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The Chemistry of Love: A Valentine's Sermon

2012-02-12T10:20:00.000-05:00

The Orangeburg Series

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Mark 12:28-34
February 12, 2012

For nearly 25 years now, I have been telling college students and congregations and anyone else who would listen that the two great frontiers for theology in our time are astrophysics and neuroscience.

Astrophysics just might get closer to “reading the mind of God,” as the great physicist Stephen Hawking put it, than any other discipline. The farther out in space we look, the farther back we are seeing in time. And in theory, at least, if we can see far enough out, then we can to see far enough back to see the first light of the beginning of time when “God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light” (Genesis 1:3).

But in addition to “reading the mind of God,” theology must plumb the depths of the human psyche as well, so the other great frontier for theology in our time is neuroscience, the study of the structures that underlie the human mind. If, as Jesus says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your . . . mind” (Mark 12:30), and the apostle Paul says, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5), then the structures of the brain that underlie the human mind are of utmost importance to theology.

Exploring the mind of God in astrophysics and delving the underlying structures of the human mind in neuroscience are the great frontiers for theology in our time.

But I know very well that you didn’t come here this morning for a lecture on astrophysics or neuroscience either one. What most of us feel that we need from church on Sunday is something we can carry away that will help us recover from the week that we just had and get through the week that lies ahead. So come with me for a few minutes to the grocery store. After all, that’s where we usually go to get the things we ran out of last week and need for next week, isn’t it?

Maybe you still need a Valentine’s Day card or a box of candy or a big helium balloon or a handful of cheerful flowers. Whether you’ve been dating for six months or married for 60 years or anyplace in between, you better come home with something on Tuesday.

I did a double take as I walked down the aisle. I was passing the magazines when a picture caught my eye. It was of a dark-haired couple in a romantic embrace, eyes closed, face to face, very nearly—but not quite—lips to lips. The photo was slightly grainy, sultry, steamy looking. In the bottom right corner, superimposed in red letters on a field of black was the word “Love.” Maybe Time would run this cover photo or The National Enquirer. But there was no mistaking the fact that this blissfully sensuous and romantic moment was framed by a bold yellow border that communicated as clearly and as incongruously as the white capital letters across the top: National Geographic. National Geographic? What kind of geography is this? Sign me up! I wanna be a geography major.

I did a double take and walked on by. After all, it wasn’t love I came to the grocery store for at 10:00 on a weeknight after having been up since 4 a.m. It was children’s Tylenol, a gallon of milk, and 0.7 mm lead for a middle-schooler’s mechanical pencil. Only to have my attention distracted by a grainy photograph in a yellow border. I walked away with the picture on the magazine still in my head, and I had to ask myself, “What is it I’m here for?” “Keep moving,” I said. “You’re not here for ‘Love’—or National Geographic either.” So I waited until the next time I was in the grocery store—about three days later. A gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, and National Geographic, the February issue 2006, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

Since a whole bunch of you are signed up for the Valentine’s Day Banquet tomorrow night, I decided to return this morning to the topic of that first “fruit of the Spirit” in Galatians 5:22-23: Love. “Love: The Chemical Reaction” was the cover story. Lauren Slater’s article was a blend of Cosmopolitan, Anthropology Today, and Scientific American. And Jodi Cobb’s photographs from Argentina, Cancun, Italy, Las Vegas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio were vintage Geographic with a Generation Next edge.

The article introduced the reader to an anthropologist named Helen Fisher at Rutgers University who studies “the biochemical pathways of love in all its manifestations: lust, romance, attachment, the way they wax and wane” (p. 35). It turns out that the chemical pathways in the brain that light up when you are “madly in love” are those that are associated with a chemical neurotransmitter called dopamine. “Dopamine [is a chemical in the brain that] creates intense energy, exhilaration, focused attention, and motivation to win rewards. [Dopamine] is why,” writes Slater, “when you are newly in love, you can stay up all night, watch the sun rise, run a race, ski fast down a slope ordinarily too steep for your skill. Love makes you bold, makes you bright, makes you run real risks, which you sometimes survive, and sometimes you don’t” (ibid.).

Donatella Marazziti is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pisa, in Italy. She studies another chemical pathway of love. Her studies of people who could be identified as “passionately in love” have shown that their blood levels of the chemical serotonin are 40% lower than normal, which corresponds to level of serotonin exhibited by people who have been diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. In the best one-liner in the article Slater writes, “Love and mental illness may be difficult to tell apart” (p. 38). “More seriously,” she writes, “if the chemically altered state induced by romantic love is akin to a mental illness or a drug-induced euphoria, exposing yourself for too long could result in psychological damage” (p. 44). In fact, “Studies around the world confirm that indeed passion usually ends. Its conclusion is as common as its initial flare. No wonder some cultures think selecting a lifelong mate based on something so fleeting is folly” (pp. 43-44).

A few years ago, I sat with a group pastor-colleagues looking at each other in shock when we heard the news that a well-respected young colleague of ours had separated from his wife of five years because, they said, they just didn’t “have the same chemistry” any more. That’s what they said. They didn’t “have the same chemistry.” Duh. The chemistry of courtship is an unsustainable imbalance in the brain more akin to mental illness than to any other human condition. The brain chemistry of a couple in love is literally different after four or five years of intimacy.

Sustainable loving relationships inevitably move “from the dopamine-drenched state of romantic love to the relative quiet of an oxytocin-induced attachment,” writes Slater. “Oxytocin is a hormone that promotes a feeling of attachment, connectedness, bonding. It is released when we hug our long-term spouse, or hug our children. It is released when a mother nurses her infant” (p. 45). We tend to speak of the “chemistry of love” as metaphor, but it turns out that the literal chemistry of love in a long-term relationship is different from the heady brew of a romantic chase. Our body produces is less dopamine and more serotonin and oxytocin, so that long-term relationships are chemically less like mental illness than courtships are. It’s no wonder that our concept of love is sometimes so confused. The literal chemistry of our love changes over time.

Our relationship with God also changes over time. In this morning’s gospel lesson, Jesus said that there is no commandment greater than “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). That sounds almost dopamine drenched, serotonin-starved, enthusiastic and obsessive, doesn’t it? All, all, all, all! And there is a second, he says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). That one sounds oxytocin rich: attachment, connectedness, bonding with others. Who would have thought that biochemistry and the Bible, neuroscience and Scripture, could be so much alike?

Look at how the Old Testament book of Hosea talks about the growth and development of our relationship with God. In chapter 2, we read of God’s courtship, God’s wooing of God’s people Israel: “I will now allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. . . . There she shall respond as in the days of her youth” (Hosea 2:14-15). Do you see the allure, the responsiveness, the underlying passion of courtship in these verses? But the relationship does not end there.

The relationship moves from short-term courtship to long-term commitment: “On that day, says the Lord, you will call me, ‘My husband.’ . . . and I will take you for my wife forever” (Hosea 2:16,19). When the relationship moves from courtship to long-term commitment, we no longer read of allure and passion. The prevailing terms of the relationship shift to righteousness and justice, and steadfast love and mercy. “I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord” (Hosea 2:19-20). In Hosea 2, God’s relationship with Israel—and with us—is described as though it moves from a dopamine-drenched, serotonin-starved courtship in the wilderness to an oxytocin-rich relationship grounded in core covenantal commitments: righteousness, justice, steadfast love, mercy, faithfulness.” Those are some marriage vows! Those core covenantal commitments long outlive the initial energy and enthusiasm, obsession and compulsion in a relationship and replace them with attachment, connectedness, bonding.

Notice one more thing about this long-term commitment. It is only in the long-term relationship of attachment, connectedness, and bonding with God that the book of Hosea says we “know the Lord” (Hosea 2:20). So many recent converts to the Christian faith make the mistake of assuming that the way they feel at the beginning of their Christian walk—the energy, the enthusiasm, the passion, the obsession and the compulsion of their feelings for God—are the substance of a relationship with God. But the book of Hosea very clearly says that’s only the courtship phase. After the courtship phase comes settling down and settling in for the long haul in righteousness, justice, steadfast love, mercy, and faithfulness, the core covenantal commitments.

There are entire churches that are designed for courtship. Their mission is centered almost exclusively on match-making between God and new believers. They design their worship experiences and their ministries to elicit energy, enthusiasm, passion and obsession for God and for the church. Those are exciting and lively churches. After all, Psalm 47:1 says, “Clap your hands, all you peoples, shout to God with loud songs of joy”; and Psalm 150:4 says, “Praise God with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe!” Those churches are as noisy as teenagers in love. Every Sunday is Valentine’s Day.

But other churches are designed almost exclusively for marriage, the long-haul relationship with God in this life that is characterized not so much by obsession and passion but by familiarity and trust, in “the relative quiet of an oxytocin-induced attachment.” Habakkuk 2:20 tells us, “the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him!” There’s no clapping and shouting there, but silence in the presence of the holy one. “The effect of righteousness,” says Isaiah 32:17, “will be peace . . . quietness and trust forever.” Every Sunday in those churches marks an Anniversary Day decades long in the making.

One of the unfortunate things about the American church scene in our time is that these two kinds of churches talk about each other as though each is the only kind of church that is really church. The old marriage churches call the new courtship churches “all style and no substance,” while the new courtship churches call the old marriage churches “cold and dead.” And even some people inside their own church sometimes launch attacks based on “hot” and “cold,” “style” and “substance,” “loud” and “quiet.” And all the while, those criticisms are signs of arrogance and ignorance.

It’s arrogance, because that criticism asserts that where I am in my relationship with God and my walk with God and my worship of God is where everyone else should be. And it’s ignorance, because it knows nothing about the chemistry of love, the profound and powerful ways that our deepest and most intimate relationships begin in enthusiasm, passion and obsession, and then develop and change over time in attachment and connectedness and bonding, “quietness and trust.”

Whichever church you’re in, don’t get caught up in the arrogance and the ignorance of criticism.

By the way, it turns out that I was in the grocery store for love at 10:00 p.m. on a weeknight. It isn’t the dopamine-drenched, serotonin-suppressed love of the first four or five years of Bev’s and my romance. Instead, it’s the oxytocin-rich love of 34 years of marriage and four children and all the joy and the anguish, all the gratitude and the disappointment, all the happiness and the heartache that comes with the chemistry and the core covenantal commitments that are at the heart of love that lasts.

And I’m still in love with the local church more than 30 years after my ordination, not for the rush of it that it was in the beginning, but for the core covenantal commitments between God and God’s people at the intersection of time and eternity in Jesus Christ.

So if ever find yourself asking, “What is it I’m here for?” I suggest that you consider answering this way: I’m here for love in all its manifestations, and above all, love for God with heart and soul and mind and strength and love for neighbor as for self.

Copyrighted © 2012 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Reservoirs and Cisterns: The Spirit Dwells in You

2012-02-05T10:48:00.000-05:00

The Orangeburg Series

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Ezekiel 36:24-30; Romans 8:1-14
January 22, 2012

I want to begin this morning by taking you on a quick tour of three locations in the mountains of Upstate South Carolina.

Our first stop is the iconic Table Rock. It’s picturesque in every season from almost any angle. But my interest this morning is not the mountain. It’s Table Rock Lake at the foot of the mountain. Table Rock Lake is a man-made lake. It was completed in 1930 to provide drinking water for the city of Greenville. As reservoirs go, it’s relatively small by today’s standards, covering 36 acres and holding an estimated 9.25 billion gallons of water. East of Table Rock, the newer and larger North Saluda Reservoir was completed in 1961 and stores approximately 25 billion gallons. Larger still, to the west in Oconee and Pickens Counties is Lake Keowee, which began to fill in 1970 and covers more than 18,000 acres with some 300 miles of shoreline.

One of the seldom-told stories about the growth of Greenville over the last 50 years is the role of these three reservoirs. Without them, its expansion in population and business and industry and quality of life would have been impossible. Now, the point of this quick tour is not to promote Greenville. After all, self-promotion is one of Greenville’s favorite pastimes. And besides, these days I’m wearing City of Orangeburg cufflinks; and I love walking along the North Fork of the Edisto River, the longest free-flowing blackwater river in North America; and every chance I get, I stop to smell the magnificent roses right here in Orangeburg.

The point of the quick tour through the mountains of the Upstate is to get us thinking about reservoirs. “Reservoir” is a French word for “storehouse,” a place where what you need is stored up, reserved for when you need it. Let me show you a set of reservoirs from the time of Jesus. Out in the Judean wilderness, down near the southernmost tip of the Dead Sea, there is a massive, rocky outcropping called Masada. It rises over 1,400 feet above the Dead Sea. On top of Masada, Herod the Great of biblical fame built a luxurious three-level palace and a nearly impregnable fortress.

One of the most impressive parts of Herod’s Masada was its water-storage system. Masada is located 20 miles from the nearest source of fresh water, so Herod’s engineers designed and excavated twelve huge cisterns—underground reservoirs—carved out of solid rock and plastered from top to bottom to keep them from leaking. They were fed by rainwater and could hold some 40,000 cubic meters of water. That’s more than 10.5 million gallons, enough to provide Masada with drinking water for an entire year and to fill Herod’s several swimming pools and Roman-style bathhouses and to provide irrigation for small-scale agriculture.

I call your attention to Herod’s cisterns at Masada to remind you that in addition to external reservoirs—lakes laid out on land—there are also internal reservoirs, cisterns carved out on the inside. Do you have an internal reservoir? Do you have a spiritual cistern? Do you have a place where you are able to store up, to reserve, what you need to sustain your relationship with God, even in the dry seasons of your life? Do you have a place where “the Spirit of God dwells in you”?

In last Sunday’s sermon, I encouraged you to “Receive the Holy Spirit,” as Jesus says in the gospel of John (20:22), to embrace the constant, continuing, empowering, and purifying presence of God in your life. Next Sunday, I will begin a series of series on what the apostle Paul calls “the fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22). Jesus says, “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.” (John 15:5). In Romans 7:4, the apostle Paul says that we are to “bear fruit for God.” This morning, I want you to consider what it is going to take for you to “bear fruit for God,” as Paul says, and “to bear much fruit,” as Jesus puts it.

One of the distinctive things about the cultivation of fruit is that fruit-bearing shrubs and trees don’t spring up quickly like the grasses and flowers of the field. Fruit-bearing plants grow and bear slowly over a long period of time, and they require reliable and sustained sources of water to bear fruit. Do you have a reservoir, a spiritual cistern within you, so that you can provide reliable and sustained irrigation to your life to bear fruit, as Jesus and Paul say? Especially in the dry seasons of our lives, we need spiritual reservoirs, deep cisterns within us for the Spirit of God to dwell in us.

Sometimes we think of the Spirit of God as a force or power that comes to us from far away, like the rain-bearing storms that sweep across the United States from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, or the ones that flow up from the south out of the Gulf of Mexico or from the Gulfstream of the Atlantic. In that way of thinking, the Spirit of comes to us intermittently, unpredictably, from somewhere far away. Other times, we think of the Spirit of God as located somewhere not so far away where we can gain access to it more consistently than just waiting for it to rain down on us from above. For example, we keep a goodly pool of the Holy Spirit right here at 1240 Russell Street on The Square in Orangeburg. This room, this congregation, is a reservoir for the Holy Spirit. Whenever we need a little or a lot, we can come here to get it, right? Those are common ways of thinking about the Spirit of God, and both of them reflect something true and authentic and entirely biblical about the way we experience the Holy Spirit.

But in this morning’s New Testament lesson, the apostle Paul offers a third way of thinking about the Spirit when he says in Romans 8:9, “the Spirit of God dwells in you.” “The Spirit of God dwells in you.” Paul says that the Spirit of God does not come to us intermittently or unpredictably from someplace far away. Paul says that the Spirit of God is not in some location where we must go to experience it there. Paul says the Spirit of God is in you. “For those who are in Christ Jesus,” Paul says in Romans 8:9, “the Spirit of God dwells in you.”

Now, Paul didn’t invent that idea. He got it from his Bible, the Jewish Scriptures, what we Christians now call the “Old Testament.” In Ezekiel 36:7, in this morning’s Old Testament lesson, God promises, “I will put my spirit within you”; and so in 1 Corinthians 3:16, the apostle Paul asks, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” Not far away. Not just in this place. In you.

How about you? This morning I want you to think about how much room there is in you for the Holy Spirit. Is there room for the Holy Spirit in you? Or are you so busy, crowded cluttered and distracted on the inside that the only room for the Holy Spirit in your life is on your outside? Or maybe in your case, it’s not busy-ness or clutter or distraction, but you are simply impervious to the Spirit. You are one of those folks who doesn’t let anything inside you. Your insides are like the rock of Masada before Herod’s engineers went to work carving out the cisterns. Is there room for the Holy Spirit in you?

The great 16-century Spanish pastor and reformer and mystic, John of the Cross, spoke of “deep caverns of the soul” (Living Flame, 3.18). He said, “The capacity of these caverns is deep, because that which they can hold is deep and infinite; and that is God” (Living Flame, 3.22). God becomes present “wherever [God] finds space,” John said (Living Flame, 1.15).

According to John of the Cross, most people who struggle to “find God” present and active in their lives just haven’t made room for God. They haven’t cleared the space in their lives and in their souls for God who always becomes present “wherever [God] finds space.” John writes sadly of people who come to God but then “leave God just as they came.” They “leave God just as they came because their hands were already full, and they could not take what God was giving” (Letter dated 11/18/1586).

If we want to experience God’s presence and activity in our lives—not intermittently and unpredictably, not somewhere we must go to find go, but with us and in us day and night, day-by-day and hour-by-hour—then we must create space for God in our lives. We must carve out or expand our internal reservoirs, our spiritual cisterns, for the Holy Spirit of God to “dwell in us” to irrigate our lives so that we may “bear fruit,” as Jesus says, even in the dry seasons and the droughts that come our way in life.

Creating space for God, making room for God to dwell in us, takes three things. First, it takes vision. Vision. Vision is the capacity to see an alternative future. Some people never make room for God in their lives because they cannot see beyond the conditions and the circumstances of the present. Whether the conditions of the present are desperate and degrading or comfortable and convenient, some people cannot imagine, see, envision, a life with God and in God and God in them any different than the life they are living. It takes vision to motivate us to take the necessary steps to dedicate precious time and energy and resources and interior space to prepare for bearing fruit, fruit that will last, in our lives. Some people never develop interior reservoirs, spiritual cisterns, because they never see the need.

The truth is, interior space may not be necessary to sustain physical existence at some level or another. Human beings can survive without it, as some of us here this morning are living testimony. But there is a huge difference between surviving and thriving. When Jesus said that we are capable of bearing much fruit, he was not using an image of subsistence farming, of merely scratching out an existence from the land. In a dry and rocky region of the world, the Palestinian landscape of Jesus’ day, “fruit” is an image of opulence, luxury, the abundant blessing of God.

In Ezekiel 36, God says, “I will summon the grain and make it abundant. . . . I will make the fruit of the tree and the produce of the field abundant, so that you may never again suffer.” In gospel of John, Jesus does not say, “I came that they may have life and barely survive at it.” No. Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Bearing fruit is a sign and symbol of that quality of life that Jesus calls “abundant.” Vision is the capacity to see or imagine a new quality of life that God offers us in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit in us in order to motivate us to move toward a better future with God and in God and God in us.

In addition to vision, creating space for God, making room for God to dwell in us, takes will. Will. It takes an act of extraordinary will to build a reservoir. Because Orangeburg takes its water from the free-flowing North Fork of the Edisto, you may not have experienced the battles of will among civic and business leaders and the general citizenry that are necessary to set land aside for submersion. Bev and I were living in the Research Triangle of North Carolina when the B. Everett Jordan Dam was built to create Jordan Lake in Chatham County and when the Cane Creek Reservoir was under development in Orange County. It’s not a pretty sight when a municipality or a county determines that it is necessary to take a Carolinian’s land away to put it under water.

“They’re stealin’ my granddaddy’s farm!” we heard, and they were. “Our gubbermint’s finishin’ what Sherman started! He burned it, and they’re drownin’ it.” And they were. Whether we are talking about literal reservoirs or spiritual reservoirs, it takes an act of extraordinary will to create them. The parts of your life that need to be claimed and cleared—cut down and bulldozed—to make room for the Holy Spirit in you will fight back, I promise you. Nature abhors a vacuum. The laws of physics favor inertia. The status quo always resists change. It takes an act of extraordinary will to create internal reservoirs, spiritual cisterns, for the Holy Spirit. You have to decide—and decide again and again and again against the resistance you will experience—that making room for God in your life is worth the effort.

And that brings us to Work. Vision, Will, and Work. In addition to an act of extraordinary will, it takes an enormous amount of work to make room for God in your life. The reservoirs that we know as Cane Creek and Jordan Lake and Keowee and North Saluda and Table Rock didn’t happen on their own, any more than those enormous cisterns in the rocky outcropping of Masada did. There are spiritual analogies to acquiring the land and clearing it, building the dams, reinforcing the shoreline, or cutting the rock and lining the cisterns with plaster. It takes years and years and years of work to build adequate reservoirs, to cut sufficient cisterns to provide water for the dry seasons and the droughts.

Some people start out with the best of intentions. They try some worship; they try some Bible study; they try some quiet-time devotions; they try some prayer. They try for a while, and then they abandon the enterprise because they didn’t get filled up quick enough to satisfy them. “It just didn’t happen for me,” they say. “I went a few times, but I didn’t really feel anything happening.” Of course you didn’t. The hard truth is it takes years.

You have to acquire the interior ground; you have to clear it of obstructions; you have to reinforce the shoreline and dam up the outflow. And even then, after years of work, when the reservoir is ready, it takes more than a single rainy season to fill a reservoir or cistern large enough to carry you through the dry season and the droughts. It takes years and years of dedicated and determined effort in faith and in works, in worship and in Bible study, in fellowship and in prayer, in repentance and in confession, in forgiveness and in reconciliation, to create space for God, to make room for the Spirit to dwell in us so that when the dry season arrives or when the drought sets in, we are steadfast in our faith; we are tenacious in our hope; and we are unfailing in our love. Nothing less will do if you want do what Jesus says: “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22), and “Bear much fruit” (John 15:5).

Engage your Vision, your Will, and your Work to make room for the Spirit to dwell in you. Start today: acquiring and clearing the land, building the dam, reinforcing the shoreline, carving out the rock and lining it with plaster, to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Start today.

Copyrighted © 2012 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

The Holy Spirit and Fire

2012-01-22T20:04:00.000-05:00

The Orangeburg Series

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Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 3:15-17
January 15, 2012

Are you old enough to remember when the words “Baptist preaching” were nearly synonymous with the words “hellfire and damnation”? Do you remember the day when if the preacher wasn’t shoutin’, then he—and it was always “he”—wasn’t preachin’?

Several years ago, I supervised an African-American Baptist seminary student in an internship for his field education experience in seminary, and one of his internship opportunities was to preach in worship at First Baptist Greenville. As we were getting ready for worship the morning he was to preach, he said his wife had told him as he was leaving the house, “Now John, don’t you get to shoutin’ this mornin’. White people don’t like to be shouted at.”

But out and about on the highways and byways of white Baptist life in the American South, the enthusiastic revivalism of what Baptist historians call the “Sandy Creek tradition” birthed and bred generations of loud-shoutin’, high-whinin’, Baptist preachers dedicated to scaring the hell out of people in order to get them into heaven and into the church.

I confess that I don’t understand the psychology of coming to church Sunday after Sunday to be yelled at from the pulpit, but I also admit that I have never lived the hard-scrabble life of tooth-and-claw existence of so many of our Baptist forebears in the woods and on the farm and in the mill.

Not all Baptist preaching was that way, even “back in the day.” Among the genteel and cultured representatives of what Baptist historians call the “Charleston tradition,” modeled on the worship and preaching of the stately and orderly First Baptist Church of Charleston, shoutin’ preachers and hellfire and damnation sermons were the exception rather than the rule.

Over time, as we Baptists—especially we citified First Baptists—have left the woods and the farms and the mills, as we have become more educated and our lives have become more comfortable, we have become less and less comfortable with whinin’ and shoutin’ and hellfire and damnation. And along the way, we have lost something entirely biblical that we would do well to reclaim in our preaching and our teaching and our living.

It’s the Holy Spirit and fire. In this morning’s gospel lesson from the third chapter of Luke, John the Baptist says to the crowds who are coming to hear him preach, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming. . . . He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Luke 3:16).

If I were a Pentecostal preacher, I would point out to you that when it comes to baptism, Baptists have spent a whole lot of time fussin’ and fumin’ over how much water is to be used and when it is to be applied when all the while, the Bible says that the baptism of John was a baptism of water; but the baptism of Jesus is a baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire.

So how come we Baptists almost never talk about the Holy Spirit and fire, and especially so at baptism when Luke’s gospel, at least, suggests that the Holy Spirit and fire are distinguishing marks of the ministry of Jesus Christ?

At the beginning of the book of Acts, Jesus says to the disciples, “This is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 1:5). So this morning, let’s talk about the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit and fire.

First the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the constant and continuing presence of God in the world and in the church and in the life of every baptized believer.

In the historic Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is the “third person” in the distinctively Christian understanding of God as Three in One and One in Three: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit; Lover, Beloved, and Love.

Outside the enthusiastic confines of Pentecostal and charismatic congregations, the “third person” in the Trinity is routinely overlooked—or at least underemphasized—compared to the Father and the Son, the Creator and the Christ, the Lover and the Beloved. But the gospel of Luke doesn’t overlook or underemphasize the Holy Spirit at all.

At the baptism of Jesus, as Luke tells the story in chapter 3, “when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.” From the baptism of Jesus on, in the gospel of Luke, the ministry of Jesus himself is driven and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

In Luke 4:1 we are told that following his baptism, “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.” In Luke 4:14 we read, “Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit returned to Galilee” where he began his ministry of teaching and preaching and healing. Luke 4 also tells us that when Jesus returned home to Nazareth to teach in the synagogue there, he read from Isaiah 61, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).

After the resurrection, Jesus said to the disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8), which is precisely what happens on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:2-4 when “suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.”

From Pentecost on in the book of Acts, individuals who minister in Jesus’ name are said again and again and again to be “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 4:8,31; 7:55; 9:17; 13:9,52) and “full of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 11:24). In fact, the Holy Spirit plays so prominent a role in the life of the early church in the book of Acts that more than one commentator has suggested that instead of being called “The Book of the Acts of the Apostles,” as the church has traditionally named it, it should be called “The Book of the Acts of the Holy Spirit.”

According to the gospel of Luke, the Holy Spirit empowered life and ministry of Jesus Christ; and according to the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit empowers the life and ministry of the church and empowers the life of every baptized believer. One and the same empowering presence of God was at work in Jesus Christ, in the church of Jesus Christ, and in every baptized believer in Jesus Christ.

So don’t make the mistake that most non-Pentecostals and non-charismatics have made by reducing the Holy Spirit to the “third person of the Trinity.” Instead, “receive the Holy Spirit,” as Jesus puts in John 20:22. Embrace the Holy Spirit as the constant, continuing, empowering presence of God in your life.

Now for the fire. Fire as a biblical sign and symbol of the presence of God is as old as the covenant of God with Abraham (Genesis 15:17), the appearance of God to Moses at the bush that was burning but not consumed (Exodus 3:2) and to all Israel at Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19:18). Consider this fire imagery on Mt. Sinai in Exodus 24:17: “Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel.” A devouring fire.

In this morning’s gospel lesson, fire is an image of judgment. John the Baptizer says that the one who is coming “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Luke 2:16-17). There it is. “Unquenchable fire.” Can’t you just smell the sulfuric vapors of the brimstone? “Hellfire and damnation,” anyone?

The fire reminds us that in addition to being the constant, continuing, and empowering presence of God in our lives, the Holy Spirit is the constant, continuing, and purifying presence of God in our lives. The fire that burns the chaff, the husk, the waste material of the wheat is like the “refiner’s fire” of our Old Testament lesson this morning from the prophet Malachi: “For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord” (Malachi 3:2-4).

Malachi speaks hard words of judgment with the imagery of fire, but notice that the point of that judgment is to purify rather than to destroy. The refiner’s fire burns away the dross, the impurities, and leaves behind only the pure metal. In our citified Baptist discomfort with hellfire-and-damnation preaching, we run from the refiner’s fire. And when we do, we are left with nothing to burn away the useless stuff, the wasteful stuff, the unnecessary, and impure stuff that weighs down our hearts and minds and souls and lives and separates us from God.

The image of the fire of judgment in this morning’s gospel lesson is a reminder that none of us is so pure that we don’t need the fire of judgment, the refiner’s fire, in our lives to burn away what is useless, wasteful, unnecessary, and impure. No church is so pure that it doesn’t need the fire of judgment, the refiner’s fire, in its life to burn away what is useless, wasteful, unnecessary, and impure. As individuals and as a church, we must not reduce the Holy Spirit to the “third person of the Trinity” but embrace the Holy Spirit as the constant, continuing, and purifying presence of God in our lives and in our church.

The image of the refiner’s fire in Malachi 3 and fire of judgment in Luke 3 is also a reminder that your “Stop-Doing List” is every bit as important as your “To-Do List.” Do you have a “Stop-Doing List”? Probably not. If you don’t have a Stop-Doing list, then you need to start one. I learned about Stop-Doing lists several years ago from an article in Harvard Business Review.

Effective companies and organizations plan for and implement abandonment strategies for their products and services and processes every bit as carefully and thoroughly as they plan for and implement their launch strategies. Companies and organizations that survive and thrive understand that sooner or later their products and services and processes will diminish in their effectiveness, will become obsolete, will no longer meet the markets for which they were originally designed. The same is true for churches. Sooner or later the various ways we do worship and ministry and missions will no longer meet the needs for which they were originally designed. If you don’t plan to abandon and replace what you are doing and how you are doing it, sooner or later, it will abandon you.

It’s so obvious that we shouldn’t even have to say it, but we do. There is a time to abandon the womb and be born. No matter how warm and comfortable it may be in there, it can’t go on forever, can it? There is a time to abandon the only life we know for a life that is still to come. There is a time to abandon high school and your parents and to move on to college—and don’t come back! (Just kidding. Come back anytime; stay as long as you need to. I guess.) There is a time to abandon the house you have been living in and move into assisted living where you get the care that you can no longer provide for yourself. There is a time to abandon “the earthly tent we live in,” as the apostle Paul puts it, to move on to “a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (1 Corinthians 5:1). Our abandonment strategy is every bit as important as our launch strategy.

Start a “Stop-Doing List” today. Every individual and every congregation should have one. Plan for abandonment and replacement. The refiner’s fire of the Stop-Doing List is a reminder of the purifying presence of God among us and around us and in us that burns away the untimely, the unworthy, the useless and wasteful and unnecessary and impure stuff that holds us back as individuals and as a congregation from loving and serving God and from loving and serving our neighbor as we ought.

Whatever it is in your life, whatever it is in our congregational life together, that needs to be burned away like chaff, like the husk, like the waste material of the wheat, pray this day that the Holy Spirit and fire will refine and purify you. So receive the Holy Spirit, and receive the fire that comes with it. Embrace the constant, continuing, empowering, and purifying presence of God in your life and in our life together.

Let us pray.

Copyrighted © 2012 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice? Nails and Gold and Everything Bold!

2012-01-15T14:56:00.000-05:00

The Orangeburg Series

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2 Kings 5:1-5; Luke 4:22-30
January 8, 2012

NOTE: This sermon is adapted from “Like a Child,” in Building a House for All God’s Children: Diversity Leadership in the Church (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2008), pp. 76-84.

“What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice. That’s what little girls are made of.” These days, we know better than to put much stock in such old-fashioned, gender-biased adages, if for no other reason than the fact that our experience has introduced us to at least some girls and women who are obviously composed of anything but “sugar and spice and everything nice”—all present company excluded, of course.

Even so, we might be surprised to see in this morning’s Old Testament lesson a girl of an entirely different mettle than in the nursery rhyme. We never learn her name or anything more about her than what we read in 2 Kings 5:2-4. But from what we do learn about her in these three verses, I want to suggest an alternative adage to characterize this na‘ărâ qĕtannâ, this “little girl” from the land of Israel: Nails and gold and everything bold. That’s what this girl is made of.

There is a cast of powerful people in the fifth chapter of 2 Kings. There is Naaman, the Syrian general. There is the king of Syria and the king of Israel. And there is the prophet Elisha who lives in Samaria, the capital of Israel. It would be all too easy for us to assume that we can learn the most from the most powerful people in the story. But it turns out that it’s the “little girl” from whom we can learn the most. Recognizing that the most important person in the story is the one who appears to be the least powerful person in it is a striking reminder that our assumptions and our expectations and our conventional interpretations frequently limit what we can learn from reading the Bible.

