Those Who Love

Sunday May 29, 2011

Easter 6A

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

John 14:15-21

¹⁵”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. ¹⁷This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

¹⁸”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. ¹⁹In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. ²⁰On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. ²¹They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

As far back as I can remember, if we were going to be handing out New Testament tracts, or portions of the New Testament, we would load up with copies of the Gospel of John.  I remember they were little yellow paperback booklets, or in later years, they had a picture of a flowing stream and a small waterfall in a green glen in a forest.  It was a picture of living water.

And I remember wondering, why are we giving out the Gospel of John, and not one of the other Gospels?  As I began to study the different accounts, from Mark and Matthew and Luke, I began to get some idea of why, but it was never that clear to me.  Coming from a background that taught me that every part of the scriptures is equally important, equally valuable and equally applicable, it seemed somewhat unfair to always be pushing the Gospel of John over the others. 

 But when you go to the beginning of John and begin to read it, and compare the opening sentences of it to the opening sentences of the other three, the synoptic Gospels, you quickly become aware of the difference in tone and approach between John and the other three. 

To one degree or another, the synoptics, Matthew, Mark and Luke, are more self consciously biographical narratives.  While they interweave theology and teachings with the life narrative of Jesus, that life narrative is the primary vehicle that they use to convey the message of the Gospel. 

With John, it is the other way around.  John is a theological treatise that pauses to include life narrative episodes from Jesus’ life.  The primary focus of the Gospel is so that we, the readers, will believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah and savior of the world. 

Stop and think for a moment about that statement.  Tradition holds that John the beloved disciple wrote the account.  And he wrote it to a group of believers who had been taught by him, who had listened to him tell the stories of his experiences with Jesus probably for years if not decades, and who were struggling to believe them – and to believe in Jesus.  

It sounds a little odd to us, that members of the early church, especially members of a congregation led by one of the actual apostles – would be struggling to believe that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah … and yet, it wasn’t any more uncommon than it is for believers today – or people who wrestle with belief, with faith. 

John wrote these words long after Jesus was gone. This gospel is written backwards, in the midst of a community for whom Jesus was only a memory. Most of those in John's community had never met Jesus. Most, if not all, the disciples were dead. The temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed-a sign for many that the end-time would soon come.

But the end-time didn't come.

Life went on and that was, in many ways, the hardest part of all. Jesus hadn't returned even when all the signs seemed right. This community of believers felt pushed to the very edge of despair, and despair could defeat them. John knew the dangers of such despair. So it was that he pulled together many of the things Jesus said into this one section of the Gospel known as "The Farewell Discourses." It's a bit like The Last Lecture Series in some colleges, where professors are asked what they would say if they knew it was their last chance to speak. Here at the table, Jesus says the same things over and over in different ways. The central word is love.

If you love me you will keep my commandments.  

A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you.  

Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.  

I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

"But how can we do that?" the disciples must have wondered. Knowing they had a hard time loving each other even while Jesus was with them, how could believers love like that in John's community where memory was fading?

Let's just keep hearing about that time when Jesus was here.

And we are so prone to be like that, aren’t we?  Don’t we love to hear about the good old days, when things were better, simpler, slower, healthier, more peaceful, less chaotic, more friendly, less self-centered?  Who can blame us?  After all, yesterday can’t be worse than today, and certainly it will be better than tomorrow, at the rate things are going.  I mean, look at the increasing rate of … well, you name it:  crime, corruption, murders, bomb threats, whatever negative statistic you want to pull out is probably enough to make the person you’re speaking to nod in agreement.  After all, it’s obvious, isn’t it?  The world is going to hell in a handbasket!

Jesus didn't call the disciples to hold up his life as memory but as presence. "I will not leave you orphaned," Jesus said, "I am coming to you." What a strange thing to say on the night of betrayal and arrest. He should have said, "I am leaving you." Jesus didn't deny what was going to happen. "In a little while the world will no longer see me," Jesus said, "but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live."

Jesus was calling his disciples to live and love in ways that seemed impossible. They couldn't do it, not without the Spirit. The Spirit is the other theme repeated over and over around the table. Sometimes Jesus says the Advocate, like someone who stands beside you in a court of law. Sometimes he says Helper, sometimes Spirit of Truth. When Jesus said, "I am coming to you," he didn't mean he would return like an old friend from a long journey.

Jesus would be with believers in a different way. Or perhaps we could say that God would be with them in a different way because Jesus had been there. The eternal, cosmic Word of God became flesh in Jesus. That's what John wrote at the very beginning of this Gospel. The Spirit, which blew like a wind over the face of the deep in creation, took on flesh in the one who now sat with them at the table. This Living Word had just bent down to wash the disciples' dirty feet. You can't get much more down-to-earth than that. Jesus was very clear. The Spirit that dwells in me will abide also in you.

