There Is No Longer

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Pentecost C5

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Galatians 3:23-29

²³Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. ²⁴Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. ²⁵But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, ²⁶for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. ²⁷As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

Do you remember the first time you realized you were on your own – faced with a particular decision or choice to make, away from or out of the sphere of influence of your parents, your family, any other significant governing body in your life up until that point? 

I made it through all of high school and all of college.  It wasn’t until AFTER college – at some point during those first couple of months in Northern Spain, when I realized I was free to make choices on my own – and I did not need to check them with my room mates, my family, my Sunday School class, really, anyone, before going forward with whatever it was. 

I realized pretty quickly that in that freedom to make decisions on my own that I was also taking on an unaccustomed burden – that of responsibility on a level I had not previously been aware of.  The choices I made WERE mine to make, but in making them I was the only one I could point to as being responsible if something turned out to be the wrong choice. 

I don’t remember the exact moment – the particular decision – I was facing, but I remember the feeling.  I remember the anxiety that came along with the possibility of MAKING that wrong choice, as well as the exhilaration at the prospect of being able – being free – to even MAKE it. 

In all honesty, I don’t begin to count my entry into young adulthood until then.  Prior to that, even though I was chronologically an adult in the eyes of the law and of society, emotionally and spiritually I was still an adolescent.

Looking back over my years in college, even though I HAD the freedom to make decisions on my own – and bear those consequences on my own – I never came to the same kind of pivotal moment as I did in Oviedo that day in the fall of 1985.  With a few minor exceptions, my college career was a continuation of my high school years, which were likewise a continuation of my Junior High and Elementary years.  It was all about meeting the requirements for completing the process, the standards set forth that would qualify me to be considered “accomplished”, and give me that particular mark of distinction as a “graduate”.   Not that that was a BAD thing.  It wasn’t in the least. 

The issue, in retrospect, came to be whether or not those four years – that college experience – prepared me for the next two as a journeyman.

In some ways it did.  I was beginning to learn what it means to not be able to satisfy everyone’s expectations, and to be somewhat okay with that.  That’s still a tough one, even these many years later.  I was also beginning to find my voice – to begin to express myself for myself – as who I was and according to how I understood my faith – something that didn’t begin UNTIL I got to college. 

But because those processes had just BEGUN in the previous two or three years, I was still learning to move around inside those recently widened boundaries, and there was still a majority of the time that I fell back into the “Good little missionary kid” role and rode that through on autopilot, thus avoiding any major potholes and mistakes because “an MK would do THIS, and not THAT, obviously.”

Please understand, this is not a criticism of that upbringing that informed my behavior in such a way that I didn’t have to think much about what choices to make as a college sophomore or junior or senior.  I would actually consider it an affirmation of the influence those earlier years had on my life.  How else would I have KNOWN the right, the safe, the correct choice to make had it not been for those people – my parents, my aunts and uncles – both missionary and otherwise – my teachers – Sunday as well as weekday School – who influenced me and shaped me and pointed me in the direction of what a vital member of society and the church looks like?

There was still, even after those four years of high school and those four years of college – a point that I had not reached yet.  And that was not because of anything that did or didn’t happen IN high school or college.  The fact was that I simply had not come to the realization of the freedom that I had available to me even as early as the first year of high school – and perhaps earlier.  It was more a function of MY disconnectedness with what was going on inside of ME in relationship to my faith in Christ that held that cathartic moment in check UNTIL 1985.

Up until that point, I largely functioned on autopilot.  These decisions that were made FOR me as a child I will continue to “make” as an adult, not realizing that there was no actual choice being made, but rather, that continuation that eliminated or largely subdued my sense of connectedness to either the process or the outcome maintained the impression that I was actively engaged IN that process and actually ended up detaching me more and more FROM that very same process, to the point where I could have walked away from the whole thing – the whole faith pilgrimage, and barely felt a twinge in my spirit. 

That is what happens when you lose your investment in your faith.      

That seems to be what Paul is talking to the Galatians about in our passage this morning.  We’ve reviewed the story of the Galatians before.  By and large a gentile group of believers, they heard and accepted the Gospel quickly when Paul preached to them, and became followers of Christ.  But at some point after Paul left, a group of people came from the church in Jerusalem – made up of people who had either first converted to Judaism or were squarely in the Jewish tradition – and told the folks at Galatia that, in order to be considered a true follower of Jesus, you needed to belong to the religion from which Jesus came.  Translated: you needed to be circumcised if you were a male, and in addition you needed to begin to observe the Law – that list of 613 rules that were laid down for the people of Israel as a sign of their covenant with God as a chosen people. 

