typically commend such traits as piety, reverence, excellence, practical knowledge and patience. One quality of character, however, that one never finds in the Greco-Roman "virtue lists" is the trait of weakness.

You may have noticed how often this quality was mentioned by Paul in his Corinthian letters. We are weak... Who is weak and I do not feel weak? If I boast, I will boast about the things that show my weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest upon me. Not only does Paul champion weakness in himself, he extols the weakness of Christ. For to be sure, he was crucified in weakness... And then he says about us all, Likewise, we are weak in him... The point is this: true holiness is not a matter of personal power—it is a matter of God’s power in the midst of personal weakness.

The city of Corinth, like many ancient cities, was filled with the images of power. The impressive temple of Apollo under the brow of the acropolis greeted all visitors to the city. The biennial Isthmian Games featured contests of athleticism and feats of power. Corinth, the “master” of two harbors, Lechaeum on the North and Cenchrea on the South, was an economic trade center and power-broker for much of the Mediterranean world. Hence, it is not surprising that the cult of power was alive and well among Corinth’s citizenry and even among the Christians who responded to Paul’s preaching. Sometimes the exaltation of power infiltrated even their understanding of the graces and gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Because of what he wrote, we can be almost certain that Paul’s critics in Corinth boasted of superior ecstatic experiences, since Paul chose such an experience for his own climactic “boast.” His words, “I will go on to visions and revelations,” indicate as much, and we know from 1 Corinthians that the Corinthian church valued highly the more sensational kinds of spiritual experiences. The ecstatic experience that Paul chose to recount in 2 Corinthians 12 occurred some fourteen years prior, and it happened to someone Paul does not name but says he knew. It becomes clear that the person of whom Paul speaks is Paul himself, since, still in the same context, he shifts from “the man” to “me.”

There is no way to directly identify this experience with any known occasion recorded in the book of Acts or in Paul’s correspondence. Some have suggested his vision on the Damascus Road as a possibility, others his trance in the Jerusalem temple, and still others his near death in Lystra. They are all possibilities, but none is definitively ‘the one’.

In this experience, Paul was caught up to the “third heaven,” to “Paradise.” Both of these terms are known from Jewish and Christian Pseudepigrapha -- religious writings of the time. Heaven, the abode of God, was depicted as multi-layered, usually in a sevenfold way. By entering the third heaven one could stand near the Lord. Paradise was a Persian loanword meaning “garden,” and in Jewish apocalyptic literature it represented the home of the departed righteous.

The irony of this ecstatic experience is that in it Paul heard things that were not possible to describe nor permissible to repeat. It is a further irony for Paul to say, “I will boast about a man like that, but not about myself,” since that man was, in fact, Paul. Instead, Paul contents himself to boast of his weaknesses. If he wished to follow the lead of his opponents in boasting of transcendent experiences, he could do so truthfully. But he chooses not to.

Paul saw an inner connection between the ecstatic experience he had just recounted and another personal situation, this time a debilitating one. Paul suffered from some deep personal affliction, so deep that he compares it to a skolops, which means a thorn, or splinter. While Paul obviously uses a metaphor, the reference is ambiguous. Tertullian, an early Christian Author and historian, thought it was a physical affliction, St. Augustine and Martin Luther thought it was a temptation. Scholars have argued that it might have been migraines, epilepsy, convulsions, ophthalmia, malaria, a speech impediment, rheumatism, fever, and even leprosy.

Whatever the case, Paul certainly understands his experience in a Job-like context. Just as Job’s affliction was dealt by Satan but permitted by God, so Paul understands his own affliction to be a blow from his archenemy, yet at the same time, allowed by God in order to prevent any conceit on his part. If ecstatic experiences might tend toward conceit, the direct refusal by God to answer Paul’s prayer for healing drove him toward humility. Three times he prayed for deliverance, but God declined, only letting Paul know that saving grace was enough and that divine power is brought to perfection in human weakness.