Shortly before this, Jesus had said something audacious. "Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these because I am going to the Father." If anyone other than Jesus had made such a claim, we would call it blasphemy. Yet, that's what Jesus said that night at the table, even as God breathed into lifeless clay to create a living person, the Spirit will breathe the presence of Jesus into you. In the power of the Spirit, Jesus will continue to be present with you. "I will not leave you orphaned. I am coming to you."

Love and the Spirit-these two are at the center of Jesus' farewell message, his Last Lecture Series. "Love one another as I have loved you" and "The Spirit of Truth will abide with you when I am gone." A little later in this same chapter, Jesus says, "The Holy Spirit, whom God will send in my name, will teach you everything and will remind you of all that I have said to you." That is, Jesus was saying: You don't know everything yet. You have more to learn. In every generation you will be faced with new questions and perplexities. Does the sun revolve around the earth or is it the other way around? Should nuclear weapons ever be used against an enemy? Is welfare the best way to bear one another's burdens? Should women who feel called by God be ordained to preach? Jesus knew there were some questions the sacred writings didn't address. Jesus also acknowledged that there were some things he had never talked about. "The Spirit will be your tutor," he said, "guiding you into all the truth."

Rosemary Radford Reuther is a church historian. She says there are two things the church must do. One is to pass on the tradition from one generation to another. Tell the story of Jesus to your children and your children's children. But that's not all, says Reuther. There is a second thing the church must do. Be open to the winds of the Spirit by which the tradition comes alive in each generation. That is different, deeper than memory.

At the very end of this chapter, Jesus seems to be ready to leave. He says, "Rise, let us be on our way." You can almost see him getting up from the table, then realizing that he forgot to say something. "I am the vine," he says, sitting down again, "and my Father is the vine grower. Abide in me as I abide in you." But how can we abide in Jesus? He has told the disciples over and over, repeating himself at the table: You will abide in me through the gift of the Spirit. The Spirit will teach you how to love one another. The Spirit will keep us connected, said Jesus. You to me, each of us to one another, and all of us to God.

Years ago I read something funny: "The reason mountain climbers are tied together is to keep the sane ones from going home." Whoever said that was playing with us a bit, for we know mountain climbers are tied together to keep from getting lost or going over a cliff. But there's another piece of truth here. When things get tough up on the mountain, when fear sets in, many a climber is tempted to say, "This is crazy! I'm going home." The life of faith can be like that-doubts set in, despair overwhelms us, and the whole notion of believing in God seems crazy. Jesus knew his disciples would have days like that. So he told them we're tied together like branches on the vine-or like climbers tied to the rope-tied together by the Spirit, to trust in one who is always more than we can understand, to keep us moving ahead on the journey of faith, to encourage us when believing seems absurd. "I will not leave you orphaned," said Jesus. "I am coming to you."

This promise is far deeper than a simple word of encouragement, and it wasn't only for Jesus' disciples, but also for you and for me. The Spirit ties us to Jesus. We feel a tug on the rope whenever we are tempted to settle for answers that seemingly make more sense in the eyes of the world, but that cannot give life. 

May the God who breathed life into lifeless clay breathe life and hope into us now and in all the days to come.

Let’s pray.

Come, Holy Spirit, tie us to Jesus and to one another. Breathe into us not only memories but the very presence of Jesus that we may love one another even as Jesus has loved us. Amen.

Guardian of Your Souls

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Easter 5A

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

1 Peter 2:18-25

¹⁸Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh. ¹⁹For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. ²⁰If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. ²¹For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. ²²“He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” ²³When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. ²⁴He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. ²⁵For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.

On Friday I made a quick run to the grocery store in town to pick up a package of chicken, thinking I was maybe going to cook it for supper.  I bought it, but ended up storing it in the refrigerator until today.  I didn’t think twice about storing it rather than cooking it.  Didn’t think there was a real chance that it could go bad and be wasted before I had a chance to cook it.  

I was in Mechanicsville yesterday afternoon, meeting with a couple for the initial plans for their wedding.  We met at a restaurant, and after our meeting, I stayed and had a late lunch.  As I drove back, I drove by a department store that we tend to frequent to buy our clothes and shoes and such.  I debated on whether or not to stop in and see if I could pick up something, but decided against it. After all, we have all the clothes we need, and in fact, we have MORE than we need.  I went through my closet last weekend and bagged close to twenty shirts which I could not remember when I wore last, and gave them away to some friends. 