And the Galatians began to do what the people from Jerusalem told them to do. 

As parents, as Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents, as persons of influence in the lives of children who are at some point under our care, if we take that responsibility seriously, we understand that setting boundaries is our primary role in the relationship.  We can secondarily be friends, playmates, story tellers, comfort-givers, boo-boo-kissers and horses on whose backs the children ride, but we are first and foremost responsible, as adults, for setting boundaries as our children begin to explore the world and all the wonders that are in it.  We are the ones who let them know what is safe to do and what is not safe to do.  We are the ones that have the responsibility to explain what might happen if a particular action is taken:  ie:  “Billy, if you climb up and stand on that stool with the wobbly leg, there’s a good chance that both you and the stool will end up with a broken leg.” 

As the children get older, those responsibilities begin to shift, to change, to actually back off… we begin with instruction, blend it with modeling, and eventually let go.  We – Leslie and I – are fast moving towards that next to the last stage – where our instruction changes to exclusively modeling – with our children, as they age and begin to understand the consequences of their actions.  Eventually, there will come a day when we will have to – inasmuch as we are able – let go.  And the kids will be making their choices and making their decisions based on what we’ve taught them but more on what we’ve modeled for them. 

I think that is the point Paul was trying to get across to the Galatians – and to the folks from Jerusalem as well.  There was a time in which God focused on instruction – the didactic approach – God speaks, we listen and obey.  Then God chose to model for us what life was supposed to be like, and Jesus came.  In his living, in his way of communicating, and behaving with his fellow human beings Jesus was showing us what God intended for us.  And for a while we watched him closely.  And that watching has been passed down to us across the centuries, as has this new law through which Jesus – the living word of God – understands the written word of God – the scriptures. 

But there is a freedom in the way Jesus read and responded to scripture that was – and is – unsettling for us.  There was a uniqueness to it that rendered it specific to the individual and his or her situation and circumstances.  That part of reading scriptures and letting it speak to our lives today in ways that it never has for anyone else before is … unpredictable, individually as well as corporately changeable, and ultimately, untamable.  We can’t fit the word of God into a box and keep God in and go on with the rest of our lives apart from that. 

God doesn’t want just PART of our lives.  God wants ALL of our lives.  

But there is still a LOT of human nature that begs for predictability and structure and order.  To a degree we are wired that way. 

It is going to take a sea change in our understanding to realize that the way we are wired is due in large part to our fallen nature.  Our limitations in knowing that God lives outside any box we can conceive of is due to the fact that we are not or have not been in right relationship with God for a very long time.  We like to believe that we can be confronted with a situation and make a quick assessment that would end up in our being able to predict what will happen.  We would like to think that we have that skill – of being able to ‘read’ a person and know how they will respond.  While that may be to varying degrees a possibility on a human level, it doesn’t translate well to our being able to do the same thing with God. 

God never loses the ability to surprise us, to confound us, to blow our safe, predictable understanding out of the sky and open to us a picture of God’s self that is so much MORE than what we’ve come to expect that we struggle to simply take it IN, much less UNDERSTAND it. 

But we CAN understand God – at least that part of God that is revealed to us.  We can if we focus on the person of Jesus.  And when we do that, when we turn our eyes on Jesus, it begins to make sense. 

It makes sense to replace “The Law”, those six hundred thirteen rules, with the law of Love.  Boil them down to “Love your God with all your Soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind”, and “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton, on Father’s day, 2010?

As gentile followers of Christ, it would seem to be a lot simpler to focus on just two rather than 613 rules. 

SEEM to be.

Think about it.  What does loving God with ALL your soul, ALL your strength and ALL your mind look like?  Does that word “ALL” begin to put it into perspective? 

And that question the rich young ruler had for Jesus:  “who is my neighbor?”

We begin to understand that the Gospel had much more far-reaching implications than simply informing how we live our lives individually on a local level … living the Gospel, very simply, has worldwide implications.   We just have to be ready to follow them as far as God will lead us. 

May we be faithful enough.

Let’s pray.                

Crucified With Christ

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Pentecost C

Jerusalem Baptist Church, (Emmerton) Warsaw VA

Galatians 2:11-21

Good Morning, as someone I love very much said to you last week, it is joy to be with you this morning! J

Our reading comes from the second chapter of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, beginning at verse 11 and going to the end of the chapter.

As always, whenever we open scripture, the invitation is to listen in this reading, in THIS PARTICULAR reading, at THIS PARTICULAR time, at 11:37 on Sunday the 13^th of June, listen for God’s word for our life, understanding that if we were to read this passage in a month or two, there might be a different message.  That is the “living” aspect of the word.