In that divine “no,” Paul understood more clearly the nature of God’s power. If his opponents boasted of spectacular things, Paul was forced to boast of his weaknesses, not because weakness itself was glorious, but because it was the place in which Christ’s power was most clearly displayed. “Therefore,” Paul says, “I delight in sickness, insult, pressing needs, persecution, and distress.” His final declaration is one of the most quotable quotes in the Bible: “When I am weak (in myself), then I am strong (in the Lord)!” Can you imagine how that sounded against his opponents’ misguided philosophy, “When I am strong (in personal power), then I am strong (in spiritual things).”

Holiness often is confused with personal power. A holy person is construed as one who is disciplined. He or she is a person with a rigorous code of conduct. Holiness is believed to be the expression of religious fervor, the measuring of oneself and others by a demanding litany of religious criteria. The problem with this way of seeing holiness is that it misses the very heart of what holiness is all about in the first place.

Perhaps that is why Paul says so much about weakness when writing to the Corinthians. As Greeks, the Corinthians took great pride in their intellectual and cultural history. They were especially proud of the classical virtues of wisdom and power. In their approach to the Christian life, they championed all the ancient Greek virtues that were part of their heritage.

Paul, to the contrary, knew that the message of the cross put all virtues in a very different light. To the Greco-Roman world, the cross was shameful and humiliating - and ONLY that. To the Jew it was the symbol of God’s curse. To the Greek, it was the shame of public disgrace. To the Roman, it was the death of traitors and rebels.

Nothing in the whole structure of ancient culture, either Jewish, Greek or Roman, prepared anyone for the preaching of the cross. It was a stumbling block to Jews and absurd to the Greeks. But to those whom God had called, it was Christ—the wisdom of God and the power of God.

In a contemporary culture that stresses individual freedom and social advancement—even in a Christian sub-culture that at times succumbs to the appeal of political clout—we would do well to more directly conform our minds to the gospel of our weakness.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

We may need to ask ourselves, do we worship power? That we live in a culture that worships power is, I think, understood. The bigger, the better. Anyone from a captain of industry to a politically persuasive leader, to a militarily powerful leader is considered someone to be admired ... or feared by virtue of the fact that they CAN command anywhere from thousands to hundreds of thousands to millions to do their bidding.

But are we at risk of bringing that same mindset into the practice of our faith here within our family of faith? Even now, nearly two thousand years after Paul wrote his letter to the church at Corinth, we are still swayed not by stories of weakness, but of strength. We would rather hear about victories than struggles, triumphs rather than defeats. And that goes with our human nature, doesn’t it? we are expected to be ‘strong’. We encourage each other to be strong, we pray for strength, we don’t pray for weakness ... it seems ... out of PLACE to pray for anything else ... so how SHOULD we pray?

First, I think we acknowledge our weaknesses. We accept that we are not doing this under our own strength, we consciously make the decision to be PRIMARILY reliant on God’s strength and God’s wisdom, God’s movement in our life as a community of faith. And we set aside anything that we would like to control. Power, and strength are translated into control. And we do like to control things, don’t we? From the temperature around us to how level the ground is, to how soft our seats are, to how much light we have ... it is a subtle thing, isn’t it?

We pray for grace.

We pray for peace, we pray for acceptance. We pray for Christ to be manifested in us, over and above anything that might draw people to US, we pray that it would be more and more to HIM.

Let’s pray.

With deep gratitude to Dan Lewis, Senior Pastor of Troy Christian Chapel, Troy, Michigan, and guest essayist on journeywithjesus.net.

Excel in Everything

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

Pentecost 4B

Text: 2 Corinthians 8:7-15

Theme: Giving as a mark of being a Christian

7 Now as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you—so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking. 8 I do not say this as a command, but I am testing the genuineness of your love against the earnestness of others. 9 For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. 10 And in this matter I am giving my advice: it is appropriate for you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire to do something— 11 now finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means. 12 For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has—not according to what one does not have. 13 I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between 14 your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. 15 As it is written, “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.”

What makes us Christ followers?

What makes us Christian?

At what point do we count ourselves as members of the body of Christ on earth? Or does that happen before we ourselves can count?

As baptists, we believe that, in order to become a Christian, one must make a conscious choice - an intentional decision to surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ - and that cannot happen until one is able to reason out - on whatever level one is capable of - the consequences of sin and the place of Christ in our lives. And if that place is to be Lord of our lives, we generally choose to follow Christ’s example and are baptized by immersion. But where does that belief come from? Where does that specific understanding of the way faith comes about and is expressed come from?