Last night, rather than cooking, I went online and placed an order for two medium pizzas from Domino’s, and made a quick run to pick them up.  It was sprinkling as I headed out, and I got to the parking lot in front of the store just as the storm got really bad.  I only hesitated a moment before opening the car door and running across the parking lot and stepping inside to pick up the pizzas and head back. 

According to the GPS we have in the car, it was a 10-mile trip in each direction.  I traveled at or below the speed limit, and made it there and back in something under an hour … maybe even less than 45 minutes.  Through the heavy downpour, across the river, listening to podcasts of religion stories that had been broadcast on NPR over the last few months. 

There was one moment coming back through town, as I passed St. John’s, where it seemed like lightning struck the new communication tower beside the Northern Neck Electric Co-Op complex, it was a momentarily blinding flash of light with an accompanying loud BANG of thunder, but all it did was startle me.  

Aside from that, it was a completely uneventful trip.

And it struck me that we have managed to engineer any sense of dependency on something other than ourselves nearly out of existence. 

The mark of modern technology is that we have begun to master our environment.  Whether it is cooling the hot air of summer or heating the cold air of winter, or constructing a bridge across what would otherwise be a serious impediment to travel – a river – with a few obvious exceptions, we go about our scheduled activities regardless of the weather or our physical surroundings. 

Most of us don’t give a second thought to getting in our cars or onto an airplane and traveling across considerable distances through the air and over geographical regions at speeds that would astonish our grandparents and great grandparents, to say nothing of our ancestors from further back than that.

Before I go on:  I am not a Luddite.  I am not opposed to advances in technology.  I believe improvements in agriculture, food production and energy supplies hold the key to ensuring a more just and equitable society as we move into the future.

 

But …

There is a downside to those advances.  We can very easily forget just how vulnerable we are. 

As I have watched the price of gasoline rise over the last few weeks and months, the thought has crossed my mind as to what it would be like to get around on bikes rather than in automobiles.  I know Hunter and Gwen could give me a really good idea of what it would feel like to ride these roads around here, and I know I could use the exercise… but that part of our ministry that calls for giving people rides to and from places – either school or the doctor or the airport – that would be the exception rather than the norm.  And what would happen on a night like last night?  We would definitely be eating leftovers or a home cooked meal.  A trip to Mechanicsville would also be an event – a once a month or maybe even a once a quarter trip, rather than a once or twice a week errand run. 

It is a seductive draw for us, so subtle that we’re not even aware of it.  We seldom stop to consider or even wonder about the risks in what is inherent in our daily activities until something tragic happens. 

Earlier this week, friends of ours whose daughter has also recently gotten her driver’s permit were out on the road, the daughter was driving, and an oncoming driver, who was apparently in need of some serious rest, nodded off as she was driving, and drifted across the center line into oncoming traffic.  Our friends’ daughter was able to swerve away from a head-on collision, but wasn’t able to miss the other driver entirely.  The other car clipped the back end of the car they were in and they spun out, spinning several times before coming to a stop – shaken, but thankfully unharmed.  If not for quick reactions and a low center of gravity, this story could be coming out tragically different.

We live in a part of the world and at a time in history when we don’t give a second thought to flipping a switch to be able to see at night, or to turning a valve to get hot or cold clean running water for our wash, our hygiene, or for our food.  Some of us can remember a time when getting clean water involved either a trip to an outside pump or a trip to a stream, but it is a distant memory for the most part.

Sometimes circumstances remind us – in harsh ways.  Hurricane Isabel did it for us here eight years ago.  Hurricane Katrina did it for folks in New Orleans and along the gulf coast six years ago.  A magnitude 9 earthquake and a horrendous Tsunami did it for folks in Japan a few weeks ago.  A storm system that tore across the southern states did it for millions of people here just a couple of weeks ago.

At times like those, it is common to hear cries for God’s help and presence, for strength and patience, for protection. 

But when things are good, when there is no threatening wave, no storm, no earth rumbling beneath our feet, how readily do we find ourselves crying out to God for that same help, that same presence, or strength, patience, and protection?

The same can be said for times when we are sick over and against times when we are healthy.  Why is it that we so readily call to God in times of distress rather than times of plenty? 

I think what we have to struggle against is this idea that we don’t need help when things seem to be okay.  That it is only necessary to look for help when things are not okay. 

C. S. Lewis wrote, “God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.”

It does seem to hold true, that we just don’t learn something in theory as completely as we do when we learn it in practice. 

So with a few notable and significant exceptions across the world, we have been the beneficiaries of an extended period of freedom in the practice and sharing of our faith.  There are few instances that any of US can recall when we were attacked – and by that I mean physically assaulted – for doing or saying something that indicated that we were followers of Jesus.  In fact, I think it would be almost a safe assumption that if I were to ask for a show of hands of people who had experienced intense persecution for what they believed, I would be surprised to see any hand go up. 