Paul writes: 

¹¹But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; ¹²for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. ¹³And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. ¹⁴But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?” ¹⁵We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; ¹⁶yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law. ¹⁷But if, in our effort to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have been found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! ¹⁸But if I build up again the very things that I once tore down, then I demonstrate that I am a transgressor. ¹⁹For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; ²⁰and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. ²¹I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.

This is the word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

It is a familiar theme, a familiar rant, if you will, of Paul’s.  It seems he is constantly arguing from the point of being a Jew, and of being an OBSERVANT Jew, that THAT observance of his, that belongs to his heritage, is NOT necessary for those that do not share his heritage. 

You may remember the situation with the Galatian church:  Paul had come and had established the church, and had preached the Gospel.  Many had come to believe, including Greeks and Gentiles, but after he left, folks had come from the church in Jerusalem, and other places where the believers were predominantly of Jewish heritage, and those folks told the people at Galatia that “no, they actually DID need to become Jewish first in order to be considered followers of Christ – LEGITIMATE followers of Christ – in that meaning they had to become observant of the food laws, the circumcision laws, and all the other 613 laws. 

Paul walks a fine line in his defense of the Gospel, because while he states that a Gentile does not need the law, he still upholds the necessity of the law in his own life.  He never stopped being an observant Jew.  Yet what he preached crossed the barrier.  He was the apostle to the Gentiles, but in some ways I think that the transformative … let’s see … what’s the word here … I’m taking Brandon’s cue by the way, I’m speaking sans manuscript… who knew? … more about that later … (Leslie’s anxiety level just went “whoop” through the roof (chuckle) … ) what Paul learned when he had his experience on the road to Damascus was that the Gospel, that Christ’s message was for EVERYONE. 

That in itself was a radical … uncovering of a truth for a Jew.  And we know he was a ZEALOUS Jew … we know that he was persecuting Christians for THAT VERY reason … for the fact that they were claiming Jesus to be the Messiah.  And he got it … with a two by four up ‘side the head, that the Gospel is, that salvation is for everyone, regardless  - now here’s the tricky part – regardless of whether or not they observed scriptural law or not.  In truth, if you take what the so-called Judaizers were saying to these new Gentile Christians, they were actually being consistent with their history.  The Messiah was supposed to come and fulfill the law – complete the law and fulfill the law – bring the Messiahship at the conclusion of this living out and following and obeying all these rules and regulations.

So they were at a loss when they were confronted with the fact that Jesus’ message AS THE MESSIAH was that IT DOESN’T MATTER.  IT DOESN’T MATTER. You can be in relationship with God and not have to be circumcised, you can eat pork or whatever else … and still have this relationship with God. 

The catch comes with this little phrase in verse 19:  “I have been crucified with Christ”. 

As far back as I can remember, when I began to understand and think about things of faith – matters of faith – “crucified with Christ” I always associated with crucifying my sins with Christ. It would seem to make sense, Christ died for my sins, so my SINS are what gets crucified.  Some part of me is still me.  Some part of me still BELONGS to me. 

No. 

There is no qualifier on ‘I have been crucified.’  That “I” is “I in my entirety, my whole being.”

You’ve heard of the book ‘The Five Love Languages’?  Who is the author?  Anybody?  I can’t remember … it’s Gary … Smalley, yes.  And he talks about the different expressions – the different ways we can express our love for somebody.  I don’t know them all, I know ‘Acts of Service’ is one of them, I think ‘Romance’ is another, but I only know Acts of Service because that one just came to mind this past week. 

God’s love language, the way we express our love for God, the way Jesus expressed HIS love for his father was through obedience. 

Philippians 2, obedience “even unto death on the cross”. So if we as followers of Christ are to emulate, are to model, are to copy, are to let HIS life be our life, then we obey God to the point of letting ourselves be crucified.  Obviously not literally, but figuratively.  And Figuratively in the most complete way we can.  Following Christ means surrendering ourselves wholly and completely to the will of God.  And if that means … actually … take out the ‘if’ there … that means nothing more than letting Christ live in us, not US live in us … and I hope you can read from the expression on my face that that is a little uncomfortable to say because there’s this piece of me that wants to say “but what about me? What about my identity?  What about my hopes and dreams, and all that stuff?” 

Here is the grace of following Christ:  when we give ourselves to him, when we give ourselves completely to God, God gives us back who he wants us to be, and we find ourselves IN Christ. 

There is no loss in giving ourselves away.  None whatsoever. 

Seven years ago tomorrow to the day, we pulled into the driveway over here with a U-Haul hauling our little Mazda loaded with stuff the looked like a mess (chuckle) and who was there to help [unload]?  Tony, Jack, Greg and Sue Smith came, Jim, Jay, Tommy … William, were you there?  Okay. 