Perhaps you have read 1 Peter 3:7, which speaks of women as “the weaker sex.” Those three words in 1 Peter 3:7 have created centuries of assumptions and expectations and conventional interpretations in the church and in our culture. But 1 Peter ignores the biblical woman named Deborah who was a judge and a prophet over Israel without whom Barak, the commander of the Israelite army, refused to go to war unless she went with him (Judges 4:4,8). It ignores the biblical woman named Athaliah who was queen over Judah for six years when there was no king in the land (2 Kings 11:3). It ignores the biblical woman named Esther whose cunning and courage saved her people from a massacre (Esther). It ignores the biblical woman named Phoebe whom the apostle Paul refers to as “a deacon of the church” in Romans 16:1. And it ignores the biblical woman named Eve in Genesis 2.

Genesis 2:7 reads, “God formed a man from the dust of the ground.” The Hebrew verb in that verse is yatzar, “to mold” or “shape” or “form.” It’s what a potter does to make a clay vessel. Contrast that with verse 22, the creation of Eve: “the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man [God] made into a woman.” So the man is made of dust, and the woman is made of bone. Which one might be stronger? Dust or bone? The Bible says men are made of dust and women are made of bone. Who looks like “the weaker sex” now?

In fact, Bible translators don’t play fair with you or with Eve either one when they use the generic English word “made” to describe the creation of Eve. The Hebrew verb in that verse is banah, and it means “to build” or “to construct.” Eve was not just “made.” Eve was built. Elsewhere in the Bible, houses are built, city walls are built, towers are built, fortresses are built. There is nothing weak about this woman created in Genesis 2.

So when I say that the little girl in 2 Kings 5 is made of nails and gold and everything bold, you shouldn’t be surprised. Because 1 Peter 3:7 may call women “the weaker sex,” but the rest of the Bible pictures women very differently than 1 Peter does. Nails and gold and everything bold.

I say, “nails,” because she was “tough as.” Consider what we know about this girl’s situation. She was an Israelite captive who had been carried away from her village by Syrian raiders. Naaman the general must have selected her as part of the spoils of war to give to his wife as a household slave. So when this girl suggests in verse 3 that Naaman could be cured of his disease if he would pay a visit to “the prophet who lives in Samaria,” she reveals an amazing spiritual toughness. In spite of the terror, misfortune and dislocation she has experienced, she has not abandoned her confidence in her God and in the religious institutions of her upbringing. How could her faith be so tenacious as to survive and even thrive as a captive slave in a foreign land instead of a child at home? Tough as nails.

This “little girl from the land of Israel” models for us the toughness and the tenacity of faith that is required for citizenship in the kingdom of God. The author of the book of Revelation understood what it takes when he wrote, “as a follower of Jesus I am your partner in patiently enduring the suffering that comes to those who belong to his Kingdom” (Revelation 1:9). That’s not the kind of talk we like to hear about citizenship in the kingdom of God. When’s the last time you saw a sign outside a church that read, “Come suffer patiently with us”?

That’s not a gospel you and I want to hear or to preach, much less to live. We buy the conquering savior who vanquished sin and death and evil, and we sell the suffering servant because we want no part of servanthood or suffering either one. We preach a Christ who conquers, overcomes, protects and defends us against all comers, a national championship Jesus. And then we find ourselves and our theology utterly unprepared for the adversity that eventually comes our way in life when there is no triumph, only travail, when the losses in our lives pile up and the wins are few and far between at best or evidently all in the past. In adversity, our faith slips away like sand through our fingers, and we fall into despair or cynicism, unlike the girl from the land of Israel, who had not sold her soul to a theology of victory and success. Nails, I say, because she was tough as. Nails and gold.

I say “gold” because she had “a heart of.” Why it ever occurred to this child to be so astonishingly compassionate as to wish that her captor could be cured of his disease we will never know. Perhaps she is an ancient example of what is called the “Stockholm Syndrome” or “capture-bonding,” in which persons who are held hostage, such as prisoners of war, kidnap victims, battered wives and abused children, become emotionally attached and intensely loyal to their captors. Or maybe her circumstances as a household slave in the home of a wealthy and pampered Syrian woman was actually an easier and happier condition than she had known in the home of her rude, impoverished Israelite father who had no good use for a daughter who was no help to him in the fields. Or maybe it was her character. Maybe she was one of those unusually empathetic children you come across from time to time, that child with a sensitivity to others that takes everyone by surprise.

We can’t get behind the text in front of us to reconstruct her feelings, but what we can see in the text is an astonishing compassion that looks right past differences in nationality and religion and disparities in power and wealth to see the commonality of human suffering and need. And so she said, “I wish that my master could go to the prophet who lives in Samaria! He would cure him of his disease.” That is astonishing compassion on the part of a victim of conquest and coercion. And it is precisely the compassion that is required for citizenship in the Kingdom of God, as Jesus puts it in the sermon on the mount: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43-44). That’s another piece of the gospel for which it is hard to find a practitioner in these days of religious, political, and national partisanship, polemics and polarization. But we’ve found one in 2 Kings 5. This little girl from the land of Israel exhibits Kingdom-of-God compassion for her enemy and her oppressor. Nails and gold, I say, because she had a heart of.

Nails and gold and everything bold. I say, “everything bold,” because this girl makes an outrageously bold claim on the grace and mercy of God. We have no idea how she knew that the prophet Elisha and the God of Israel would cure the Syrian general of this disease. Perhaps she had suffered from it herself, or perhaps someone in her family had, or perhaps the reputation of this prophet was so widespread that she needed no personal experience with his gift of healing. However she knew it—or perhaps only believed it or hoped it or prayed it, she was outrageously bold in her offer to Naaman. She invited this foreigner to avail himself of the health and wellbeing that was available in her own community of faith. She invited the wolf into the sheepfold, for heaven’s sake. And when she did, she made an outrageous claim on the grace and mercy of God by suggesting that God would act to heal an enemy of God’s people, that God whom she worshiped was every bit as interested in and concerned for Naaman’s health and wellbeing as for her own.

Syrians were historic enemies of Israelites, so much so that more than 800 years later the good people of Nazareth in Luke’s gospel became so incensed at Jesus that they wanted to kill him when he reminded them of this passage that contradicted their assumptions and their expectations and their conventional interpretations. A leprous Syrian warrior is healed while Israelite men, women and children are not? They became furious with Jesus when he proclaimed as “the truth” (v 25) an understanding of God that insists that God does not discriminate against people we despise or detest.

In Luke 6, Jesus says, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:32-36).

In the end, it’s not the sociological imperative—“love your enemies”—that infuriates Jesus’ audience then and now. It’s the theological declarative that angers us most: God is “kind to the ungrateful and the wicked,” Jesus says, and God is merciful to our enemies. As Jesus preaches and teaches it, citizenship in the Kingdom of God requires worshiping and serving a God who loves even people who do not love God, a God who is good even to people who are not. That’s what this “little girl from the land of Israel” understood about God that many of us have not yet been willing to understand or to accept or to live by. Nails and gold and everything bold. That’s what it takes to be a follower of Jesus and to belong to Jesus’ kingdom.

And as for “the weaker sex”? Only in 1 Peter 3:7. The visionary words of the apostle Paul characterize Jesus’ kingdom this way: “There 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.”

May we never fail to live into and live up to Paul’s vision of Jesus’ kingdom. It’s nails and gold and everything bold.

Copyrighted © 2012 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

New Beginnings

2012-01-01T16:20:00.000-05:00

The Orangeburg Series

John 1:1-18

New Year’s Day 2012

Every year, more than a million people gather in Times Square in New York City for the annual Ball Drop that begins at 11:59 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. Many millions more watch on television, while others party in the new year in their respective downtowns, hotels, and homes. It’s the most raucous holiday of the year. If you look only at the surface of the New Year’s celebrations and New Year’s dissipations you might not recognize that underneath it all is a deep hunger and thirst in the human soul for a fresh start, a new beginning.

A couple years ago, a few days before Christmas, I was helping one of my sons change a flat tire on his truck in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. To tell you the truth, I was enjoying myself. I’m not a fan of flat tires, mind you; but once your son leaves home for college, even changing a flat tire together can feel like “quality time” with each other. We weren’t quite finished when we were approached by a man in his late 30s or early 40s asking for a meal. He said he was embarrassed to ask for help, and he didn’t want money. But he said he was an out-of-work construction worker, and he had four mouths to feed; and if I would buy him supper, he would sure be grateful to me. I confess to you that my first thought was “Can’t you see you’re interrupting a father-son thing here? Leave us alone.” Then I thought to myself, “Go scam someone else, man. I don’t have time for this, and your supper is not in my budget.” Not to mention the fact that we were in the parking lot of a burger joint and he wanted dinner for four from the chicken place a half a mile away. Right.

But it was a couple days before Christmas, and he sure enough looked as though he was down on his luck. And he didn’t ask for cash, and I thought about what I would want somebody to do for my son if he was ever out of work with four mouths to feed. And besides, it had only been about ten days or so since I had preached a sermon about God being in the business of filling the hungry with good things, as the gospel of Luke puts it (Luke 1:53; 6:21). So the next thing I knew, I was standing at the counter of that chicken place buying dinner to go for four. I still don’t know whether I got scammed or whether I actually helped someone; but on the way to the chicken place, the fellow I bought dinner for said this: “I’ll be glad when this year is over. I sure hope next year is better than this one was.”

Have you ever felt that way at the end of one year and the beginning of the next? At one time or another in our lives, every one of us experiences the deep need to turn the calendar to a new year. Sooner or later, every one of us comes to a place in our lives where we need a fresh start, a new beginning.

New beginnings are different from New Year’s resolutions. For one thing, the need for a new beginning doesn’t always coincide with a new year. The circumstances of our lives, the conditions of our hearts, and the movement of our souls—not the calendar—determine the timing of our need for a new beginning. For another thing, a new beginning is a fresh start, a clean slate. It’s not just a list of a few new things that you’re going to do or old things you’re going to stop doing. It’s starting all over again.

On the morning of my father’s funeral, my mother walked into the den of the church parsonage where my parents were living when my father died and asked those of us sitting there, “You know what song I’ve been singing since I woke up this morning?” We didn’t even try to name that tune. She said, “I’ve been singing, ‘I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair.’” Nellie’s song from the Broadway musical, South Pacific. That was more than 25 years ago, and there is still an occasional night when she calls his name in her sleep. But she recognized that morning that she had arrived at a “starting-all-over” moment in her life. A new beginning.

New beginnings are a lot harder than New Year’s resolutions, but they last a lot longer. New beginnings are also more biblical than New Year’s resolutions. God called Abraham and Sarah out of the Ur of the Chaldees to a new beginning in Canaan. God called the Israelites up out of Egypt to a new beginning in a land of promise. God called the exiles home from Babylon to a new beginning in Jerusalem. God called Peter away from his nets on the Sea of Galilee to a new beginning as an apostle fishing for people. God called Nicodemus away from his life as a Pharisee to a new beginning, “born from above” or “born again.” God called Saul of Tarsus from persecuting the Way to a new beginning as the greatest champion of the Way.

And then there’s the biblical new beginning in verse 14 of this morning’s gospel lesson: “The Word became flesh and lived among us . . . full of grace and truth.” The Word that was in the beginning, the Word that was with God and the Word that was God, the Word through whom all things were made, the source of all beginnings, began anew when the Word became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth. That new beginning—the “incarnation,” it’s called in theological jargon—is the ground of all our new beginnings. Incarnational new beginnings—not merely resolutions—are necessarily “full of grace and truth.”

Grace has to do with letting go of what has been. Grace is about letting go of what has been in order to embrace what yet can be. That’s what God’s grace does: God lets go of our has-been in order to embrace the yet-can-be in us. Let me be very clear about what grace is not. Grace is not a “do-over.” There is no such thing as a do-over. What you’ve done, you’ve done; and what you left undone, you’ve left undone. There is no such thing as a do-over; but there is do better. There is do wiser. There is do new. And in order to do better and wiser and new, you have to let go of what has been: good, bad, or indifferent. Just as by grace God let go of our sin, we must let go of our guilt, our loss, our pain, our grief, our anger, our disappointment—our own or others. Whatever it is about the past that you are dragging with you into the present, you must let that go. Grace is washing what has been out of your hair to start a new day or a new year fresh and clean and anew. That’s what new beginnings take: Grace.

And truth also. Truth has to do with recognizing in the present that nothing less than a new beginning will do. Tony Compolo tells the story (Let Me Tell You a Story, p. 96) of an old guy in the backwoods of Kentucky who could always be counted on to show up at revival meetings whenever an evangelist came to town. At the end of each service when the invitation was given, he would come down the aisle, get down on his knees, raise his arms to heaven and cry out, “Fill, Jesus! Fill me! Fill me, Jesus!” Then, within a week or two after the revival was over, he would slip back into his old ways of living. But when the next round of revival meetings was held, he would once again show up, walk down the aisle, and pray the same prayer over and over. One time, he was down on his knees yelling to the ceiling, “Fill me! Fill me, Jesus! Fill me, fill me! Fill me, Jesus!” when suddenly from the back of the church a lady called out, “Don’t do it, Lord! He leaks!” The truth is, of course, we all leak. If you only have a small leak, and all you need is a minor tune-up, then making a few New Year’s resolutions will do for you. But if what you need is an overhaul, a rebuild, a restoration, a spiritual “make-over,” if you will, then the truth is, nothing less than a new beginning will do.

It wasn’t enough for Abraham and Sarah to make a few New Year’s resolutions in Ur of the Chaldees and then a few weeks later just go on with things as they were where they were. It wasn’t enough for the Israelites in Egypt or Babylon, either one, to make a few New Year’s resolutions and keep on living where they were as they were. It wasn’t enough for Nicodemus or for Peter or for Saul to resolve to do a few things a little differently. In every case, it required an entirely new beginning. And truth is what it takes to recognize that the game you have been playing, the life you have been living, the circumstances of the present, are no longer viable as a vehicle to carry you to a healthy, sustainable, and redemptive future in right relationship with God, in right relationship with others, and in right relationship with yourself. Only a new beginning will do.

When “the Word became flesh and lived among us. . . full of grace and truth,” it opened up to you and to me and to the world the ever-present possibility of a new beginning. The gospel of Jesus Christ is all about new beginnings. The gospel is about “new life,” Paul says in Romans 7:6, and “a new creation,” he says in 2 Corinthians 5:17. The gospel is “new wine,” a “new garment,” a “new covenant” (Luke 5:36-37; 22:20). The gospel is about “a new self,” according to Ephesians 4:24. And God knows, every one of us needs a new self at least once in our lives; and some of us discover once is not enough for us.

No matter how many New Year’s resolutions we may make, our life remains soiled; our creation is spoiled; our covenant becomes tattered; our garment is torn; our wine becomes tasteless; and our self gets tarnished. The problem with New Year’s resolutions is that they are a self-help enterprise. And the problem with “self-help” is that it just doesn’t work. Have you ever thought about why it is that “self-help” books are a billion-dollar business? It’s because self-help doesn’t work. If self-help worked, you could buy one good self-help book, and you’d be done. But have you noticed how those of us who buy self-help books can’t buy just one? It’s like those potato chips: you can’t eat just one. You have to have another and another and another because self-help can’t create a new self. It only nurtures the deep hunger and thirst of the human soul for a new beginning.

The new beginning that leads to a new self can only come when the hunger and thirst on our inside is met by the nourishment we need from the outside. Think about it. When you are hungry, your body can feed on itself. In the short-term, your body feeds on itself by burning the fat it has stored up in order to keep itself alive and functioning. And when you are hungry, your body can feed on itself by devouring the muscle you have built in order to keep itself alive and functioning. But your body cannot feed on itself forever. Sooner or later, your body must receive nourishment from the outside—protein and carbohydrates and nutrients—that will restore the muscle and replenish the fat reserves that your body can live on but for only so long. Like body, like soul.

The words of Jesus later in the gospel of John express this biological and spiritual reality when Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry” (John 6:35). Jesus said, “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14). How can that be? Never hungry? Never thirsty? We don’t know any condition of the human body or the human soul in this life in which hunger and thirst are permanently satisfied.

But here’s the thing. It’s not one-and-done. It’s not eat and never eat again. It’s not drink and never drink again. It is the constant, saving presence of Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, “God is with us,” feeding our hunger and satisfying our thirst, offering us again and again and again the bread of life and the cup of new life, the spiritual food that nourishes our souls the way physical food nourishes our bodies. New beginnings come from the outside in, not the inside out.

Look at John 1:12 in this morning’s gospel lesson. There are three biblical steps to a new beginning in John 1:12. “To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” I want you to see the three steps in the three verbs in that sentence: received, believed, to become. The first step in a new beginning is to receive—to receive the constant, saving presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in your life, whether it is for the first time or for the hundredth time to receive—the bread of life and the spring of water gushing up to eternal life. It is God’s initiative, not ours, that opens us to the possibility of a new beginning when we open ourselves to God in Jesus Christ to receive God’s constant, saving presence in our life, guiding, sustaining, directing, correcting us on our way. The first step is to receive.

The second step is to believe. Notice that we don’t receive because we believe. A lot of people have it backwards. A lot of believers and unbelievers alike misrepresent the Christian faith as an act of believing that leads to receiving. From the book of Genesis to the book of Revelation, the Bible could not be more clear that we don’t receive because we believe. We believe because we have received. In Genesis 15:5-6, Abraham received the promise of a future from God: God brought Abraham outside his tent “and said, ‘Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then [God] said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And [Abraham] believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Abraham received, and then he believed. The apostle Paul put it this way in Romans 5:8: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” We all received the promise of salvation in Jesus Christ long before any of us believed it. Believing comes from receiving, not the other way around.

The redemptive new beginning of the Christian faith germinates and takes root and sprouts and grows in the darkness of doubt and sin and guilt and loss and pain and grief and anger and disappointment whenever and wherever we come to the recognition that God has already provided all we need to address the hunger and thirst on our inside, so that when we receive, we believe.

And when we believe, we become. “To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” If grace is about letting go of the past, and truth is about recognizing in the present that nothing less than a new beginning will do, then “the power to become” is the God-given capacity to step into the future of a new beginning with God, in God, for God.

Oddly enough, it just might be that the people who understand best what a new beginning is are those folks among us who play video games. In a video game, there comes a point when the screen is filled by the words, “GAME OVER.” If you want to keep on playing, there’s nothing else to do but to start an entirely new game, begin an entirely new life. A new beginning is a “game over”/“start new game” moment. By the mercy of God, revealed in Jesus the Christ, by grace and truth, any new day can begin a brand new year when you decide to receive, to believe, and to become.

This New Year’s Day can be that day for you. Any day in this new year can be that day for you. The invitation of God in Jesus Christ is open now to you to receive, to believe, and to become.

Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Tilting the Table: The Care and Feeding of Youth

2011-10-27T06:55:00.001-04:00

The Orangeburg Series

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Proverbs 22:6; Luke 2:41-52
October 23, 2011

For most of my adult life, I considered successful parenting to be little more than a crapshoot. It starts as a roll of the dice in the gene pool, and out comes a baby. Sometimes it’s 7 or 11 on the very first roll, and you win. But sometimes it’s 2, 3, or 12, and you “crap out.” (That’s technical terminology for losing on your come-out roll, so don’t get upset with me for thinking I just said something ugly. I didn’t. It’s a technical term.) Sometimes there’s not an immediate win or loss, but you just keep on rolling and rolling—4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10—without winning or losing either one. That’s pretty much how I’ve looked at parenting for most of my adult life. Sometimes you win; sometimes you lose; most of the time you just keep on rolling.

Now, I’m very much aware that the image of a crapshoot for the parenting experience doesn’t line up especially well with the famous biblical proverb of fail-safe parenting, “Bring children up in the way they should go, and when they are grown they will never depart from it.” The problem of course, is that there is no such thing as “fail-safe parenting.”

Almost every one of us could identify an example of an unexplainable parenting failure: “How did that child from this family turn out so poorly?” “Those parents brought that child up in the way she should go, but she sure departed from it.” Most of us could also identify at least one unexplainable parenting success as in “How did this child turn out so well from that family?” “Those parents did nothing to bring him up in the way he should go, but he found it anyway.” The biblical proverb is not prescription for fail-safe parenting. There’s no such thing. Instead, it is a description of tilting the table, tipping the odds, in a young person’s favor for turning out well.

Now, you might think that by speaking of “tilting the table” that I’m using yet another unsavory image of a game of chance, and maybe I am. But let me tell you where that image comes from in my family. I first heard it at the dining room table in my maternal grandparents’ home when one evening at dinner I asked for a second helping of meatloaf and mashed potatoes and more gravy, please. And as my grandfather reached for the gravy boat, he said, “Tilt the table toward Jeffrey.” They didn’t tilt it literally, mind you; but here came the meatloaf and the mashed potatoes and the gravy all in my direction. And my grandmother added the green-bean casserole for good measure, even though I hadn’t asked for that. Over the years, I heard the expression many more times, and in retrospect, it was about the time the grandsons hit their preteen and teen years that the table started to tilt toward them. “Tilting the table,” then, is about seeing to it that young people are nourished and fed by what they need to grow into the healthy, strong, and faithful adults that God has created and called them to be.

What if I told you that it is possible to significantly reduce the likelihood that young people will engage in high-risk behavior such as problem alcohol use, violence, illicit drug use, and sexual activity? What if I told you it’s not a crap-shoot at all, that in fact we can reduce those behaviors among our young people to single-digit incidences—3% on problem alcohol use, 6% on violence, 1% on illicit drug use, 3% on teen sexual activity. Would you be interested? Every one of us would. The handout in this morning’s order of worship provides a blue-print for tilting the table, for tipping the odds, for feeding and nourishing young people with the social and emotional and spiritual diet they need to avoid negative behaviors and engage in positive behaviors such as succeeding in school, maintaining good health, exhibiting leadership, and valuing diversity.

Search Institute, which produced this free handout has studied more than 2 million young people and children since it was founded in 1990. Search Institute has found that in bringing up youth and children, there are statistically reliable outcomes based on 40 different inputs or “developmental assets,” as they call them. Search Institute research shows that a young person who accumulates 31 or more of these 40 assets reaches a statistical “tipping point,” if you will, toward the avoidance of high-risk behavior and engagement in positive behavior. Unfortunately, the data also show that only 8% of youth and children reach the number of 31 or more that tips them statistically in the right direction. But we can do better than 8%. We can do a lot better than 8%.

That’s why this morning’s sermon comes with a homework assignment for the adults and the youth among us. What I want you to do is to take this insert home with you. Adults, your assignment is to identify which of these assets you can see that each of your children or your grandchildren or your First Baptist youth and children have available to them as they are growing up. Mark them and count them up. And then begin to identify which assets they don’t have that you might be able to help bring to bear in their lives to get them to 31 or more. I want you to look at how you can do that in your family and in your church, and when you’ve finished in your family and your church, move on to your neighborhood and to Orangeburg at large.

Youth, I want you to mark on this page which of these assets you have now, and then I want you to circle the ones you don’t have that you could add either by your own effort or by getting other people to help you in order to get to 31 or more. If you want help, sit down with your parents or your grandparents or your minister or your teacher or a friend and talk about which ones you have and which ones you don’t have and which ones together you could add to your assets.

At Search Institute's website, each of the 40 developmental assets is accompanied by a link to a pull-down menu titled “Take Action” that suggests practical things you can do to cultivate that asset. We can tilt the table, tip the odds, in favor of our young people avoiding negative behaviors and engaging in positive behaviors.

Nowhere in the Bible is tilting the table any better illustrated than in this morning’s gospel lesson. The parents of Jesus leave Jerusalem for their home in Nazareth assuming that their preteen son is in the company of family, friends and neighbors who had traveled together from Nazareth to Jerusalem for the annual Passover festival. A day’s journey later, we read, they realize that he is nowhere to be found among the villagers from Nazareth. Can’t you just hear the panic and the accusatory tone in the parents’ questions to each other: “I thought he was with you!” “Well, I thought you had him!” “Some father you are, Joseph, losing your own son!” “Me? My son? Holy Mary, Mother of God, how could you not know where he is?” So, in a panic, Mary and Joseph rush back to Jerusalem to find Jesus of all places “in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.”

What mother or father among us has not at least thought the question that Mary asks her son in v 48: “Child, why have you treated us like this?” And what parent hasn’t heard back some variation or another on what sounds like a typical preteen, self-possessed, smart-aleck answer, “Don’t you know I must be about my Father’s business?” If I were Joseph, right about then I’d want to throttle him even if he was the son of God.

The first thing we should see in this amusing—and for parents, terrifying—little episode in Scripture is that Mary and Joseph are not trying to bring up their youngster all alone. They are bringing him up in the company of a “group of travelers,” verse 44 says, an entourage composed of “relatives and friends.” Mary and Joseph are surrounded in their parenting by people whom they trust enough to know that their child is just as well off with them as with themselves. This morning’s gospel lesson illustrates the point that it takes more than parents to rear a child successfully.

When I was in high school, my mother would routinely infuriate me on Saturday mornings when she would ask—as though entirely innocently—some question like, “How was your pizza last night?” “Pizza?” I would say. “What pizza?” “At the Village Inn Pizza Parlor. How was your pizza?” “Who told you I was at the Village Inn last night?” And she would always answer, “Oh, a little bird told me.” It’s probably no coincidence that the only kind of hunting I’ve ever done in my life is bird-hunting. Shotgun in hand, I’ve gone after those feathered fiends in retribution for all the surveillance and intelligence they provided my mother.

Search Institute research shows that a young person who “receives support from three or more nonparent adults” has an asset that contributes to the likelihood that she or he will avoid negative behaviors and engage in positive ones. It’s asset #3 in your handout. It doesn’t say anything about surveillance, but it does say that having at least three supportive nonparent adults in a young person’s life—a teacher or coach who takes a special interest in them, a minister, a choir director, an uncle or aunt, a Sunday School teacher, a mentor—tilts the table in the direction of a positive behavioral outcome for a young person. Never underestimate how important it may be in the life of a young person when you take a supportive interest in a young person’s life as a non-parent adult. Let me put it this way: you have no business grousing and complaining about how bad today’s youth are if you aren’t doing anything about it by supporting, befriending, coaching, teaching, or mentoring a young person or two.

In this morning’s gospel lesson there are adults who allow a preteen boy to sit with them and listen to them, and they listen to his questions, and they listen to his answers (Luke 2:46-47). You can talk about the miracles in the Bible all you want, but that may be one of the biggest miracles of all time right there: adults who actually spend time with a preteen child not their own talking with him and listening to him. It’s not surprising that Jesus of Nazareth is said to have “increased in wisdom as he increased in years,” surrounded as he was by adult relatives and friends of his parents and by teachers who took an interest in him.

A second thing that can tilt the table is regular participation in a religious community. Luke 2:41-42 tells us, “Every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival.” Now, we can’t tell from this passage how involved Mary and Joseph were in the life of the synagogue back home in Nazareth. Luke 4:16 tells us that when Jesus was an adult, it was his weekly “custom” to attend synagogue, so it makes sense to think that Mary and Joseph had taught him that by taking him there weekly when he was young.

Search Institute research shows that being regularly and actively engaged in a religious community is a developmental asset. It’s asset #19 on your handout. More specifically, though, the religious-community asset entails that a “young person spends one or more hours per week in activities in a religious institution.” Notice that the asset says, “spends one or more hours per week.” Not one or two a month. Not one or two a fall or winter or spring or summer. Not one or two a year. That’s not an asset. That’s a flirtation. The research suggests that engagement in a religious community rises to the level of an asset when it reaches “one or more hours [or times] a week.” That’s one of the 31-out-of-40 assets that young people need to tilt the table in a positive direction, and it shows up in Luke 2.

One more. Look at asset #39: “Sense of purpose: Young person reports that ‘my life has a purpose.’” That brings us back to Jesus’ question to his parents: Did you not know “that I must be about my Father’s business?” as the King James Version translates it. Jesus’ parents did not understand what he meant by that, verse 50 tells us, but Luke 2 suggests that as a youngster, Jesus had a sense of purpose in his life, a sense of a calling on his life. Whether they realized it or not, Jesus’ parents and his synagogue and his relatives and his parents’ friends and his hometown of Nazareth had planted and cultivated in him the seed of a sense of purpose and calling in his life that is one of the 31 out of 40 developmental assets that tip a young person’s life in a positive direction.

When young people in the youth ministry of First Baptist Orangeburg identify and explore their gifts, when they are introduced to and nurtured in God’s call on their lives, the table is tilted toward them: the spiritual and emotional and psychological equivalents of meatloaf and mashed potatoes and gravy and green-bean casserole—are all coming to them. In fact, no institution or agency in all of contemporary American society provides as many or as wide a range of opportunities for youth to expand and enhance their developmental assets as a church like First Baptist Orangeburg does. Just look down that list of assets and think about at the things we provide and teach through the youth ministry and wider ministries of this church.

Under “Support,” I’ve already mentioned #3: “Other adult relationships.” Under “Empowerment:” #7: “Community values youth.” #8: “Youth as resources.” #9: “Service to others.” Under “Boundaries and Expectations,” #14: “Adult Role Models.” (Now, I’ve been around churches long enough to know that not every adult in church can be classified as an “adult role model,” but plenty of you can be!) Under “Constructive Use of Time,” #17: “Creative activities” such as children’s choir, #18: “Youth programs” such as Wednesday and Sunday evenings, #19: “Religious community” such as Sunday mornings an hour or more a week.

Look at the “Positive Values” list. Those are biblical and gospel values, folks: #26: “Caring,” #27: “Equality and social justice,” #28: “Integrity,” #29: “Honesty,” #30: “Responsibility,” #31: “Restraint.” We teach those things in spades around here. Under “Social Competencies,” #33: the “Interpersonal competence” of “empathy, sensitivity, and friendship skills.” #34: “Cultural Competence.” Sarah mentioned that developmental asset as something she had gotten from the student ministry here when she introduced the video: “Young person has knowledge of and comfort with people of different cultural/racial/ethnic backgrounds.” #35: “Resistance skills”; #36: “Peaceful conflict resolution.” Under “Positive Identity,” at the very least, #39: “Sense of purpose.” Without even stretching, we can identify 19 out of the 31 assets needed to reach the tipping point that turns young people away from negative behaviors and toward positive behaviors. Through our youth ministry and music ministry and missions ministry and educational ministry, along with the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are delivering proven developmental assets to young people.

Now, remember, even for an entire church, there’s no such thing as fail-safe parenting. And it’s our responsibility as parents to get our young people here where they can develop their assets, whether they want to come or not. When our young people get up on Monday morning and say, “I don’t feel like going to school today,” we parents typically say, “You know, I don’t feel like going to work today either. Let’s just stay home.” That’s what we say on Monday morning, isn’t? So why is that exactly what we say on Sunday morning? Excuse me, that’s not parenting; that’s behaving like a teenager instead of an adult. When we exercise our parental responsibility and see to it that our youngsters are where they need to be, the ministries of First Baptist Orangeburg are delivering multiple developmental assets to them.

All those years I had it wrong. It’s not a crap-shoot at all. It’s true that there are unexplainable failures and unexplainable successes. But it is also true that you and I and all of us together can tilt the table toward our young people to feed and nourish and cultivate them to grow into the healthy, strong, and faithful adults that God has created and called them to be. Adults, you have your homework assignment. Youth, you have your homework assignment. Take it home with you and do it. It’s passing the meatloaf and the mashed potatoes and gravy and the green-bean casserole. It’s tilting the table toward our youth. Let’s do it so that they too will increase “in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.”

Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

The Sending Church: A Biblical Mandate

2011-10-17T17:30:00.000-04:00

The Orangeburg Series

Readers of past posts may recognize sermons in this series. To anyone who may be disappointed to see a "rerun," I apologize. I dare say, however, that for a preacher, revisiting familiar sermonic ground is as delightful an experience as a walk in a familiar wood or a stroll on a favorite beach. (Click on the pic to visit the church's website.)

October 16, 2011
Genesis 12:1-3; Luke 10:1-11,16-20

There are all kinds of churches in the landscape of American Christianity. There are large churches and small churches. There are country churches and city churches. There are old churches and new churches. There are high-church “smells-and-bells” churches, and there are low-church “meet-and-greet” churches. All kinds of churches.

Years ago, my friend and my former boss at Furman University, A.V. Huff, Jr., a South Carolina historian by trade and a Methodist minister by calling told me the story of a Furman student who came to him for counsel. The student felt called to the ministry, but he also felt confused about what kind of church he was being called to. He told A.V. that he was wrestling with whether to remain Methodist, as he had grown up, or to become Episcopalian, as he had been introduced to by friends and a favorite professor while at Furman. The young man had done his homework, and he laid out for A.V. the argument that he was having with himself over Methodist and Episcopalian theology and ecclesiology and which was better.