On the one hand, part of me wants to celebrate that.  To know that we live in a time and a place where we don’t have to face persecution and are free to share our faith and to live it without any hindrance is an unmitigated blessing. 

On the other hand, part of me is uneasy about that.  Insofar as we are prone to be lulled into a sense of complacency, and we easily forget the more radical nature of Christ’s call on our lives.  Because is really is a call to radical discipleship, to radical commitment, to radically reimagining what the world could look like if all those who claim Jesus as Lord let him actually BE Lord of their lives. 

How much injustice would be corrected?  How much hunger and poverty would be eradicated?  How much justice and compassion would be evident where it is now absent?  How many would truly act as brothers and sisters rather than pay lip service only, but make no move in the practice of daily living?

Can we really see what that world would look like?  Can we really trust God to the point where we actually take the steps that Jesus calls us to in following him?   

Do we really trust God like we say we do?

  

Hannah Whitehall Smith, a Quaker from New Jersey who lived and worked and preached at the turn of the last century, believed and staked her entire life on this idea that we are to really, truly, completely trust God; with our souls, with our lives, with our all. She wrote a prayer that speaks to the awareness of what it truly means to give up our idea of self-sufficiency and self-reliance and live in that radical faith that relies ultimately and solely on God through Jesus Christ.

Pray her prayer with me:

"Lord Jesus, I believe that Thou art able and willing to deliver me from all the care and unrest and bondage of my life. I believe that Thou didst die to set me free, not only in the future, but here and now.

I believe that Thou art stronger than my sin, and that Thou canst keep me, even me, in my weakness, from falling....

"So Lord, I am going to trust Thee to keep me. I have tried keeping myself and I have failed…. So now I will trust Thee. I give myself to Thee. I keep back no reserves. Body, soul and spirit, I present myself to Thee....

"And I believe Thou doest accept that which I present to Thee ... That this poor, weak and foolish heart has been taken possession of by Thee, and that Thou hast even at this very moment begun to work in me to will and to do Thy good pleasure. So I trust Thee completely, O God, and I trust Thee now." In Jesus’ name. Amen.

You Are Light

Sunday, April 3 2011

Lent 4A

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Ephesians 5:8-14

⁸For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light— ⁹for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. ¹⁰Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. ¹¹Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. ¹²For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; ¹³but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, ¹⁴for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

If you saw the movie, Forrest Gump a few years back, you will remember how Forrest always had a quote from his mama to sum up just about any situation that a person might find himself or herself in. And if Forrest were to comment on this text from Ephesians, he might have this to say: "It's like my mama always used to say, 'Light is as light does.' "

Light is as light does. And what light does is shine out of the darkness. What light does is to make darkness disappear. Light and darkness cannot exist in the same space, because anytime light shows up, it pushes the darkness away. Darkness can exist on the edge of light, but it can never invade the space light has claimed.

Our lives seem to be filled with gray areas. Areas that are not fully illuminated nor are they fully darkened. Yet, while we try to convince ourselves that these gray areas exist to give us choices, we know deep down inside that the right choices always lead to the light, not the darkness. From inside those gray areas we can see that the right choices are not hidden from us, but are in plain view.

The Ephesians text tells us: "Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." Those gray areas are described as sleep from which we can awake, or even death, from which we can rise. And when we escape those gray areas, Christ will shine on us. Not only will he shine on us, he will shine out from us.

As Christians, we believe Jesus is the light of the world. He illuminates darkness so that in his light all secrets and hidden evils are revealed. If we choose to live in the light of Jesus, all that is dark within our lives is revealed and nothing is hidden from him, or from the rest of the world.

What is it about light that makes it better than darkness? The obvious answer is that you can see light. Not only can you see light, but light also makes all things in its path visible so that you don't stumble into things. Light has a presence that makes it known to you. You can't miss light when it's around although you may not consciously think about it. But take it away, turn it off, cover it up, and you miss it immediately.

Darkness, on the other hand, is the absence of light. Darkness is empty of light.

When we think of it in those terms, and believe that Jesus is the Light of the world, it is then we can say that Jesus is something you can see, while evil is hidden. Jesus makes everything else visible, while evil blocks things out. Evil is the absence of Jesus. Evil is void of everything that Jesus has come to represent to people.

Light promotes growth. Darkness leads to death.

A woman was working in her garden and came upon a large, green, healthy--looking squash plant, and she began to admire it. The stems appeared to be strong, and the leaves were large. She thought about the beautiful squash that this plant would one day produce.  She looked forward to making squash casserole with them.