That day began for us the most grace-filled period of our lives to date.  We have … to say we’ve been blessed is an understatement.  Stepping into the role of Pastor is a two-edged sword.   There is a lot of affirmation, a lot of love that comes my way, that I HOPE has been reciprocated.  In that same instant, as I have worked at living out what I speak from here each Sunday, I find that the main person I’m preaching to is myself, because I need to hear this MORE than anybody else sometimes.  To hear this message that Jesus lived out that it was not about him.  The Gospel is about God’s love.  We as Christians understand it as THROUGH Christ, and Jesus lived it, but no … but he wasn’t the focus of his message.  He didn’t stand in the spotlight and say ‘Looky!  Here I am!’  He talked about the Kingdom of God, and about how it is expressed in community, how it is expressed in our care for each other.  He talked about what it’s not.  That it’s not about being self-righteous, about being overbearing, it IS about being humble with each other, about being selfless rather than selfish, about being self-sacrificing. 

And over these last seven years I hope you’ve watched me learn that lesson.  I hope I’ve lived it faithfully.  So many instances come to mind where I have failed.  And for those who have extended the grace of remaining in communion, of remaining in conversation, and in relationship with me beyond that, I am deeply grateful.  But it’s not about me.  It’s about US, and about how we, even as we learn to do it individually, we’re also called to surrender ourselves as a group, as a congregation, as a community of faith, and give ourselves, surrender ourselves, sacrifice ourselves, and that can get a little more complicated.  Because, here we are, fifty people, seventy-five people, seventy-four on the roll (for Sunday School, anyway).  If there is an invitation, it is that we all continue to put grace first.  To put love before anything we do and say.  That we focus on our relationship with God, rather than how the T’s are crossed or the i’s are dotted.  Because it’s not about the six hundred and thirteen rules, it’s about being in a living relationship with a living, loving God. 

        

Let’s pray.      

Lord we have sometimes gone astray.  We like to chase rabbits.  We are enthralled with these stories and details and love to explore. We are curious, Lord, about how this, your written word, came to be.  We unpack it, we decipher it, we study what the words were in the original languages and how they mean what they mean.  And while that engages our minds, you ask for not only our minds, but you ask for our hearts as well. So even as we TURN our minds to you, Lord, help us give our hearts to you as well. 

Through Christ our Lord,

Amen.

                     

I Have Said

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Trinity Sunday, Year C

Jerusalem Baptist Church, (Emmerton) Warsaw VA

John 15:26-16:15

²⁶ When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. ²⁷You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.

16 I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. ²They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. ³And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. ⁴But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them. “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. ⁵But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ ⁶But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts.

⁷Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. ⁸And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: ⁹about sin, because they do not believe in me; ¹⁰about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; ¹¹about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned. ¹²“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. ¹³When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. ¹⁴He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. ¹⁵All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

There’s a rule of thumb worth jotting down when studying scripture:  If a phrase appears three times in close succession, it might be good to sit up and take notice.  In the passage this morning, Jesus does that in the first 6 verses of chapter 16 of the Gospel according to John.  So, we sit up and take notice. 

When we do that, we first pull back from the minutiae, the details of the verses and get a sense of the context from which we have lifted this section and read it.  In John’s telling of the Gospel, virtually the whole second half of the book is dedicated to the last two days of Jesus’ life and public ministry.  This is towards the beginning of that part.  Jesus is speaking to his disciples after having shared supper with them – the last supper, as it were – this whole section is made up of extended discourses by Jesus delivered to his disciples.  In some ways you almost get a sense that he is cramming the last doses of wisdom into them because he knows he will not be with them much longer.  And he says that pretty plainly, repeatedly, even in this brief section – in chapter 16 verses 5, 7 and 10 (read underlined phrases).  It is almost painfully repetitive in retrospect, looking at it and reading it from our perspective – post resurrection – but it underscores the degree to which Jesus sensed the disciples’ resistance to the idea that he, their Rabbi, mentor and Master, should be the victim of a betrayal that would result in his being tried and found guilty of blasphemy and treason and executed by crucifixion.  And yet it is a recurring theme in each of the Gospels to varying degrees, that the disciples didn’t ‘get’ that Jesus had to give himself for them in order to fulfill his purpose for coming to earth.    

Now we move back in a little closer to the text, to see just what it is that Jesus is saying.  In the first instance, he says he’s told them what he has told them to keep them from stumbling. 