Over the next few weeks I’d like to take us on a journey of discovery ... or maybe re-covery into what it is that marks baptists as distinct from other denominations and traditions. I want to make clear that, while I AM firmly a baptist, and proud of my heritage and have come in some ways BACK to that heritage from a point of being ready to leave it, I am not going to wave the baptist banner and tell everyone that would care to listen that the CLOSEST thing to the New Testament Church are these baptists sitting at the corner of Mulberry Road and History Land Highway in Warsaw, Virginia. We are all flawed human beings; you, me, our baptist forbearers, the current and former leadership of our convention and agencies, as well as all the professors in our seminaries - past AND present. So to state unequivocally that we are the only ones that have it right is arrogance that borders on sinful pride. This approach will be one of simply putting forth what marks us and how we are different. Paul calls us to convince and win each other over by speaking clearly and passionately about Jesus, not by coercion or intimidation - I would add, not by fear mongering or belittling other faith traditions as less than they are.

I live and practice my faith through the baptist tradition because my identity in Christ has best and most fully been informed by my upbringing as a baptist. I will freely admit that there are things about our denomination that I struggle with, even disagree with on a pretty fundamental level, but one of the things that I love - REALLY love about being a baptist is knowing that I don’t have to agree lock stock and barrel with ... ANYONE or anyTHING in order to be a baptist, because that happens to be one of the hallmarks of baptist identity; we are neither a hierarchical nor a creedal denomination. We don’t have to agree to a specific understanding of a given series of issues in order to call each other brother and sister, and we answer only to God for those beliefs and those understandings. As a member of a local congregation, there is an element of accountability that enters into how we choose to join in fellowship, but that is a separate issue from our foundational, or core beliefs.

Over the last few years I’ve heard on a fairly regular basis “it’s all the same, we’re all serving the same God.” Let me say at the outset that ... I agree. On some level, all our traditions that have come to be known as denominations within the Christian faith ARE the same in that they are attempts by well-meaning humans to understand and interpret, or put into action how they understand the coming of God in Christ to the world. And we DO all serve the same God. If you are talking about denominational traditions within - or under - the larger umbrella of the Christian faith -- in other words, any given group of people who believe That God was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s self, then we DO all serve the same God.

I will also point out at the outset that how we understand God varies considerably - even within the Christian faith, from Roman Catholic to Eastern Orthodox to United Church of Christ to 40-Gallon Baptists, though we speak of the same God, the very reason we ARE in different denominations is precisely BECAUSE of how differently we view and understand God.

Now, here’s the kicker: that understanding even varies within the various denominations ... and I would venture to say, even within this local congregation. I EVEN feel comfortable saying that our understanding of God varies within each of us as individuals, depending on where we are in life.

Yesterday at Brittany and Trevor’s wedding I read 1st Corinthians 13. If you are familiar with that chapter, you know that towards the end of it, Paul writes, “when I was a child, I talked like a child, thought like a child, reasoned like a child, but when I grew up, I put away childish things.” It is that way with how we each come to understand God - as we grow in our faith as well as chronologically.

So we are going to work through those things that make us baptist in light of what the lectionary gives us each week.

In our text this morning, Paul is writing to the folks at Corinth. It is a young congregation and relatively well-off congregation, due primarily to the fact that it is located in the then-booming metropolis of Corinth.

Paul is making his missionary journeys for many reasons. Primarily, of course, to spread the gospel, but also, he is reconnecting with folks that he has met in previous journeys, as well as collecting contributions to bring back to the folks at the church in Jerusalem, to provide for the needs of the poor in their community as well as those in need in the church.

He’s gotten into some hot water with some people thinking that he was profiting from these collections, so he is trying to respond to that accusation as well as to reiterate his appeal - it comes out most clearly at the end of the section we’re reading this morning - in his appeal to fairness - that starts in verse 13 - he speaks of fairness and balance - that crystalizes in his quote in verse 15: that the one who has much does not have too much, nor the one who has little has too little.

The immediate issue has to do not with the amounts collected or not from either the Macedonian congregations or from the Corinthian one, but it has to do with a generosity of spirit.