A few days later she noticed that the plant was terribly wilted. There were no signs of any damage, and none of the plants around it were in this condition. She couldn't figure out what had happened and she tried to give it extra care to nurse it back to health. But in a couple more days, it was completely dead. She pulled the plant up and examined its roots. That’s when she discovered that a bore worm, which could not be seen from the outside, had eaten the heart out of the stem of the plant.

That's how our dark, hidden sins work on us. Like the bore worm, hidden sins can eat away at the heart of our Christian experience and leave us spiritually dead. When left unexposed to the light, sin continues to do its dirty work: obstructing our lives, destroying the true joy of life, and separating us from a loving God.

A lighted path is easy to follow. We stumble in the darkness.

I have a scar on my right shin.  I got it on our wedding night, and although it quickly became a source of jokes, here’s the real story: We were in a beautiful but unfamiliar cabin in the woods outside London Kentucky.  I got up at some point in the night, in the dark, and didn’t turn on a light.  Getting out of the bedroom was no problem, and coming back in wasn’t one either, but as I approached the bed, I forgot that it was a platform bed, and banged into it solidly.  Gave myself a good two and a half inch cut when I walked into that platform.  If I had turned on the light – even for a moment, I would have seen the platform and would have avoided slamming into it.    

Like a lighthouse on the shores of the ocean, light can lead people to safe harbor or it can warn them of dangerous waters. As people come in contact with Jerusalem, and into our lives, they are looking for family, for fellowship, and for some sense of the divine presence. They want to know God and they want to be known by God.  Are we a light that others can see in the darkness? Are we easily identifiable as followers of Jesus so that people recognize our church as a safe place to be? Not by the name on the sign, but by the way we live and act when WE are outside this building?  Are we, as a congregation, a string of lights that shine out and into our community? Can we lead people to the light of Christ and away from the dangers of sin?

The Holy Spirit living within us gives off a light that people cannot miss. Are we sometimes too busy going about with church work that we forget to do the work of the Kingdom? We can master the budget, the music, the worship, the fellowship times, the Sunday school curriculum, and all sorts of committees, but if we are not running our light outside the building, then it is all for nothing.

When the power gets low, or the connection is faulty, a light might begin to grow dim. And when the power source is completely severed, the light goes out completely, and the word for that is darkness.

Light cannot help but to shine outward. You cannot hide your light under a bushel basket and expect it to be seen by others and attract attention. A light that is hidden is darkness and does not do anyone any good.

Ultimately, light will show the flaws and imperfections of each of us and all those around us. Our heroes get brought down, our highest government officials have a dark side, our best friends surprise us, and our parents are really human after all. And, oh, how we love to jump on the sins of others, if not out loud, silently to ourselves.

Paul tells us, "For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light" (Ephesians 5:12--13). Sins are revealed not to be talked about or to become the basis for gossip, not to be pitted one against another to show that I am less of a sinner than you, but sins are revealed so that they might be forgiven and corrected. Sins are revealed so that what is done in the darkness might be overcome by what is done in the light. We are not to attack our brothers and sisters for their sinfulness, but are to admonish them concerning the dangers of being drawn to the darkness.

We are children of light who walk in the light. And while this passage tells us more about what life in the light is not than what life in the light is, like a parent pleading to his children, Paul challenges us to discover that for ourselves. "Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord," he says. We know that the light pleases God. So if we live in the light of Jesus, we will reveal all those things that are pleasing to the Lord. By the same token, we can avoid those things that are covered by darkness.

On that first Easter, God broke through the darkness once and for all. The darkness of the tomb of death was exposed when Jesus rolled away the stone. His light now shines throughout the world.

You who are light ... be light. Do what light does. And you will no longer live in darkness.

Let’s pray.

Strive First

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Epiphany 8

Matthew 6:24-34

Theme:  Setting priorities

²⁴“No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

²⁵“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ²⁸And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ ³²For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.  

There are passages in the Bible that speak to us in a timeless voice.  Especially passages that speak of comfort, such as the 23^rd Psalm.  And there are lessons that Jesus speaks that are also equally timeless – “I am the vine, you are the branch”, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life …” the phrases just roll off the tongue and the words stick in our hearts and in our memories like Velcro. 

Today’s passage is not one of those.  At least, it doesn’t seem to be.  When Jesus said ‘do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear’, he had no idea what kind of a world we live in today. 

He didn’t know the multitude of bills that have to be paid, or the letters and calls that need to be replied to, or that the cost of gas keeps going up, and all the driving that needs to happen, or the appointments that need to be made, to say nothing of the ones that need to be KEPT … it’s just one thing after another, and another, and another. 