Imagine, if you will, an underground grotto, a tunnel, or a cave.  No lights, no lamps, no skylights.  Solid darkness.  Someone has walked through it often enough to be able to navigate the more-or-less finished floors.  More or less means they have only partially been leveled.  There are still some dips, there are still some rocks that were too big to move out of the way whose points still come up through the dirt floor and make for a nasty surprise if you don’t know they are there. 

This person who has the knowledge of what it is like to walk through the cave without the aid of a light offers to tell you how to avoid knocking your head or slamming into a wall or tripping on a rise in the floor… would you want to listen to what he or she has to say?  Common sense would say yes, wouldn’t it?  In some ways this is what Jesus was offering the disciples.  He knew they were going to be facing some of the same experiences that he was getting ready to face in the next few hours, so he tells them what they need to know in order to get through it.  He knows they will be thrown out of their places of worship.  He knows they will most likely be killed.  And he knows WHY it will happen: because of him.  Because of the Good News that God is no respecter of persons, that salvation is offered to all freely, but that it comes at a price. 

Jesus gave his life for ours.

Not coerced, not blackmailed, not negotiated away from him in exchange for our salvation, but freely offered, freely given.  And that brings us to the second and third instances.  Jesus knows that it will seem to the disciples – and all those who will be persecuted for the sake of the Gospel – that in those times when they are facing their darkest moment – even to the point of death – it will FEEL like those forces arrayed against the Gospel message are winning.  And it would seem to make sense, wouldn’t it?  After all, we can’t DO any more once we’re dead, right? 

While they may not have been able to actively engage in the propagation of the Gospel after death, HOW those martyrs of the faith faced death, HOW they dealt with persecution and torture and ridicule DID make all the difference in the world.  It was their witness – their testimony to their faith as they faced those final moments that impressed the very people who were doing the persecuting, the torturing and the killing that eventually began to turn people to the truth of the Gospel. 

And Jesus includes that truth in the very next breath.  He tells the disciples he is going away, but his absence does not mean that they are being abandoned – in fact it means the opposite – in order for them to remain connected to Jesus he is going to have to leave them to allow the Holy Spirit to come to them. 

And here is where we see the relational heart of the Gospel.   Jesus says he is returning to the Father, and that the advocate – the comforter – the Holy Spirit is coming in his place.  But whereas Jesus was constrained by his very physicality – that he in fact had a body like you and me – it limited his ability to enter into communion with his followers – in other words, just as we cannot know each other’s hearts because we cannot enter into each other’s hearts and read each other’s minds, Jesus, while scripture tells us he COULD tell what a person’s true heart was, he could not necessarily be aware of everything that was going on around the world while in his physical form.  The Holy Spirit has no such constraints.  Jesus could only be in one place at one time.  The Holy Spirit has no such constraint.  Jesus had to rely on what people could hear come out of his mouth in order to communicate to them the will of God.  The Holy Spirit had no such constraint.

To put it in another way, it is the difference between going to hear a speech in a civic center, or watching it, along with the rest of the nation or perhaps the world, on television or listening to it on the radio – everyone tuned to the same station and listening intently. 

There is a reach that the Holy Spirit has that would elude us if we relied solely on what we could hear from an individual or what we could figure out simply from reading scripture. 

Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit is our intercessor – our go-between between God and us – that communicates for us when we don’t have the words to express what our hearts are yearning for – and that at the same time he – the Holy Spirit – serves as the one who communicates God’s life and word to US. 

I have to tell you, I struggle with using the male pronoun because, being Spirit, there is no gender attached to the third person of the Trinity, and yet, in the English language there is no gender-neutral way of referring to a person as anything other than ‘he’ or ‘she’.  Please know that even though I may not employ the gender specific pronoun that does not take away the personhood of the Holy Spirit.  He or She is still as personal as you or I.  The Spirit knows, cares, moves, prompts, challenges, and generally treats us like our best friend would – always calling us to be and to do our best, always expecting the best from us and loving us regardless of whether or not our best is what is given, done, or experienced. 

So on this Trinity Sunday, as we celebrate the continuing presence of the Holy Spirit of God in our lives and in our midst, I would invite you to remember that critical aspect of our faith: that we are not simply following a life-ethic, or the teachings of a prophetic, religious genius who was killed at a relatively young age in a backwater territory of the Roman Empire nearly two thousand years ago.  That we are not simply taking those teachings and stripping them down to the underlying principles in order to make them relevant in today’s culture.

We are, in claiming our faith in Jesus Christ, claiming that we are in relationship – in a living, changing, deepening, broadening GROWING RELATIONSHIP with him.  And THAT overrides everything else. 