Paul is not, here, arguing that God has done so much for us and we ought therefore to show our gratitude by our financial gifts ('and they ought to be big!!'). He is not waving the big stick of God's right to be worshipped with money. There is nothing about paying back God's generosity nor about secret rewards for divine investments such as our own personal prosperity in this life or the life beyond.

On the contrary Paul creates problems for translators by using some of his major theological terms, such as grace and fellowship, to describe his undertaking of fundraising. 8:7, for instance, urges the Corinthians to abound 'in grace' (eg. NRSV: 'in this generous undertaking'). For Paul the same grace (divine generosity) which embraces us in our failure and sin also generates action as we become companions of this grace. In other contexts he talks about love as the fruit of the Spirit. Generous financial giving does not belong to another department. It is part of the outworking of compassion, the fruit of the Spirit. The stewardship invitation is not about moral obligations to pay God back or even to express gratitude, but to engage with God in love in the world. That includes acts of love with our whole being (including our financial resources) for others. Elsewhere Paul talks of his collection for the poor among the saints in Judea. It is outwardly focused.

For Paul stewardship is not about cranking up gratitude to God (with lots of moral pressure and shaming), but about living a Christ-shaped life. Notice how he relates his appeal to the very heart of Christian faith: Christ's life (8:9). As those incorporated into the body of Christ, baptised into the river of his influence, we are, of course (it comes so naturally to Paul to think this way!), to see ourselves as living out the life of God we saw in Christ. Christian stewardship is an appeal to love - to join God's loving (William Loader: First thoughts on Year B Epistle Passages from the Lectionary)

So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church? We can see the cooperative nature of our associations - with other churches in our area, in our commonwealth, in our country, and across the world as an outgrowth of this push on Paul and Titus’s part to travel and bring from any and all churches - not just the big and wealthy ones - an expression of THEIR love for those people that they most likely did not even know, and were unlikely to EVER get to know face to face on this earth ... does that ring a bell for us?

We give because God gave first to us.

Let’s pray.

Open Wide

Open Wide

Pentecost 3B

Text: 2 Corinthians 6:1-13

Title: Open Wide

1 As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. 2 For he says, “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.” See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! 3 We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, 4 but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5 beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6 by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, 7 truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; 8 in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; 9 as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; 10 as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

11We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. 12 There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. 13 In return—I speak as to children—open wide your hearts also.”

It is always an adjustment to come off a retreat or a camp or something that has taken you away from the routine of every day to something other than that -- to a different setting, a different schedule, a different ... purpose, even. The adjustment can sometimes be gentle, and at other times, drastic. Having spent this past week with about two hundred teenagers was a baptism by fire in some ways ... in others, it was a breath of fresh air. In still others, it was a reminder of just how treacherous a time adolescence can be.

I got here this morning and it didn’t quite feel right to begin the morning without doing The Revolution shuffle (with motions) - (twirling hands in front, while leaning forward, then to the side, back, and the other side) “Oooooooh --- Ooooooh -- (alternating jabbing motions with hands - first time down and to the side, second time up and to the other side) do you want a revolutin? (hoooo-hoooo)(high-pitched) I said do you want a revolution? (hoooo-hooo)” with two hundred other kids ... would you like to join me? C’mon! Everybody up! :-)

I talked to Lindsey and Hannah about doing that as a call to worship some Sunday ... we might yet ...

David and Colleen Burroughs - you might recognize the name -- Esther Burroughs -- those of you who have been involved in the Women’s Missionary Union over the years ... she was President of the National WMU for several years, I believe, and Coleen is an MK from Africa. I became friends with them while we were in Seminary together in Louisville. Their camps, the program they’ve put together, is unlike anything I experienced as a child going to camp when we were back in the States, because it is a blending of both discipleship and missions opportunities. They go hand in hand, they are one and the same in terms of the purpose of the camps. You have hands-on missions opportunities.

The group I was with went to a park that was next to a low-income housing project in one of the areas of Monroe, NC, which is a town that might be comparable to Tappahannock. (note: on research, it’s not, it’s MUCH bigger), it’s on the outskirts of Charlotte. We did day camps for a couple of hours each afternoon from about 12:30 to about 2:30 with the kids from the neighborhood -- Anglo, African American and Latino. I had a chance to greet and get to know some of the families there.