He didn’t know what MY LIFE was going to look like when he spoke those words almost two thousand years ago. Heck, >>I<< didn’t know just ten years ago!  How could he?    

But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

Let’s back up a little, to the opening verse of today’s passage.  Jesus is concluding the previous thought, where he was talking about wealth – back up to verses 19 & 20:

¹⁹“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; ²⁰but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.”     

So the beginning of today’s passage is the conclusion to that idea, one that we’ve probably heard more than once from any number of pulpits:  you can’t have more than one master at a time.  You either serve the one or serve the other, but you can’t serve both. 

But how does that tie in with worrying – or NOT worrying? 

If we begin to think that the worldly perspective makes sense, that what we HAVE determines our happiness and our worth, we begin to fall into the worldview that underlies that idea, and it might not be what you think.  The determining factor for that worldview – for what forms the BASIS for the idea that wealth equals happiness – is the idea of scarcity. 

David Lose, from Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN, puts it this way:

“I think we live in an incredibly anxious culture. The evening news certainly depends upon worries at home and abroad to attract viewers. Commercials are constantly inviting us to worry about one more thing – usually about ourselves! – the sponsored product should supposedly solve. More and more houses seem to sport home security signs in their front lawns. And whenever I go to the airport I'm greeted outside by an electronic sign that reads, "See Suspicious Activity – Call 1-800...) and inside by an ominous voice informing me that, "The threat level, as determined by the Office for Homeland Security, is Orange." (I don't even know what "orange" is, but I'm betting it's not good.) And there it is: everywhere you turn, everywhere you look, there are visible reminders of just how much there is to worry about.”   

Let me put it into perspective for you.  If you have nice clothes to wear, AND a roof over your head AND you have a pretty good idea of where your next meal is coming from, you are already better off than several hundred million, if not a couple of billion of your fellow human being.  In fact, if each of those three factors come together for you, you are actually in a minority of the population of the earth. 

We hear a phrase periodically spoken “to preserve our way of life.” That is what it is referring to.  Yes, it is also referring to other less palpable aspects of our culture here in the United States; ideals and laws and things like that, but when it comes down to brass tacks, as they say, it is also very much a reference to our standard of living. 

And it’s not that we are necessarily turning a blind eye to the poverty that exists in the world, we’re not.  Most of the time.  But we ARE constantly reminded of the gulf that exists between us and those people and children whose faces we see in those commercials for any number of charities and help organizations that depend on our contributions to provide that charity or that help. 

And what comes out of that is the idea that scarcity equals unhappiness.  And the converse of that idea is that plenty – or wealth – equals happiness.  And our response to that underlying presupposition is that we begin to be concerned with avoiding scarcity.  We begin to spend a lot of energy and time in the accumulation of material possessions, or figuring out how we are going to acquire material possessions, or how we are going to KEEP material possessions.   

David Lose goes on:

So why can't we give our allegiance and worship to money? Because to do so is to fall prey to the larger worldview that crowns money lord in the first place: scarcity. Again, the issue isn't money per se; the problem comes when we make money our god – ‘that thing,’ as Martin Luther once observed, ‘which we trust for our every good.’ Once we believe that money can satisfy our deepest needs, then we suddenly discover that we never have enough. Money, after all, is finite. And so once we decide money grants security, then we are ushered immediately into a world of counting, tracking, and stock piling. No wonder we worry - in a world of scarcity, there is simply never enough.



The alternative Jesus invites us to consider is entering into relationship with God, the God who is infinite and whose love for us and all creation is infinite as well. Love operates from a different "economy" than money. I mean, when our second child came along, I didn't divide my love for our first child between the two, I suddenly had more love, more than I could possibly have imagined before. No doubt you've noticed the same thing: how the more love you give away, the more you have. Love – and especially God's love – cannot be counted, tracked or stockpiled. And when you live in this kind of relationship of love and trust, you've entered into the realm of abundance, the world of possibility, the world of contentment. Suddenly, in this world – Jesus calls it the "kingdom of God" – not worrying actually becomes an option.



I know, I know, it's hard to believe in this world of abundance that Jesus proclaims, this world that invites us to trust God's faithfulness like a flower does spring or sail upon the currents of God's love like a bird does the air. This is why, in the end, Jesus dies – not to somehow pay for our sins (there we go tracking and counting again), but because those in power were so invested in the world of scarcity that abundance was downright frightening, even threatening. Scarcity, after all, creates fear, and fear creates devotion to those who will protect you (think "threat level orange" again). Abundance, on the other hand, produces freedom. So rather than imagine Jesus' world of abundance, and committed to keeping the power they derived from a fear born of scarcity, the rulers of Jesus' day put him to death (see John 3:17 and following).