A brother whom I deeply respect came up to me earlier this week and told me this: Christianity has nothing to do with philosophy.  It has to do with knowing what God wants us to do and doing it.  I told him I couldn’t agree more.  But I would go a little further in the explanation, beginning with a question:  How do we know what God wants us to do?  Where is our clearest picture – our clearest image of God?

In Jesus Christ. 

So we get to know Jesus, and in that knowing, we get to know God.  And we find out that God wants us to be in relationship with God just as Jesus was in relationship with God, just as the Holy Spirit is in relationship with God. 

And what clicks for us is that God has provided, in the person of Jesus and through his CURRENT absence – a way to BE in relationship with him – THROUGH the Holy Spirit!

So here is where we become more than observers at the party, standing along the sides of the room, leaning against the wall and wondering how it would feel to get out on the floor and dance… because God in Christ through the Holy Spirit is extending a hand to each of us and saying come, let’s dance together!

Let’s pray.

Amazed and Perplexed

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Pentecost C

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Acts 2:1-21

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ²And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.⁵Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹ Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” ¹² All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” ¹³But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”¹⁴But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. ¹⁶No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ¹⁷‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. ¹⁸ Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. ¹⁹And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. ²⁰The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. ²¹Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

The birth of a baby is a wondrous, glorious thing.  Let me get that out first and foremost.  It is the closest we will ever be to actual magic in this lifetime.  The expectations leading up to the event, the countdown, as it were, DURING the birth, and the final, squalling, wriggling outcome was one of the most entrancing experiences of my life.  It was also, objectively speaking, pretty gruesome.  The pushing, the sweating, the blood, the rest of what accompanies a birth … I can understand how some fathers don’t remain conscious through the whole thing, or how some lose the last meal they ate in the middle of it, and how others, as much as they love their wives and are excited about the coming child, have no interest in witnessing that child’s actual entrance into the world. 

We’ve established a tradition in our family, that at some point during each person’s birthday, their birth story is told… with Hannah, we talk about how we had Chinese food a few days before, because someone told us that eating Chinese food would trigger the contractions, or how Leslie and Angela went walking around the mall for several hours in the hopes that the exertion would trigger the contractions.  We end up talking about how we stayed up playing cards on the bed in the soon-to-be baby room as we timed the contractions, wondering if this was finally IT the night before she was born.  We include the details that right after she came out, as the doctor was placing her on Leslie’s tummy, she flung her arm out and splashed Leslie in the face with … stuff … and that Leslie was surprised at the saltiness… little things that stick in our memories.

Today we celebrate the birth of … us, the church, the body of Christ on earth.  And we have the good fortune of not having to rely on our fading memories of the event, or on the verbal variations that can happen in oral tradition.  We have a record of the event right here, right in front of us. 

And that birth, just like our own, or that of our children or grandchildren or nieces and nephews, was full of wonder and miracles.  The sound of a rushing wind, tongues as of fire above peoples’ heads, and then folks with no formal training or perhaps even exposure to a language beginning to speak it fluently enough to draw the attention of those who had spoken those languages all their lives.   

It was also full of the not-so-pretty stuff.  The disagreements, the disputes over the validity of claims that the Gospel was for Gentiles AS GENTILES – not necessarily first converted to Judaism, or the persecution that those first followers of Christ would suffer all came together to make for a less-than-idyllic entrance of a newborn faith into the world. 

And just as WE mark the first smile, the first coo, the first word, the first rollover, the first step, it bears noting and remembering those early days of the church – as Christ’s body began to find it’s legs, flex it’s arms, reach out it’s hands to the marginalized and those without a voice in the first century Roman Empire. 

So why was it such an amazing thing?  Why, if the people of God had the word of God for all those centuries, did this new thing have to happen and begin to turn everything upside down, including those who had been entrusted with the preservation of that word of God that had been handed down to them from the time of Moses forward? 

Simply put, they had forgotten that the served a living God – an active God, a God who was interested and cared about how they felt, how they acted, how they lived, and what moved them.  A God who wanted to be in relationship with them. 

Here’s the thing about relationships.  They can be … messy, sometimes unpredictable, sometimes incredibly comforting, and more often than not, surprising.  It is no different when we enter into relationship with God through Jesus Christ.  Just when we think we have him pegged, and know what he is going to do next, God brings to our attention something so radically different that was so far off our radar screen as to make it incomprehensible to us at first glance … and it is only in retrospect that we realize what was happening and understand it … perhaps in greater or lesser part, on rare occasion fully. 

When you are in relationship with someone, those relationships that most energize you are the ones that are constantly evolving, constantly growing, constantly changing.  It’s the same person you always knew, but as you get to know each other more and more, the fullness of that relationship and the richness and depth of it is something that you come to look forward to rather than dread. 