When he finished his lengthy monologue on the merits of being Methodist and the merits of being Episcopalian, he finally asked A.V., “How do you decide which way to go on a question as important as this one is?” To which A.V. responded, “It’s very simple, actually. You need to decide whether you want to spend the rest of your life going to pot-luck suppers or going to cocktail parties.” There are pot-luck-supper churches and there are cocktail-party churches. There are all kinds of churches in the landscape of American Christianity.

Not so long ago, it was enough to identify churches by their middle name: First Baptist Church, First Presbyterian Church, St. Andrews United Methodist Church, Holy Trinity Catholic Church, and so on. These days, there are still “middle-name churches,” churches for whom their identity is primarily defined by their denominational brand. The most important thing to those churches is that they are Lutheran, or they are Episcopalian or they are Baptist. It used to be that knowing a church’s middle name was enough to know what kind of church it was. But times have changed.

The landscape of American Christianity has shifted dramatically over the last 40 years, and among the most dramatic shifts is a decrease in the importance of middle names when people are looking at a church. These days, people choose a church less for its form and more for its function. People are looking less at middle names and more at missions. If we look at functions instead of forms, if we look at missions instead of middle names, we could say that along with “middle-name churches,” there are four other types of churches these days.

In addition to the middle-name church, there is the “member church.” The primary function of a “member church” is the care and feeding of the people who have signed up to be members. You can always tell a member church by the way the people in it introduce themselves. “Hi, I’m Bob. I’ve been a member here 42 years.” “My name is Alice. I’ve been a member here 11 years.” People in member churches don’t identify themselves by the ministries and the missions they are engaged in through their church. They don’t introduce themselves by saying things such as, “I sing in the choir” [on the praise team], or “I teach children’s Sunday School,” or “I work in the soup kitchen,” or “I volunteer at the FLC.” The most important thing in a member church is how long it’s been since you signed up for the care and feeding of the member church.

Middle-name churches and member churches have been around for a long time. A third type of church was introduced to the American religious landscape about 40 years ago. It’s called a “seeker church.” The seeker church was originally developed in the 1970s as an evangelistic tool to reach a particular group of people whom observers of American religious life call “seekers.” “Seekers” are people who are seeking spiritual fulfillment but who haven’t found it in middle-name churches or member churches. Seeker churches were designed to attract people with no previous experience in the great and lasting traditions of the Christian faith. Seeker churches were created to provide an “entry-level” Christianity that contemporary unbelievers could understand and be comfortable with. A seeker church is not designed for people who have already found Christ and profess the Christian faith but to attract unbelievers who are still searching. The seeker church.

A fourth type of church is the “disciple church.” Disciple churches are designed primarily to teach and equip—or “disciple”—people who have already found Christ. Disciple churches focus on turning people who have professed the Christian faith into people who understand and live by the Christian faith that they have professed. The worship of disciple churches is designed to nurture believers in traditions that are centuries old, to turn believers into followers of Jesus. Disciple churches are essentially “program” churches. They offer “programs” in Christian Education and Spiritual Formation and Faith Development, Bible studies and book studies and denominational studies and all manner of things to help people who have professed faith to understand their faith and live by their faith. The disciple church.

There is a fifth type of church in the American landscape that I’m going to call the “sending church.” The biblical mandate for the “sending church” is found, among other places, in the mission of the seventy in the tenth chapter of the gospel according to Luke. If you look at the beginning of Luke 10, what you see first are verbs of sending and going. Verse 1 tells us that Jesus “sent them,” apesteilen in Greek. The English word “apostle,” which means “one who is sent” on a mission on behalf of someone else, comes from the same root word as the verb apesteilen, Jesus sent them. In verse 2, Jesus says to the 70, “ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers,” “send out,” ekbale in Greek. Ekbale means to “throw,” “to cast,” to sling ’em out there. Then in verse 3, Jesus says, “Go on!” “Go!” “Scram!” And then he says, “I am sending you,” apostello. It’s the “apostle”-word again, one who is sent on a mission on behalf of someone else. Four times in three verses: “send,” “throw,” “go,” “send.” It doesn’t look as though Jesus is trying to draw a crowd or maintain a crowd; it looks as though Jesus is in the business of sending a crowd.

In fact, sending looks to be the business of God from the book of Genesis on. In Genesis 12:1, the call of Abraham, “the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go!’” “‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.’” God whom we worship and serve has always been a sending God. Do you remember last Sunday’s OT lesson from Isaiah 6:1-8, our model for the drama of worship, in which God asks, “Whom shall I send? And who will go?” Those of you who were in the Bible study on the book of Exodus last Wednesday evening will remember God saying to Moses at the burning bush, “I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt” (Exodus 3:10). God whom we worship and serve has always been a sending God.

So it stands to reason that if First Baptist Orangeburg is in the business, as it were, of “building a community that glorifies God and reflects Jesus Christ,” as the mission statement of this congregation says, then we, too, must be in the business of sending. Not just middle-naming. Not just membering. Not just seeking. Not just discipling. But sending also.

I want us to look this morning at the “mission of the seventy” in Luke 10 as a biblical mandate for a sending church. The first thing to see about this biblical mandate is that a sending church has a global vision of its mission. Why are there “70”? Why not 64? Why not 36? Why not 120? Why 70? Over the centuries of Christian interpretation of the gospel of Luke, there have been a variety of proposals to explain the number 70. Here’s the one I think fits Luke’s gospel best. Way back in Genesis 10 after the great flood, we read that the descendants of Noah spread abroad “in their lands, with their own language, by their families, in their nations” (Genesis 10:5,20,31). “These are the families of Noah’s sons,” says Genesis 10:32, “according to their genealogies, in their nations; and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood.” And guess how many families there are in Genesis 10? That’s right: 70. The number 70 in Luke 10 points back to all the families of the earth in Genesis 10.

Now look at what the Lord says to Abram in Genesis 12:3 when God calls and sends Abram: “In you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Abraham is sent to bless and to be a blessing to “all the families of the earth.” Now look at what Jesus tells the seventy that they are to do first when they go out. “Whatever house you enter,” Jesus says, “first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’” Speak shalom to it, Jesus says (Luke 10:5). Before you know anything about the household, good, bad, or indifferent, says Jesus, pronounce a blessing upon it: “The peace of God be to this house!” Just like the mission of Abraham who was to be a blessing to all the families of the earth, the mission of the followers of Jesus is to pronounce a blessing on every household to which they come: “The peace of God be with you.” The sending of the seventy, like the sending Abraham, is a global vision of blessing to all the families of the earth. That’s the global vision of a sending church that is mandated in Luke 10.

The second thing to see about this biblical mandate is that a sending church has a holistic vision of the gospel. A holistic vision. In verse 9, Jesus instructs the seventy to do two things: cure the sick and proclaim the gospel. Jesus says, “cure the sick who are there” and then Jesus says, say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” Jesus tells his followers to meet both the physical needs—cure the sick—and meet the spiritual needs—proclaim the good news—both of them. Not just one of them. Both of them. That’s the great both/and of Jesus. The sending church both proclaims the gospel and feeds the hungry, gives a drink to thirsty, clothes the naked, welcomes the stranger, cares for sick, and visits the imprisoned (Matthew 25:31-46). The great both/and of Jesus, is the holistic vision of the sending church mandated in Luke 10.

This morning while the offering was being collected, we saw a video that highlights the missions efforts of this church. It highlighted ways in which this congregation responds to Jesus’ mandate in Luke 10 to meet the physical and spiritual needs of people outside these four walls. That’s missions. The root meaning of our English word “mission” is “to send.” Instead of coming from the Greek verb apostello as in apostle, it comes from the Latin verb mittere, “to send,” and the Latin noun missio, “the act of sending”; and it’s exactly the word that is used in the Vulgate, the great Latin translation of Luke 10: “I am sending you.” “I am giving you a mission,” Jesus says. If Luke 10 is any indication, being sent—missions—is at the heart of the church. Show me a church without a heart for missions, and I’ll show you a church on life support. Show me a church without a heartbeat for missions, and I’ll show you a church without a pulse.

There’s nothing wrong with being proud our middle name, and there is every good reason to teach and to learn and to cultivate in the world this congregation’s great old General Baptist understanding of the gospel that is grounded in John 3:16, that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever [whosoever, mind you!] believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Our middle name says, “whosoever will,” and that’s a part of our mission. Taking good care of the members of this congregation is a good thing. We come together to be “mutually encouraged by each other’s faith,” as Paul says in Romans 1:12, and to “encourage one another and build up each other,” as he says in 1 Thessalonians 5:11. Care for our members is a part of our mission. Certain parts of this congregation’s worship and its ministry are specifically designed to communicate to seekers—unbelievers—and engage them in the gospel of Jesus Christ in ways they can understand and connect to. That’s a good thing. It’s part of our mission. Various programs of this church are designed to disciple: to teach, to equip, and to empower believers to understand and live the faith that we profess. That’s a part of our mission.

But Luke 10 reminds us on this morning of missions emphasis that following Jesus means not just gathering here and drawing people in but being sent out into the world to share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ by addressing both physical and spiritual needs of people to whom God sends us. Jesus said, “I am sending you out.” “Go!” “Go on!” “Scram!” “Get out there!”

Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Showing Up: Worship as the First Work of the Faithful

2011-10-09T17:15:00.000-04:00

The Orangeburg Series

October 9, 2011
Isaiah 6:1-8; Romans 12:1-2

One book in the New Testament has been responsible for more revolutions, reformations, revivals, and conversions than any other book in the history of the Christian faith.

For example, in September of the year 386, a young professor of rhetoric at the university of Milan sat despondently in a garden. Through tears of frustration at his confusion over the character and quality his life—or the lack thereof—he read the verses, “Let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, nor in quarrelling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” The young professor wrote this about his encounter with those verses: “No further would I read, nor had I any need; instantly, at the end of this sentence, a clear light flooded my heart and all the darkness of doubt vanished away.” His name was Augustine, and he went on from that experience in the garden to became the first great theologian of the Christian faith—and a saint, no less.

Fast-forward to the early 1500s. An Augustinian monk and university professor was reading the same New Testament book and struggling with a particular expression in it: the “righteousness of God.” He wrote, “Night and day I pondered until . . . I grasped the truth that the righteousness of God is that righteousness whereby, through grace and sheer mercy, [God] justifies us by faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before ‘the righteousness of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage . . . became to me a gateway to heaven.” From reading this book, Martin Luther launched the Protestant Reformation and changed the course of the history of the Christian church.

One more example. Two hundred years after Luther, on an evening in May in 1738, an Englishman in his 30s sat in a church on Aldersgate Street in London and listened to the Preface to Luther’s commentary on this book read out loud. He wrote in his journal about that evening: “About a quarter before nine, while [Luther’s Preface] was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for my salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken my sins away, even mine; and saved me from the law of sin and death.” From this “Aldersgate conversion” in which his “heart felt strangely warmed,” John Wesley went on to found the Christian movement that became the Methodist church, and once again this one book was responsible for a revolutionary new course in Christian faith and practice.

It is no wonder that the great British New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce wrote in the introduction to his commentary, “There is no telling what may happen when people begin to study the Epistle to the Romans.” Paul’s letter to the Romans is responsible for more revolutions, reformations, revivals, and conversions than any other book in the history of the Christian faith.

This morning, we’re only looking at two verses from Romans, but as we saw in the case of Augustine, it only took two verses to put a university professor on the road to sainthood! So “there is no telling what may happen,” even if we read only two verses. Romans 12:1-2 mark a new beginning in the book. In chapters 1-11, the apostle Paul lays out great ideas of the Christian faith: the righteousness of God, justification by faith, the nature of sin, the nature of grace, the nature of the gospel, the work of Jesus Christ in salvation, and many more. But in Romans 12:1-2, Paul turns from great ideas to great and faithful living in the light of those great ideas. After all, what good are great ideas if you don’t put them into practice? That’s what Paul calls us to do beginning in Romans 12:1: put the faith we profess into practice.

According to Paul, putting the faith we profess into practice begins with worship. “I appeal to . . . you, brothers and sisters, . . . to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” So the first work of the faithful is worship. We gather in this place in the morning of every first day of the week to worship God, because in our work-week, as it were, our first work is worship.

Maybe you’ve heard the conventional wisdom that “90% of success is just showing up.” “90% of success is just showing up.” I have to admit that I usually consider that statement not conventional wisdom but conventional stupidity. It takes a whole lot more to succeed than just showing up. But this morning, at the risk of attracting the ire of preachers and pastors and teachers and employers the world over, I’m going to endorse the conventional stupidity that “90% of success is just showing up.”

Here’s why. First, if you don’t show up, you can’t possibly succeed, so “just showing up” is in fact the foundation for success. Second, the first thing the apostle Paul says when he turns from talking about great theological ideas to talk about great and faithful living is “prez-ent your bodies.” Prez-ent. Be there. Now, I know as well as you do that the correct pronunciation is “pre-zent.” But you cannot pre-zent anything if you are not prez-ent.

When it comes to worship, the common stupidity turns out to be pretty wise. 90% is prez-enting “your body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Congratulations. You are 90% there just by being here. If you are listening on the radio because you can’t get here, you are 90% here by being there where you can participate by hearing. But none of us, no matter where we are, is where we need to be yet.

But before we move on from where we are to where we need to be, let’s take a moment to look at here. I cannot tell you how important it is to see and to understand that according to Paul we don’t come to worship “to get something out of it.” We come to worship to give something to God. The something we come to worship to give to God is ourselves: “present your body as a living sacrifice . . . to God.” If you came to worship this morning in order to get something out of it, then you came here putting yourself ahead of God, and that’s idolatry. When God said in the Ten Commandments, “You shall have no other gods before me,” that includes the god of self who comes to worship thinking that worship is about what I get out of it instead of about what I give to God first, foremost, and forever.

In a famous description of worship that I’m sure you’ve heard before but that we can’t hear often enough, the great Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard characterized worship as a play on a stage with actors, prompters, and an audience. The actors in the drama of worship are everyone in the congregation gathered to “exalt God” as the mission statement of this congregation says of worship. You are the actors in worship prez-enting and pre-zenting “your bodies as living sacrifices . . . to God.” That’s what you are doing right now. The leaders in worship—the preacher, the praise team or the choir, the deacons, the ushers, whoever reads Scripture or leads in prayer—are all merely prompters, people whose job is to prompt you the actors as you act out your part and deliver your lines for the audience who is God. The music that is sung or played in worship is not sung or played for us as though we were the audience. It is sung and played as an offering to God who is the audience. The sermon is not offered to you for your approval or disapproval. The sermon is offered to God for God’s approval or disapproval and as a prompt—a prompt for you to respond to God by offering yourself to God.

Look at the drama of worship in Isaiah 6 that we heard read this morning. If you have a Bible with you, open it to Isaiah 6. In Isaiah 6, the prophet Isaiah is present for worship in the temple in Jerusalem—Isaiah has done his 90%. But the more import presence than the presence of Isaiah in the temple is the presence of God: Isaiah “saw the Lord, sitting on a throne, high and lifted up,” verse 1 says. The audience—God—is present, and the drama of worship begins in v 3 with the praise of God in a Hebrew praise chorus: qadosh qadosh qadosh adonai tzebaoth melo’ kol ha’aretz kebodo, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” That song of praise wasn’t sung for Isaiah; Isaiah wasn’t the audience. It was sung for God; God is the audience and the object of praise in worship.

The praise of God in verse 3 is followed by a confession of sin in verse 5: “Woe is me,” says Isaiah, “I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” Any time we catch even the slightest glimpse of the holiness and the glory of God we cannot help but recognize our own unholiness. But by God’s mercy and by God’s grace, “If we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” as 1 John 1:9 says. And so the confession of sin in Isaiah 6:5 is followed by the forgiveness of sin in verse 8: “your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out,” Isaiah is told.

After praise and confession and forgiveness, worship continues with a word from God, in this case, a question that is a call: “Whom shall I send, and who will go?” comes the word. And worship is not complete until the worshippers respond: “Here am I! Send me!” Isaiah answers in response to the word that he has heard. Praise. Confession of sin. Assurance of forgiveness. Proclamation of the word. Response to the word. That’s the movement of the drama of worship, and 90% of it is getting yourself here on stage to play your part for God. Congratulations! But even if showing up is 90% of success, it’s only 90% of success; and the other 10% makes all the difference.

Look at verse 2 of Romans 12: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” The other 10% is being changed by God, being “transformed,” being renewed, being revolutionized, being reformed, being revived, being converted. Did you come here to be changed today? Did you come here to be transformed, renewed, revolutionized, reformed, revived, converted? I did. I walked into this room to offer myself to God—that’s the 90%—and I walked into this room to be transformed, re-formed, re-newed, revived, converted by God—that’s the 10%, the difference that makes a difference in my life and yours.

When we give ourselves over to God as a living sacrifice, God never fails to give our selves back to us, changed, converted, revived, renewed, re-formed, transformed, in the direction of God’s will, which Paul defines as “what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Remember what F.F. Bruce said: “There is no telling what may happen when people begin to study the Epistle to the Romans”? Well, there’s also no telling what may happen when people begin to worship, when people begin to prez-ent and pre-zent themselves, body and mind, “as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God.” Because when we do, God changes us.

I don’t happen to know what kind of change needs to happen in your life this morning. Maybe you are like Augustine, disappointed or despondent in the character and quality of your life, and you need an entirely new direction, a fresh new start. What you need this morning is for “clear light” to flood your “heart and all the darkness of doubt” to vanish away. Maybe you are like Luther, struggling with something that just doesn’t makes sense to you. And what you need is to feel yourself “reborn . . . so that the very thing that is filling you with confusion or pain or anger or hate can become to you “a gateway to heaven.” Maybe you are like Wesley, needing your heart to feel “strangely warmed” by the assurance that Christ has taken your sins away, even yours.” Maybe the change that needs to happen in your life this morning is not Augustine’s or Luther’s or Wesley’s or anyone else’s, and maybe only you and God know what it is. You are 90% of the way there just by being here.

Open yourself now to the other 10%, and ask God here and now for the revolution, the transformation, the reformation, the renewal, the revival, or the conversion that you need. 90% of success is showing up. The other 10% is opening up: opening yourself up to God to be changed today and every Lord’s Day in worship.

Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Bread of Life

2011-10-03T15:23:00.005-04:00

The Orangeburg Series

October 2, 2011
John 6:22-35,47-51

Have you ever been hungry? Have you ever experienced that gnawing feeling eating at you because you haven’t eaten? Every one of us has been hungry at one time or another. Some people are hungry on a regular basis. According to the most recent comprehensive study of hunger in America, “one in six Americans. . . . cannot make ends meet and are forced to go without food for several meals, or even days.” Fifty 50 million Americans—33 million adults and 17 million children experience hunger regularly.

In the New Testament, all four gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—tell us that one part of Jesus’ earthly ministry was feeding the hungry. Again and again in the gospels, Jesus is said to have had compassion for the people he saw. He had compassion for people who were sick (Matthew 14:14) and compassion for people who were blind (Matthew 20:34) and compassion for people who were grieving (Luke 7:13) and compassion for people who were “harassed and helpless” (Matthew 9:36); and he had compassion, we are told, for people who were hungry (Matthew 15:32; Mark 8:2), and he fed them.

The good folk of First Baptist Orangeburg who gather on Thursdays to prepare and serve a hot meal to anyone in need, “anyone” numbering anywhere 125 to 175 people a week, are continuing the ministry of Jesus by feeding the hungry. And so do the good folk of First Baptist Orangeburg who gather in this space at 8:45 and 11:00 on Sunday mornings for the worship of God. “One does not live by bread alone” (Luke 4:4), Jesus said, quoting the book of Deuteronomy (8:3). Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6): blessed are those who hunger and thirst for right relationship with God and right relationship with the people around them.

You see, Jesus recognized that there is a spiritual hunger and there is a spiritual thirst that are every bit as real and powerful as physical hunger and physical thirst. And that’s why the meal-plan at First Baptist Orangeburg offers physical food on Wednesday evenings and Thursdays afternoons and spiritual food on Sundays.

In chapter 6 of the gospel according to John, the day after Jesus satisfied the physical hunger of a large crowd of people who were following him, the conversation turns from physical bread to spiritual bread. In verse 27, Jesus says to those who have come looking for him on the day after the feeding, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.” “For the bread of God,” Jesus says, “is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” Those who had come looking for him “said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’ Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty’” (vv 33-35).

As is always the case in the gospel of John, a conversation about something physical shifted gears to become a conversation about something spiritual. So, have you ever been spiritually hungry? Have you ever experienced that gnawing feeling eating at you because you haven’t been fed, because you haven’t eaten? Maybe you’re hungry now, and not just because you didn’t eat breakfast this morning, but because you are hungering and thirsting for something deeper than food and more satisfying than a drink. If so, you’ve come to the right place.

This table is set for those who hunger and thirst. On this table is the bread of life for you. On this table is the cup of new life for you. Just as this congregation prepares a meal and sets a table for “anyone in need” for the physically hungry in this community on Thursdays, so also this congregation prepares a meal and sets a table for “anyone in need” for the spiritually hungry in this community on Sundays. It’s the bread of life for you and for the world.

The legendary preacher Fred Craddock tells the story of the first church he served as pastor in the hills of east Tennessee, not far from a sleepy little hamlet called Oak Ridge. In the 1940s, when Craddock was pastor there, Oak Ridge, TN, suddenly became one of the leading centers of work on the Manhattan Project, the now famous code name for the U.S. government’s operation to develop the atomic bomb. Almost overnight, says Craddock, “that little bitty town became a booming city. Every hill and every valley and every shady grove had recreational vehicles and trucks and things like that. People came in from everywhere and pitched tents, lived in wagons. Hard hats from everywhere, with their families and children paddling around in the mud in those trailer parks, lived in everything temporary to work.”

The church Craddock pastored met in a beautiful little white frame building over a hundred years old. “It had beautifully decorated chimneys, kerosene lamps all around the walls, and every pew in this little church was hand hewn from a giant poplar tree.” After church one Sunday morning, Craddock asked the leaders of the congregation to stay, and he said to them, “We need to launch a calling campaign and an invitational campaign in all those trailer parks to invite those people to church.” “Oh, I don’t know,” one leader said. “I don’t think they’d fit in here.” Another said, “They’re just here temporarily, just construction people. They’ll be leaving pretty soon.” “Well, we ought to invite them, make them feel at home,” Craddock said. They debated the matter, he says, and time ran out. They said they’d come and vote the next Sunday.

The next Sunday, they all sat down after the service. “I move,” said one of them, “that in order to be a member of this church, you must own property in this county.” Someone else said, “I second that.” It passed. I voted against it, Craddock says, but they reminded me that I was just a kid preacher and I didn’t have a vote.”

Decades later, after Craddock and his wife Nettie retired to north Georgia, they took a ride one morning north to Tennessee to see if they could find that little church for which Craddock still held such fond and painful memories. The roads had changed. The interstate now goes through that part of the country, so he had a hard time finding the way, but he finally did. He found the state road, the county road, and the little gravel road. Then there, back among the pines, was that little building shining white. The parking lot was full—motorcycles and trucks and cars packed in there. And out front, there was a great big sign: Barbecue, all you can eat. It was a restaurant, so they went inside.

The pews were pushed against a wall. There were electric lights, and the old pump organ was pushed over into the corner. There were aluminum and plastic tables, and people sitting there eating barbecued pork and chicken and ribs—all kinds of people, lots of different people from lots of different walks of life and lots of different places. In the course of the meal together, Craddock said quietly to his wife Nettie, “It’s a good thing this is not still a church; otherwise these people couldn’t be in here.”

The church is not a private dining club in which the food and drink are prepared for property-owners only, members only The meal plan of this congregation is the banquet of God in Luke 14 to which everyone is invited, the hungry, the thirsty, the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind— physically and spiritually alike.

Whatever your grief, whatever your fear, whatever your loss, whatever your need, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6). That’s nothing less than a promise of God, and that’s why if you come here with a gnawing feeling eating at you, you have come to the right place. Because here is the bread of life prepared for you. Here is the cup of new life prepared for you.

We’re going to pass it around. We’re going to share it with each other. And we’re going to go from this place to share with the world the good news that when you hunger and thirst, there is bread of life for you and a cup of new life for you. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Let’s eat and drink together.

Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Sing Jesus to Me!

2011-08-22T08:36:00.002-04:00

August 21, 2011

Faith Memorial Chapel

Cedar Mountain, N.C.
John 12:12-26

One afternoon a month or so ago, I was driving through Greenville when the voice of a three-year-old in a car seat behind me chimed out of the blue, “Sing Jesus to me, Daddy!” “Sing Jesus to you?” I asked. “Sing Jesus to me!” he insisted. “How do I ‘sing Jesus’ to you?” I asked him. “You know,” he said, assuming a lot, it seemed to me at the time, “The Bible song.” “Sing Jesus?” “The Bible song?” So I sang what came to mind: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” “Is that it?” I asked. “Yeah, that’s it!” he said. And so I sang it. And when I got to the chorus, he joined in loudly and happily on the only words he knew: “loves me!” “loves me!” “loves me!” And when we finished he said, “Sing it again, Daddy!” And so I did.

And I marveled as I drove and sang that Sunday School teachers in preschool classes for two-year-olds and three-year-olds had created such a positive emotional and spiritual environment that a child who didn’t yet know how to count past five or how to finish his ABC’s—he always gets stuck at “V” for some reason and perpetually recycles “T, U, V . . . H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V . . . H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V . . . H, I, J, K, L,M, N, O, P; it’s an alphabetical loop into infinity, a song that never ends—that child knew enough to ask for “the Bible song”: “Sing Jesus to me!”

I also marveled at how the unexpected song request of a three-year-old expressed the essence of the gospel in a famous passage in the gospel of John, in two books on the message of the gospel that have been published in the last two years, and in the words of a grandfather who died 24 years before he was born.

The more widely-known of the two books was Rob Bell’s runaway bestseller, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. Bell’s book was controversial before it even arrived on bookstore shelves and electronic reading devices. Before its publication, Bell was a darling of American evangelical circles, “one of the nation’s rock-star-popular young pastors,” USA Today called him. He’s not so darling in some circles any more, as his book called into question the traditional teaching of the church about hell as a literal place of eternal damnation. Nothing Bell says is particularly new, at least in liberal Christian circles. What made his book so controversial is that Bell is a card-carrying conservative, an evangelical pastor who came to the conclusion that “the good news” just might be even better news than most evangelicals have been inclined to suppose.

Lost in the public furor over what Bell says about hell is the more important message of what Bell says about the nature of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. The essential message of the gospel, Bell says, is as his title claims, Love Wins. In Jesus Christ, sin and death and hell lose, and we can all sing “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. . . . “Loves me!” “Loves me!” “Loves me!” That’s not just good news; that’s the very best news of all. Sing all you want about heaven; sing all you want about hell. Sing all you want about Trinity; sing all you want about mystery. Sing all you want about about revelation and tribulation and consummation. But above all else, “Sing Jesus to me!” “Loves me!” “Loves me!” “Loves me!” That’s the gospel, and even a three-year-old can know it.

The second book didn’t get nearly as much attention as Rob Bell’s Love Wins. Jesus Manifesto by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola was published last summer to considerably less hoopla and controversy. But in a truly memorable assertion, Sweet and Viola suggest that “the major disease of today’s church is JDD: Jesus Deficit Disorder.” JDD, Jesus Deficit Disorder, is what the church contracts, Sweet and Viola write, when “the person of Jesus” is “replaced by the language of ‘justice,’ ‘morality,’ ‘values,’ and ‘leadership principles.’” Just in case you don’t read the ideological shorthand in the words Sweet and Viola use, Jesus Manifesto is an equal opportunity offender in the contemporary American Christian context.

They spell it out this way: “The body of Christ is at a crossroads right now,” they say. “The two common alternatives are to move either to the left or to the right.” Most “people are frozen,” they write, “as they look in either of those directions. When they look to the left, they decide they cannot venture there. When they look to the right they decide the same. Whether they realize it or not, people are looking for a fresh alternative—a third way.” And that way third way, according to Sweet and Viola is neither left nor right but forward: “this global, Google world,” they write, “needs a meta-narrative more than ever, and the Jesus-Story is the interpreting system of all other systems.” The “Jesus-Story” is the way forward: “Sing Jesus to me.”

This morning’s gospel lesson is most familiar as the story of the triumphal entry, the Palm Sunday narrative. In it, a great crowd has heard that Jesus of Nazareth is coming to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. They are eager to see Jesus because of what they heard that he had done when he raised Lazarus from the dead. So they “took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel!’” On Palm Sunday, that crowd gets all the attention. But several verses later, we are introduced to another set of characters, some “Greeks,” they are called in verse 20, after the Palm Sunday gospel lesson has ended.

We don’t know who, exactly, these “Greeks” might have been, except that they would have been non-Jews. They may have been “God-fearers,” Gentile persons of faith who attached themselves to a synagogue but who declined to submit to the Mosaic dietary restrictions and, in the case of men, circumcision. Or they may have been only “spiritual tourists,” as Max Stackhouse suggests, the first-century equivalent of “new-agers” who were seeking a spiritual fix in the latest religious fad. Whoever they were, the words they say to Philip in verse 21 have become famous in churches.

In churches all over England and in not a few scattered around the states, the words of their request, “Sir, we would see Jesus,” as the King James Version translates it, are carved, engraved, emblazoned, and otherwise displayed on pulpits where the preacher can see them as he or she stands before the congregation. “Sir, we would see Jesus.” Preach all you want about heaven; preach all you want about hell. Preach all you want about Trinity and mystery. Preach all you want about revelation and tribulation and consummation. Preach all you want about “‘justice,’ ‘morality,’ ‘values,’ and ‘leadership principles.’” But above all else, “Preach Jesus,” those pulpits tell the preacher.

The great American preacher Fred Craddock tells the story of how when he was little his family moved from their farm into town when times got too tough to make a living on the land. Not long after they arrived, some women from a nearby church “came to our house and brought a pair of Buster Brown shoes that fit me, and enabled me to start Sunday school—those women didn’t just bring me a pair of shoes. You know what else they brought me? They brought me a picture book of stories about Jesus. I needed those shoes. I really needed those stories,” Craddock said. In this “global, Google world”: the way forward—rather than to the left or to the right—is the Jesus-story. “Sir, we would see Jesus.” “Sing Jesus to me!” “Loves me! “Loves me!” “Loves me!”

Ten years or so ago, as we prepared a missions team to Canada to work with international refugees, among whom there would be many Muslims, we instructed our team members to answer the question of their own religious identity as “I follow Jesus” or “I’m a Jesus-follower.” The term “Christian” among Muslims is a lot like the term “Baptist” among Americans: it’s a religion with a bad reputation. So to side-step the preconceived negatives, we used the name of Jesus instead of the name of a religion. The first time I heard of this rhetorical slight of hand, I confess that I was offended by it. Why should I change how I speak of myself because of someone else’s sensibilities? Never mind that the apostle Paul went so far as to say, “For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all. . . . all for the sake of the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:19,22-23). It’s their problem, not mine, I thought to myself. But the more I thought about it, the more I began to realize that we could all probably do with less Christianity and more Jesus-following.

The widespread distaste of people in our time for so-called “organized religion” is on the one hand a cop-out. Take it from a Baptist who knows: disorganized religion offers no advantages whatsoever. But the popular criticism, on the other hand, is a clear and compelling commentary that Christianity is too much with us and Jesus not enough. “We wish to see Jesus.” “Sing Jesus to me!”

Now, just in case you think I think that’s all there is to it, let’s look back at this morning’s gospel lesson to see what happens next. Because of our expectations of immediate gratification and our genie-in-a-bottle approach to God, we would expect that the Greeks’ request would result in an immediate audience with the Nazarene. “Your wish is my command,” he would say. “What can I do for you today to make your life better?” he would ask. But that’s not what Jesus says at all, is it? Instead, he says, “The hour has come.”

If you have been reading the gospel of John up to this point, 12:23, where Jesus says, “The hour has come,” you know when you hear these words that you have reached a defining moment in the story. For ten chapters, John’s gospel has been telling us that Jesus’ hour had not yet come. “My hour has not yet come,” Jesus says in 2:4. “My time has not yet come,” he says in 7:6. “My time has not yet fully come,” he says in 7:8. “His hour had not yet come,” we read in 7:30 and again in 8:20. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. And then, in 12:23: Now. Now “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

This is the moment that the reader of the gospel of John has been waiting for ever since chapter 2. Finally, it is now; Jesus will be glorified. “King of Kings! And Lord of Lords! Hallelujah!” That’s who the first crowd in this morning’s gospel lesson turned out to see, and that’s the Jesus we want to see. That’s the Jesus we want to sing: “And he shall reign—and so shall we—forever and ever, forever and ever.”

But look at what Jesus says at the defining moment of his ministry in the gospel of John. It begins in verse 24. “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains but a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” His glory is in his dying? “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” In order to keep life, we must lose life? “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.” To see Jesus—to be where Jesus is—we must serve and follow?