But God doesn't operate from scarcity; God operates out of abundance. So in response to the crucifixion of God's Son, God does not, in fact, keep track, or look for payment, or hoard power with which to destroy the offenders; instead, God resurrects – which, when you think about it, is the ultimate act of abundance: creating something, once again, out of nothing, drawing light from darkness, giving life to the dead.



This is the world Jesus invites us into: a world of abundance, generosity, and new life. But it is also a world of fragility, trust, and vulnerability. Lilies and birds, after all, can't defend themselves but must trust God's providence and love.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton? 

It means we have to become adept at identifying when that other worldview – the one that feeds on fear and seems to come so natural – is informing our thought process and our motivations, and stand against it, and in the reality of the Kingdom, where there is an abundance and a generosity that comes directly from God.

What priorities can we set that would reflect that Kingdom reality rather than the worldly reality?  What projects would we take on that would speak to the fact that we DO strive first to live out of the abundance of God’s love rather than of our fear that there won’t be enough to go around? 

What would we dare to do if we daily lived in THAT Kingdom reality?

Let’s pray.  

Belonging

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Epiphany 7A

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Text: 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23

¹⁰According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it.¹¹For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.

…

¹⁶Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? ¹⁷If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.¹⁸Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. ¹⁹For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” ²⁰and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.”²¹So let no one boast about human leaders. For all things are yours, ²²whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you, ²³and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

Last Saturday afternoon, knowing that Leslie would be preaching on Sunday, I decided to set myself a task:  assembling Hannah’s new dresser.  It came in 3 flat boxes from the store.  I began at 3:30, opening, unpacking, counting and organizing all the pieces, and, with a little help from Hannah turning the thing over in the later stages, was finally done at 10:30 that night. Even though I freely admit to being mechanically challenged, there are some things that I DO feel capable of doing.  I managed to complete the job with only one small blister and one small cut.

To be able to watch it come together from all the seemingly hundreds of little pieces and flat boards into this big, solid piece of furniture was a deeply satisfying experience.  I’m pretty sure the single determining factor was the fact that I was able to see the project move from beginning to end, and the end product was … something concrete, something I could put my hands on and touch.  Something that was easily quantifiable – easily measurable. 

Not all the tasks to which we set our minds are that clearly defined, that cut-and-dried.  Especially when it comes to spiritual ones.

Paul was dealing with that issue in his continuing interaction with the church at Corinth: the fact that it was not a completed work, but a work in progress.   

In the first few verses of chapter 3, Paul uses language that evokes the image of a farmer. It would be familiar to the Hebrews of his day, who would have grown up with the concept of Israel as being referred to in Isaiah 5 and in Ezekiel 36 as a garden or a vineyard, in those passages, each servant has a God-given task to carry out.  These tasks are meaningful and necessary work.  One plants the seed another waters the land … but growth?  Growth is a gift.  Those who have worked to plant and water can only do one thing once their work is done, and that is to wait.  They cannot make a plant grow.  It is the same with spiritual growth. 

Paul continues the description with a different metaphor, that of a building.  There is the foundation that has been laid in the person of Jesus Christ, and that is what he is building on – he or whoever comes after him. 

The point he is making is that each of the builders – whether himself or someone else – is working towards the same end – the completion of the building.  Just as the farmer and the farmhand go about different tasks to the same end – the harvest – so it is with Paul and other apostles who come and preach and teach the people of the Corinthian church – to deepen their faith, to strengthen them, and to help them mature in their knowledge and understanding of the Gospel.  They are not in competition with each other but are collaborators, coworkers for the Kingdom.  It is the noblest thing that can be said of anyone who works for the Kingdom, that we are fellow workers for God.

I remember in youth group how 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 was always brought up when the discussion turned to how we were to treat our bodies as young people. 

¹⁹Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? ²⁰For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

It would seem that verses 16 and 17 are an early reference to that same thought, and while that IS one way to understand and interpret those verses, and there IS a valid point to be made, their focus is different at this point in the letter. 

Paul is using the plural form of ‘you’ here.  He is speaking to the Corinthian church as a whole – as a congregation.  This is one place where the King James English serves a clarifying purpose in it’s use of ‘ye’, rather than the modern English ‘you’ that has come to be used for both singular and plural cases. 

Note what Paul is saying: that the Spirit of God – the Holy Spirit – dwells in us both as individuals AND as a community – and that even as we would seek to allow the Spirit to show himself through us by individual action, we are just as bound to allow the Spirit to show himself by COMMUNAL action.  The two go hand in hand. 

