Nola Janelle Scogin and Eric McDonald Hardaway

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

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

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

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.