The role of the chaperones and group leaders is actually to step back and let the kids do the ministry. It’s giving them the opportunity to experience hands-on what it means to be the presence of Christ.

Our theme for the week was drawn from 2nd Corinthians 5:17-20 (read):

17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 20 So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

The theme interpretations, the way that those passages were applied were profoundly moving.

There were four mission teams formed from the teams that were there; one was helping a woman with some needed repairs around her house , including to her wheelchair ramp, and yard cleanup; two, including mine, were day camps at different low income housing areas, and a fourth was doing some work at a rehabilitation center.

The stories we heard from the children who came to our camps were hair raising. Stories of both parents being imprisoned and the daughter is left living with her stepmother; we heard of how, anytime there was a disagreement -- any disagreement -- the stepmother would call the police on her stepdaughter, stories of gunshots in the streets every night, and of the children staying inside because it was simply not safe to be out; stories of adolescent girls selling themselves just to have money to spend -- just heartbreaking stories.

But to watch the campers interact was that breath of fresh air. I don’t think children naturally have a mistrust of a stranger, especially between children, there is an immediate connection - basketball, t-ball, water sports (that was a big one -- and it happened to fall on the most heavily overcast and coolest day of the week). To watch the kids slide and have unbridled fun was encouraging.

The evening worship was moving. The camp pastor is a young man who has just completed his first year at Truett Seminary, which is connected with Baylor University in Texas. He connected with the kids in a way that was ... intimidating.

So why am I telling you all this about camp?

Our group was the smallest group there. There was one other group that had one more camper than we did, but most if not all of the others had anywhere from ten to maybe 50 campers from their youth group there. It got me to thinking about the disparity in terms of numbers. I got to thinking about why there aren’t more kids at Jerusalem, about why there aren’t more of us in worship at Jerusalem. And then I got to this text, and in reading back through 1st and 2nd Corinthians, and remembering what the situation was, I was reminded of what we are called to do as Christians.

Paul was dealing with a church that was being, in some ways split apart. Folks were being ... I don’t want to say distracted ... they were being pulled away by what they called “Super” Apostles.

You think about Television Evangelists today, you think it is a modern phenomenon; these churches that have stadium-sized auditoriums, and millions of dollars in budgets, and state-of-the-art ... everything, and have tens of thousands of members, and you think it might be a modern thing, and it is really not. There have always been those charismatic -- in the sense that they draw people to them -- speakers who draw crowds, who get people exited and get people to ... connect -- so I don’t want to entirely criticize this -- it’s NOT a criticism -- but for those of us who maybe prefer this smaller, more intimate setting, we struggle with a sense of, “Are we doing it right if we are still this small? Are we being ... faithful?”

Paul is addressing that here. Where he speaks starting in verse three:

We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger;

Does that sound like successful ministry? Not exactly ... and yet ... what portion of scripture remains with us, and from whom? I don’t know that any of the epistles, or any of the gospels are from Apollos ... it makes me wonder ... substance ... the substance of what faith means in terms of living it out, applies whether you belong to a ten-thousand member church or to a church that has less than 300 on the roll and gathers fifty souls on a Sunday. It is a word of encouragement to know that it doesn’t matter -- the size of your faith family -- that what matters is how we individually and as a congregation turn that faith that we believe into practice. And it doesn’t matter whether we send two or whether we send forty children to camp, we are still called to be faithful. And in carrying out that faithfulness, in living that out, we are doing the will of God.

Let’s pray.

God of Grace and God of Glory, you who call all of humanity to you, you who bless the large and the small congregation, we give you thanks that we can know each other, that we can live in each others’ lives, that we can be your presence, in a very concrete, in a very real, in a very palpable way. That your love and your grace and your mercy can be found within each of us. I ask, O God, that you would bless us, that you would dwell in us, that we would let you shine through in everything that we do, Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

If you would like to turn to our hymn of response, it is number 273, “Freely, Freely”

The Open Wide reference in the title of the message is from that last part, where Paul writes

“We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return—I speak as to children—open wide your hearts also.”