It’s no wonder that the crowd who sang, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel!” on Sunday shouted, “Crucify him!” later in the week. When his hour finally came, Jesus did not say what they expected him to say or do what they expected him to do; and instead of reassessing their own expectations, they called for his crucifixion. And when they did, it turned out exactly as Jesus said that it would: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

The apostle Paul recognized Jesus’ defining moment as the stumbling block that it is when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:22-23, “For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified.” In this morning’s gospel lesson, Jews and Greeks alike come out to see Jesus only to have their expectations disappointed and their desire for gratification go ungratified. Because Jesus says it is in dying—not clinging—to life that we bear much fruit. It is in giving—not grasping—that we receive life. It is in serving and following—not lording and leading—that we arrive where Jesus is. If there is a “Jesus Manifesto” for our lives and for the church and for our world in the gospel of John, it is right there in the defining moment of the arrival of the hour that we had been waiting for since chapter 2.

More than 30 years ago, as I was experiencing the church-culture shock of having moved from my high-church Lutheran upbringing into a decidedly revivalistic stream of Baptist life, I wrote to my father who was a Lutheran minister that I was unnerved by the fact that all I was hearing in church was “Jesus”: “Jesus this” and “Jesus that.” “They don’t talk about God; they don’t mention the Holy Spirit. It’s just Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, all the time. I don’t think I’m in a church; I think I’m in a Jesus movement,” I wrote. I fully expected him to affirm my prejudice, but what he wrote back instead was this: “As for being in a Jesus movement, not to worry. I’m a priest in a Christ-cult. A Jesus movement sounds pretty good to me.”

Thirty-six years later, a grandson he never met echoed his grandfather's assertion from a car seat: “Sing Jesus to me, Daddy!” The way forward is neither to the left nor to the right but to the Jesus-story. “I needed those shoes,” Craddock said. “And I really needed those stories.” So do we; so does the church; and so does the “global, Google world.” It’s the story of dying that leads to life, of giving that leads to receiving, and serving and following that leads to where Jesus is. Let’s go forward, shall we?

As you go, may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus now and forever. Amen.

Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Karl Rahner on "The Decisive Moment of My Life"

2011-06-30T07:33:00.006-04:00

Karl Rahner the existentialist (and a very baptist-sounding moment from a Catholic theologian):

"I must stand ever ready and waiting, so that when You open the door to the decisive moment of my life--and maybe You'll do it very quietly and inconspicuously--I shall not be so taken up with the affairs of this world that I miss the one great opportunity to enter into myself and into You. Then in my trembling hands I shall hold 'myself,' that nameless something in which all my powers and qualities are united as in their source, and I shall return this nameless thing to You as an offering of love."

From the chapter "God of My Prayer" in Encounters with Silence (South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine's Press, 1999), p. 24.

Harry F. Stoeckert (1926-2011)

2011-06-25T14:55:00.004-04:00

June 24, 2011

“For everything there is a season,” says the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, “and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.”

Many people read those words in Ecclesiastes 3:1-12 or recognize them when they hear them, but it has occurred to me as I have listened in recent days to Harry stories and Harry-isms that Harry Stoeckert lived them. There is a time to climb up on the roof of the house on Long Island to turn the television antenna toward Connecticut to pull in the blacked-out Giants home games, and there is a time to send Scott up on the roof to turn the television antenna toward Connecticut. There is a time to let Erin come and go as she pleases, grabbing the clean clothes she needs off the stairs as she runs up to change, and a time to tell her she needs to apologize to her mother, show her more respect, and be more responsible for her own upkeep. There is a time to work—two jobs to provide for a family of six—and a time to play Big Shamu and Little Shamus with the grandkids in the pool in Windemere, Florida.

There is a time for war, and a time for peace. You would have thought Harry was a career Navy man for as important as his military service during World War II was to him. The old Navy recruiting slogan, “Join the Navy, see the world,” fit Harry to a T, and he was proud of it. The Navy didn’t take him to tiny Treverton, Pennsylvania, but two days after he was discharged, he arrived there to finally meet the girl he had been corresponding with for two years, the cousin of his buddy Frank. In 1948, he said to Ellen, “What do you think about getting married?” She said, “I never thought about it.” He said, “I think you should start thinking about it,” and it lasted very nearly 63 years through four children, seven grandchildren, and a great-grandchild.

“What a Wonderful World,” indeed, thanks in large part to men like Harry Stoeckert, who served their country well in wartime and in peacetime, and who provided for their families, not only by their hard work and the occasional care packages they received from him but also by their delight in play. (O.K., so maybe those hard-packed snowballs that brought you to your knees when they nailed you in the back of the leg were not so delightful.) But the model of a life well lived that Pop Harry offers us all—for everything a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven—is to celebrate and to remember under the heading of the anonymous proverb, “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” Or the Harry-ism, “Move your feet, lose your seat.” Or “Hi, kid.” Or “COD!” Or “I never forget anything I remember.” Or “Ruff-Ruff.”

All of which is to say, “What a Wonderful World” because you choose to make it that way for yourself and for others. Can’t get tickets to Giants home games? No problem. Take the family on the road to see them play in Atlanta, Dallas, Tampa, Miami, New Orleans, D.C., Cleveland, Jacksonville, the Super Bowl.

The thing about Harry is, he made you love him. In the grocery store, at the pharmacy, where he said his name was pronounced “Stoh-kaire,” at the bank—everybody knew him. When Ellen went to Publix with him one day, the cashier asked her, “Is that your husband?” Ellen answered, “Yes,” and the woman replied, “God help you.” Kay was sitting in an office at the bank one day trying to sort out a long-running snafu with an account when Harry’s beloved little dog Jacque trotted into the office as though he owned the place and jumped up in her lap. “Well, hello Jacque,” Kay said, a bit surprised. “You know Jacque?” the banker asked. “That’s my father,” Kay replied, pointing into the lobby at Harry. “I see,” said the banker, and the banking snafu cleared up immediately. I guess when you buy a $20 dog at the Jockey Lot and name him Jacque Elat, the world will treat you like a Stoh-kaire. What a wonderful world, because you choose to make it that way.

Harry was a man of few words, and sometimes none at all. After all, there is a time to keep silence, right? When Jerry asked Harry for his permission to marry Ann, Harry said, “I’ll have to think about that.” At Jerry and Ann’s 35th wedding anniversary, Jerry said, “Harry, you never answered my question.” “What question is that?” asked Harry. “If I have your permission to marry Ann.” Without missing a beat, Harry said, “I’m still thinking about it.” “For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.”

Ecclesiastes goes on to say, “I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by.”

Those words are the ground of the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, and they are every bit as much the ground of Harry stories and Harry-isms. So even as we cry because it’s over, we smile because it happened. There is “a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.”

May the God of peace grant Harry peace eternal, and may God grant each of you peace now and forever.

Let us pray.
“May everlasting light shine upon them, O Lord, with your Saints forever, for you are kind. Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and may everlasting light shine upon them with your Saints forever, for you are merciful. Amen.”

Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Nola Janelle Scogin and Eric McDonald Hardaway

2011-05-21T09:16:00.004-04:00

May 21, 2011
1 Corinthians 13:4-13

Nearly twenty years ago now, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras wrote a business best-seller titled Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. You might think that a book about business is a strange place to begin a meditation on marriage. But when I asked Janelle to tell me a story about her childhood, she concluded the story by saying, “writing this reminds me of what a strange child I was. I’m sure Eric and I will be in for a treat when we start our family.” Indeed, you will be.

Here’s the story Janelle told. “I knew from a very young age that I wanted to have a career. My career goals changed from secretary to lawyer, then from astronaut to teacher as I got older, but at the end of the day my education and career was always very important to me. In the third grade my mom bought me my first suit . . . seriously. It was a navy pleated skirt, white-collared shirt, yellow jacket, and a navy neck scarf. I am sure I looked ridiculous, but I wore it every Wednesday!” So if the bride is a woman who began dressing for business in the third grade, a book about business might not be such a strange place to start a reflection on marriage at her wedding.

Eric told me a story about the day when he was eight years old that he announced to his parents that he was becoming a man, but I’ll leave that story to another setting. I will tell you this one, though. Eric’s first job out of college was working at a power plant in a tiny town called Roxboro, north of Raleigh, NC. Eric wrote, “I was unhappy with the location of my job in a rural, tobacco-farming town that was semi-stuck in time. There was not a whole lot going on for a twenty-five-year-old single guy, so I began coming home every weekend, a four-and-a-half hour trip. One of my good friends, Matt Cagle (yo, Matt!), was one of Janelle’s best friends growing up, and the three of us crossed paths several times during my Greenville visits. I quickly grew fond of her, and we began to see each other on a more serious note after a few months. Eventually, being away from her began to wear on me, and I began looking for jobs in Greenville once I had worked my job with Fluor in Roxboro about a year and a half, so I could be closer to her. That was five years ago, and the rest, as they say, is history.” As an aside, I want to point out God’s sense of humor. Roxboro, NC, was too far away from Janelle, so you took a job in Greenville that takes you to Afghanistan for weeks on end. That seems to me to belong in the category of “be careful what you pray for.”

In Built to Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras say, among many other things, that it is core values, not charisma, that make for a successful company. And the same is true of a marriage. For a marriage to be “built to last,” shared core values are far more important than personality and passion. Now let me be clear: I’m in favor of personality, and I’m a big fan of passion. But personality and passion are the icing on the cake of shared core values. In the time we have spent together, we have talked about some of those core values that the two of you share. As Collins and Porras point out, successful businesses, like successful people, change and evolve, grow and develop over time. So do successful marriages. As your marriage grows and develops, changes and evolves, it is your shared core values that will make your relationship “built to last.”

In 1 Corinthians 13:4-13, the Scripture that you selected as the biblical foundation of your marriage, the apostle Paul identifies three core values that are the ground of our relationship with God and our relationship with one another: faith, hope, and love are lasting. We grow and mature from childhood to adulthood, Paul says. He could have gone on to say that we continue to grow and mature, develop and change, during our adult years. The constant is our core values: faith, hope, and love are lasting, Paul says.

In a nutshell, faith is trusting your life to God no matter what happens to you. Hope is never, never, never giving up on God, on yourself, or on each other. And love, well the greatest of these is love. “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

God grant that it may it be so for you. God grant that you may make it so for you as long as you both shall live. Amen.

Photo by Wayne-Amethyst Photography, used under license of Creative Commons.

Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign

2011-05-19T05:49:00.013-04:00

2 Kings 2:1-2,6-14
July 1, 2001

Note: While lying fallow for a time, I'm selecting and posting some personal favorites among sermons past. This sermon is from the first Sunday of my service as Senior Minister of First Baptist Greenville. Many thanks to Elijah, Elisha, and Five Man Electrical Band.

God whom we worship and serve is truly astounding. And the most astounding thing about God is God's imagination and creativity. Only the mind of God could imagine some things and make them happen.

The late Loren Eiseley, a distinguished biologist, anthropologist, naturalist, and occasional mystic once suggested that "out beyond the rustling of the galaxies" and deep within beyond "the great coil of DNA in which is coded the very alphabet of life," there lies the One whom Eiseley called "the ultimate Dreamer, who dreamed the light and the galaxies." Eiseley wrote, "Before act was, or substance existed, imagination grew in the dark." Only the mind of God could imagine some things and make them happen.

We are experiencing one of those thing this morning. More than thirty years ago, L. D. Johnson left the pastorate of this congregation to make Furman University his place of ministry. Earlier this year it began to dawn on me that somehow in the imagination and creativity of God the time might be right for Furman to return the favor to First Baptist. On Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings, everywhere I went in the building I saw signs.

Now you have to understand that I am not one of those persons who goes through life looking for a "sign." Jesus was quite clear about his perspective on signs when he said, "An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign" (Mark 16:4). Paul called searching for signs a symptom of a misplaced spiritual emphasis when he said, "For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified" (1 Corinthians 1:22). I take Jesus and Paul too seriously to look for a sign.

But I kept seeing signs everywhere in the building. If felt as though I was living the chorus from an old song by the Canadian group Five Man Electrical Band: "Sign, sign, everywhere a sign, blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind. Do this. Don't do that. Can't you read the sign?" You've seen them, too. They have a white background with a yellow design and purple letters that spell, "What Really Matters."

"What Really Matters." Most of us recognize that phrase as our stewardship theme for 2001. Many of us who have been around for a while will also recognize it as the theme of a lecture series at Furman University established and continuing in L. D. Johnson's memory. There have been any number of times in the last six months that I have wished our stewardship committee had chosen a different theme. I would have slept more easily at night, and I would have worked more contentedly by day if I had not kept seeing those signs calling me to commit my life to "what really matters" most to me.

Only the mind of God could imagine some things and then make them happen. "Sign, sign, everywhere a sign. . . . Can't you read the sign?"

Our Old Testament lectionary passage for this morning provides us with three signs that point us in the direction of "what really matters." The first sign is the largest of the three. It is the company of prophets. In ancient Israel, the company of the prophets kept prophetic proclamation alive. Some Old Testament scholars sometimes refer to this group as the "prophetic order" or the "prophetic guild." I call the the prophetic community. In the last two decades, the study of prophets and prophecy has taught us that prophets do not exist in a vacuum. Centuries of preaching and teaching in the church and the academy alike have overemphasized individual prophetic figures such as Elijah and Elisha and Deborah and Miriam and undervalued the role of the prophetic community.

But it turns out that there is no such thing as a lone-ranger prophet. The truth is, there never was such a thing as a "lone ranger." The only reason we heard those words each week, "The lone ranger rides again," was because last week Tonto had bailed his pale-faced buddy in the mask out of trouble.

Prophets--like rangers--exist only in community. When we read 2 Kings 2, we tend to read it as though Elijah and Elisha were the only actors in the play. It might look that way if we only read the portion the church has traditionally marked out for reading in worship, verses 1-2 and 6-14. But read with me between those lines. Verse 3 that goes unread speaks of the company of the prophets who were in Bethel. And verse 5 refers to the company of the prophets who were in Jericho. Verse 7 says that 50 members of the company of the prophets accompanied Elijah and Elisha from Jericho to the Jordan River, and verse 15 reports that they were waiting when Elisha returned alone. This nearly constant stage presence of the company of the prophets is an important sign for us, because the company of the prophets was the predecessor to our treasured idea of the priesthood of all believers. Long before First Baptist Greenville embraced the vision of "Each Member a Minister," Moses cried out in the wilderness, "Would that all God's people were prophets!" (Numbers 11:29).

The apostle Paul felt the same way. In 1 Corinthians 14:1, Paul exhorts us all, "Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts, and especially that you may prophesy." Listen to how Paul defines prophecy: "Those who prophesy," he says, "Speak to other people for their upbuilding and their encouragement and their consolation." According to Paul, then, when we are called to the priesthood of all believers, we are called to be a prophetic community, a community pursuing love and speaking to people for their upbuilding and encouragement ad their consolation. That's what "Each Member a Minister" means in the prophetic community, and that really matters.

Let me give you an example. In June of 1977 in the small Baptist church where I was minister of music at the time, the pastor delivered a series of sermons on marriage and the family. Perhaps the best thing that could be said of his view of marriage is that he was more than twenty years ahead of his time--SBC style. Ordinarily, what he said would have been water off a duck's back as far as I was concerned. But this time, there was birdshot in the air because Bev was there to hear him. We were counting down the weeks before our wedding in August, and Bev wasn't taking to those sermons very well. Let's just say that the sermon I got over lunch every Sunday was even more animated than the one I had heard at church.

And then one Sunday it happened. To this day, it is one of the most memorable and moving experiences of my entire life. Never before or since have I felt that God has spoken any more clearly, directly, and personally to me. After worship was over that day, a small, silver-haired lady named Ethel Clarke came up to Bev and me and asked ever so quietly, "May I speak with the two of you for a moment?" "Sure," one of us said as we looked at each other with a mix of surprise and uncertainty. "Come with me," she said, and we followed her to the back of the sanctuary, up under the balcony. She stopped, turned, faced us, and this is what she said, word-for-word after twenty-four years: "I know what the Bible says, and I know what the preacher says. But me and Brodie were married for forty-seven wonderful years, and we always did things 50-50. I just wanted the two of you to hear that." And with that she smiled, turned, and headed for the door, leaving Bev and me utterly speechless.

Ethel Clarke taught me that morning that God whom we worship and serve is as likely to speak through a silver-haired widow as through a voice crying in the wilderness or a preacher standing in a pulpit. Ethel Clarke taught me that morning that if one essential ingredient in the life of a Baptist congregation is the freedom of the pulpit, then a second like unto the first is the freedom of the pew. And Ethel Clarke taught me that morning that the priesthood of all believers means cultivating a prophetic community. We are all in the company of prophets.

"Each Member a Minister" means every one of us pursuing love and speaking to people for their upbuilding and their encouragement and their consolation. That's the direction in which the sign of the company of prophets points us, and that really matters.

The second sign in this morning's passage is the sign of the spirit. In verse 9, the younger prophet Elisha requests of his mentor and friend Elisha something that the older prophet cannot give him. Elisha says, "Before you go, leave me with a double portion of your spirit." It's a fascinating moment, psychologically. Elisha is sufficiently unsure of himself and his own ability that he figures he needs twice as much as Elijah has to get the job done. I'm familiar with that feeling.

But as Elijah's answer makes clear, the spirit is not Elijah's to give, because the spirit that sufficiently enlivens and empowers him is God's spirit, not Elijah's. Though Elijah and Elisha are the only actors on the stage when this takes place, remember the community of prophets standing in the wings. Because in the prophetic community, what is true for one is true for all The spirit of God is not something to which only a few have access or recourse. The creative presence of God's spirit infuses the universe of God's creation from the rustling of the galaxies to the coiling of DNA. The book of Genesis tells us that the spirit of God swept across the face of the water while the earth was void and without form and darkness covered the face of the the deep (Genesis 1:2). There, imagination grew in the dark, and the spirit of God enlivened and empowered creation.

The gospel of Luke tells us that this same spirit enlivened and empowered the ministry and mission of Jesus, as our Lord announced in his inaugural sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth: "The spirit of the Lord God is upon me . . . because the Lord has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners" (Luke 4:18; Isaiah 61:1).

And the book of Acts tells us that at Pentecost God's promise in the book of Joel to make prophets of all the Lord's people was fulfilled: "I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy" (Acts 2:17; Joel 2:28). From creation to Christ to the prophetic community, it is one and the same spirit. Through the continuing work of the Holy Spirit, the one who dreamed the light and the galaxies enlivens and empowers each one of us to pursue love and to speak to people for their upbuilding and their encouragement and their consolation.

The third sign for our reading is the mantle. The mantle. When Elijah disappears into the whirlwind and whatever it was that happened is described in 2 Kings as chariots and horses of fire occurs, Elisha spots the mantle of Elijah lying on the ground. It is the OT prophet's equivalent of the quieter, more reflective vision of the American poet Emily Dickinson, who wrote, "Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality."

I have sometimes mused over whether Elijah, upon seeing his conveyance arriving from a distance, removed his cloak from his shoulders, folded it neatly, and laid it down for his successor to pick up. And there Elisha found it where his mentor left it for him. Or perhaps, as the fiery steeds approached, the awe and the terror of the moment overcame him, and he simply lost his grip on it where he stood. And there Elisha found it where his mentor dropped it. Or maybe Elijah held on to that mantle with all his might as though it were his prophetic lovey, his professional security blanket, that was only wrested from his white-knuckled hands by the force of the whirlwind. And it fell away behind him where Elisha picked it up. Elijah's mantle is an apt metaphor, a sign, if you will, for how we all make transitions and negotiate profound passages in our lives.

Each of us handles the mantle of our life differently as we arrive at death's door, or as Dickinson put it, as death arrives at our door. Some of us wrap it up neatly and put it down carefully, the way we did everything else in life. Others of us drop our lives where we leave them, for someone else to clear up after us. After all, we did everything else that way, too. And some of us fight to hang on with all we are worth, never letting go until life is wrested from our grip. In this morning's passage, though, the sign of the mantle also applies to our acting as Elisha did by taking up the work that God has set before us to be done in the prophetic community.

There is work to be done in every nook and cranny of our congregational life both within the walls of this wonderful facility and reaching out into our world to places with which we are familiar, such as Greenville, in partnership with Open Heart church; such as Canada, in partnership with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship; and such as Cuba, in partnership with the Alliance of Baptists.

The mantles in our congregational life also take some of us much farther afield, to places we might be hard pressed to find on a map. On the grounds of this church's campus (old ways of speaking die hard, you know), in its Sunday School rooms, conference rooms, Media Center, nursery, kitchen, reception area, gymnasium, ball fields, to name only a few, to a far-flung wherever that we have not even imagined yet--but God already has--there is a mantle. There is a mantle for every task, for every role, in every place, in every time, for everyone.

The most important question, then, is not who left a mantle behind or what condition they left it; the most important question is, "Who will pick it up?" Or, more pointedly yet, "Will you pick it up when you come across it?" Not so very long ago, the senior pastor search committee and came to the conclusion that it is the time and the place for me to pick up the mantle of the senior pastorate of this remarkable congregation.

Last week I listened on the radio as Baxter Wynn read the roll call of my twenty-four predecessors, and I was humbled and terrified. And I was moved, as Elisha was, to cry out, "Make it a double, Lord!" And I'll never forgive Bax for the fact that I had to put away the sermon I had pulled out of my file to preach today," "Synchronism and Structure in 1-2 Kings and Neo-Babylonian Chronicles."

But as impressive as the roll call was that we heard last week, what makes this congregation truly remarkable is not my predecessors but your predecessors. Because this congregation is a prophetic community in which each member is a minister. There is a mantle, a task, a role, for each on of us, from the oldest to the youngest. No one mantle is more important or impressive than any other because every one of them is indispensable to our efforts to be the prophetic community that God has called u to be. The mantle that you come across really matters. Pick it up and put it on. No matter how larger or small it is, it really matters. Enlivened and empowered by one and the same spirit that impels the rustling of the galaxies, the coiling of DNA, we are called together to pursue love and to speak to people for their upbuilding and their encouragement and their consolation.

The signs are up all over the building, calling you to commit your life to "what really matters" most to you. Sign, sign, everywhere a sign. Can you read the sign?

Let us pray: O God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Sarah, Rebekkah, Rachel, and Leah, of Moses, Miriam, Deborah, Elijah, and Elisha, give us eyes to read the signs, ears to hear the needs, and hearts and hands willing to be moved by your Holy Spirit and the example of Christ in whose name we pray. Amen.

The invitation of Christ and this church is open to all who would come professing faith in Jesus Christ and committing their lives to Christ's service. And that invitation is open as well to all who would commit their lives to Christ's service as a member of this prophetic community.

Copyrighted © 2001 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Words for a Wedding

2011-05-14T18:34:00.003-04:00

Elizabeth Pearce and Travis Vaughn
May 14, 2011

For just a few minutes, I am going to be so bold as to claim a “God’s-eye view” on this very moment. God is smiling right now, because God knew, even when you didn’t have a clue.

You’ve known each other for years. God knew, but you didn’t have a clue. You were around each other often enough to know, but you were too busy trying to be who you thought you wanted to be and too busy being with who you thought you wanted to be with. God knew, but you didn’t have a clue.

God is like that with us. God doesn’t force God’s self on us. God doesn’t insist on God’s way. God only and always invites us into God’s way. God’s way is to love and to be loved, to accept and to be accepted, to respect and to be respected; that’s God’s way. God is like that with us.

And when we are finally ready to be that way with God—to love and to be loved, to accept and to be accepted, to respect and to be respected—one of the things we may awaken to discover that God knew that we didn’t have a clue is that the person God had in mind for us has been right there nearby all along. And when we awaken to that discovery, it makes God smile.

It’s more than your wedding. God is smiling at your wedding, of course. I’m sure God smiles at weddings (well, at most of them, anyway). But even more than the wedding, God is smiling at a family of three, Travis, Elizabeth, and Luna, that is a living sign and symbol and embodiment of God’s redeeming love in the world. I’m not saying that you are the Trinity or anything, mind you. What I’m saying is that when any of us decide, finally, to be that way with God—to love and be loved, to accept and be accepted, to respect and be respected—God becomes present with us in a powerful and mysterious way.

God knew when you didn’t have a clue, but now you do too. And God is smiling on you and on all of us thanks to you. So the vows that you are about to speak and the promises you are about to make and the life together you are setting out on today, all those things aren’t just about the two of you. They are also about God who is closer to each of you because of the other. And they are also about all of us who are closer to God because of you. And that makes God smile.

Photo by Wayne-Amethyst Photography, used under license of Creative Commons.

An Easter Journey: Mind-boggling and Mystifying

2011-05-08T21:26:00.006-04:00

Luke 24:13-35
Third Sunday of Easter

Of all the mind-boggling and mystifying passages in the New Testament, this morning’s gospel lesson for the third Sunday of Easter probably takes the cake as the most mind-boggling and mystifying of them all.

Sure, there is the story of the day Jesus and the disciples were in a boat on the Sea of Galilee when a storm came up, and Jesus “rebuked the wind and the raging waves; they ceased, and there was a calm” (Luke 8:24). That’s mind-boggling, all right, but this morning’s passage is even more so.

There is another Sea of Galilee story about how the disciples were in a boat that was being battered by the wind that was blowing against them, “And early in the morning [Jesus] came walking toward them on the sea. . . . Jesus spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid’” (Matthew 14:25,27). That’s mystifying, all right, but this morning’s passage is even more so.

One day when Jesus was teaching, there was a large crowd with nowhere to buy bread to feed them, so Jesus told his disciples to seat the people where they were, and Jesus fed them all with five barley loaves and two small fish. And after everyone had eaten their fill, there was more left over than there was to begin with (John 6:5-14). That passage is mind-boggling and mystifying, but this morning’s passage is even more so.

In the calming of the sea, the walking on water, and the feeding of the five thousand, as in many other gospel stories, there is a central mystification, a single mind-boggle. But in this morning’s gospel lesson the mind-boggling and the mystifying run from beginning to end.

First of all, who are these two people, and why are they walking the seven miles or so from Jerusalem to Emmaus? It’s a curious shift in the narrative from Jerusalem to a dusty road miles away and from the central cohort of Jesus’ followers to two outliers on a dirt road. But that part is easy compared to what comes next: “Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (Luke 24:15-16). Now that’s mystifying.

Not only that, but this one whom they do not recognize who is the subject of their conversation asks them questions such as, “What are you discussing?” How ironic is that? Technically, it’s called “dramatic irony,” when you the reader know more than the characters in the story do. You know it’s Jesus, but the two walkers don’t. They say to him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” (v 18). Now, that’s funny, at least it would be if we weren’t so deadly serious when we read the gospels. Here they are remonstrating Jesus for what they think he does not know about what has happened. He could have said, “Tell me about it!” In fact, that’s exactly what he says: “Tell me.” And so they do.

And after they offer an account that Jesus clearly considers to be less than adequate, he leads them in a Bible-study. He teaches from what we call the Old Testament, the books of Moses and the prophets. And somehow still they do not recognize him for who he is. Mind-boggling, I’d say.

As they neared the village to which the two were going, the one they did not recognize “walked ahead as if he were going on.” As clueless as the two were, they had the presence of mind to invite him in: “Stay with us,” they said, “‘because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them” (v 29). When mealtime came, the one whom they did not recognize “took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight” (vv 30-31). Mind-boggling and mystifying.

Who is this that commands the wind and the waves and they obey him? Who is this that walks on water? Who is this that feeds five thousand people with a lunch intended for a child? Who is this that walks with us and teaches us and is made know to us in the breaking of bread? In the ancient world in which Jesus lived and in which the gospels first circulated, the central question in each of these mystifying and mind-boggling stories is “Who is this?”

Since the rise of rationalism and empirical science in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the question has shifted from “Who is this?” to “How could this happen?” Instead of asking “Who?” in awe and wonder, readers began to ask “How?” in skepticism and cynicism. But one of the things that we learned about the nature of knowledge in the twentieth century is that the kind of question we ask and the place where we are standing when we ask it make all the difference in the world in what we see and hear for an answer.

If you choose to read these stories and all the rest of Scripture with awe and with wonder, you will discover within them awesome and wonderful things. If, on the other hand, you choose to read these stories and all the rest with suspicion and skepticism and cynicism, you will find exactly what you are looking for: nothing, nothing at all.

So let me suggest this morning a different question. Let’s leave behind for a moment the first-century question, “Who is this?” and set aside for now the eighteenth and nineteenth-century question, “How could this happen?” Let’s ask instead a question of faith and of doubt, of searching and of seeking, of learning and of growing that interpreters of these texts have taught us to ask for centuries: “What do these words mean?” It is in the nature of the human enterprise of interpreting texts that interpreters find what they are looking for, so let’s look for meaning in this text in the context of this wonderful Community of Believers, Each Member a Minister. “What do these words mean?”

First, look at the very beginning and the very end of this story. There are “two of them” walking together and talking together as they try to make sense of what they have experienced in recent days. In their case, what they have experienced has been traumatic and disturbing, disappointing and confusing. But these two did not hide themselves away alone in their rooms to brood and to stew in grief and in anger and in self-pity. Instead, they set out together to walk and to talk about what they had experienced.

What these words mean is that experiencing the presence of the Risen Christ in our lives is not a heroic, individual effort in which we receive some private otherworldly revelation that no one else has. Experiencing the presence of the Risen Christ in our lives is always grounded in community and in communion. It is as though this story were intended to illustrate Jesus’ words, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20).

So the next time you find yourself traumatized and disturbed, disappointed and confused, take a walk—take a roll—with someone you know and love and trust and in your walking and talking and eating together you will discover community and communion that lifts you up to recognize that you are not walking alone after all and that you have been walking all along in the presence of the One who created you and called you and redeems you and loves you even when you did not recognize it.

Set aside the mystifying and the mind-boggling elements of the story and you will discover a simple truth in it: we never know for sure what or who is ahead on the path we are on, but we walk in trust because we know the One who is the Way and who is with us always, even when we do not recognize it.

What do these words mean? Look at the middle of the story. The two of them are walking and talking about what they have experienced in recent days when a stranger, someone they do not recognize, approaches them. If ever two adults had occasion to be put off on account of the possibility of “stranger danger,” now was a good time for it. Remember Peter’s experience three nights earlier in the courtyard of the high priest when he was singled out with the chilling words, “You also were with Jesus the Galilean” (Matthew 26:69), and “Certainly you are also one of them” (Matthew 26:73). When this stranger approached, they had all the reason in the world to stop and let him walk on by or quicken their pace so that it would be clear to him that they did not want him to join their company. But what they did instead was to welcome another walker in, a stranger no less.

When they did, they could have changed the subject of their conversation, like people typically do when the preacher walks up: “Beautiful weather we’re having, isn’t it?” “How ’bout that earthquake Friday afternoon? That was somethin’, eh?” “That was some big crowd for Passover this year, wasn’t it? Oy vey! What a crowd!” Not only did they welcome the stranger into their company but they also welcomed the stranger into their conversation.

And when they did, they learned and experienced more about Jesus from their conversation with the stranger than they ever would have learned and experienced if they had kept to themselves. Why, it’s as though this story were intended to illustrate Jesus’ words, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 26:35). If you don’t obsess over the mystifying and the mind-boggling elements of the story, you will discover a simple truth in it: we often learn more about God and ourselves and the world we live in from strangers than we do from one another.

What do these words mean? Look again at the end of the story. It’s a common biblical motif: extending hospitality to the stranger in food and lodging. But that’s not “the moral of the story.” There is something deeper and more powerful at work here and it is this: it is the presence of God in Jesus Christ in the ordinary, the everyday, the mundane and the profane. There was nothing religious or theological, sacerdotal or liturgical about the invitation. It was simply, “Hey buddy, this is as far as we’re going. But look, it’s getting late. Why don’t you stay where we’re staying. There’ll be room enough and food enough. Don’t walk by yourself in the dark. Come stay with us.” And he did.

There was absolutely nothing special about the invitation, about the house, or about the meal. But what happened in the story is what happens when people sit down to eat together, when strangers sit down to eat together, when friends sit down to eat together, when families sit down to eat together: the most ordinary, everyday, mundane and profane acts become occasions for grace, eternal moments, and sacred events.

A cup of cold water, Jesus said. Some hand-me-down clothes for someone who needs them, a home-cooked meal, a bed to sleep in, a visit during sickness or incarceration, a timely tip on a good place to fish, a breakfast on the beach. Surrounded by the presence of the One who is with us always, ordinary, everyday, mundane and profane acts are occasions for grace, eternal moments, sacred events.

What do these words mean? Walk together and talk together and eat together sharing your experience in conversation and in community and in communion, and you will discover there the presence of the Risen Christ with you.

What do these words mean? Open that conversation and community and communion to strangers, and you will find the Risen Christ revealed to you in them.