It is that way in our growing relationship with God.  Each day brings a new experience, a new insight, a new lesson.  And I do believe that with each measure of growth that WE experience, God takes utter delight in us, even as we delight in our own children.

So we tell our birth story, and we remember where we were, and we see where we have come, and we are both relieved and challenged.  Relieved to be able to look back and know that God has been with us, has guided, taught, directed, begun to form us into the image of his likeness in the person of Jesus.  But just as firmly, we are challenged, because we see how far we have to go, we are aware of our shortcomings, our faults, our petty squabbling, our infighting, and we realize that, if we are to be called Christ’s body, then we must exercise to keep in shape – those who have been gifted with leadership, to lead, with teaching, to teach, with prophecy, to prophesy.  And the list goes on and on. 

Will we answer the challenge?       

Let’s pray.

That They May All Be One

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Easter 7C

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

John 17:20-26

²⁰"I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, ²¹that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²²The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, ²³I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

²⁴Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. ²⁵“Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. ²⁶I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

How do you define unity? 

Looking up some definitions, I came up with the following:

1. The state of being one; oneness.

2. A whole or totality as combining all its parts into one.

3. The state or fact of being united or combined into one, as of the parts of a whole; unification.

4. Absence of diversity; unvaried or uniform character.

5. Oneness of mind, feeling, etc., as among a number of persons; concord, harmony, or agreement.

6. (In literature and art) A relation of all the parts or elements of a work constituting a harmonious whole and producing a single general effect.

Did any of those definitions resonate more or less with your idea of what unity means? 

There are, obviously, differing definitions of the term.  Would we apply different expectations of what we would expect unity to mean depending on what we were talking about? 

If we were talking about food, for example, say, milk.  I would expect the definition that would apply to milk to be something like number 4.  I want my milk to be ALL milk.  I don’t want any more water in it than is found naturally in milk, I certainly don’t want any fuel oil or chemical substance mixed in with it.  I would welcome the “absence of diversity” as a part of the definition of the unity of what I would pour into my glass or my cereal in the morning. 

If I were talking about my clothing, I could live with quite a bit of diversity in the components of my clothing.  Though I prefer 100% cotton, Polyester-cotton blends for dress shirts, or pants, or other items of clothing are economical, still feel natural, and can save a ton of time in terms of ironing.

But we’re not going to be talking about unity of food or clothing this morning, are we?  We’re talking about the unity in the sense of faith, of belief, of purpose as it relates to our understanding of being part of the body of Christ on the earth.  Which is, to put it mildly, a horse of a different color.

There’s some clarification that needs to happen before we even begin to approach an attempt to answer the question now as it relates to faith.  We need to decide if we are talking about unity at the beginning of the process or unity at the end – as a conclusion to or as a result of the process.  If you want to phrase it this way, do we want many to become indistinguishable in their faith or are we looking for a unity in spite of the ‘many-ness’ at the point of origin?

There are some who understand this as a black and white issue.  Unity means … unity.  Means uniformity, means compliance and agreement in all matters, with no dissent, no variation, no wandering from the normative definition of the subject matter.  That is a valid understanding of the issue.  It has to be because it is part of the definition of the word, and thus must be allowed to be part of the understanding of what it means to be one within the body of Christ.  It is simple without being simplistic.  It is understanding that there is a greater good to be found in the ‘no diversity’ view of the body of Christ because you know what to expect, you know what is understood when you are using all the terms and phrases that a common language provides – the language of faith – and therefore there is value in subsuming – in making yourself subject – even though you may in the beginning be in DISagreement with a given position you willingly surrender that initial disagreement in favor of maintaining that ‘no diversity’ understanding of ‘unity’ of the greater body. 

But, as you can imagine, there is another view, a different understanding of the issue.  And it has to do with where we place the ‘unity’.  If we place the unity at the end, as a result of the process, then the expectation – and the only allowed outcome – would be a unity of understanding, a ‘diversity-free’ understanding of faith. 

But if we were to place the unity at the beginning, then we have to modify our understanding of what the word was intended to mean.          

It might be helpful to explore a little bit about the language of Jesus’ prayer.         

Brian Stoffregen in his Bible Study resources website puts it this way:

I want to look more closely at the phrase in v. 23, which the NRSV translates "that they may be completely one."

The verb teleioo is usually used in reference to Jesus "completing" or "finishing" the work God has given him to do (4:34; 5:36; 17:40). A related word teleo is the last word Jesus utters from the cross in John, "It has been finished!" (19:30).

Literally, teleioo means "to make teleios' -- that is, "to make perfect, to make complete, to make whole (i.e., unblemished)."