The invitation is to not just open wide our hearts to what God wants to do through us, but that we also open wide our hearts to the community around us. WE DO THAT, but it bears repeating. And it bears pointing out that that wideness, that openness is one that we cannot restrict, because God did not restrict it to us.

Let’s stand and sing.

Go Therefore

Trinity Sunday

Text: Matthew 28:16-20

Title: Go Therefore

Theme: “Going” with a ‘posse’ of three

16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.  And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

What is it that defines a person?  Is it something external or internal?  Something objective or subjective?  Something all can agree on or something open to debate?  

To be honest, there are some elements of both wrapped up in what makes us who we are.  To a degree, each person can be - and hopefully IS - self-defined.  We each strive to reach a point of maturity where it is not so much what others think of us that makes us who we are as it is who we know ourselves to BE that gives us our sense of identity.  For a follower of Christ, that identity is wrapped up in how we understand God in Christ to consider us that gives us our core identity.    

There are multiple factors that must be taken into consideration when that sense of identity is being formed; race, family history, place of birth, language, culture, income, education, friendships, work, social networks ... and faith.  

The question I’d like to address here today is, what place does faith play in our sense of identity here, at Jerusalem, as a unique family of faith, working out our salvation with fear and trembling, striving to be Christ’s presence in Emmerton, on the Northern Neck and beyond.

Being a people who have historically been identified as Baptists, we bring into this sense of identity all the history of our faith tradition: our connection to a free church tradition that tells us that each congregation is independent, free to decide for ourselves what to believe and how to practice that belief.  Our belief in soul competency: that each individual soul is capable, through the prompting of the Holy Spirit, to enter into engagement with God and to be transformed directly by the action of God in his or her life, with only Christ as mediator, no one else.  We believe in the inspiration of scripture as the word of God, applicable to every aspect of our lives, to be approached with reverence and honest questioning, to be studied intensely and deeply, and to be open to what God may have for us in different ways through the different seasons of our lives from the same text, never setting those words in stone because the word of God is a living thing, capable of speaking in different ways and times to different people and situations.  

We also, as a people born of a tradition called specifically Southern Baptist, acknowledge our own history in that we were formed as a denomination due in large part to the defense of slave-owning missionaries.  While we do not disavow our missiological heritage, we have come to an understanding of the abhorrent nature of the institution of slavery and are mindful of the destructive patterns it rooted in us in terms of racism, segregation and profound injustices that were carried out or allowed to be perpetuated simply because that was “the way things are.”  In owning that history, we also renounce any justification of those practices that set man-made barriers between us and fellow believers of different races and cultures simply because we ARE of different races or cultures.  

In his great commission, Christ’s command is for us to go and make disciples, baptize, and teach.  The Great Commission is most informed, best exemplified, by Jesus‘ metaphors found earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 5, verses 13 & 14:  for the Christian life as being one of salt and light.  Being salt and being light is ... just THAT ... a state of BEING.  It is not, strictly speaking, the act of DOING something, though that is not excluded, it is something that has to do more with who we ARE as Christ followers, we are to BE like salt -- seasoning and preserving, we are to BE light:  casting away darkness by simply BEING present.  

We do not all have the skills or stamina to mend broken lives in distant lands, or even in nearby cities and towns, but we ARE as are all followers of Christ, empowered to become like those first followers were - salt and light to the world immediately around them: devoid of a sense of taste that distinguishes right from wrong and sinking in sometimes seemingly ever-increasing darkness.  We see evidence of this lack of a sense of right and wrong at least once a week when the Northern Neck News comes out, and just inside the front page is the listing of reports from the county sheriff’s offices in Richmond County and the surrounding counties on the Neck.  

What does it mean to make someone a disciple of Christ?  For that, we need to look at what the original disciples did and were.  They were Jesus‘ constant companions.  For three years, they spent nearly every waking moment with Jesus, listening to him teach, watching him perform miracles, face down the purveyors of injustice and warped religion of the day, and they heard him interact with God in a way that was unheard of before.  They had front-row seats to the unfolding acts of God in the world as a present and accessible God.  And even with all that, they didn’t quite ‘get it‘ until AFTER the pivotal act of God in history had taken place.  