What do these words mean? Embrace the ordinary, everyday, mundane and profane as occasions for grace, eternal moments, sacred events, and you will discover in them the presence of the Risen Christ in them.

Amen.

Photo by Matt Perry, used under license of Creative Commons. This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Religion, Politics, and Hope in Charles Kimball's "When Religion Becomes Lethal": A Review

2011-04-26T06:12:00.004-04:00

Charles Kimball, When Religion Becomes Lethal: The Explosive Mix of Politics and Religion in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011)

Anyone who watches CNN, FOXNews, or MSNBC should read this book. In fewer than 200 pages, Kimball leads his readers from the origins of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to the latest disputes over Jewish settlements in the occupied territory of Palestine, Christian opposition to the construction of an Islamic center in Manhattan, and the bizarre rants of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Real people—militant Muslims, cocksure Christians, and hard-core Jewish settlers “prepared to facilitate the final conflagration”—populate these pages.

Kimball goes behind the news-media and talk-show sound bites to reorient popular perspectives on major events and introduce important players in the interaction of religion and politics among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. For example, the widespread talk of a “clash of civilizations” among scholars and the public alike “reinforces a simplistic and dangerously inaccurate perspective.” Support for Israel among American politicians is entirely understandable if for no other reason than “Criticizing Israel has been political suicide in the United States.” As for September 11, 2001, “the world did not change on that fateful day. On that day, the United States of America simply joined the rest of the world, in a disturbing way. . . . The lethal threat posed by violent extremists claiming inspiration from their religion and prepared to die in suicidal self-sacrifice was [now] just as real in the United States as it had been in Beirut or Jerusalem.”

What separates Kimball from the often-heard sensationalists and fear-mongers who dominate the radio and television airwaves is his insistence that the world’s three great monotheistic religions contain within them and share in common convictions, perspectives, and centuries of practice living together that are fertile ground for hope and for action instead of despair, immobilization, and counterproductive responses to the challenges of the next decade and beyond. Explosive? Yes. Lethal? Yes. Hopeless? No. Kimball explains why on all three fronts.

This book is required reading for anyone who wants to—or presumes to—understand the interaction of religion and politics from Murfreesboro to Mecca and from Tulsa to Tel Aviv.

An Easter Journey: Where Is He?

2011-04-25T08:43:00.003-04:00

John 20:1-18
Easter Sunday 2011

Have you ever tried to find Waldo? Do you know Waldo? The three-year-old in our family hasn’t graduated to Where’s Waldo? yet, but he is positively entranced by searching for Goldbug. Goldbug is a tiny yellow character hidden away in every double-page illustration in Richard Scarry’s delightful book Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. Occasionally Goldbug is hidden in plain sight; but in most of the illustrations, he is only partly visible, sometimes barely visible at all. But he is always there for you to find if you have the powers of observation and the patience. “There he is!” “There he is!” “I see him!” our three-year-old shouts exuberantly when he finds him. For older kids, there’ Where’s Waldo?

Waldo is a character with brown hair wearing a red and white striped shirt, a red and white cap with a red ball on top, and round black glasses who appears—or disappears, as the case may be—in stunningly intricate two-page illustrations by British illustrator Martin Handford. If you haven’t had children in your home in the last 20 years, you may not know who Waldo is or what he looks like. But Waldo is present in every illustration, hidden in plain sight, always there for you to find if you have the powers of observation and the patience. Where is he? Can you find him?

In this morning’s familiar gospel lesson for Easter Sunday, it is Jesus of Nazareth who is the missing person. Four times in fourteen verses, the question of where Jesus is occurs in John’s account of resurrection morning. “We do not know where,” says Mary Magdalene breathlessly in verse 2 after running from the garden tomb to Peter and to John, who in turn run to the tomb to see—or not, as the case may be. “I do not know where,” she says through her tears in verse 13. “For whom are you looking?” asks the one whom Mary took for the gardener in verse 15. “Tell me where,” Mary says.

Up until resurrection morning, people who were looking for Jesus knew where to find him. In Luke 4, the crowds were able to find Jesus, even when he slipped away at daybreak to “a deserted place” (v 42). In the sixth chapter of John’s gospel, the crowds take boats from the city of Tiberius on the shore of the Sea of Galilee to find Jesus in the fishing village of Capernaum (v 24). On the night he was betrayed in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus said to those who came for him, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me” (Mark 14:48-49). The way the gospels tell the story, whether Jesus was in the Galilee or in Jerusalem, it was not all that hard to find him. But on that first Easter morning, the enterprise of finding Jesus changed completely.

According to the gospel of John, it did not come without warning. In the seventh chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus said, “I will be with you a little while longer, and then I am going to him who sent me. You will search for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come” (vv 33-34). That set at least some in the crowd abuzz, and they “said to one another, ‘Where does this man intend to go that we will not find him? Does he intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? What does he mean by saying, “You will search for me and you will not find me” and “Where I am, you cannot come?”’” (vv 35-36). So even though the resurrection of Jesus Christ broke on the world like a cosmic curveball, the gospels insist that Jesus tipped his hand before it was thrown.

Jesus said to Martha while her brother Lazarus was still in the tomb, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25); but those worlds sounded for all the world like a metaphor or a symbol of some sort, like words that meant something other than what they said. But that is precisely the power of a metaphor or a symbol: it is and at the same time it is not the very thing of which it speaks. The communion cups were being passed around in this very room some years ago when a first-grader in big church for the Lord’s Supper for very first time watched the tray come down the pew on which he was sitting and pass him by. He looked at the tiny cup in his mother’s hand and looked up at her and asked with eyes wide, “Mommy, is that really blood?” Startled, his mother whispered, “No, of course not. It’s grape juice.” The child paused a moment and then asked, “Then why did he just say it’s blood?” “We’ll talk about that later,” the mother whispered, as she hoped that later never came. The power of the cup of salvation is that it is the precious, saving blood of Jesus Christ; and at the same time, it is as common as ordinary grape juice or table wine. For those who have experienced it, resurrection is both a symbol, a metaphor, and the very thing itself.

Listen to what novelist and non-fiction writer Anne Lamott wrote about resurrection. “People who think we Christians are idiots or delusional for our beliefs get hung up on the Good Friday part—the part where Jesus is suffering, everyone is bad, God is mad. I try not to bog down in it, though, and not because of what [comedian] Lenny Bruce said, that if Christ had been killed in the modern era, we Christians would be wearing electric-chair charms on chains around our necks. It’s because I got sober, against all odds, and then I started hanging out with people who were trying to get sober too, and over time I got to watch a number of the walking dead come back to life—as I came back to life. So I believe in the basic Christian message: that life happens, death happens and then new life happens. I believe in resurrection. So sue me. Or go read something else” (http://www.salon.com/columnists/lamott.html).

“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen,” the women at the tomb were told in Luke 24:5. So, if he is not there, where is he? My middle brother loves to tell the story about his freshman year in college when he was approached by an erstwhile collegiate evangelist who confronted him with the question, “Have you found Jesus?” To which my brother says he replied, “I didn’t know he was missing. I’d be happy to help you look for him if you would like.” The resurrection of Jesus Christ means that you don’t need to go looking for Jesus on a college campus or in a deserted place or in the Galilee or in the garden of Gethsemane. The resurrection authorizes and empowers Jesus to say, “Remember, I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20).

By the power of resurrection, the risen and living Lord is the One of whom the psalmist sings, “Where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in [the Pit], you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as day, for darkness is as light to you” (Psalm 139:7-12).

By the power of resurrection, even in our darkest hour, our darkest hour of a devastating diagnosis or a terminal prognosis, even in our darkest hour of divorce or the death of a loved one or the end of a dream or the loss of everything we may have hoped for or worked for, even in that darkness, the risen and living One is present with us. Even there the hand of Christ leads us; even there the right hand of Jesus holds us fast.

If that’s not working for you right now, let me suggest that you look where Jesus said he would be. Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 28:20). Jesus did not say, “Where the thousands are, you will find me.” Jesus did not say, “Look for the crowds in the hundreds, and I will be there.” Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Look where Jesus said he would be, among “the least of these” whom he calls his brothers and sisters (Matthew 25:40): the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the inadequately clothed, the sick, the imprisoned. Just as you did to one of the least of these, you did to me, Jesus said. You will find me even where Anne Lamott did, among the walking dead coming back to life, together trying to get sober or together just trying to make it through the hour or the day or the week or the year of crisis, whatever the crisis might be.

The book of Colossians tells us that Christ is the “firstborn from the dead” in whom “all things hold together” (1:17-18). But the apostle Paul reminds us that the Risen and living One is every bit as present where things fall apart. In 2 Corinthians 13:4 Paul writes, “For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we are weak in him, but . . . we will live with him by the power of God.” That’s why Paul can write, “Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).

In her darkest hour, Mary Magdalene stood weeping in the garden until she heard him call her name. And then she “went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord” (John 20:18). What I’m saying is that Easter means that if you have the powers of observation and the patience, and if you will put yourself where Jesus said he would be, you, too, can discover, “There he is!” “There he is!” “I see him!” “There he is!” Amen.

Photo by E. L. Malvaney, used under license of Creative Commons.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

A New Testament Lenten Journey: Who Is This?

2011-04-17T14:58:00.009-04:00

Matthew 21:1-11
Palm Sunday 2011

When I was a child, Palm Sunday was one of my favorite Sundays in the Christian year. I loved waving a palm branch as the children’s choir led the procession while the whole congregation sang, “All glory, laud, and honor to Thee, Redeemer, King, To whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring!” I love a parade! Growing up as I did in good Lutheran churches, Palm Sunday’s triumphant entry was a welcome relief after all the gloom and impending doom of Lent.

What I know now that I didn’t know then is that Palm Sunday is the spiritual and liturgical equivalent of the eye of a hurricane. When a well-defined eye of a hurricane is passing over land, the wind and rain disappear and the sky above is clear. Fear subsides, and people come outside. They are sometimes fooled into thinking that the danger, the gloom and the doom, are past. But when the other side of the eyewall arrives, the winds and the rain return with a vengeance.

That’s the part I did not understand as a child: the return of the storm in the events of Holy Week. The impending passion of Christ in Maundy Thursday’s Last Supper, betrayal, and trial; Good Friday’s crucifixion, and Holy Saturday’s descent into hell were lost on me as a child on Palm Sunday. It was only palm branches and children’s choirs and “sweet hosannas ring.” “All glory, laud, and honor to Thee, Redeemer, King.” Is this morning about the palms, or is it about the passion? Is it about the triumphal entry of a king who has come to reign or the arrival of a suffering servant who has come to die? That either/or makes Palm Sunday the most ambiguous Sunday on the Christian calendar.

It also makes Palm Sunday an excellent example of one of the great religious and theological and spiritual challenges our world faces in the 21st century. It is the challenge of selective listening and selective reading and selective believing and selective living.

We all know what selective listening is. One mom characterized it in her family this way. Her family’s “sense of hearing is, at best, unstable, and seems to work in their favor, rather than mine,” she wrote. “If I drop a few coins, my 14-year-old daughter . . . can identify their value by the pitch and tone as they hit the kitchen floor. This same girl, however, can’t hear the dog barking five feet from her while she’s watching television. Presumably, ‘selective listening’ is a genetic disorder, since her father, who was sitting on the couch beside her, didn’t hear the dog either” (http://www.parentinghumor.com/categories/familyparenting/sensorywarfare.htm).

Humans are not the only organisms afflicted with this malaise. I read recently that the law of selective listening is one of many “laws of cat physics”: “Although a cat can hear a can of tuna being opened a mile away, she can’t hear a simple command three feet away” (http://www.pawsperouspets.com/humor/catphysics.html). Cats, like teenagers and husbands, are notoriously selective listeners.

I’ve heard that selective listening even happens in church—so I’ve heard. “A Husband came home from church, greeted his wife, and lifted her up and carried her all around the house. The wife was so surprised, and she asked, ‘Did the pastor preach about being romantic?’ The husband answered, ‘No, he said we must carry our burdens and sorrow’” (http://blogs.rediff.com/prannath/2007/09/19/selective-listening/, alt.). Selective listening.

Selective listening is what made it possible for me as child to hear and to sing the Palm Sunday hymn, “Ride on, ride on in majesty, in . . . pomp, ride on” without hearing the totality of the second line: “in lowly pomp, ride on to die.” I heard the majesty and pomp of the triumphal entry and filtered out the humility and the death at the end of the parade. It’s a dangerously common religious disorder.

In his just-published book titled When Religion Becomes Lethal: The Explosive Mix of Politics and Religion in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Charles Kimball—who in some ways still considers First Baptist Greenville a “home church”—describes the Islamic movement of Wahhabism, the “uncompromising, puritanical approach to Islam [that] took root in Saudi Arabia beginning in the 18th century and became “the most conservative of the four major Sunni legal schools” (p. 194). It features a strict adherence to what one particular 18th century Arabian cleric named Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab “understood to be the beliefs and practices of the earliest Muslims.” In the second half of the twentieth century Wahhabism was exported around the world from Saudi Arabia, and it is now most infamously associated with the extremism and the violence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda and Osama bin Ladin. Wahhabism is a religious and theological and spiritual disorder of selective listening, selective reading, selective believing, and selective living.

But the threat that Wahhabism poses to the West in particular has given rise to a similar disorder among non-Muslims who are choosing to misunderstand and misrepresent all of Islam as though it were all Wahhabi. And it is not. If you associate all Muslims with the radical extremism of Wahhabism, then to be consistent in your thinking, you must say that all Christians are skin-heads and snake-handlers. But you know better than that. And you should know better about Islam also. Selective listening, selective reading, selective believing, and selective living is a common religious disorder.

The crowd on the road to Jerusalem in this morning’s gospel lesson wanted a messiah-king so desperately that they threw down their coats on the road and cut branches from the trees to pave Jesus’ way into the city. They turned his arrival in Jerusalem into a parade with singing and cheering, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” They got the part in Zechariah 9:9 that reads, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he!” They got the “Ride on, ride on, in majesty” part. But in their desperation for a king in the image of their own projection, they ignored the rest of the verse: “humble and riding on a donkey” instead of instead of swashbuckling astride a stallion. They didn’t hear that part; they didn’t read that part; they didn’t believe that part; they wanted no part in living that part.

So later in the week, they were all surprised and offended when he offered no defense in response to the accusations that were made against him. When he was struck, he turned the other cheek. When he failed to meet their expectations as the kind of king they wanted they called for his crucifixion. That’s the kind of self-righteous sin that selective listening, selective reading, selective believing, and selective living can lead to. And every one of us is susceptible to it.

Some of us, for example, latch on to “Jesus Christ our Savior,” as Titus 3:6 puts it, and wish to hear nothing more of Jesus than that which feeds our personal faith and assures our “entry into the eternal kingdom” in the words of 2 Peter 1:11. Some of us, on the other hand, echo the words of the crowds in this morning’s gospel lesson who announce, “This is the prophet Jesus” (Matthew 21:11). We want an Old Testament Jesus, a reformer of the world order whose mission is centered on creating the ideal society, in spite of the fact that the Jesus of the gospels shows no interest whatsoever in establishing an ideal national or global or ecclesiastical society. He never ran for a seat on the Sanhedrin and he never endorsed a candidate for the Roman Senate. Pietists and policists alike turn their prized image of Jesus into a dashboard mascot whose head bobbles up and down in support of their every whim.

In contrast to the pietists and the politicists and self-centered crowds on the road to Jerusalem, the most important words in this morning’s gospel lesson are spoken by the bystanders in Jerusalem who on hearing all the commotion ask, “Who is this?” “Who is this?”

Every time you figure you have who this is figured out, your figuring will be inadequate. Every time you think you have found out who this is, your thinking will be confounded. Every time you believe you have who this is nailed down, the cross on which your believing nailed him will turn up empty. Who is this?

The New Testament says this is Joseph’s son (John 1:45), Mary’s child (Matthew 2:11), the brother of James and Joseph and Simon and Judas (Matthew 13:55), a Galilean (Matthew 26:69), a Nazarean (Matthew 2:23), a Savior (Luke 2:11), a prophet (Matthew 21:11), a blasphemer (Matthew 26:65), a madman (Mark 3:21), a rabbi (Mark 9:5), a slave (Philippians 2:7), a master (Luke 8:24), the king of the Jews (Matthew 27:37), the king of Israel (John 1:49), the Messiah (Mark 8:29), the Son of God (John 11:27), the Son of David (Mark 10:47), the Son of Man (Mark 8:31), God with us (Matthew 1:23), a glutton and a drunkard (Matthew 11:14), a friend of sinners (Matthew 11:19), the lamb of God (John 1:29), the lion of the tribe of Judah (Revelation 5:5), the Word (John 1:1), the true light (John 1:9), the Savior of the world (John 4:42), the bread of life (John 6:35), the light of the world (John 9:5), the good shepherd (John 10:11), the gate for the sheep (John 10:7), the way (John 14:6), the truth (John 14:6), the life (John 14:6), the vine (John 15:5), Lord and God (John 20:28), the Lord of glory (1 Corinthians 2:8), the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24), the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), the firstborn of all creation (Colossians 1:15), the last Adam (1 Corinthians 14:45), the crucified one (1 Corinthians 1:23), the risen one (Luke 24:34).

The mistake that the crowd on the road to Jerusalem made was not that they welcomed Jesus as king; their mistake was that they could not or would not see that the Jesus they welcomed is always and everywhere much, much more than a projection of our own expectations and desires. And that’s precisely why Palm Sunday is so important in the annual cycle of the Christian year: it is palm branches and passion.

The truth be told, not one of us can avoid selective reading and selective believing and selective living any more than teenagers, husbands, and cats can avoid selective listening. The question is not whether you are selective or not; the question is what your principle of selection is. What do you select and why? What are the consequences of your selection for your listening, reading, believing and living?

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the parade while the palm branches are waving and the sun is shining and the band is playing. We all love a parade. But Palm Sunday is the eye of a religious and theological and spiritual hurricane, a temporary respite before the storm begins anew with a vengeance in the upcoming week of the Christian year because who Jesus is is more fully and authentically revealed in the cross than in the parade.

So even now, as Holy Week begins, we turn our attention in the direction that Jesus’ attention had been focused all along: to the cross, to the cross, to the cross. There is no better principle of selection for listening, for reading, for believing, and for living than the cross. After all, it was the cross that was waiting at the end of the parade: “Ride on, ride on, in majesty ride; on in lowly pomp to die.”

Photo by davecurlee, used under license of Creative Commons.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

A New Testament Lenten Journey: Mary, Don’t You Weep

2011-04-12T12:03:00.006-04:00

John 11:1-45
Fifth Sunday in Lent

Bruce Springsteen - O Mary Don't You Weep (Official Music Video). Watch more top selected videos about: Bruce Springsteen

Long before the invitation hymn that we will sing at the close of worship this morning was called a “spiritual,” it was a slave song: “Mary, Don’t You Weep, Don’t You Mourn.” It was a song of resistance and hope authored anonymously and sung religiously by persons whose bodies were owned and exploited by others, but whose spirits kept their eyes on the prize of freedom, and whose souls were never enslaved. “Pharaoh’s army got drownded; O, Mary, don’t you weep.”

The Mary of “Mary Don’t You Weep” is the Mary of this morning’s gospel lesson from the Revised Common Lectionary. You know Mary and Martha from another story, a story that the gospel of John doesn’t tell but the gospel of Luke does. In that story, Martha expresses frustration over the fact that while she is busy with the work of the household, Mary is sitting at Jesus’ feet reveling in his teachings instead of helping Martha. Martha says, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” To which Jesus famously replies, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:38-42). Poor Martha has taken a beating from preachers ever since: “Martha just doesn’t get it,” they say.

But in John’s gospel, Martha does get it. When she says in John 11:27, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world,” she makes one of the greatest confessions of faith in the four gospels, right up there with Simon Peter and Thomas Didymus and the centurion at the cross and Mary Magdalene in the garden. Mary, her sister, in contrast, she who sat at Jesus’ feet, throws herself down at Jesus’ feet and weeps. Mary is undone in her grief and her pain. She does not “kneel” at all, as the New Revised Standard Version mistranslates the Greek verb piptō, “to fall.” She collapses in tears at the feet of Jesus. At which point the old slave song steps into the story as though it were a Greek chorus in an ancient tragedy and responds, “O, Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn. Pharaoh’s army got drownded. O, Mary, don’t you weep.”

It’s one of the most influential and important of all the slave songs and spirituals that have survived into the twenty-first century. But it hasn’t been a popular cross-over song, by which I mean it hasn’t made the inroads into white religious culture and personal piety that so many spirituals have, like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “The Battle of Jericho” and “Wade in the Water” and “Deep River,” among so many others. We sing “Mary Don’t You Weep” almost every time we go to Springfield Baptist Church for our annual joint Communion service, but we don’t ever bring Mary back with us to First Baptist. This one doesn’t cross over very often.

And when it does a curious thing happens, as in the version we’ll sing this morning from the United Methodist hymnal. The only stanzas that get included are the “when I get to heaven” stanzas. White hymnals don’t typically include the stanza that sings, “If I could, I surely would stand on the rock where Moses stood.” In other words, I’d drown that Pharaoh if I had a chance. Or “One of these nights about 12 o’clock, This old world’s gonna reel and rock.” I wonder what that expresses in a song of resistance and hope among persons who are owned and exploited or among persons who are systematically denied access to economic opportunity and education and self-determination. “God gave Noah the rainbow sign; no more water, but fire next time.” Judgment’s coming, don’t you think? “Mary wore three links of chain; every link was freedom’s name.” That’s a marvelous image of resistance and hope: every link of the chain by which you are bound has freedom’s name on it.

The problem, you see, is that when we whitewash those old slave-song spirituals and only sing the emancipation-hope stanzas without singing the slavery-resistance stanzas, we risk preaching only half the gospel. In the message of the gospel, there is no hope without resistance. The moral and spiritual power of hope is always found in the active refusal of the human spirit to give in to the way things are as the way they must be, the active refusal to accept what is wrong as right as a legitimate structure of society and the universe, the active rejection of what is demeaning and destructive to others and to one’s self. Hope is grounded in never giving in and never giving up cause “Pharaoh’s army got drownded, O, Mary, don’t you weep.”

“Take away the stone,” Jesus says in John 11:39. The voice of accommodation and acquiescence immediately repsonds, “Jesus, you can’t do that; it’s too far gone.” But Jesus refuses to accept the way things are in place of the way things can be, and so he calls to the one who is already in death, “Lazarus, come out!” And as Lazarus stumbles out of the darkness of the tomb into the light of day, Jesus says to those around, “Unbind him, and let him go.” That’s the gospel voice of resistance: “Take away the stone.” “Come out!” “Unbind her, and let her go.”

When Mary falls in tears at Jesus’ feet, she does not yet know how the story ends. None of us ever does when we get to a point like that in our life. But the story of the resurrection of Lazarus is also the story of the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of Mary and the resurrection of Martha and the resurrection of all of us who refuse to accept the way things are as they way they must be, who refuse to accept what is wrong as right, and who reject what is demeaning and destructive to others and to ourselves. Yesterday’s venture in Operation Inasmuch in which more than 300 of us participated was an act of resistance and hope that things will not always be as they are now. Sending a mission team to Haiti—and going to Haiti this week—is an act of resistance and hope that things will not always be as they are now.

Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26). That question, “Do you believe this?” is not just about eternal life as “in heaven.” Remember, now, in those old slave songs and spirituals “heaven” and “home” and “over Jordan” are codes for freedom, for emancipation in the here and now, not just in some life to come. Jesus refuses to accept Martha’s answer in v 24 that she believes in a resurrection of the dead at the end of time as what he means when he tells her that her brother will rise again (John 11:23-24). When Jesus asks, “Do you believe this?” it is a question about the character and quality of life here and now that we are all are called to live: a life of resistance and hope for others and for ourselves.

So when we come this morning to sing those “heaven” stanzas of “Mary Don’t You Weep”—“gonna run about and spread the news”—we are not just singing hope; we are singing resistance also in the name of the one who is the resurrection and life, in whom we never give up or give in cause Pharaoh’s army got drownded. O, brother, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn. O, sister, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn. Pharaoh’s army got drownded. Take away the stone! Come out! Unbind him, and let her go!

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Kimberly Rebecca Thomasson and James Gresham Stephens

2011-04-02T20:04:00.014-04:00

April 2, 2011
Colossians 3:12-17

The common expression “fall in love” may be the one of the truest images and at the same time one of the biggest lies our culture tells. “Falling in love” is a true reflection of what happens to us at the beginning of a romantic relationship if for no other reason than that the science of biochemistry has shown that the chemicals released in the human body when we are “madly in love” are the very same chemicals at work when people suffer from certain mental illnesses. From a biochemical standpoint, it’s hard to tell the difference between “love” and insanity. Love makes us crazy.

Most of you weren’t here at the rehearsal last night to see Jay skipping down the aisle—yes, skipping—as he and Kimberly practiced the recessional. Love makes us nuts. It makes grown men skip. But the expression “fall in love” is also one of the biggest lies our culture tells us. You may fall into a romance; you may fall into each other’s arms; you may even fall into bed. But love as the Bible understands it and as the Christian faith defines it is not something you “fall” into at all.

First, the Scripture from Colossians that you chose for today begins by calling you “God’s chosen ones.” It’s true enough that the book of Colossians is referring to all baptized believers by that phrase, but your choice of this passage as important to you in your marriage puts the expression “God’s chosen ones” in a special light this afternoon. I am convinced that you did not simply fall in love with each other; you were chosen for each other by God. You did not fall into a relationship; you were drawn into it by God to be a match made in heaven lived out on earth. Scripture tells us that “unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Psalm 127:1), and the same is true of a marriage. If you are not “God’s chosen ones,” each for the other, then you have chosen in vain. The time we have spent together in the last several months has convinced me that you did not fall in love; you were chosen in love and for love.

Second, in the Bible and in the Christian faith, love is an act of will, not a spill; love is a choice you make, not a trip you take; love is a commitment, not a fall. The Scripture passage from Colossians that you chose for today says, “Above all, clothe yourselves with love.” Love is something you choose to put on every day. Some days, love is relaxed and easy, and you spend your day in sweats. Some days, though, love is a labor of sweat and even tears, and it requires the grungiest work clothes you own. Some days, love is new shoes, new shoes, a whole store full of new shoes. Some days it’s beachwear, but some days it will be long-johns and a parka, trust me. But every day, your love for each other must be an act of will, a choice you make; a commitment you clothe yourself in daily no matter what the weather is and regardless of how you feel that day.

We all know that not everyone who gets married is capable of that kind of will. Not everyone is willing to make that choice. Not everyone is committed to being faithful as long as they both shall live. But those who are and those who do mutually and together discover a God-given character and quality of life together that is like no other.

It is a life together that “was established by God in creation, and our Lord Jesus Christ adorned this manner of life by his presence and first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. Holy Scripture commends it to be honored among all people. The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord. Therefore marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God. Into this holy union Kimberly and Jay now come to be joined” (Book of Common Prayer) and commit to clothe themselves every day in their love for each other as long as they both shall live.

Photo by Wayne-Amethyst Photography, used under license of Creative Commons.

Obstacles to Grace: Envy

2011-03-30T20:27:00.011-04:00

1 Samuel 18:5-9; James 3:13-18

March 30, 2011

Do you look good in green? Kermit the Frog does. The Irish, they of the “Emerald Isle,” love their green, especially on St. Patrick’s Day. Green is the color of environmental responsibility: Reuse, Reduce, Recycle. Kermit the Frog, St. Patrick’s Day, environmental responsibility. What’s not to love about green?

Unless green is the color of your complexion, and then you are not feeling well at all. Unless green is the color of the sky, and then we’re talking tornado time. Unless the grass of your neighbor’s lawn is greener than yours is, and then we’re talking envy. I love a green, green lawn all year long. That’s why at our house we still grow fescue instead of bermuda or zoysia, which would make a lot more sense in South Carolina. I want a green lawn all year long because I want the grass to be greener on my side of the fence. To envy—or to desire to be the object of envy—is an insidious and ugly obstacle to grace.

Frederick Buechner calls envy “the consuming desire to have everybody as unsuccessful as you are.” Dorothy Sayers says, “Envy is the great leveller. If it cannot level things up, it will level things down.” Let’s look at how envy works.

In the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel, King Saul and the young warrior David were allies in arms against the Philistines. Saul welcomed David into his own home, and in the service of Saul “David went out and was successful wherever Saul sent him; as a result, Saul set him over the army.” But one day, something changed in Saul. It happened, we are told, “when the women came out of all the towns of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul.” But when they met King Saul, listen to what they sang: “Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands.” Hmmm. That’s when the screw of envy turned in Saul. Saul became “very angry. . . . He said, ‘They have ascribed to David ten thousands, [but] to me they have ascribed [only] thousands. . . .’ So Saul eyed David from that day on.” “Saul eyed David” (1 Samuel 18:5-9).

On one level, envy is a sin of the eye. It is an optical and perceptual flaw by which we objectify others on account of what they have that we perceive ourselves to lack. On a deeper level though, envy is not in the eye at all. Envy is rooted in our deepest insecurity and discontent with ourselves. Envy is an expression of the most anxious place in our self and our self-image.

Consider this. Saul didn’t envy David for his shepherding or for his harp playing. He didn’t envy David on account of the love of his son Jonathan for David or on account of the love of his daughter Michal for David. He didn’t even envy David for his military exploits. Saul did fine with David’s success in love and war until the women began to sing; that’s what touched a nerve in Saul’s insecurity and wounded him in his most anxious place. The self-tormenting discontent that is envy always originates in the most insecure and anxious place in each of us.

Preachers don’t envy engineers for their analytical acumen, but another preacher’s deft turn of phrase and the ability to draw a congregation in turns a preacher green. Bankers don’t envy a violinist’s virtuosity. The recent collapse of financial institutions all over our country was driven not by greed as much as it was by the personal and professional insecurity of hollow men consumed by the thought that the other guy had a bigger . . . bank. The billion-dollar business of elective cosmetic surgery is predicated on women’s envy of the size of other women’s . . . lips. Where we are most vulnerable and insecure is where envy grows.

So where do we turn to be healed of our own evil eye?

First, get over it. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. It’s a scientific fact. In an article published in 1983 titled “‘The Grass is always Greener’: An Ecological Analysis of an Old Aphorism,” James R. Pomerantz showed how optical and perceptual properties of the human eye make a mass of grass at a distance appear greener than grass nearby with its differentiated blades (Perception 12 [1983], 501-502). Of course their grass over there looks greener to you than your grass over here does. It’s an optical and perceptual fact. Don’t torment yourself because your distance from another person’s particulars makes their life look better than it really is up close. Get over it.

Second, no matter how green it is, sooner or later, “the grass withers, the flower fades” (Isaiah 40:8). Perhaps the saddest thing about the endless anguish and self-torment of envy is that it doesn’t even obsess over things that are lasting. There is nothing in the world to envy that does not fail, fall, wither, shrink, or sag sooner or later. Instead of envy, which leads to “disorder and wickedness of every kind,” James 3 says, we set our eyes on “the wisdom from above” that is everything that envy is not: it is “pure . . . peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace” instead of tormenting themselves and others with their envy (James 3:17-18). “Wisdom from above” is lasting; the grass, no matter how green, withers.

Third, stop counting. The most popularly prescribed antidote to envy is “Count your many blessings, name them one by one.” But the problem is that antidote assumes the very same thing that envy does: that your contentment and satisfaction are grounded in how much you have instead of in how good God is. Contrast that popular prescription with the discovery of the apostle Paul who says that at the very place of his greatest insecurity and anxiety—he called it “a thorn in the flesh”—he heard God say to him, “My grace is sufficient for you” (1 Corinthians 12:9). “My grace is sufficient for you.”

Envy is an obstacle to grace precisely because it denies the goodness of God that that fills our weakness with God’s strength and replaces our insecurity with God’s love when with the Psalmist our “eyes are ever toward the Lord” (Psalm 25:15) instead of roving about looking at whoever we see as having more or bigger or better than we.

The antithesis and the antidote to envy is not in adding up our blessings but in letting go of our insecurities and anxieties. It’s expressed in one of the most overlooked psalms in the entire Psalter, the quiet and unassuming Psalm 131. It’s overlooked because it runs counter to our cultural obsession with more, bigger, better. Psalm 131 reads, “O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother.” Satisfied, content, calmed, and quieted. “O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high.”

Satisfied, content, calmed, and quieted. Centered, not in how much you have but in how good God is.

Photo by Timo, used under license of Creative Commons.

An Old Testament Lenten Journey: Why Did You Bring Us Out?

2011-03-27T15:15:00.005-04:00

Exodus 17:1-7 Third Sunday in Lent 2011

“Why?” More often than not, it is an unanswerable question: “Why?” From a three-year old’s incessant refrain, “Why?” “Why?” “Why?” to the more substantive and troubled inquiry of an adult: “Why?”