Teleioo in our verse is a perfect passive subjunctive: "so that they might have been made perfect, might have been made complete, might have reached perfection." (see 1 John 2:5; 4:12, 17, 18 where the perfect passive is used -- which may be translated as a present).

The passive in our verse indicates that it is God who is perfecting us ("into" our one-ness). The perfect indicates that it is something that has been accomplished in the past and its effects are still with us, but the subjunctive indicates that it is a wish that it "might" or "may" happen -- often pointing to a future event.

Questions related to this are: "Are we to wait for God to perfect our unity?" or "Has our unity already been perfected by God and God is waiting for us to realize it?" What are the roles God plays in creating our unity? What are the roles we need to play in creating (or actualizing) that unity?

Those questions are what I’d like to explore with you briefly this morning. 

Are we to wait for God to perfect our unity?  Insofar as we understand that unity in a limited sense, and express it in a limited sense, the answer is yes, we have no choice but to wait for God to perfect it.  Paul expressed it well in his letter to the church at Corinth when he said ‘now we see through a glass, darkly, but then we shall see face to face’.  That applies here as well. 

Has our unity already been perfected by God through Jesus Christ, and God is waiting for us to realize it?  The answer to that is also yes.  The whole movement of the Kingdom of God on earth is a ‘now and not yet’ movement.  We live in a place where we experience both the imperfect here and now, but we also experience the hope of the ‘not yet-ness’ of the Gospel, and on blessed occasion are able to catch a glimpse of that coming Kingdom. 

What role has God played in creating our unity? God as the creator and being a part of the Trinity has already engaged in the most necessary part of that creation – in and through the person of the Holy Spirit. 

Does God continue to PLAY a role in creating our unity?  We would need to pose the question to ourselves.  If we take the presence of God to be a fact, and the work of the Holy Spirit to be a fact as well, then I think we have to admit that God’s role through the Holy Spirit is a continuing and very active role in creating our unity. 

So here’s the rub.  We’ve had all this talk about unity in the body of Christ – the Church.  But we can look around us – even within our own association – at very recent events that scream DISunity, that highlight the discord that can be apparent even in the smallest groups of believers.  We can search back into our own individual histories and remember events in the life of our churches – those we’ve been a part of in the past or even this very church, and with very little if any effort recall an instance where the spirit was anything BUT one of unity.  We can go back in history and recall events on a State, Regional, National or even international level that resulted in what was generally regarded as a prime example of DISunity, that may have even resulted in wars or decades of struggle and bloodshed.  Events that resonate even across the centuries as glaring examples of an almost complete ABSENCE of unity.

My question is this:  in thinking of those instances, what was the starting point, the presumption of understanding, when it came to the unity aspect?  Was it a rallying cry that the unity be achieved in the aftermath?  That the purpose of the conflict was the gaining of conformity and non-deviation in understanding or in purpose?

We have to ask that question because the first will strive to eliminate differing understandings, the second will allow and even welcome them. 

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

As Baptists, we have historically been a people who understand and accept that there will be differences of opinion and interpretation in matters of faith and practice.  It doesn’t mean that we always celebrate them, and it certainly doesn’t mean that those differences don’t lead to conflict and even pain and sorrow, and deep division within the body.  Our present national condition as a denomination reflects just such a conflict’s aftermath.  We have two state bodies that relate to the national body, we have two national bodies that to a large degree were born of the different definitions of the word “unity”, and we have an international body of Baptists that has also had to struggle with what definition will apply to all the member bodies from nations around the world as they relate to each other. 

I would urge us all to heed the Apostle Paul’s words to the Roman church, (12:18) “if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” and focus on the unity from which we are all born, whatever denomination, or stripe WITHIN a denomination we belong to – that of the Lordship of Christ.  

Hear these words of Paul to the Colossian church (3:12-15) (ESV): 

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, ¹³ bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. ¹⁴ And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. ¹⁵ And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.  

The church is no stranger to conflict and discord and differences of understandings.  That goes without saying.  I would venture to say that the majority of us have at some point in our lives been on either the sending or the receiving end of some of that disagreement and discord and conflict. 

I truly believe that if we were to accept the fact that there will, in fact BE disagreements and differing understandings TO BEGIN WITH, and if we are prepared to deal with them in a respectful, honest manner, never losing sight of the fact that even despite those differences the main purpose for ALL of those involved is the extension of the Kingdom of God, there might actually be a noticeable change in the perception that the world has about us.  And our effectiveness as witnesses to the presence and the action of God in the world would increase immeasurably.

May we be found so faithful.

Let’s pray.