We cannot say that the Holy Spirit is working through and dwelling in us when our words or actions are tearing at the spirit of unity, at the willingness to work together for the Gospel, when they are causing strife and dissent and conflict in the larger community of believers.  That is not an easy thing to say or an easy thing to dwell on, but it is one of the lessons we have from the Corinthian church.  There were factions that had formed within the church that were still living as they had in the world before they heard the Gospel, still separating themselves from other believers based on status and wealth and position, still looking down on the poorer and marginalized members of their same community, and considering themselves to be holier because of it. 

Paul is reminding the Corinthians that they are ALL – each and every one of them – a member of that Holy Temple of God, and he gives warning in verse 17 to anyone who destroys the unity of that Temple.  There is some uncertainty as to whether he is directing the comment to particular individual or to a group of individuals in the church, but it is, in either case, a sobering thought. 

Paul then goes back to the themes he’s touched on earlier in the letter – those of factions and of wisdom.  He again uses the word ‘sophia’ in verse 18.  His juxtaposition of the ‘wisdom of this age’ over and against the foolishness of God again underscores how we as humans so easily fall back on trusting our own ability to achieve so much that we extend that skill to … everything. 

For most of our 50,000 years of recorded history, we gazed at the moon and wondered what it was, what it was made of and how far away it was. And finally, we decided to engage the challenge. Our technology had advanced to the point where it was almost within our reach, and from that day in September 1962 when President Kennedy announced our intention to put a man on the moon within the decade, we set our minds to it and completed the task within seven years of that date of that speech. 

Our abilities and skills and knowledge have grown exponentially in the intervening decades.  And our hubris – our pride – has kept pace with that growth.  There is an almost breathless anticipation to know and to see what we are capable of.  To be sure, we are capable of what would even in the relatively recent past be considered miracles.  To be able to instantly communicate with someone thousands of miles away simply by pushing some buttons and placing a device next to our ear, or to be able to open the chest of a living human being and repair a tear in the tissue of an organ and close them back up and have that person recovery to full health, would be unimaginable to our ancestors.

There is a measure of justification in being proud of an extraordinary accomplishment, but hubris is something else – it is unmitigated pride – pride without humility, pride that ignores the fact that we are created beings, frail and fraught with weaknesses and flaws.

We are SO skilled, SO capable, SO gifted by God to be so creative and inventive, that we tend to forget where the gift comes from, so dazzled are we by our fancy trinkets.

It is a fundamental point to understand that if we begin to rely on our own abilities, our own skills and knowledge as a way to understand and master the relationship between God and us, and by that understanding we are attempting to close that gap ourselves, we are trying to be the arbiters of our own salvation, and that is something that only God is in a position to do.  There is no form of human understanding, of human wisdom, that can hope to fully grasp the mystery of the cross.

I wrestle with it even now.  I question the why of the sacrifice, the why of the atonement, why the need for all of that – the passion – to take place at all.  It seems, to my supposedly modern sensibilities, such an archaic thing, a barbaric thing.  I would much rather find a cooler, less passionate, cleaner, clearer, simpler act that God might have taken in order to redeem the world to God’s self.

There must be a radical break in our understanding of wisdom.  It is a turning away from our self-centered wisdom and an acceptance of God-centered wisdom that is revealed in the cross of Christ.  Not what we can learn about life in the world, or the Solar System, or the galaxy, but what God reveals at the cross – THAT is wisdom.  It’s not that we SHOULDN’T strive to learn as much about life in the world, the Solar System and so on, but that we must keep in perspective what that knowledge is to be used for. 

Verse 21 – ‘for all things are yours’ … Paul steps back and is saying to the Corinthians, ‘look, yes, there is all this knowledge and all this wonder and it is all there and it is all good, but it is not to be used to divide you from your brothers and sisters in Christ.’ His essential call to the Corinthians is for unity in Christ.  He again brings in the factions, speaking perhaps euphemistically of those belonging to him, or to Apollos, or to Cephas, and he expands it to encompass the whole of human knowledge – ‘the world, or life or death, or the present or the future,’ and he says that that way of thinking is irrelevant to the Kingdom.  We all belong to Christ, and through Christ we all belong to God.   

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist church at Emmerton?

I wondered as I was putting this message together how many of you would begin to question at a certain point in it whether I was directing the message at a particular situation within our community of faith.  Let me assure you I am not – at least not intentionally – not KNOWINGLY.

I simply think it is helpful to visit the lessons we find in scripture at any point in our walk, in our joint pilgrimage, as we travel this road together, to have maybe a dispassionate view – a view at a distance – of a situation with which we may have been faced in the past or with which we may be faced with at some point in the future. 

In doing that, my prayer is that we would be able to step back and remember the lesson that our spiritual ancestors at Corinth laid out for us as they struggled with their own faith and their own identity as a community of faith.

Let’s pray.