That's Rebekkah’s question in Genesis 25:22 during a difficult pregnancy: “If it is to be this way, why do I live?” I’ve heard a woman or two speak that way. It was Moses’s question to God in Numbers 11:11: “Why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me?” That’s the perennial question of pastors and preachers when they go into their closet to pray. The prophet Jeremiah laments, “Why did I come forth from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?” (Jeremiah 20:18). I’ve heard that voice of depression and despair a time or two, have you? The Psalms are full of “Why?’s”. Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” That’s Psalm Ps 10:1. And then there’s the famous beginning of Psalm 22, that Jesus quotes from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?” More often than not, it is an unanswerable question: “Why?”

The Israelites ask, “Why?” in the wilderness in verse 3 of this morning’s Old Testament Lesson from the Revised Common Lectionary: “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock by thirst?” This is not the only time the Israelites ask “Why?” on their journey in the wilderness. They ask it again in Numbers 11:20: “Why did we ever leave Egypt?” And in Numbers 14:3: “Why is the Lord bringing us into this land to fall by the sword?” And in Numbers 20:5: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to this wretched place?”

Professors and preachers alike routinely ridicule and even condemn the Israelites on their journey when they ask “Why?” My friend and mentor, John Durham, in his commentary on Exodus, calls this passage a story of a “rebellion born of doubt” (WBC, Exodus, p. 232) as the Israelites engage in “doubting . . . what should be undoubtable” (p. 230): the presence and provision of God on their journey. A momentary exposure to thirst—a short-term shortfall—causes them to become disaffected and to grumble about Moses leadership and the Lord’s provision. So the name of the place is remembered in v 7 as “Massah (Testing) and Meribah (Dissatisfaction)” (p. 228). “Is the Lord present with us or not?” the Israelites ask when they get thirsty.

Durham says that to ask that question at all is scandalous. It is as though God’s mighty acts in Egypt had never occurred; as though the Israelites’ deliverance from bondage and slavery had not happened; as though their rescue at the sea was forgotten; as though their guidance in the wilderness by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night had gone unnoticed; as though the manna—bread from heaven—that they were eating daily counted for nothing. It is as though the very fact that they were alive and free, they and their children and their livestock, were not in itself evidence enough that the Lord is present with them. A little thirst, a short-term shortfall, an anxiety or uncertainty or fear of any sort causes them—and us—to doubt the undoubtable: God’s presence and provision.

The larger biblical tradition remembers this incident of quarreling and complaining in the wilderness as a turning point—a breaking point of a sort—in the Lord’s relationship with Israel. Listen to the ancient call to worship in Psalm 95, part of which served as our opening sentences for worship here this morning: “O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker! For the Lord is our God, and we are the people of God’s pasture, and the sheep of God’s hand. O that today you would listen to the Lord’s voice! Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah, in the wilderness, when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation and said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not regard my ways.’ Therefore in my anger I swore, ‘They shall not enter my rest’” (Psalm 95:6-11). The shortfall may be short-term, the anxiety or uncertainty or fear may be passing; but the relational consequences of dissatisfaction and testing can be far-reaching, according to Psalm 95.

It is surely not a coincidence that Psalm 95:8 says, “Do not harden your hearts,” exactly the expression that was used repeatedly of the recalcitrant Pharaoh of Egypt in the book of Exodus whose “heart was hardened” again and again, and we all know how that turned out, in the words of the old spiritual: “Pharaoh’s army got drownded.” The consequences of hardness of heart are far-reaching. For forty years I loathed that complaining and grumbling generation and “Therefore in my anger I swore, ‘They shall not enter my rest,’” said the Lord.

They are easy targets, these Israelites, and so are you and I. Our grumbling and complaining are incessant, as are our disaffection toward our leaders and our doubting of God. To be sure, the priests in the Jerusalem temple in their call to worship in Psalm 95 want none of it; and so they instruct the people, “Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah, in the wilderness.” The priests know what is at stake here. After all, Psalm 106 says that Meribah was Moses’ downfall. Psalm 106 says that the people “angered the Lord at the waters of Meribah, and it went ill with Moses on their account; for they made his spirit bitter” (vv 32-33).

That’s a reflection of the Meribah story as it is told in the book of Numbers, where “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying:

Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and your brother Aaron, and command the rock before their eyes to yield its water. Thus you shall bring water out of the rock for them; thus you shall provide drink for the congregation and their livestock. So Moses took the staff from before the Lord, as he had commanded him. Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, ‘Listen, you rebels, shall we bring water for you out of this rock?’ Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his staff; water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their livestock drank. But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you did not trust in me, to show my holiness before the eyes of the Israelites, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.’ These are the waters of Meribah, where the people of Israel quarreled with the Lord, and by which he showed his holiness” (Numbers 20:7-13).

Instead of simply commanding the rock to yield its water to show God’s holiness, in a fit of anger, Moses berated the people and struck the rock, and in so doing ruptured his relationship with God. In this version of the Meribah story in Numbers, Aaron the brother of Moses and the ancestor of the priests in Jerusalem is also present and is also excluded from God’s rest on account of what happened there; and Aaron’s successors who are calling the people to worship in Psalm 95 want no part of that kind of trouble on their own time and place.

But let’s look again at what happens in Exodus 17:1-7. What typically gets overlooked by the priests and preachers and professors alike in their ridicule and condemnation of these Israelites is the very fact that in Exodus 17:1-7, in spite of their dissatisfaction and testing, in spite of their quarreling and complaining, in spite of their “doubting what should be undoubtable,” God still provides for the people. When the people complained against Moses, “Why did you put us in this situation of scarcity and discontent?” “Moses cried out to the Lord, ‘What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.’ The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and the water will come out of it, so that the people may drink’” (Exodus 17:4-6). What usually goes curiously unnoticed in this story is that God provides exactly what the people need and ask for. After all, v 1 says, “There was no water for the people to drink”; and v 3 says, “The people thirsted there for water.” And God responded to the people’s cry by giving them exactly what they asked for: water where there was no water. There is in Exodus 17:1-7 a legitimate situation of need; there is a short-term shortfall, a condition of scarcity.

According to the late Brevard Childs, a leading American Old Testament scholar of the twentieth century (who, by the way, was born in Columbia, S.C.), there is a pattern to this story that shows up throughout the wilderness journey of the Israelites. It is a pattern of need, of complaint, of intercession, and of God’s miraculous meeting of that need. That pattern expresses gospel in a nutshell: the Lord provides even for testy and unsatisfiable, quarreling and complaining and doubting people. And when we read this story, instead ridiculing and condemning those Israelites, we should all say together, “Thanks be to God!” “Thanks be to God!”

You see, a fascinating thing about God and about our journey with God is that our disaffection and discontent and doubt does not result in God’s abandonment of us on the journey. God still provides, as God provided in Exodus 17 at Meribah and Massah. What happens, though, is that by allowing ourselves to become over-reactive and to be overcome by our disaffection and discontent and doubt, consumed by anxiety and uncertainty and fear in the face of shortfalls and scarcities, we remove ourselves, we cut ourselves off from “God’s rest.” God had promised the Israelites rest, and they cut themselves off from it and Meribah and Massah.

Jesus calls us to reconnect to God this way: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Jesus calls us to quench our deepest thirst with the “living water” (John 4:10) this way: “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water I will give them will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14). Our Lenten journey is a coming to Christ in our weariness with our heavy burdens. Our Lenten journey is a coming to Christ in our deepest thirst. Our Lenten journey is a coming to Christ to lay down our disaffection and discontent and doubt, our anxiety and uncertainty and fear that makes us testy and unsatisfiable, quarreling and complaining.

So that even when we are beset by thirst, shortfall, scarcity, uncertainty, and fear, instead of arriving at “Massah (Discontent) and Meribah (Testing)” asking, “Why?” “Why?” “Why?” and asking, “Is the Lord present with us or not?” we arrive instead at a place where we sing, “Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see; All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—“Great is Thy faithfulness,” Lord, unto me!”

Photo from St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, England, by Lawrence OP, used under license of Creative Common.

An Old Testament Lenten Journey: To an Unknown Land

2011-03-20T15:01:00.007-04:00

Genesis 12:1-4a
Second Sunday in Lent 2011

One day this past week, I realized that I was humming a familiar tune. It was a song from my childhood, long forgotten, but apparently long remembered also. Once I recognized the tune, I put with it the few words that I could remember: “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we fight our country’s battles in the air, on land and sea.” I have no idea why I learned the United States Marine Corps hymn when I was a child.

The melody is taken, more or less, from an aria in a French comic opera, but it wasn’t the melody that brought it back to mind for me. It was the “shores of Tripoli” that triggered my memory. That’s a reference to the battle of Derne in 1805 during the First Barbary War, the first land battle that U.S. forces ever fought overseas. There were actually only 8 Marines and two navy midshipmen involved in leading a mercenary force of some 400 Arabs, Greeks, and Berbers in an operation that included a 500-mile march across the Libyan desert and a pretty remarkable exercise in interfaith management as the commanding officer worked to keep the Muslims and the Christians in his army on the same side in difficult circumstances.

More than 200 years later, American forces are once again on the shores of Tripoli. Someone will tell me that I’m wrong about that, but if the last fifty years of American military tactics are any indication, there are more American special forces personnel on the ground in Libya this morning than there were marines and midshipmen involved in the battle of Derne in 1805 that has been immortalized in the Marine Corps hymn.

Earthquake, tsunami, nuclear meltdown, the spread of radiation, and new hostilities in North Africa to go with operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are heavy times, befitting the season of Lent and the shadow of the cross. For some of us, though, the weight of the season is not grounded in foreign affairs or military actions or tectonic shifts or waves or particles. The weight of our season is closer to home in grief, in guilt, in loss, in illness, in uncertainty, in loneliness, in despair. Some of us don’t need international headlines to weigh us down; we’re carrying our own weight of the world on our shoulders, thank you very much. The words we’re singing aren’t the Marine Corps hymn but “The pathway is broken, the signs are unclear. I don’t know the reason you brought me here,” wherever here may be.

This morning’s Old Testament lesson from Genesis 12 is the second passage in our Old Testament Lenten journey. It marks the beginning of the journey of Abraham and Sarah to an unknown land. To understand the shape of their journey—and our own, we need to understand the place of Genesis 12:1-4 in the book of Genesis. The great German Old Testament scholar and Lutheran pastor Gerhard von Rad saw in the first 12 chapters of the book of Genesis an amazing pattern that he characterized as the increasing visible power of sin and the increasing hidden power of grace. The increasing visible power of sin and the increasing hidden power of grace.

Here’s what von Rad saw. In Genesis 3, you may recall from last week, the first man and the first woman violated the one limitation that God had put on them in creation. In Genesis 2, the Lord God said to the first human, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Genesis 2:16-17). Von Rad points out that when the man and woman sin by violating the one and only commandment in creation (besides “be fruitful and multiply,” but that’s another story), God does not, according to Genesis 3, carry out the death sentence that was hanging over their heads but expels them from the garden instead. Sin entered in, but grace prevailed.

In Genesis 4, the sin in creation escalates to murder when Cain kills his younger brother Abel. But when Cain is sentenced by God to “be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth,” the killer of his brother cries out to God, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.” The Lord’s response to Cain is an inexplicable act of grace. “Then the Lord said to [Cain], ‘Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.’ And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him” (vv 13-15). Instead of allowing the threat of blood vengeance to run its course, the Lord God provided Cain with a protective mark so that no one would kill him. Why? Sin entered in, but grace prevailed.

You may also recall from last week that I said Genesis 6 begins with a strange little piece of ancient folklore about the cohabitation of “sons of God” and the daughters of humans that created a race of legendary hero-warriors (verses 1-4). This disruption of the created order was more than a moral God could stand, and so we read in Genesis 6:7, “the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But immediately after the divine determination to make an end of all flesh in a creation run amok, the very next verse reads, “But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord.” So instead of making an end of all flesh, God provided for creation to begin again on the other side of the inundation. Why? Sin entered in, but grace prevailed.

By Genesis 11, the human beings are up to their old tricks and are attempting to become like God by building a temple tower that will reach into the heavens to secure their fame and their future. In Genesis 11:6, God looks out on the situation and says, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them”—and that means they will have become like God. So the Lord says, “‘Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.’ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.” Von Rad points out that finally in Genesis 11, for the first time in creation, God did exactly what God threatened to do in punishment. Destruction and confusion and scattering and alienation are the threat and the penalty, one and the same: “The Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.” This time, there is no amelioration, no grace.

Until the beginning of chapter 12, that is: the journey of Abraham and Sarah. “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. . . . and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:1,3). The call of Abraham, the theological ancestor of Jews and Christians and Muslims alike, is God’s act of grace that expresses God’s intent that destruction and confusion and scattering and alienation are not God’s will for creation. God’s will for creation is always blessing (Genesis 1:28; 12:4).

Buried in Genesis 12:2 is a small and often overlooked turn of phrase that is at the heart of the journey of Abraham and Sarah. NRSV translates the end of verse 2 this way: “so that you will be a blessing.” But the final phrase in verse 2 is not a result clause at all, as it is usually translated. Instead, weheyeh beraka, as it reads in Hebrew, is an imperative; it’s a command. “As for you,” it says, “be a blessing.” That’s the journey of Abraham and Sarah: to “be a blessing.” Sin enters in, but grace prevails. “In you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.” That’s the journey of the church and of every member of it: “be a blessing.” The apostle Paul wrote, “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3:29): “In you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” That is your reason for being; that is our reason for being.

That is why whenever we are faced with the weight of the season or the weight of the world either one, when “The pathway is broken, the signs are unclear; I don’t know the reason why you brought me here,” still we sing, “I’m gonna walk through the valley if you want me to.” We don’t know where our journey will take us or when, but the shape of our journey is to “be a blessing.”

Thomas E. Murray, Jr., was a member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission from 1950-1957. In 1954, Murray published an article titled “Don’t Leave Atomic Energy to the Experts” in a journal called The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. In that article, Murray argued that far too few people in the military, in politics, and in the general public fully understand the implications of nuclear science and technology. “Leaving it to the experts,” as he put it, portends what he called “a tragic price” (February 1954, p. 48). More than a half century later, experts and non-experts all over the world are scrambling to reassess the price of even peaceful uses of nuclear power. But listen to the conclusion of Murray’s article.

“After attending a large-scale nuclear explosion, one can never forget the sudden deafening angry roar of tortured nature as energy escapes, in a fraction of a millionth of a second, from its ancient confinement in matter. [Human beings] too have gigantic energies captive in their minds, needing only the compression of circumstances for release into the most varied forms of human activity. In its highest form, this release of energy joins with God’s grace. . . . What our world needs most now are architects of survival—those blessed peacemakers of the Sermon on the Mount. They exist—just as surely as that energy exists which when released produces the incredibly giant explosions that are now shaking the world” (p. 50).

When Murray calls us to “the gigantic energies . . . of human activity” that “joins with God’s grace,” he is singing Abraham and Sarah’s song singing God’s song: “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” “Be a blessing!”

Photo of a Tripoli beach at sunset sunset by Faris Haider Al-Ftasy, used under license of Creative Commons.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

An Old Testament Lenten Journey: Living with Knowledge

2011-03-13T16:24:00.007-04:00

Genesis 2:15-17 and 3:1-7
First Sunday in Lent 2011

Have you ever had an “eye-opening experience”? The kind of experience I have in mind is this. Whether you wanted to or not, you came to know something that you didn’t really need to know. Your life would have been just fine without knowing it; but once you knew it, you couldn’t look at something or someone the same way ever again. Knowing this one thing changed everything. It changed everything about a person or a relationship or a marriage or a family or a workplace or a church or a community. You didn’t really need to know it, but now that you do, there’s no going back. This morning’s Old Testament lesson from the book of Genesis, the first passage in our “Old Testament Lenten journey” is about an “eye-opening experience.” Genesis 3:7 says, “then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew. . . .” They knew.

The story of Adam and Eve doesn’t give us any reason to think anything other than that the first man and the first woman were getting along just swimmingly in the garden of Eden. How could they not have been? They had the whole place to themselves: no in-laws, no outlaws, no laws at all, really, just some simple instructions. They were, no doubt, young and in love, and they were tilling and keeping the garden as they had been created to do without a care in the world. It was paradise, after all, sheer bliss.

“Ignorance is bliss,” they say. In one form or another, it’s an ancient proverb. The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes or Qohelet as it is known in Hebrew says, “For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow” (1:18). When I taught the book of Ecclesiastes in my classes at Furman, I would always tell my students that Ecclesiastes 1:18 was the basis of my understanding of my call as a professor: my job was to increase their vexation and their sorrow. And I was pretty good at that. It was the British poet Thomas Gray who in 1742 in a poem titled “On a Distant Prospect of Eton College” put the ancient proverb into the form we have known it in English ever since: “Where ignorance is bliss, ’Tis folly to be wise,” he wrote. “For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow.”

The first eleven chapters of the book of Genesis are intended to tell us about the nature and meaning and structure of ourselves and of the world in which we live. We usually think of Genesis 1-2 as containing the stories of the creation of the world by God, but chapters 3-11 of the book of Genesis are every bit as much creation stories as Genesis 1-2 are. The creation of the physical world is recounted in the first two chapters of Genesis. And then the next nine chapters narrate the creation of the psychological and social and spiritual and linguistic and demographic world as the ancients new it and understood it to be.

In the beginning was bliss: a man and a woman, God, and a garden. That is, until in Genesis 3, the man and the woman became alienated from themselves and from each other and from God. They fashioned clothing to hide themselves from each other, literally and figuratively; and they even tried to hide from God. By the end of the chapter, they were expelled from the garden to eke out a hard-scrabble existence that was sometimes as much a curse as it is a blessing. Now, that’s more like the world we know than life in the garden of Eden. In Genesis 4, the arrival of the second generation of human beings brings with it violence and estrangement when Adam and Eve’s oldest son Cain murders his younger brother Abel with the result that Cain becomes a marked man and a fugitive for the rest of his life. Now, that’s more like the world we know than life in the garden of Eden.

Then, after a genealogical interlude in Genesis 5, Genesis 6 begins with a strange little piece of ancient folklore about the cohabitation of “sons of God” and the daughters of humans that created a race of legendary hero-warriors (verses 1-4). But more importantly, what was happening in creation created grief for God, according to Genesis 6:5-6, which says, “the Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that the inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry for having made humankind on the earth, and the Lord was grieved in heart.” Talk about “in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow”: God knows vexation; God knows sorrow.

So in chapters 6 through 9 we read of a great flood, as though it were the overwhelming waters of the tears of God in sorrow and grief over how badly psychological and social and spiritual creation was turning out. But even after a new beginning in chapter 9 with a brand new blessing from God and a covenant promise that God would never to do it again, creation is spoiled all over again by Noah’s propensity for drunkenness and the human propensity for enslavement and oppression of one human being by another. Now, that’s more like the world we know than life in the garden of Eden.

Genesis 10 is another genealogical interlude that explains how the human beings dispersed and diversified after the flood into their own lands, with their own language, by their families in their nations. It is only there in Genesis 10 that we finally arrive at a psychological and social and spiritual and linguistic and demographic world that looks anything like the world we live in: diverse peoples in their own lands, with their own language, by their families in their nations. In Genesis 11, the story of the infamous tower of Babel narrates the same development as the judgment of God rather than the multiplication of peoples, but the end result is the same: a world populated by human beings who are spread out and separated and alienated one from another by competing allegiances to land and language and family and nation.

How could it have all gone so wrong from something that started out so right: a man and a woman, God, and a garden? You see, the Lenten journey that we make from Ash Wednesday to Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday in remembrance of the journey to the cross and to the tomb and to the depths of hell that Jesus made began a long, long time ago. It began even in the beginning, as it were, when the goodness of God’s creation was spoiled by an eye-opening experience that changed everything.

And no matter how much you and I might like for things to go back to how they were before our eyes were opened and we knew whatever it is we know now that we wish we didn’t, there is no going back; there is only going forward, living with knowledge.

The younger of my two brothers tells the story of when he was a boy on a sunny afternoon on a back porch in suburban Wilmington, DE, when our quiet and unassuming grandfather explained to him how nuclear fission—the splitting of the atom—works. Then my grandfather drew a simple, clear diagram of an atomic bomb and explained how it worked, all of which was fascinating to my brother. It was only decades later, after my grandfather died, that we began to learn how it happened that this quiet and unassuming man had his eyes opened in the 1920s and the 1930s to atomic chemistry so that by the 1940s he was well prepared and well connected to participate in the one of the greatest advances in science—and warfare—in the twentieth century.

This morning, as the world watches anxiously at the likelihood that nuclear meltdown has already begun in reactors number one and three at the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant, we are all reminded that human knowledge can be every bit as much a curse as it can be a blessing. On account of thousands of quiet and unassuming people like my grandfather, the Japanese are already more familiar with death by radiation than any other people on the face of the planet. Their history has taught them all too well how scientific advances and competing allegiances—their own and others’—to land and language and family and nation can turn beauty beastly, can turn life deathly, can turn good evil. That’s meltdown. Meltdown is what happens when heat builds up in our reactors, and we don’t cool it down before it releases toxic levels of radiation into the environment around us. We’ve all done it; we’ve all participated in it.

Yesterday afternoon, as Bev and I talked about the repercussions of this morning’s time change to Daylight Savings Time—“spring forward”—on our family, she said, “It’s going to put everybody out of whack.” “Yep,” I said, “it will. But what I’d like to know is when it was that everybody was ‘in whack.’ I must have missed it.” Creation is out of whack; persons are out of whack; families are out of whack; workplaces are out of whack; churches are out of whack; entire communities, economies and nations are out of whack. If the book of Genesis is any indication, it has been that way from early on in the beginning.

And that’s why every year the first stage on our Lenten journey is repentance. Repentance is recognition, confession, and redirection. The first step in repentance is the recognition that we are out of whack, that every one of us is Adam and Eve spoiling the garden for themselves and for everyone else. We have to recognize it for what it is before we can do anything about it. We are all out of whack. Recognition. The second step in repentance is confession, acknowledging to God that we have sinned against God and against others in things we have thought, in things we have said, and in things we have done, and in things we have failed to think and failed to say and failed to do. Confession. And the third step in repentance is redirection: getting back ‘in whack’ with God and neighbor and self. Redirection.

Recognition, confession, and redirection are at the heart of the Lord’s Supper that we share this morning. The vexation and grief that God experiences over creation and the sorrow and suffering that Christ experiences over us come down to this table, to the bread and the cup, in the form of mercy and forgiveness and love that are our only antidotes and our only sustenance for living with knowledge.

“All we like sheep have gone astray, But Christ would shepherd us alway; And for our sins in sorrow weep, Content to suffer for his sheep. Miserere nobis, Lord, have mercy” on us. Lord have mercy on us.

Photo from the Associated Press/NTV Japan via APTN.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Sing, Seek, Remember

2011-03-06T15:34:00.005-05:00

1 Chronicles 16:7-13, 31-34
Transfiguration Sunday 2011

Later this morning, during the eleven o’clock hour, the Furman Singers under the direction of Dr. Hugh Floyd will fill this room with glorious music as they lead in worship in this place. And when they do, they will become the successors of “Asaph and his kindred,” as 1 Chronicles 16:7 identifies the singers in Jerusalem who were appointed by King David to lead ancient Israel in the praise and worship of God.

The connection between music and religion is probably as old as music and as old as religion. The book of Job suggests that music is as old as creation itself, as when God “laid the cornerstone” of “the foundation of the earth” and “the morning stars sang together” (Job 38:7). In Genesis 4, there is an ancient folk genealogy of the descendents of Adam and Eve, one of whom is named “Jubal,” “the ancestor of all those who play the lyre and the pipe” (v 21). According to Genesis 4, that is also around the time that people began to call on the name of the Lord (v 26), so even in this ancient folk genealogy, music and religion are not too far apart.

From Genesis to Revelation, the verb “to sing” and the noun “song” occur nearly 250 times. Four of those nearly 250 times are in this morning’s Old Testament lesson from 1 Chronicles 16. The job of “singing praises to the Lord” belonged to Asaph and his kindred, according to verse 7. “Sing” to the Lord, and “Sing praises” to God, says verse 9. And “the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord,” says verse 33. It’s a singing-full chapter, actually. “Sing to the Lord, all the earth,” says v 23; and verses 41-42 point out that that those who were chosen and appointed “to render thanks to the Lord. . . . had with them trumpets and cymbals for the music, and instruments for sacred song.” There were harps and lyres also, according to verse 5. There was a whole lot of music going on in the worship that David appointed in Jerusalem.

Not everyone is enamored with music in worship, however. Back in August of 2001, members of the First Baptist diaconate gathered in the Fellowship Hall for an ice-cream social and to share their “Hopes and Dreams” for this congregation. One person at the table at which I was sitting talked about his hopes and dreams for the music ministry at First Baptist, because that was the most important part of the church to him; it was the music that drew him here and the music that kept him here, he said. Three or four persons later, around the table, it was another deacon’s time to speak, and this one said something like this: “You mentioned the music. I have to tell you that if we only sang two verses of two hymns every Sunday morning, and that’s all the music there was, that would be more than enough music for me.” Ah, the “perspectival diversity” of the congregation of First Baptist Greenville! What some of us are most passionate about, others of us can do without entirely!

Listen to what the great Christian thinker and writer C.S. Lewis said about going to church and singing hymns. “My own experience is that when I first became a Christian . . . I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn’t go to the churches and Gospel Halls; and then later I found that it was the only way of flying your flag; and, of course, I found that this meant being a target. It is extraordinary how inconvenient to your family it becomes for you to get up early to go to Church. It doesn’t matter so much if you get up early for anything else, but if you get up early to go to Church it’s very selfish of you and you upset the house. If there is anything in the teaching of the New Testament which is in the nature of a command, it is that you are obliged to take the Sacrament, and you can’t do it without going to Church. I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit” (God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, pp. 61-62).

Lewis never changed his opinion of the literary and musical qualities of church music—he always went to the earliest Sunday morning service at the Anglican church he attended in Oxford in order to avoid the music of the later services. But he admits that he came to recognize “the devotion and benefit” of those “fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music.” (By the way, if you stay for 11:00 worship this morning, you will hear the Furman Singers offer first-rate poems by e.e. cummings and John Donne and Christina Rosetti set to first-rate music. C. S. Lewis never had it that good where he went to church in Oxford.) It was in the music that Lewis detested that he discovered the devotion of the “old saint” whose boots he was not “fit to clean.” Music creates that kind of community. Music awakens that kind of harmony. Even for those of us who are not overly fond of it, music draws us out of the dissonance of our solitary conceits into the consonance of the body of Christ, the communion of saints, the cohort of foot-washers, one of another.

In verses 9-10 of 1 Chronicles 16, “singing” to the Lord is connected to “seeking” the strength and presence of the Lord. Many of you know Kyle Matthews’ song “Sing Down” about the Civil Rights-era march from Selma to Montgomery: “The men held hands just to keep from runnin’ as the buckshot whistled past their ears. They had no choice but to raise their voices so the marchin’ songs were all that they could hear. They tried to sing down the dark clouds, choke back the fear; tried to sing down their anger over all the lost years. Tried to sing down the one sound that was most loud and clear: the silence of good people ringing in their ears.” That’s a song about seeking strength and presence in singing that overcomes dissonance and danger by unifying people for whom being committed to a common cause made them a target.

Even for those of us who cannot or will not sing, the singing of the congregation and seeking the strength and presence of the Lord go hand-in-hand. So those of us who can sing and do sing are not singing for ourselves alone. We are singing also for those who cannot or will not, just as the old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew was singing for C. S. Lewis when he could not or would not sing. Those who sing, sing for all for the strength and presence of the Lord.

Singing, seeking, and remembering, according to verse 12. Did you know that clinical studies of Alzheimer’s patients have shown that music can enhance memory recall and improve learning? Those studies have shown that music leads to positive changes in mood and emotional states in Alzheimer’s patients and increased awareness of self and others and the surrounding environment, which can be accompanied by increased emotional intimacy and social interaction with spouses and families and caregivers.

The esteemed neurologist and psychiatrist Dr. Oliver Sacks commented before a Senate Special Committee on Aging, “The power of music very remarkable. . . . One sees Parkinsonian patients unable to walk, but able to dance perfectly well or patients almost unable to talk, who are able to sing perfectly well.” The power of music is very remarkable, indeed. “The wife of a man with severe dementia said, “When I was encouraged by a music therapist to sing to my husband who had been lost in the fog of Alzheimer’s disease for so many years, he looked at me and seemed to recognize me. On the last day of his life, he opened his eyes and looked into mine when I sang his favorite hymn. I’ll always treasure that last moment we shared together. Music therapy gave me that memory, the gift I will never forget” (http://www.musictherapy.org/).

Our singing the praise of God and the glory of God and the works of God and the goodness of God and the steadfast love of God creates memories for the future the shape of which we do not yet know, and it re-calls memories of the past in the present that sustain us in God and with God. The power of music is very remarkable: singing, seeking, and remembering.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Evidence of Grace: Hope

2011-02-23T21:05:00.011-05:00

Romans 5:1-4
February 23, 2011

A few weeks ago, Irv Welling passed along what is said to be a Cherokee story he heard recently at an awards dinner. The story goes like this. One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. The grandfather said, “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?” The old Cherokee replied, “The one you feed.” The one you feed.

It occurred to me when I read that story that it could stand for our entire MidWeek series on virtues as evidences of grace and vices as obstacles to grace based on Steve Shoemaker’s book The Jekyll and Hyde Syndrome. It all depends on which wolf we feed. Tonight, I’m talking about feeding hope. Not having hope; not finding hope; not needing hope; but feeding hope.

In the Bible, hope is presented as something God gives. The prophet Jeremiah wrote to the people of Jerusalem who had been exiled to Babylon, “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). God gives hope, Jeremiah says. As that verse from Jeremiah implies, hope is always about a future with God that stands somehow in contrast to or in tension with the present. Whatever the circumstances of the present may be, hope holds out an alternative future in the plan of God for welfare and not for evil, for shalom and not for ra‘, the Hebrew text says.

The apostle Paul calls God “the God of hope” who will “fill you with joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope” (Romans 15:13). Shoemaker points out that “In the New Testament, hope is always a noun [or a verb], hope, never an adjective, hopeful, or an adverb, hopefully; [because hope] is far more than some subjective feeling we conjure up. It is a power given us by God, the God of our hope” (Shoemaker, p. 174). Hope is a power given to us by God. It is like a wolf inside us—if we will feed it.

God is our hope, the source of our hope and the object of our hope. “Hope in the Lord,” says the psalmist (Psalm 130:7; 131:3). “I hope in the Lord,” says Paul (Philipians 2:19). Hope is not some vague, wishful and wishy-washy feeling that “everything will be O.K.” Hope is a persistent and tenacious conviction of the soul that God really is at work in all things for good (Romans 8:28), even when you and I cannot see the good for which God is working. After all, Paul reminds us in Romans 8:24-25, “hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

Ah, patience. There’s the rub. In an era of fast food, fast cars, fast facts, fast internet, fast money, fast games, fast answers, fast weight loss, fast living, fast-acting, fast and furious, we do not hope for what we do not see because we wait for nothing with patience. The problem with the hope that comes to us from God is that it does not come as a gift on a silver platter to privileged and entitled people who are impatient and in a hurry. “Lord, give me patience, and give it to me right now.”

Hope comes, says Paul in Romans 5:1-4, from the long, slow work of the cultivation of our character which comes from the expansion of our endurance which comes from our experience of suffering. God sows hope like seeds in the dirt of our lives, seeds that must lie in the dark, underground, in order to germinate and sprout, to be cultivated, watered, fed, weeded, trimmed and pruned only eventually to be harvested as ripe and full-grown hope. The quote from Steve Shoemaker's book that has been at the top of our MidWeek order of worship for this series speaks of all of the virtues and of each of them. So, hope “is a gift from the Creator, an evidence of natural grace, and [hope] is also a habit, a discipline consisting of difficult choices and the day-by-day, step-by-step determination” to choose hope. In other words, to “have hope,” we must “feed hope.”

We must day-by-day and step-by-step determine to choose hope among the many options we have for relating to ourselves and to God and to others and to the world. I say to myself, “In this situation, I can choose cynicism; I can choose despair; I can choose apathy; I can choose anger; I can choose retribution. I have many choices, and I choose hope. I am going to feed hope.”