So if we, as followers of Christ, are supposed to go and make disciples of all nations, then we are even more burdened with the task of being Christ’s presence in the world.  If those first eleven disciples were disciples due in large part to their being exposed to Jesus nearly every waking hour of the day, then our charge is even clearer:  We are to be Christ’s representatives, models, emulators, emissaries, ambassadors every waking moment, and especially in the presence of new or potentially new believers ... not that we are to relax and let our guard down when we are NOT in the presence of those same fledgling believers, or even potential believers, it is simply another reference to the fact that we are not only talking about beliefs and a faith that demand action, but we are talking about a way of life, a state of being, an identity born of the spirit of God that infuses who we are, that redefines us into being children of God above and beyond all else that would lay claim to our allegiance.   

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?  It means that if we are to be seriously about the business of the Kingdom of God, whether that be right outside these doors, in the surrounding community or in one of the surrounding counties or beyond, we have to take to heart one three-letter word in our passage this morning:  ‘all’.  

Both in the sense that our call is to take it to all people -- all nations -- as well as everywhere -- our mandate is not simply geographical, it is universal.  And insofar as it is unrestricted we are to likewise seek to be unrestricted ourselves:  in our outreach, in our welcoming, in our interconnectedness, we are commanded by Jesus to set aside those things that separate us in favor of that which unites:  the Love of God in Christ, calling us to sacrifice, to service, to fellowship, to establish and maintain bonds of love and fraternity that transcend the things that the world considers insurmountable differences.  We are called to unite with our brothers and sisters in worshipping God through that living of our lives that is our true worship - not just that which is limited to an hour or so on a given Sunday morning, but that worship that informs, that marks, that BRANDS the living of our days and that touches the lives of everyone around us.  

Christ’s Great Commission is the ongoing work of the Kingdom that begins in each of our lives and continues throughout our environment -- that touches everything and everyone we know.              

Let’s pray.  

You Shall Know

Sunday, May 31st, 2009
Pentecost B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton, VA
Ezekiel 37:1-14

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

It is easily one of the most bizarre scenes in the Hebrew Scriptures. The prophet Ezekiel is transported in a vision to a valley that is representative of everything that the exiled people of Israel were feeling. It was full of the dry bones of a slain army -- and Ezekiel is called on by God to preach to them. The people of Israel -- and Ezekiel as on of them -- are struggling with the reality they have been forced to deal with. 

God’s promises have been impossible from the very start. There is the call of Abraham and Sarah, two impossibly old folks who were charged with giving birth to a nation as plentiful as the stars in the sky. The nation did grow up, but before too long it had been enslaved. When God liberated the people, they continually fell away – even when they had been given their own land, even when they had judges, kings, and prophets to try and keep them in line.

Ezekiel was faced with a situation in which a promise made thousands of years ago, a promise that seemed too good to be true, was turning out to be exactly that. The exile was one of the most traumatic events in Jewish history, and there’s a whole book of the Bible – Lamentations – dedicated to the words of despair and hopelessness God’s people felt at that time. The land was supposed to remind them of God’s promise; the king was supposed to remind them of God’s promise; the Temple was supposed to remind them of God’s promise. Now all those things were gone and the people were left despondent – utterly alone. We can hear their anguish in the words of Psalm 137.

By the rivers of Babylon - there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy. Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem’s fall,
how they said, ‘Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its foundations!’ O daughter Babylon, you devastator!  Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!

 

What we hear are the words of a people who are utterly lost, utterly without hope, utterly defeated. That terrible image in the last verse speaks more to the frame of mind of the Psalmist than to the enduring wish of the people of God. It is an honest expression of the bitterness and hatred that can so easily settle into the heart of one who no longer has hope, who sees no way out of their present circumstances, who is sure that God has -- at least for a little while -- abandoned them. 

Despite the 2,500 years that separate us from Ezekiel, I think each of us must have some idea how he felt, how his people felt. I suspect that there are things many of us treasure as reminders of God’s promise: a passage of scripture; words spoken by a dear friend at just the right moment; the memory of a particular star in the sky one night. They are meaningless to anyone else, but to us they are touchstones to which we cling when everything else falls away. Now imagine that you’ve lost even those, and I think you begin to grasp the magnitude of the exile.