Ezekiel saw a vision of a valley of dry bones, the bones of Israel in exile, who cried out, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost!” But in that valley of dry bones, Ezekiel heard God say, “I will put my Spirit within you and you shall live!” That’s the voice that gives us reason to choose hope. Whether the valley is exile or illness, a broken family or a broken heart, a lost job or a failed test, God puts God’s spirit within us for life. In Egypt, Israel cried out to God under the murderous oppression of Pharaoh, and God raised up the voice of Moses, who demanded for God of Pharaoh, “Let my people go!” That’s the voice that gives us reason to choose hope. Whether Pharaoh is a political tyrant or an exploitive workplace, an abusive parent or spouse, or homelesseness or hunger or poverty, God’s spirit is always on the side of liberation. In the Easter story, we, like the women who were there, are asked, from the empty tomb, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” (Luke 24:5). That’s the voice that gives us reason to choose hope. Whether the tomb is in a garden or a graveyard or a failed marriage or a faded dream or an addiction or a dead end of one sort or another, God’s spirit is always on the side of life.

That’s the voice that gave Martin Luther King, Jr., the spiritual fortitude to announce on the night before he was assassinated, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. . . .
With this faith I will go out and carve a tunnel of hope from a mountain of despair.” We are all in the business of carving “a tunnel of hope from a mountain of despair.” Carving a mountain of hope from a tunnel of despair takes a tenacious faith in God that God is working for good regardless of how things look at any given time or place. It takes passionate confidence that in the end, God’s kingdom will come, God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And it takes faithful listening to the voice that gives us reason to choose hope.

Which wolf in you will win? The one you feed. So feed hope.

Photo by sometimesong. Used under license of Creative Commons. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sometimesong/

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Bread for the Journey: The Roundabout Way

2011-02-13T14:18:00.005-05:00

Exodus 13:17-22, Matthew 28:19-20
The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany 2011

It never was a straight line. It never has been. It never is. It never will be. Our biblical ancestors Abraham and Sarah left the city of Ur in southern Iraq, the book of Genesis says, to move north and west up the Euphrates River to Haran in modern-day Turkey. And from Haran they were called to Canaan, and from Canaan they traveled to Egypt, and from Egypt they returned to Canaan. It wasn’t a straight line.

Our biblical ancestors the sons and daughters of Jacob/Israel fled drought and famine in Canaan to settle in Egypt in the Nile Delta until they were no longer welcome there and were driven out or escaped from their home away from home to begin a forty-year journey to return to a land of promise generations old. It wasn’t a straight line.

Our biblical ancestors Israel and Judah were subjected to successive waves of Assyrian and Babylonian domination until they were exiled and dispersed throughout the Fertile Crescent from Egypt in the south to the Transjordan in the east and Asia Minor in the north and Babylonia in the northeast. It wasn’t a straight line.

Our biblical ancestors, the “holy family,” as Mary and Joseph and Jesus are sometimes called, fled to Egypt for safety out of the murderous reach of Herod the Great. And when they returned home, we are told, they did not settle in Joseph’s ancestral town of Bethlehem south of Jerusalem as he had hoped, but instead took up residence in the north in Galilee in Mary’s backwoods village of Nazareth, the kind of place about which it was asked, “Can anything good come out Nazareth?” (John 1:46). It wasn’t a straight line.

The Via Dolorosa, “the way of sorrow,” the path that Jesus walked carrying the cross, zig-zags through Jerusalem’s Old City with falls along the way. The biblical journey of faith never was a straight line. It never has been. It never is. It never will be.

Did you know that in the 1800s, “fewer than half the [American] population claimed membership in a local congregation” (Robert Wuthnow, After Heaven, p. 30). By the 1950s, however, “at least three-quarters of Americans belonged to a local house of worship.”But the 21st century is beginning to look more and more like the 19th century than the 20th century as church membership in the U.S. has slowly but steadily declined since its all-time high in the 1950s.

In his book titled After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s, the sociologist of religion Robert Wuthnow argues that a spirituality of a place—location, habitation, domicile—has been replaced by a spirituality of journey. “In settled times,” Wuthnow writes, “people have been able to create a sacred habitat and to practice habitual forms of spirituality; in unsettled times, they have been forced to negotiate with themselves and with each other to find the sacred. Settled times have been conducive to an imagery of dwellings; unsettled times, to an imagery of journeys (p. 4).

We live in unsettled times, don’t you think? Our lives are conducted in comings and goings that would have made our grandparents and great-grandparents dizzy and confused. Singer-songwriter Carole King characterized the unsettled times of our personal lives and our spiritual lives alike forty years ago when she sang, “So far away, Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore?” We are all on the move, traveling, changing, growing, declining, uniting, separating, arriving, leaving. “One more song about moving along the highway. . . . If I could only work this life out my way. . . . Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore?” Carole King’s ballad about a long-distance love affair is also a ballad about the spiritual condition of unsettled times.

But what if it never has been about staying in one place? What if the 1950s in America were an anomaly, and oddity, an outlier that we have mistakenly benchmarked as “the norm” against which other eras are measured? What if it never was about the location in Ur or Haran or Canaan or Egypt or Bethlehem or Nazareth or Jerusalem? What if it always has been about the journey not the place?

What if Exodus 13:18 were at the core of our understanding of our relationship with God as individual persons and as a people of God? Listen again to the beginning of Exodus 13:18: “God led the people by the roundabout way.” “The roundabout way.” It never has been a straight line. It never is. It never will be. The journey that we are on with God as individuals and as a people of God is and has always been and always will be the roundabout way. God leads by the roundabout way, Exodus 13:18 says.

It’s important to understand that in Exodus 13 “the roundabout way” is not an endless circle of confusion or being constantly lost and bewildered. Verse 21 makes it quite clear that God is leading along the way. In the wilderness, God’s constant presence and leadership is depicted in the external and visible sign of the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night “so that they might travel—journey—by day and night.” The journey of our biblical ancestors in the wilderness, however threatening or difficult or conflicted it was—and it was threatening and difficult and conflicted; just read the books of Exodus and Numbers to see how easy it was not—that journey always in the presence of God and under the leadership of God.

In the New Testament in the twenty-eighth chapter of the gospel of Matthew in what we have come to call “the great commission,” Jesus is decidedly less pictorial, decidedly less concrete; but Jesus is no less direct in his assurance of the presence and the leadership of God among the people of God. “Remember, I am with you always,” Jesus says (Matthew 28:20).

As I have told you a number times, a fascinating aspect of the great commission is that in spite of the fact that it is popularly translated as a command to go on a journey—“Go therefore,” the great commission in Greek does not begin with an imperative verb, a command, but with an infinitive in a circumstantial clause. The great commission does not command us to go on a journey; it presumes that just as our biblical ancestors were on journey, so are we. “As you are going,” Jesus says. “Along the way,” Jesus says, make disciples and baptize them and teach them.

And there lies the mission of the church in unsettled times. The church is not an end in itself. The church is a means to an end. As Wuthnow put it, “Instead of drawing people in to do God’s work in the organization itself, [churches] need to send people out to do God’s work in the world” (17). In other words, there is still a place for the church in a spirituality of journey.

The church is the place on our journey where we learn who we are and whose we are. The church is the place on our journey that we learn that our relationship with God, neighbor and self are all of a single piece of the woven fabric of life. The church is the place on our journey where we learn the spiritual disciplines of prayer and the study of the Bible and openness to the Holy Spirit who sustains us on our journey. The church is the place on our journey where we learn that we are called to serve not to be served. The church is the place on our journey where we discover a community of support and care along the way we travel. The church is the place on our journey that equips us and sends us out to do God’s redemptive work in the world. Without a church, we are Christian nomads, vagabonds, vagrants. It is the church that teaches us to be at home on the move as citizens of God’s creation sent to do God’s redemptive work in the world.

From Ur to Haran to Canaan to Egypt, from Bethlehem to Egypt to Nazareth, from Antonia Fortress or Herod’s Palace to Golgotha and the Garden Tomb, the journey is the thing. As we go, along the way, the we are discipled to disciple; we are baptized to baptize; we are taught to teach; we are called to call; and we are fed to feed.

And that’s the bread for the journey: fed to feed on the roundabout way that God is with us and leads us.

Photo by Liu Tao, used under license by Creative Commons.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Bread for the Journey: Daily Bread

2011-02-06T14:12:00.010-05:00

Matthew 7:7-12
The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany 2011

“Wherever the road is turning, there is bread for the journey.” “Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!” 420 loaves, to be exact. Take a look at last Sunday.

This week, hungry adults and children were fed with Bread for the Journey that you provided. I was in a meeting this week and remarked to someone that I was a little anxious that it had taken longer than we had anticipated to bring the bread to the Lord’s Table. “No, no!” he said. “It was wonderful! They just kept coming. They just kept coming.” On Monday, Loaves & Fishes delivered all 420 loaves to Project Host. That’s how Loaves & Fishes works: “mobile food rescue” to feed people who are hungry.

I suggested last week that our primary focus was changing in our consideration of the stewardship of our lives from our bread for our journey to other people’s bread for their journey. To move from our bread for our journey to others’ bread for their journey is not a socially driven shift in focus or an economically driven shift or a politically driven shift. It’s a theologically driven shift in the narrowest sense of the word “theological”: it’s a God-thing.

It’s right there in this morning’s gospel lesson, in Matthew 7:11: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

Matthew 7:11 is a hard verse for some of us for two reasons. The first reason is that some of us resent it when Jesus or anyone else speaks of us human beings as being “evil.” As early as the fourth and fifth century, two roads diverged in the theological woods, and which one you choose to follow makes all the difference in what you believe about human beings. The great North African theologian Augustine popularized the doctrine of original sin that has led Christian theology down a road called “the total depravity of man.” That’s the “you-who-are-evil” path; and its followers always shout, “Hear! Hear!” when they hear it.

The other road in the theological woods of the fourth and fifth century was walked by a Celtic monk named Pelagius whose view of humankind and creation was very different. For example, Pelagius wrote, “There is no creature on Earth in whom God is absent. . . . When God pronounced that [God’s] creation was good, it was not only that [God’s] hand had fashioned every creature: it was that [God’s] breath had brought every creature to life.” That’s the road called “inherent divine goodness,” and if you are on the “inherent divine goodness” path, you are inclined to shout, “I object” when you read or hear expressions such as “you who are evil.”

Now, in fairness, I have to tell you that these are not two equivalent roads in the history of Christian doctrine. Thanks to the insistent theological politicking of the great Augustine, Pelagius was condemned as a heretic; and you might say that “North African theology” has dominated “Celtic theology” ever since. But many of us in this congregation are more Celtic than we might have thought, and so when we hear “you who are evil,” we at least squirm a bit, even if we don’t shout out, “I object!”

The second reason Matthew 7:11 is a hard verse for some of us is the masculine reference to “Father in heaven” who gives “good things to those who ask him.” Thousands of years before Augustine and Pelagius argued with each other over original sin and total depravity and inherent divine goodness, two other roads diverged in the theological woods. The earliest evidence we have for the human religious imagination includes both the masculine and the feminine in its understanding of the Numinous, Ultimate Reality, Divinity, God. In time, however, there was a fork in the road, and Mother God and Mother Earth were sent packing down a path of obscurity, while “Father knows best” became theology’s superhighway. This is especially so among us Protestants who banished even Mary “the mother of God” from the path we take.

Those among us who are troubled by the whole male domination thing squirm at least and sometimes shout, “I object!” when we come to assertions of the fatherhood of God, just as others of us squirm at least and sometimes shout, “I object!” when we come to assertions of the motherhood of God.

But none of us should permit the core teaching of Matthew 7:11 escape us because of our reactionary affirmations or reactionary objections on the divergent roads we walk. The core teaching of Jesus in this verse says that we human beings do indeed know enough about what is good and are indeed capable of doing what is good to feed children when they ask for food. We know enough not to give them a stone when they ask for bread.

Whether you are on the total depravity road or the inherent divine goodness path, whether you are on the Mother God trail or the Father God highway, you know enough about what is good and you are capable enough of doing what is good to feed children when they are hungry. All around us in society there are horror stories about individuals and families who have failed to exhibit the capacity to know and to do what is good, but those egregious cases do not absolve you and me of the responsibility we have to know and to do what is good.

The same Jesus who said, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35) said, “I was hungry, and you fed me” (Matthew 25:35). The same Jesus who is “the bread of God” that “comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (John 6:33) said, “feed my sheep” (John 21:17).

No member of this congregation in the twentieth century cut any wider a swath through Greenville and this church than Schaeffer B. Kendrick. An attorney, a faculty member at Furman, a proponent of civil rights, a person of faith, a purveyor of wisdom, and a raconteur of the highest order, Schaeffer Kendrick insisted nearly twenty years ago that this congregation should lead the way in efforts to alleviate hunger among children in our community.

It is because of Schaeffer Kendrick’s challenge that the large basket sits in the “Come Unto Me Window” in this Sanctuary, and it is because of Schaeffer Kendrick’s challenge that green plastic bins to collect non-perishable food items sit at the primary entrances to this facility. It’s not a stretch to say that “Mission Backpack” is the result of Schaeffer’s call to feed hungry children. If for twenty years we have been hearing what we know is good and what we are capable of doing, then wouldn’t it just make sense to take the next step in doing it. No more stones for hungry children. It’s bread instead, and Mission Backpack is a way to make it so.

When my grandfather was a boy growing up outside Ogden, Utah, he worked for a farmer he called “Uncle Henry.” “Uncle Henry” was no relation, but “Uncle” said a lot about how much my grandfather thought of him. One evening, my grandfather was with a group of older boys who decided to raid Uncle Henry’s watermelon patch under cover of darkness. My grandfather says he felt pang of guilt about the plan, working as he did for Uncle Henry; but he didn’t have the nerve not go along with the older, bigger boys.

The watermelon patch was behind the house, so once it was dark, the boys made their way down to the river, and from there they slipped across the fields up toward the house. They climbed over the fence, and each of them felt around until they found one of a size and shape they wanted. Back over the fence they went, but one of the boys tripped and fell with a thud that alerted Uncle Henry dogs that something or someone was out there. The boys took off running, but they were no match for the dogs, of course. But they didn’t need to be. All they needed to be was bigger and faster than my grandfather, and they were. When the lead dog reached him from behind, it knocked him down and snarled at him momentarily—until it recognized who he was, and then it stood over him licking him in the face while the other dogs milled around wagging their tails.

Moments later, a lantern appeared and there was Uncle Henry standing in its glow among the dogs. “What’s going on here?” he asked sternly. And then he saw my grandfather and a broken watermelon lying just out of his reach. Uncle Henry shook his head and said quietly, “Victor, all you had to do was ask.” “All you had to do was ask.”

They are asking. All around our community they are asking with their words and with their eyes and with the growling in their stomachs. They are praying in the same words we are: “Give us this day our daily bread.” And it does not matter one whit which road through a theological wood we are on. It does not matter a hill of beans what our social or economic or political convictions may be. On this one, we know what is good and we are capable of doing it. It's the next step in the Schaeffer Kendrick Challenge twenty years later.

So as the call goes out to pray and shop and pack and deliver and give for Mission Backpack, I hope you will take the next step in bringing bread for the journey, not our bread for our journey, but bread for the journey of others. After all, the same Jesus who said, “I am the bread of life,” said, “I was hungry, and you fed me.” The same Jesus who is “the bread of God that “comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” said, “feed my sheep.”

“Wherever the road is turning, there is bread for the journey.” “Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!”

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Bread for the Journey: Loaves Abound!

2011-01-31T07:40:00.026-05:00

John 6:1-13
The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany 2011

“Wherever the road is turning, there is bread for the journey. Wherever God guides, God provides.”

“Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!”

For the past several weeks, the primary focus of our stewardship emphasis has been on our journey, our bread. To be sure, the focus hasn’t been on us alone. We have included “fellow pilgrims on the road” from Cowpens, SC, to Guanajay, Cuba. Along the way, we heard the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, call for friendship and understanding with those who are enemies or opponents, as well as our friends. Along the way, we have included others or “the other.” But the primary focus has been on our journey, our bread.

This morning, our focus changes.
“Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!” That’s a lot of bread. Why bring it all at once, all on a single Sunday? It’ll go to waste, somebody will say. Well, where it’s going, I can promise you it won’t go to waste. Most of you are familiar with “Loaves & Fishes,” the “mobile food rescue organization” that was founded here in Greenville in 1991. Our own Jon Good is the chair of the Board of Directors. According to “Loaves & Fishes,” 27% of the food produced in the United States every year goes to waste. Do you hear that? More than a fourth of the food that is produced here is thrown away. It turns out that world hunger is not nearly the problem that some people make it out to be. World hunger is not the problem. World waste is the problem.

Last year, Loaves & Fishes rescued more than a million pounds of fresh food that would have gone into the landfill right here in Greenville County. By receiving perishable food items that would otherwise be thrown away by grocery stores, restaurants, caterers, wholesale food distributors, churches and corporate cafeterias and transporting those items quickly to food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters and residential programs, community centers, and neighborhood distribution programs, last year Loaves & Fishes provided the food for more than a million meals out of the 27% wasted food in Greenville. Volunteers from Loaves & Fishes are standing by, just waiting to engage in a “mobile rescue” of this bread from our Sanctuary.

They are going to start by taking it to Project Host, “the soup kitchen,” on Academy Street just south and west of Greenville’s thriving downtown, a couple blocks too far west of West End to be fashionable. Last year, Project Host served 78,000 meals to people who otherwise would have gone hungry. Project Host serves 250 meals a day six days a week at lunch time. It also has a program called the Feed Hungry Children Project that serves full evening meals to 191 children at six different centers in Greenville County. I’m told that Project Host uses on average thirty loaves of fresh bread a day, and lately they have had to buy bread because rescue deliveries have not kept pace with their needs. Hearing that made me wonder if all that bread that gets bought off the shelves in the grocery story when the weather forecast predicts snow actually gets eaten? How much of it just gets horded and then thrown away? World hunger is not the problem. World waste is. If we have brought more bread today than Project Host can use in a timely manner, there are food pantries, shelters and residential programs, community centers, and neighborhood distribution programs standing in line behind the soup kitchen. Where this bread is going, it will not go to waste.

It was that way in this morning’s gospel lesson also. At the end of the story Jesus said, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” At the command of Jesus, the disciples became the first “mobile food rescue organization” as they moved among the people and collected what was left over. I’d like to suggest this morning that the point of the story is not just that there was more than enough to go around, as it is commonly preached. The point is also that none of it should be wasted. None of the sowing and the growing and the reaping and the grinding and the mixing and the kneading and the rising and the baking and the blessing and the breaking should be wasted. The problem is not hunger; the problem is waste. “Gather it up,” Jesus says, “so that nothing may be lost.”

The hero in the story, as everyone knows, is a child with a lunch, a lunch not nearly large enough to feed a hillside full of people. But children can be a resourceful lot. One summer day, dozens of First Baptist children were up on Paris Mountain for a children’s ministry activity. When lunchtime came, one little boy discovered that he had lost or forgotten her lunch. Bev asked the children sitting around him, “What do you think we should, do?” Before anyone could answer the question, another little boy sitting right beside took half of his sandwich and placed it in front of the boy who had none. “Here!” said a little girl, as she handed her bag of chips across the table. Another child handed over an apple, and another still fished out some cookies and passed them along. And before you knew it, a child who would have gone hungry had all he could eat and then some. That’s the gospel story. Like the little boy on the mountain in Galilee, the children on Paris Mountain were happy to hand over what they had so that everyone would have something. The problem is not hunger; the problem is hording.

“Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little,” Philip said to Jesus. The gospels tell us that Philip was from Bethsaida, which according to its name, “house of fishing,” was probably a fishing village along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. But Philip must have been in the accounting department of the fishing business. Because when Jesus asks him where to buy bread for these people to eat, Philip immediately estimates how much it will cost instead of answering the question Jesus asked. The deflection of the question from where the available resources are to the question of how much money is at stake is a common problem. Almost all of us get caught between the “two masters,” as Jesus calls them. You “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,” Jesus says (Matthew 6:24). You have to choose, Jesus says. Is God your God, or is wealth your god? This morning’s gospel lesson is a reminder that if our first question is always, “How much will it cost?” instead of “How can we make it happen?” then money has become our master. Jesus wasn’t asking Philip about how much it would take. Jesus was asking Philip about the wherewithal of God and God’s people to do it. The problem is not hunger; the problem is greed.

In the way the gospel of John tells the story, Jesus sees the hunger problem before anyone else when he sees the large crowd approaching him. No one has to tell him about their hunger; Jesus sees it coming. It’s not that Jesus is some sort of soothsayer or fortune teller. It’s not a power of prediction or prognostication. It’s a matter of sensitivity to the needs of others. We don’t need prediction or prognostication to know that that people are going hungry in the communities in which you and I live. We don’t need more information to see that people are starving to death on the planet we share with them. We don’t even need more production: most experts agree that the current production capacity of global agriculture is sufficient to feed the current population of the world. The problem is not prognostication or information or insufficient production but insensitivity.

But I would remind you that in this congregation there is a little boy who without even being asked handed over half his sandwich to a child who had none, and there is a little girl who gave her bag of chips and another child who shared an apple and another who passed along a bag of beloved cookies. And like those children on Paris Mountain, this morning you have joined the gospel story by bringing loaves of bread and commitment cards to the Lord’s Table as an expression of the stewardship of your life. It is a journey of sensitivity and responsiveness to the needs of others. It is a journey of serving God rather than wealth. It is a journey of generosity rather than hording. And it is a journey of conservation and “mobile rescue” rather than waste.

“Wherever the road is turning, There is bread for the journey. Wherever God guides, God provides.” “Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!” Thanks be to God!

“Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!” is from the hymn “Let us Talents and Tongues Employ,” by Fred Kaan, 1975.
“Wherever God guides, God will provide” is from an original composition by Kyle Matthews, 2011.
Photography by Bill Dunlap.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Bread for the Journey: Nutrition for the Spirit

2011-01-23T16:11:00.008-05:00

Matthew 4:1-11
Third Sunday after Epiphany 2011

Two weeks ago, when Carol Stilwell introduced the theme of our 2011 Stewardship Emphasis, “Bread for the Journey,” she said, among other things, that we were going to “have fun.” When’s the last time you heard “stewardship emphasis” and “fun” in the same sentence? To be honest with you, at the time she said it, I didn’t have any more idea than you did that one week later people would be throwing paper airplanes in church and contemplating a ride on the secret slide.

Last Sunday was either a complete breakdown in spiritual decorum around here or it was a sign of life, vitality and vigor in a congregation otherwise known for its seriousness. We take church very seriously around here, and we always have—for 180 years this November, this congregation has been taking church seriously. If you don’t think so, just look around you. Do you see how serious everyone is? This is serious business. We do serious very well around here.

But last Sunday, we showed that in addition to having the capacity to buckle up and buckle down, we also have the capacity to lighten up. This morning, I want to follow up on the lighten up to suggest that on the journey of the stewardship of our lives we must also open up. Open up.

Years ago, I heard Randall Lolley preach a sermon in which he echoed the song of the nuns in “The Sound of Music”: “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” Randall Lolley was once the president of a formerly good little Baptist seminary in North Carolina; and he has served in addition as Senior Pastor of the First Baptist Churches of Winston-Salem, Raleigh and Greensboro. Few individuals in the two Carolinas have left more finger prints on moderate Baptist life in these parts than Randall Lolley has. But more of us here this morning know of Maria than we do Randall.

For those of you who are young enough never to have seen the musical or the movie, Maria is a young nun about whom there are many complaints among the other nuns in the abby: “She climbs a tree and scrapes her knee; Her dress has got a tear. She waltzes on her way to Mass And whistles on the stair. And underneath her wimple She has curlers in her hair. I even heard her singing in the abbey. She’s always late for chapel, But her penitence is real. She’s always late for everything Except for every meal. I hate to have to say it, But I very firmly feel Maria’s not an asset to the abbey.” Another nun pipes up to counter the prevailing mood when she sings, “I’d like to say a word on her behalf: Maria makes me laugh.” “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” the nuns sing. “How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? . . . . How do you keep a wave upon the sand? Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria? How do hold a moonbeam in your hand?”

The faith we hold on the journey of our lives from God, with God and to God, is in some ways like a moonbeam. The only way to hold it is with your hands wide open. As soon as you make a fist, the moonbeam is no longer in your hand. Our journey is with open hands, not clenched fists. Our hands are open in thanksgiving to God. Our hands are open in welcome and embrace to each other—and to the so-called “other,” as well, whoever that might be. Our hands are open in compassion and generosity. How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? Only if you keep your hands wide open. Sometimes when I pray, I pray with my hands tightly clasped as I was taught to pray when I was a child. But sometimes when I pray, I pray with my hands relaxed and open to receive, to accept, to allow God in.

In this morning’s gospel lesson from the fourth chapter of the gospel according to Matthew, Jesus is in the throes of a wilderness experience. Far from family and friends and temple and everything familiar, the wilderness experience of his journey becomes a place of temptation. He was famished, verse 2 tells us, hungry, starving, when the tempter rightly points out to him that he has the power to provide for himself the bread that he needs and wants to satisfy his hunger. All you need to do, the tempter says, is to “command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

Remember, now, this is the Jesus who will turn water into wine, who will turn five barley loaves and two fish into enough to feed thousands, who will turn the bread and the wine of a Passover meal into a new covenant. The insidious power of temptation is that it always invites to do something that we are eminently capable of doing. It always invites to grasp something that will satisfy a certain want or need we have. In the throes of his wilderness journey, Jesus could have reached down, laid hold of a stone, and turned it into the bread he wanted and needed to satisfy his hunger. But instead, he stood with his hands open to receive, to accept, and to allow God. And as he did, he quoted the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

On the journey of our lives, there is the physical bread, the food we need to provide our bodies with the nutrition necessary to survive and to thrive. But there is another kind of bread; it is the food that provide our spirits with the nutrition necessary to survive and to thrive, regardless of our physical circumstances. A malnourished and shriveled spirit can be as detrimental to the quality of a human life as a malnourished and shriveled body can. It doesn’t always show on the outside, but if you watch long enough and listen carefully enough, you can recognize them in others—and in yourself.

With apologies to T.S. Eliot, I call them the hollow men and women. They are robust on the outside but shrunken on the inside. They are well fed in body but malnourished in spirit. It can happen to any of us. The reality of our journey is that all of us pass through a wilderness experience sooner or later. All of us experience a hollowness that comes with a loss of spirit. Sooner or later, all of us come to place of hunger that we cannot satisfy. But Jesus’ words in his own hunger and deprivation remind us to keep our hands open, to open up to receive, to accept, to allow God in to provide the nutrition for our spirit that we need every bit as much as we need the nutrition for our body.

Now, I’m going to take the time to insist that there is no body/spirit dichotomy here. There no “never-the-twain-shall meet” in relation to our physical selves and our spiritual selves. Each is a component of the other. During the wilderness experience of his journey, Jesus recognized the physical temptation that came with his hunger for the spiritual temptation that it was. The spiritual temptation was to grasp control of his own wellbeing out of the hands of God and by his own power to craft on his own a solution to his wants and his needs. But the inner voice of the Holy Spirit at work in Scripture said, “Not so fast my friend.” “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” The physical and the spiritual components of our living are not “either/or”; they are “both/and.”

Some of us here this morning find ourselves very much like the people in chapter six of John’s gospel who when Jesus said, “For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world,” they responded, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus answered, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:33-35). This bread for the journey, this nutrition for the spirit, cannot be grasped or seized. It can only be received, accepted, allowed in with hands wide open.

So the next several times you pray, let me suggest to you that you practice praying with your hands relaxed and open as a reminder that in addition to buckling up and lightening up, we must open up. Our journey is with open hands, not clenched fists. Our hands are open in thanksgiving to God, and our hands are open in welcome and embrace to each other and to the so-called “other,” whoever that might be. Our hands are open in compassion and generosity.

How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? Only if you keep your hands wide open.

Photo by Sharon Mollerus, used by license under Creative Commons.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Bread for the Journey: Proofing the Dough (Or: Lightening Up)

2011-01-16T15:19:00.009-05:00

Matthew 13:24-33
The Second Sunday after Epiphany 2011

Note: I confess that I am a preacher who is always suprised whenever I discover that someone actually listened to what I say. So you can imagine my surprise when this morning, as I walked out the aisle during the singing of the Doxology, several paper airplanes flew toward me--and from adults, no less! Priceless!

We all know that before we begin a trip, no matter how short or how long it may be, we always “buckle up.” A month or so ago, as I prepared to back out of the driveway of the home of Demauth and Bea Blanton down in Union where I visited them, Demauth stood at the end of the drive giving me a hand signal that I didn’t recognize for a minute. And then I realized that I hadn’t yet buckled my seatbelt, and he was signaling me to buckle up before I started back to Greenville. But this morning, as we continue on the journey of the stewardship of our lives, I want to suggest that in addition to buckling up, we need to lighten up. Lighten up.

As our nation pauses on this long weekend to remember the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I am reminded this time around of how often and how deeply the metaphor of the journey appears in Dr. King’s understanding to the Civil Rights Movement, in Dr. King’s understanding of the movement of human history, and in Dr. King's understanding of his own life.

His first book, published in 1958, was titled Stride toward Freedom. In that book, King laid out what he called his own “pilgrimage [or journey] to nonviolence.” The intellectual side of that journey this pilgrimage began, he said, his freshman year in college when he read Henry David Thoreau’s Essay on Civil Disobedience. Thoreau’s idea of “refusing to cooperate with an evil system” fascinated him, he wrote (Stride toward Freedom, p. 73).

Several years later, in 1950, when he was in seminary, King heard the Baptist pastor and university president Dr. Mordecai Johnson speak of a recent trip to India and of the life and the teachings of Mohandras K. Gandhi. Having read Thoreau and having heard Johnson, King became committed to “the Christian doctrine of love operating through the Gandhian method of nonviolence” (Stride toward Freedom, p. 79).

Five years later, King put his intellectual commitment to nonviolence into direct action for the first time during the Montgomery bus boycott that began with the arrest of Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955. As King articulated it, the idea and practice of nonviolence contained “six key principles. The first principle is that is possible “to resist evil without resorting to violence.” The second principle is to seek always “to win the ‘friendship and understanding’” of one’s opponent, not to humiliate him or her. Third, nonviolence opposes “evil itself, not the people committing evil acts.”

Fourth, persons “committed to nonviolence must be willing to suffer without retaliation as suffering itself can be redemptive.” Fifth, “nonviolent resistance avoids ‘external physical violence’ and the ‘internal violence of spirit’ as well.” As King put it, “The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him” or her. And sixth, engaging in nonviolent resistance requires “a deep faith in the future” grounded in the conviction that “the universe is on the side of justice.” That’s the framework of the journey of the Civil Rights Movement that King sets out in Stride toward Freedom.

In the final public address of his life the night before he was assassinated in Memphis, TN, King framed his own life and ministry in terms of the biblical image of the ancient Israelite journey out of Egypt and through the wilderness when he said, “I’ve been to the mountaintop. . . . And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything.” There’s a journey worth taking. Surrounded by threats on his life (evidently with a premonition of his own death), surrounded by fractures and competing factions in the movement he was attempting to give leadership to, and surrounded by resistance to his work not only by white people but by some black people who accused him of moving too slowly, too indecisively, who accused him of cowardice for his unwillingness to take up arms to end oppression, King was able to say, “I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything.” There’s a life worth living. There’s a journey worth taking.

It is unfortunate, I think, that King’s legacy of nonviolence is too often analyzed as a method for social change and not often enough proclaimed as a way of life, a way of living and being. On the other side of the horrific incident the week before last in Tucson, AZ, as I have listened to some of the public reactions, especially in the political arena, I am saddened to watch and to listen to how little we have learned from King. We have a holiday in King’s honor, but our nation has yet to learn the most basic and most important lessons King taught and preached and lived.

I, for one, have been glad to hear the calls for “civility” in the political arena and in the public square. But I tell you, “civility” is sterile and lifeless compared to King’s call for friendship and understanding with one’s opponents. Wisely crafted and Constitutionally grounded policy for the licensing and controlling firearms is worth debating, but it pales by comparison compared to King’s call to avoid “an internal violence of spirit” as well, not only refusing to shoot one’s opponent but also refusing to hate her or him. That’s what we need to hear in the political arena and in the public square. Adopting a King holiday means nothing if we don’t adopt King’s journey as well.

In this morning’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells a story about a field that a householder had planted with wheat. But weeds sprang up among the wheat, and the immediate impulse of those who were watching over the field was to pull out the weeds. But the householder in the story surprised everyone by saying, “No, don’t do that; for in rooting out the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest.” Do you see the nonviolence of that parable?

The late Dr. Foy Valentine was the long-time Executive Director of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission. When he died in January 2006, he was characterized by a Dallas newspaper as “a white Texan who, during the 1960s and ’70s, forced fellow Southern Baptists to confront their denomination’s racist past and move toward integration.” The last time he was here at First Baptist Greenville, two years before he died, Foy told me that during that era, one of the most famous Southern Baptist missionaries of the twentieth century stood up on the floor of the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting and made a motion that the staff of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission be “eliminated.” “Eliminated?” Foy asked. “Terminate my employment, that’s one thing. Fire me, fine. But eliminate me?”

It is not only politicians and partisan pundits who use extreme language that reveals an internal violence of spirit. It happens in the church as well, whenever we fail to put “friendship and understanding” ahead of opposition, whenever we are unwilling to suffer without retaliation, whenever we don’t refuse to hate our opponent, whenever we give up our deep and abiding faith in God’s future regardless of the circumstances of the present.

Now if all that sounds like too big a thing for you and for me to accomplish, take a look at the two short parables that Jesus tells after the parable of weeds. All it takes is a tiny seed, Jesus says, to produce a large tree. All it takes is a pinch of yeast to leaven an entire loaf. That second short parable in Matthew 13:33 suggests to me that proofing the dough, allowing the yeast to ferment, allowing the dough to rise is a too-often ignored metaphor for the kingdom of heaven and the work of the Holy Spirit. If you don’t stop working the dough long enough for the yeast to ferment, you end up with flatbread, not a loaf. And a lot of what we are living these days is flatbread because we are unwilling lighten up and proof the dough, just let it alone and let it rise. Lighten up.

“I’m happy tonight,” King said. “I’m not worried about anything.” Who among us can say that even when we are not surrounded by threats on our life, faced with a premonition of our own death, and surrounded by fractures and competing factions and resistance in the workplace, at home or in school. So this morning, in effort to help us all lighten up on the journey, I’d like you to hear another parable, a contemporary one. It’s the parable of Throwing Paper Airplanes in Church. Becky Ramsey wrote this parable from a real-life experience. Becky wrote. . . .

Don’t tell anyone, but someday when I’m in the building and dressed for it and no one is looking, I just might try it myself, just to lighten up. Just to remind myself that the kingdom of heaven is never so serious that it fails to include children of God of all ages at play under a tree under which Christ's stories are told. King told us that. The kingdom of heaven is where “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.”

Congregations such as ours are called to be the leaven in the loaf. We are called to cultivate friendship and understanding even where there is opposition. We are called to set aside the internal violence of the spirit and to refuse to hate. We are called to suffer without retaliation. We are called to sustain a deep faith in the future. That’s the journey we’re on. And every once in a while, it just might require throwing a paper airplane in church and taking the secret slide. So let’s lighten up. Let’s lighten up.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

A Beach Picture, Snow and Ice, and Resurrection: "While it Was Still Dark"

2011-01-11T11:31:00.015-05:00

When I finally became a citizen of facebook nation, someone asked me why in the world I posted a beach picture--topless, no less, someone else pointed out--on my fb wall on a day when the part of South Carolina where I live was getting eight inches of snow. It's like this.

When Bev and I lived in Princeton, autumn was my favorite season of the year. By the end of August, the nights were turning cool enough to need a sweater, and the chill of September and October screamed, "Football!" "Hot chocolate!" and "Let's jump in the leaves!" Thanksgiving was a celebration of plenty in the face of impending winter, and December's snows made Christmas lights brighter by far than they are at home in the American South.

But by the middle of January, the snow was piled by the curb and the sidewalks, crusted and yellowed and blackened. The dingy gray carpet on the field where we walked our dogs was now cold and oppressive, covering as it did the green, green grass of our home-away-from-home until March.

Do you remember the line, "April showers bring May flowers"? That was obviously written by a northern poet, not a southerner. Down home, we have crocus in February, daffodils in March, and azaleas in full bloom by April. Living in the northeast, January was the month of the beginning of a months-long longing for spring that came far too slowly.

January was also the month when the cruise lines saturated the airwaves with advertisements. The television constantly showed sun, sand, sea, bathing suits, beach balls, beach umbrellas, carefree people cavorting and carousing all day long and deep into the tropical night, while we huddled inside in our little apartment and outside in our coats and mittens and toboggans (those are "knit hats" to everyone outside the South, "tooks" to Canadians). "The beach! The beach!" we yearned (that's "The shore!" for you Jerseyites). "Ah, for summer!" we cried. Winter was cruel enough; the cruise lines made it crueler still.

Hence a beach picture on my fb wall in the middle of January in the throes of snow and ice.

The biblical Song of Songs reflects the yearning for winter to pass in its celebration of the arrival of spring:
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away;
for now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs,
and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
(Song of Solomon 2:10-13)
Could I sign you up for a cruise in the southern Caribbean about now? How about a beach in Belize or Costa Rica or Panama? "Arise, my love, and come away!"

In the Christian faith, the passing of winter and the arrival of spring has long been associated with resurrection. There are both historical and theological reasons for this association. But there is a reason of the Spirit also.

Resurrection is a spiritual light at the end of the tunnel. Resurrection is the Spirit's whisper in our soul in the literal and figurative coldest days and darkest nights of our lives. When what was once as fresh and clean and lovely and enchanting as the windblown snow has become crusty and yellowed and blackened and the enchantment is gone, resurrection is a ray of hope in the light in which we are always held but cannot always see because of the darkness around us and within us. "While it was still dark," the Easter story begins (John 20:1). Resurrection.

Sometimes a beach picture is just a beach picture. But sometimes a beach picture is a whisper of the Spirit to our soul, a proclamation of resurrection.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Bread for the Journey: Communion and Community

2011-01-10T11:00:00.006-05:00

John 6:25-35
The First Sunday after Epiphany 2011

Bread for the Journey. Bread for the Journey. Let’s begin the journey of the stewardship of our lives with an overview of where our journey begins and where it ends and how we get from the beginning to the end.

Psalm 139 tells us about our beginning: “O Lord, you know me. . . . For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb” (Psalm 139:1,13; NIV, adapted). Psalm 139 tells us that for every one of us the journey of our life begins as a gift from God who created our inmost being and knit us together in our mother’s womb.

Psalm 139 also tells us that the journey of our life continues with God. God did not create us only to abandon us by the side of the road to fend for ourselves. The journey of our life takes place in the constant presence of God. Psalm 139 says, “Where can I go to hide from your spirit? Or where can I flee away from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, the Pit, you are there. If I take flight on the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast” (verses 7-10; NRSV, adapted). In other words, wherever we go on the journey of our life, we go with God and God with us. Jesus said, “Remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). The journey of our life is a journey from God and with God. Even when it does not feel like it, even with it does not look like it, even when we do not think it is so, even there God’s right hand holds us fast.

Every one of us is on a journey from God, with God and to God. Jesus also said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:1-3). That’s the journey of our lives: from God, with God, and to God. The entirety of our existence is played out within the envelope and the embrace of the constant presence of God. God is at our beginning, and God is at our end, and God is at our every point in between.

Now, if that is so—and I for one believe with heart and mind and soul and strength that it is so—then it follows that the journey is the thing. It’s about the journey, not just the destination. Some of us Baptists, among other Christians—and among some Jews and Muslims, too, for that matter—have gotten that whole destination and journey thing the wrong way round. You’ve heard the old story about the revival preacher who got all wound up in his sermon one night and said to the congregation, “Everybody who wants to go to heaven, raise your hand!” A smattering of hands went up, and he said, “Come on, don’t be bashful! Raise your hand if you want to go heaven!” More hands went up, and so he said it again, until everybody in that little church had a hand up, except for one grizzled old fellow way at the back. And the preacher pointed at him and said, “You there! In the back! Don’t you want to go to heaven when you die?” “Oh, when I die?” the old man asked. “Well sure, I do,” he said. “But it sounded to me like you were trying to get up a busload to go right now.”

That old fellow at that back of the church knew better than to sell the journey short for a busload of the destination. He knew better than to think we live without God on earth in order to live with God in heaven. We don’t go to heaven to be with God. The whole message of Advent and Christmas and Epiphany is that heaven came down and glory filled our souls. Emmanuel is his name: “God is with us”: “Lo, I am with you always,” Jesus said. So, if God in Jesus Christ is with us always, then our Christian faith and practice is not about where we’re going as much as it is about how we’re getting there from beginning to end. It’s about the journey from God, with God and to God.

Frank Mayfield is 97 years old, and he’s been a member of First Baptist Greenville since . . . well, since Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem. Frank grew up in the thriving metropolis of Cowpens, SC, where his father owned and operated a general store. Frank cut his teeth on retail sales and operations, and as a youngster he aspired to be a great salesman. And he became one, too, a salesman with a national and international reputation. For you literary buffs out there, if the great American playwright Arthur Miller had ever met Frank Mayfield, his Pulitzer Prize-winning-classic Death of a Salesman would have been a very different play. Frank Mayfield is no Willie Loman.

One day when Frank was young, he told his father that his goal in life when he grew up was to make a million dollars. I probably don’t need to point out that 90 years ago in Cowpens, SC, a million dollars was an astronomical sum of money. There weren’t any millionaires in Cowpens in those days. In response to that astronomical goal, Frank’s father said something to him that he has never forgotten, and by which he has lived ever since: “Frank,” his father said, “enjoy the journey. Enjoy the journey.” Jesus said of his own teachings, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:11). The point of my teachings, Jesus said, is so that my joy may be in you, and so that your joy may be complete. Could Jesus have said, “Enjoy the journey,” any more clearly? From God, with God, to God: enjoy the journey.

In this morning’s gospel lesson from the sixth chapter of John Jesus is in a conversation about the journey. In particular, he’s in a conversation about bread for the journey. The conversation takes place in the aftermath of an amazing event the day before in which Jesus had fed a crowd of 5,000, we are told, in spite of the fact that there was initially no more food at hand than five barley loaves and a couple fish (John 6:9). That amazing feed reminded at least some people in the crowd of the great journey of Moses and the Israelites out of Egypt and through the wilderness toward the land of promise. On that journey, we are told, the Israelites awoke to a daily provision of “manna.” The books of Exodus and Nehemiah call the manna “bread from heaven” (Exodus 16:4; Nehemiah 9:15). The Israelites received their “daily bread” in the form of manna, and when Jesus fed the whole crowd that was following him, that made some folks think of Moses and the Israelites and the manna.

But Jesus said to the crowd, “The only reason you’re following me today is because you got your bellies filled yesterday” (John 6:26). “I fed you because you were hungry, but I’m not just talking about your physical hunger,” Jesus says. “I’m talking about your spiritual hunger. I’m talking about the emptiness in your soul, not the emptiness in your stomach I’m talking about feeding you with ‘the food that endures [not for just a day, but] for eternal life. The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” When they heard that, at least some people in the crowd said, “Sir, give us this bread always.” “Let heaven come down and glory fill our souls,” they said. To which Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry” (John 6:35). Jesus was talking about our spiritual hunger, the emptiness in our soul.

This time next week, our Cuba mission team who leaves on Thursday will be worshiping and breaking the bread of life with our sisters and brothers in our partner congregation La Iglesia Bautista del Camino in Guanajay. This plate and cup and pitcher for communion that the team will carry with them as a gift from us are a reminder of what fills the emptiness in our soul. They are a testimony to the spiritual reality that even though our two nations are separated from each other by political and economic and social ideology and demagoguery, our two people, First Baptist Greenville and the Baptist Church of the Way in Guanajay are united in communion and in community in Christ.

The first time Javier Perez and I sat down together to talk about our respective congregations and communities and countries, I listened to him talk about how the souls of Cuban people have been emptied by decades of poverty and alcoholism and addiction and domestic violence and discrimination against women and homophobia and racism. But you know what? As I listened to him, I realized how the souls of American people have been emptied by decades of poverty—and affluence—and alcoholism and addiction and domestic violence and discrimination against women and homophobia and racism.

In Guanajay and in Greenville, as we have worshiped together and prayed together and worked together and talked together, we have discovered together that “We are trav’lers on a journey, fellow pilgrims on the road” and that “we are here to help each other walk the mile and bear the load.” We have discovered together that “We are one in Christ our Savior” and that we “are sent to serve the Lord.”

And that’s the final piece of the overview of our journey. We are not a congregation of wanderers and seekers. To be sure, every one of us at some time or another finds ourselves wandering in a wilderness and seeking something we have lost and cannot find. But together as a congregation in communion and in community with Christ and with one another we are created and called and sent to serve the Lord, each and every one of us a minister in each and every interaction and transaction of our lives.

That’s our journey: from God, with God and to God; the journey is the thing; enjoy the journey. As fellow pilgrims on the road, worship together, pray together, work together, and talk together to discover together that each of was are created and called and sent to serve the Lord.

And that’s the invitation this morning to the journey of the stewardship of our lives. Our invitation hymn is “We are one in Christ,” which is printed in your order of worship. The invitation of Christ and this congregation is open as we stand and sing together.

Photo by Alex Leung from Six Steps Photostream, used under license of Creative Commons.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Beginning and New Beginning

2011-01-03T06:09:00.004-05:00

John 1:1-18
Epiphany Sunday 2011

A couple days before Christmas, I was helping my eighteen-year-old son change a flat tire on his truck in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. To tell you the truth, I was enjoying myself. I’m not a fan of flat tires, mind you; but once your kid leaves home for college, changing a flat tire together in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant actually feels like quality time together.

We weren’t quite finished when we were approached by a panhandler, a man in his late 30s or early 40s asking for a meal. He said he was embarrassed to ask for help, and he didn’t want money. But he said he was an out-of-work construction worker and he had four mouths to feed, and if I would buy him supper, he would sure be grateful to me. I wanted to say to him, “Can’t you see you’re interrupting a father-son thing here? Leave us alone.” Then I wondered, “Do I have a neon sign on my back that flashes, ‘Sucker!’?” I wanted to say, “Go scam somebody else, man. I don’t have time for this, and your supper is not in my budget.” Not to mention the fact that we were in the parking lot of a burger joint and he wanted dinner for four from the chicken place a half a mile away. Right.

But it was a couple days before Christmas, and he sure enough looked as though he was down on his luck, and he didn’t ask for cash, and I thought about what I would want somebody to do for my son if he was out of work in his 30s or 40s with four mouths to feed, and besides, it had only been ten days since I had preached a sermon about God being in the business of filling the hungry with good things (Luke 1:53; 6:21), so the next thing I knew, I was standing at the counter of that chicken place buying dinner to go for four people I still don’t know.

I don’t know whether I got scammed or whether I actually helped someone, but along the way the fellow I bought dinner for said this: “I’ll be glad when this year is over. I sure hope next year is better than this one was.” At one time or another in our lives, every one of us has a deep need to turn the calendar to a new year. Sooner or later, every one of us comes to a place in our lives when we need fresh start, a new beginning.

That’s what those New Year’s celebrations that some of us are still recovering from do. “Ringing out the old and ringing in the new” is our culture’s attempt at a ritual of new beginning. Those resolutions we make his time of year express the yearning for a fresh start that deep in the human soul we hunger and thirst for. We need new beginnings, and that’s what this morning’s gospel lesson from the Revised Common Lectionary is about. It’s about a new beginning.

John 1:1-18 begins by talking about the old beginning: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” Those verses are about creation, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). But the point of talking about the old beginning, about creation, in the first three verses of the gospel of John is to create a springboard for talking about a new beginning, about a new creation, about being born all over again “of God,” verse 13 says.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is about “new wine” and “a new garment” (Luke 5:36-37) and “a new covenant” (Luke 22:20) and “a new commandment” (John 13:34) and “new life” (Romans 7:6) and “a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17) and “a new self” (Ephesians 4:24). God knows every one of us needs a new self every now and then! And this morning’s gospel lesson is the springboard to a new self for every one of us, for every one of us “to be renewed,” as Ephesians 4:23 puts it, and “to clothe [ourselves] with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24).

If you only look at the surface of the New Year’s celebrations and New Year’s dissipations and New Year’s resolutions and New Year’s dissolutions, you might not recognize that underneath it all is a deep hunger and thirst in the human soul for a fresh start, a new beginning; but that’s what it is. And verse 12 in this morning’s gospel lesson provides the blueprint, the “new and living way,” as Hebrews 10:20 puts it, to that fresh start, that new beginning, that “new self” that God knows every one of us needs. Three words in John 1:12: receive, believe, become. Receive, believe, become.

Have you ever thought about why it is that “self-help” books are a billion-dollar business? It’s because self-help doesn’t work. If self-help worked, you could by one good self-help book and you’d be done. But have you noticed how those of us who buy self-help books can’t buy just one? It’s like that bag of potato chips: you can’t eat just one. You have to have another and another and another because self-help doesn’t work. Self-help can’t create a new self; it only nurtures the hunger and thirst of the deep need of the human soul for a new beginning. The new beginning that leads to a new self can only come when that hunger and thirst on the inside receive from the outside the nourishment we need. That’s not just a theological assertion; it’s a biological and spiritual reality.

Your body can feed on itself. In the short-term, your body can burn the fat you have stored up, and it can devour the muscle you have built in order to keep itself alive and functioning. But sooner or later, your body must receive nourishment from the outside—protein and carbohydrates and minerals and nutrients and fluids—that will restore the muscle and replenish the fat reserves that it can live on for only so long. Like body, like soul.

The words of Jesus in the gospel of John express this biological and spiritual and theological reality when he said, “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14). Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). How can that be? Never hungry? Never thirsty? We don’t know any condition of the human body or the human soul in this life in which hunger and thirst are permanently satisfied. But here’s the thing. It’s not one-and-done. It is the constant presence of Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, “God with us,” feeding our hunger and satisfying our thirst, offering us again and again the bread of life and the cup of new life.

Now, look at the order of things John 1:12. Receive, believe, become. We don’t receive because we believe. Belief comes from receiving, not the other way around. Belief comes from receiving, not the other way around. That’s one of the things that the so-called “new atheists” refuse to understand about the Christian faith. The Christian faith does not begin with a prior assumption of belief. In fact, the Christian faith begins in the absence of belief. Christian faith germinates and takes root and sprouts and grows when someone recognizes that he or she has received something spiritual from the outside in that is every bit as real as the something nutritional that our bodies receive from the outside in. The Christian faith does not begin within us; it begins outside us in a mystery that we come to understand as God who acts on us and in us and with us so that we come to believe in God because of what we have received, not the other way around. Receive, and you will believe. Receive, believe, become.

When I was much younger, growing up Lutheran, I didn’t understand the old Baptist propensity for an annual revival. I understand it now. It was an expression of the deep human need for a new beginning. It was grounded in the recognition that sooner or later, every one of us comes to a place in our lives where we need fresh start, and an annual revival—like New Year’s and the arrival of spring and the first day of summer and the beginning of a new school year and the beginning of new church year at Advent and the celebration of the birth of Jesus in our world and in our lives—offered one more opportunity for a person and a community to claim a new beginning, a fresh start, for becoming who God has created and called them to be all over again. It’s a shame we urbane and sophisticated Baptists have lost that.

But we haven’t lost it entirely. Because every time we set this table we extend an invitation to receive, to believe, and to become. Not everyone comes here hungry and thirsty for this bread and this cup every time we serve it. That’s why communion doesn’t necessarily move you every time you receive it. We don’t do this every month for everyone. We do this every month for the sake of the one person among us who comes into this room hungering and thirsting to receive, to believe, and to become. The rest of us take the bread and pass it on, and we take the cup and pass it on, not for ourselves but for the sake of the one person in the room whose deep hunger and thirst has brought them this morning to this place and to this people where and among whom they can receive and believe and become who God has created and called them to be.

So let’s take the bread and pass it on; let’s take the cup and pass it on. Because someone among us has a deep need to turn the calendar to a brand new year. Someone among us—maybe you—is hungering and thirsting for a new beginning, a fresh start, to receive, to believe, to become.

Photo by Andrew Dallos, used under license by Creative Commons.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Joseph the Dreamer

2010-12-19T16:23:00.007-05:00

Matthew 1:18-25
The Fourth Sunday in Advent

“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.” “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.” “The whole world needs a Christmas dream.” Have you ever noticed how often dreams and dreaming come up in Christmas songs? Dreams seem to come with the season, and this morning’s gospel lesson is no exception.

Joseph, who was engaged to Mary, has a dream in the passage in front of us this morning from the first chapter of the gospel according to Matthew. Joseph has three more dreams in next Sunday’s gospel lesson from the second chapter of Matthew. This Joseph who was engaged to Mary was apparently every bit the dreamer that his Old Testament namesake was.

In the world in which the New Testament was written, dreams were not interpreted psychologically as expressions of the wishes and desires of the subconscious mind. Dreams were not understood neurologically as a function of electrophysiological brain activity. In the world of the New Testament, dreams were taken spiritually, if you will, in that dreams were regarded as a means of receiving a message from God. And in the gospel of Matthew, Joseph was a dreamer.

In chapter 1, after Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant with a child that could not possibly be his, Joseph had a dream. And in that dream an angel appeared to him and told him to marry Mary anyway, because the child she was carrying was God’s doing. When he woke, we are told, Joseph took that dream as a message from God, and he did as the angel in it told him.

The gospel of Matthew has no interest in Joseph’s dream apart from the message from God that it contains. In the ancient world, the medium was not yet thought of as the message, as the twentieth-century communication theorist Marshall McLuhan taught us to think.

But what would it take for a “righteous man,” as Joseph is described in Matthew 1:19, a good, law-of-Moses-abiding man with an outstanding pedigree—descended as he was according to the genealogy in Matthew 1:1-17 from Abraham and David and Solomon and the kings of Judah—what would it take for such a man to marry a woman who was carrying a child that could not possibly have been his? In first-century Palestine, it would been unimaginable for a good Jewish man such as Joseph to do such a thing.

Unless . . . unless something entirely disrupted his sense of righteousness and order. Unless something utterly interrupted his way of thinking. Unless something completely altered the state of his reason, a man such as Joseph would have removed himself from Mary’s situation and gone on with his righteous and pedigreed life and found himself a similarly righteous and pedigreed wife.

In this morning’s gospel lesson, the medium is the message, not the message alone. As dreams are often wont to do, Joseph’s dream disrupted righteousness and order, interrupted thinking, and altered reason. To marry Mary anyway is an idea that comes in from the outside of righteousness, remote from thinking, and beyond reason. What happens to Joseph in this morning’s gospel lesson is every bit as unexpected as the fact that Mary was unexpectedly expecting.

As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ in the world and in our lives, Joseph’s dream reminds us that rightly understood, Advent and Christmas are disruptive, interruptive and altering. One of the great Christian heresies of our time and place is the popular assumption that being a Christian, following Jesus, is a confirmation of our sense of righteousness and order, an endorsement of our way of thinking, an affirmation of our reason. Nothing could be farther from biblical truth.

Jesus the son of Joseph (as he was called in the gospel of John in 1:45 and 6:42) grew up to say, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:34-39). Those are Jesus’ words, but he learned them from Joseph. Because when Joseph “followed his dream”—when Joseph abandoned righteousness and pedigree and thought and reason to marry Mary anyway—it would have cost him dearly in family and friends and social standing.

And that brings us to the content of the dream, the message. In this morning’s gospel lesson, the message is the message, not the medium alone. The message is of two parts: 1) marry Mary anyway 2) because the child she is carrying is God’s doing. The message is this: first, expect the unexpected; and second, it’s about what God is up to, not what you are up to.

Expect the unexpected. Have you ever known someone for a long time, only to discover something about them that you did not expect? When Bev and I married, we had known each other since we were both 10 years old. She thought she knew me. She really did. So you cannot imagine the surprise it was to her to discover that this otherwise free-spirited, undisciplined and sometimes off-the-wall guy would end squeeze the toothpaste tube carefully from the bottom instead of in the middle. And even worse than that, he wound up becoming a Baptist preacher! You think you know someone, and then it turns out that you don’t know them all that well after all. All of us have had that kind of experience at one time or another with one person or another and sometimes even with ourselves—or if we haven’t had it yet, we will.

(By the way, for those of you who keep up with such things, you might be interested to know that after last Sunday’s sermon, this week beside my sink in the double vanity in our master bathroom a brand new tube of toothpaste appeared. It didn’t have a sticky-note on it that read, “Shut up, already,” but it could have.)

Sometimes the unexpected comes to us for good and sometimes the unexpected comes to us for ill, as in a decline in our health or the death of a spouse or a child or the end of a marriage or the end of a job or the end of a business or the end of an entire sector of the economy. But either way, for good or for ill, we should not be surprised. We should expect the unexpected.

I used to love surprises. And then I became an academic administrator. When I became an administrator, a manager of policies and a controller of procedures, my love for surprises disappeared. My priorities became systematization, operationalization, procedurefication. I know those last two aren’t even words, but that’s the point. The message of Joseph’s dream—marry Mary anyway—reminds us that we cannot control the Holy Spirit; we cannot control the church which is the body of Christ; we cannot control God, no matter how hard we try and no matter how often or long we pray in the hope that we can.

So expect the unexpected, in life and with God, because it’s not about what you’re up to; it’s about what God is up to. In Joseph’s dream, it is as if God said, it’s not about you, Joseph. It’s about me. It’s not about your righteousness or pedigree or thinking or reason. It’s about my saving work in the world. “You are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). “‘They shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us’” (Matthew 1:23). It’s as if God said, “Get on board with me, Joseph.” The message of Joseph’s dream is the same to us, no matter how many times we have to hear it for it to sink into our thick skulls. It’s not about our righteousness or thinking or reason. It’s about God’s saving work in the world.

Sometimes I think that one of the reasons our culture has turned December into the most frenetic and distracted month of the year is so that we will not be tempted to listen to Joseph’s dream. Joseph’s dream reminds us that getting on board with God requires setting a lot of things aside, putting a lot things down, giving a lot of things up. As Jesus grew up to say, it requires us to put other people’s expectations aside to embrace the unexpected and to get on board with God.

Next Sunday morning, we’ll look at where that dream can take you. But for now it is enough to consider whether you will be taken at all by Joseph’s dream. Expect the unexpected. And it’s not about what you’re up to; it’s about what God is up to.

Photo by Tacit Requiem. Used by license under Creative Commons.

This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Mary the Revolutionary

2010-12-12T15:33:00.010-05:00

Psalm 146:5-10
Luke 1:46-55
The Third Sunday in Advent 2010

Have you ever known someone for a long time, only to discover something about them that you did not expect? When Bev and I married, we had known each other since we were both 10 years old. I thought I knew her. I really did. So you cannot imagine the surprise it was to me to discover that this otherwise fastidious, careful and particular woman would actually squeeze the toothpaste tube indiscriminately in the middle instead of squeezing it systematically from the end like you’re supposed to. It was unseemly. It still is. There it is, every morning. This mangled toothpaste tube sitting on the bathroom counter reminding me that you think you know someone, and then it turns out that you don’t know them all that well after all.

I thought I knew Mary the mother of Jesus. After all, I’ve known her longer than I’ve known Bev. When I was still too young to know what the words were, much less what they meant, I crooned in a boy soprano, “’Round yon virgin mother and child.” Later, I would learn to sing, “Gentle Mary laid her child lowly in a manger.” Later still, I learned of Mary’s great submission to God. In response to a troubling message from an angel she said meekly, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Mary would never squeeze the toothpaste tube in the middle!

So, perhaps you can imagine how surprised I was to discover that this otherwise virginal, gentle and submissive woman was a revolutionary. To be sure, the submissive, gentle and virginal woman is the Mary whom the church has championed down through the centuries. But the song that Mary sings in Luke 1, called in church tradition “The Magnificat,” after the first word in the Latin translation of her song, reveals a Mary who is every bit as subversive as she is submissive.
The gospel of Luke tells us that after Mary was told of her unexpected pregnancy, she left her home in Nazareth to travel south to the Judean hill country and the home of her older relative Elizabeth who was also unexpectedly expecting. Elizabeth greets Mary with a blessing on her and on the child she is carrying. And in response to Elizabeth’s blessing, Mary sings her song that is at least as subversive as it is submissive.

It begins with praise for God in verse 46 and rejoicing in verse 47. In verse 48, it moves to divine grace, Mary’s humility, and her blessedness in the eyes of others on account of God’s grace and her humility. Verses 49-50 return to focus on God: God’s mighty acts, God’s holiness, and God’s mercy. Verses 46-50 form a model prayer of praise. It should come as no surprise that the mother of the one who taught us to pray a model prayer would herself pray a model prayer in Luke 1:46-50.

We know that when it comes to faith formation, children are are not merely “passive recipients of parental influences,” as researchers at Bucknell University have pointed out. But a mother’s religious influence is not to be underestimated in any aspect of childrearing and child wellbeing. In a study titled the “Relationship Between Maternal Church Attendance and Adolescent Mental Health and Social Functioning,” psychologists Stuart Varon and Anne Riley found these results:
Youths whose mothers attended religious services at least once a week had greater overall satisfaction with their lives, more involvement with their families, and better skills in solving health-related problems and felt greater support from friends compared with youths whose mothers had lower levels of participation in religious services. Maternal attendance at religious services had a strong association with the youths’ outcome in overall satisfaction with health and perceived social support from friends.” The effects of a mother’s religious influence are not to be underestimated.

Now, the truth is, we know nothing about Mary’s attendance at religious services. But Luke 1 portrays her as so familiar with the worship tradition of prayer in the psalms of her Jewish faith that in a time of great joy—and great stress—she prayed a model prayer just like Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel 2 and in the Psalms, and her son grew up to pray a model prayer in Luke 11. Mary’s model prayer in verse 46-50 is hardly revolutionary, is it?

But look where Mary’s song goes in verses 51-53: “God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” This Mary is a revolutionary. This Mary is subversive. This Mary would squeeze the toothpaste in the middle of the tube!

Is it any wonder that Mary’s son would grow up to say, “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled” (Luke 6:21), and “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry” (Luke 6:25)? Should anyone be surprised that Mary’s son would grow up to say, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20), and “woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your reward” (Luke 6:24)?

Mary the mother of Jesus was no Joan of Arc or Harriet Tubman or Gloria Steinem or Mary Daly, but she is no less revolutionary than they. The lullaby that Mary sang her baby in utero was the Magnificat—and not just the first four verses that could easily be mistaken for a first-century praise chorus. The lullaby that Mary sang her baby included verses 51-53: “God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

And when she did, she planted the seeds of the longest lasting and most frequently recurring revolution in the history of humankind. Again and again through the centuries, Mary’s song and Mary’s son’s words and life and death and resurrection have fueled aspirations and acts of justice for the oppressed, food for the hungry, freedom for those who are imprisoned, sight for the blind, the raising up of those who are bowed down, protection for strangers, and safekeeping for widows and orphans.

Down through the centuries, the church that carries Jesus’ name has often sided with the powerful and the proud; it has often sided with the rich and the wicked. But even when it does, you see, it carries with it the seeds of its own destruction in Mary’s song and Jesus’ words and life and death and resurrection. There is a model for us all and for Christ’s church in Mary the revolutionary.

Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God as being but a tiny “mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches” (Luke 13:19). That’s a quiet revolution that is planted and nurtured entirely without the fanfare, pomp and circumstance of the powerful and the proud. Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God as being as imperceptible as the “yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened” (Luke 13:21). That’s a revolution in the making that no one even notices until it has already happened.

Many years ago, my parents took my two younger brothers and me to Williamsburg, Virginia. Before we wandered that reconstructed treasure, we watched a video that introduced the town, its history, and the beginnings of the American revolution. The video concluded with a stirring clip in which young men and old took up arms and marched away to resist the British. When it was over and the lights came back on in the little theater, my youngest brother, who was probably six years old at the time, turned to my mother and said enthusiastically, “Mother, where do we get the guns?” That’s the kind of revolution we’re all looking for. “Where do we get the guns?”

Whether the guns are literal or metaphorical, we are always susceptible to the devilish temptation to turn the kingdom of God into a kingdom of men and women by force and by power. Even in the church, we always want a revolution we can be proud of instead of humble in. We want a revolution that is big and powerful, not small and imperceptible, that grows unnoticed in a garden, that leavens a loaf without anyone even noticing.

And when we do, we reveal that our mission is not really for the oppressed or the hungry or the imprisoned or the blind or the bowed down or the strangers or the widows or the orphans at all, but it is for ourselves. We make the mistake of only singing Mary’s praise chorus—“the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is God’s name”—without moving on to sing and to live the rest of her revolutionary lullaby. The revolutionary lullaby is how the kingdom comes, how God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

In the earliest decades of the church, that revolutionary lullaby was lived out in an uncommon common meal in which Jews and Gentiles, men and women, rich and poor, Asians and Europeans and Africans all sat down together to eat and to drink in communion with God and in communion with one another. That’s the uncommon common meal we share this morning because Mary’s song is our song and Mary’s revolution is our revolution, small and unnoticed, imperceptible even, until someone looks around and says, “Look, there are Asians and Europeans and Africans and rich and poor and men and women and Jews and Gentiles all eating and drinking together in communion with God and in communion with one another in the kingdom of God, in heavenly peace, in peace on earth, goodwill toward all!”

It all goes back to Mary the revolutionary. Let’s eat and drink to the kingdom of God.

Photo by sarah.mckenzie11, used by license of Creative Commons.

This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.