So we return to that painful conversation between Ezekiel and God. Painful because Ezekiel knew. “Mortal, can these bones live?” -- the prophet knew the answer; he knew it was impossible.

And yet, that’s precisely what happens in the vision that follows. In essence, God says, “You think it’s impossible for me to restore my people from exile? I’m going to show you that I could do something infinitely more impossible than that. Not only am I going to restore the bones and sinew and flesh, but I am going to return my breath to these bodies, and they are going to live again.

“I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.” God keeps promises, even though they have been impossible from the very start. 

(Thanks to Joshua T. Andrzejewski, Union PSCE, Richmond VA)

The people of Israel were dealing with very real, very present issues in their life as as a corporate entity - as a nation - they were hundreds of miles away from their home, bereft of their leaders, their temple, their sense of identity -- everything that for so long had helped them understand who they were in the world. 

But then, I guess that may have been part of the problem, don’t you think? They were sure of who they were in the eyes of the world, just not in the eyes of God. I’m not saying that they had NO idea of who they were in the eyes of God, they were just ALSO very aware of who they were in the world BECAUSE of who they were in the eyes of God ... and as so often happens in these cases, the ‘who’ they were in the world ended up taking precedence over the ‘who’ they were in the eyes of God, and when the ‘who’ they were in the eyes of the world got LOST, the initial response was to associate that loss with their PRIMARY identity -- who they were in the eyes of God. So they ended up digging a hole twice as deep as they WOULD have been in had they kept that sense of who they were in God‘s eyes. 

But the beauty of this passage is that it is a vivid reminder -- for them as well as for anyone who has lost that sense of identity -- of just what God is capable of doing in the face of the impossible. 

What seems the most unlikely, miraculous event that could happen in your life right now -- in your wildest imagination, that which you don’t even dare to hope for -- much less speak out loud? That the one you’ve lost - to distance, to estrangement, to a silly little argument - will be back with you? Or that the job you were so sure you had in the bag but which was pulled out from under you in a dizzying twist at the last minute is actually going to be offered to you? Can you picture God coming to you in your dreams tonight and telling you that exactly THAT is what is going to happen? What would that do for you? Would you look forward to whatever it was with relish, anticipating all the wonderful outcomes that would result from that one single event that was beyond hope for you until just a couple of minutes ago? 

Okay. Here comes the tough question: if that miracle were to take place, where would your energies then be directed? Would you be lost in the moment, drinking in the presence and ignoring everything else that is going on around you, or would you be focused on the one who made that seeming impossibility possible? There is a sense in playing the scenario out in our heads that we would CHOOSE to do the right thing -- that we would BEGIN to put things in proper perspective, in proper order, that we would regain a sense not only of balance between God being ultimate allegiance and the world - whatever laudable and praiseworthy event, person, or entity it might be -- being second ... but we have no guarantees that we would learn from our previous mistakes and missteps. In the best of all possible worlds, yes, we would learn and carry on with our lives in such a way as to never again let who we are in the eyes of the world overshadow who we are in the eyes of God, but the frailty of the human condition is such that it is never far from our minds -- even on Pentecost Sunday -- the day that commemorates that God can take ashes and bones and turn them into living, breathing human beings, even as Ash Wednesday at the BEGINNING of Lent reminds us that we ARE, in truth, dust and ashes, This day, Pentecost, reminds us that in SPITE of that truth, God is still more than capable of taking our dry bones and our scattered dust and souls and breathe life back into us -- that God can and DOES instill in us a sense of just WHO we are, regardless of our circumstances, regardless of our scattered-ness, our lostness, our confusion and questioning.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton? 

It means that if we are willing to hear the word of God -- that same word that calls us by name before we are even born, that knows us better than we know ourselves, that also calls us to be and to do and to LIVE Christ’s life in the world today, that if we are willing to hear that spirit breathed into our lives here today, we can, just as that army in that valley could, just as the apostles in first century palestine and the Roman Empire at the time DID, we can change the world, through this magnificent source of the same unquenchable fire that burned in Christ’s heart for us -- that same Holy Spirit can and WILL work through US -- frail children of dust though we be. 

Let’s pray.