Bread of Life

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.

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.

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.

Bread for the Journey: Communion and Community

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

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.

Mary the Revolutionary

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.

World Communion: A God’s-Eye View

2 Timothy 1:1-14
World Communion Sunday 2010

If you are a parent or a grandparent of more than one child, then you have probably marveled at one time or another at how two children reared in the same household could be so different from each other. If you have at least one brother or sister, sooner or later you have wondered at the differences between them and you.

There was Jacob the homebody, soft and quiet and close to his mother; and there was his brother Esau the hunter, rough and ruddy and close to his father. There was Rachel, graceful and beautiful, and her sister Leah of the lovely eyes. There was Joseph the dreamer and his rash-acting brothers who sold him into Egypt. There was Mary the devoted student and Martha the diligent hostess. The differences between brothers and sisters reared in the same household can be so great that sometimes a person’s closest “kindred spirit” is not found among one’s own siblings but among children reared in another household. Think David and Jonathan, Mary and Elizabeth, Jesus and John the Beloved. Kindred spirits. Soul mates from different families.

For all our marveling and wondering, we can account for most of those differences—and the similarities, too. Except in the case of identical twins, no two children of the same parents have exactly the same genetic make-up. The differences begin in our DNA. Beginning even in utero, no two children experience exactly the same environmental influences. For the simplest of examples, a first child born into a nuclear family experiences a very different interpersonal environment than a second child experiences in that family. For the second child, there are not two but three faces and voices and bodies interacting with them. And a third child grows up in an entirely different interpersonal environment than either the first or the second. There are not three but four, and they’re all different. The differences in their genes and the differences in their experiences even within the same household result in distinct personalities, disparate identities, different strengths and weaknesses, dissimilar tastes.

On this World Communion Sunday on which brothers and sisters in “the household of God,” as the church is called in Ephesians 2:19 and 1 Timothy 3:15 and 1 Peter 4:17, share in the bread and the cup of remembrance of our Lord Jesus Christ, we would do well to reflect—even if only briefly—on the nature of our kinship, our sisterhood and brotherhood in the household of God.

I’m suggesting we take a “God’s-eye view” on the matter. Now, you and I both know that there is no one any more presumptuous than the person who proposes to see things as God sees things. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts,” says God (Isaiah 55:8-9). We all know that there is no one more preposterous than a person who purports to see as God sees. “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been God’s counselor?” God’s judgments are “unsearchable” and God’s ways are “inscrutable,” says the apostle Paul (Romans 11:33-34). No one sees as God sees. We all recognize that it is intellectually and psychologically and spiritually impossible for a finite being to comprehend an infinite point of view.

And yet, Scripture is every bit as insistent that there are times and places and persons who are called on to “write the vision” they have seen, to “make it plain” (Habakkuk 2:2; compare Revelation 1:11). From time to time, God says to a mere mortal, “What do you see?” (Jeremiah 1:11,13; 24:3; Amos 7:8; 8:2; Zechariah 4:2; 5:2; compare Acts 11:5-9). By suggesting that we take “a God’s-eye view” on World Communion Sunday, I recognize that I can be called “presumptuous” and “preposterous” but there is a vision of “the household of God” that World Communion Sunday represents and that vision should be written and made plain. And here it is: If in God’s household, God had wanted an “only child” of a church, God could have and would have made it so. If in God’s household, God had wanted an “only child” of a church, God could have and would have made it so.

From the earliest decades of the church’s existence, there were distinct personalities, disparate identities, different strengths and weaknesses, and dissimilar tastes in the various congregations of the New Testament. In Jerusalem, there was a very Jewish church that was law-abiding as well as gospel-proclaiming. In Corinth, there was a predominantly Gentile congregation that was a free-spirited, overly enthusiastic. And there was a church in Galatia in Asia Minor torn between the two, pulled by unnamed teachers in the direction of the law and scolded by Paul to go with the Spirit. There was a church in Antioch that was cosmopolitan, and missionary-sending. If the New Testament is to be trusted and believed, then in the household of God that is the church there have always been multiple siblings with distinct personalities, disparate identities, different strengths and weaknesses, and dissimilar tastes, owing to their different DNA, their different environmental influences, and maybe even their divergent callings as the people of God in their time and in their place.

This morning’s New Testament lesson from the Revised Common Lectionary for this Sunday was written to a third-generation Christian whose grandmother Lois and mother Eunice were believers. The counsel given to Timothy speaks wisdom to a particular individual in a particular household of God, the household of Lois and Eunice. But is also speaks wisdom to the sibling bodies that are churches and communions.

We sometimes call churches or communions by the untheological and unbiblical word “denomination.” That word was not coined until the fourteenth century, and it wasn’t used to refer to religious groups until the eighteenth century. The communion of the saints that is called the church is nearly 2,000 years old, but the word that dominates our understanding of the distinctives and differences among communions is fewer than 200 years old.

We are not denominations; we are sibling bodies, brothers and sisters in Christ, each of us “called with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to God’s own purpose and grace,” in the words of 2 Timothy 1:9. Each sibling body is called to espouse the “sincere faith” (1:5) that is in its DNA and in its upbringing. Each sibling body is reminded “rekindle the gift of God that is within” it (1:6). Each sibling body is encouraged to “Hold to the standard of sound teaching” that it has heard “in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (1:13) and to “Guard the good treasure entrusted” to it, “with the help of the Holy Spirit living in” it (1:14). There are many different communions in God’s household “called with a holy calling . . . according to God’s own purpose and grace.”

Remember that in the gospel of Luke, one of Jesus’ disciples reported seeing “‘someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he does not follow with us.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘Do not stop him; for whoever is not against you is for you’” (Luke 9:49-50). Just because someone doesn’t “follow with us,” it does not mean they are not following Jesus. Just because we don’t “follow with them,” it does not mean that we are not following Jesus.

In the gospel of John, in the passage in which Jesus states his claim to be the “good shepherd” of the biblical tradition, he says to those who are listening in his presence, “I know my own and my own know me. . . . I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice” (John 10:14,16). Jesus goes on to say, “There will be one flock, one shepherd” (10:17), but that is a “kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven” prediction, not a temporal description. The temporal description is that there are other sheep not of this fold who also listen to the voice of Christ, who also belong to Christ.

It goes without saying that there are sibling rivalries in the household of God. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that sibling rivalries reflect ontological realities. Sibling rivalries are a reflection of human sinfulness, not of “God’s own purpose and grace.” There were, after all, Jacob and Esau, Rachel and Leah, Joseph and his brothers, Mary and Martha.

And it goes without saying that sometimes we find our closest kindred spirits not among our own siblings but among sisters and brothers from other families. There were, after all, David and Jonathan, Mary and Elizabeth, Jesus and John the Beloved.

If in God’s household, had God wanted an “only child” of a church, God could have and would have made it so. “According to God’s own purpose and grace,” there are many churches with distinct personalities, disparate identities, different strengths and weaknesses, and dissimilar tastes, yet “called with a holy calling” to espouse a “sincere faith,” to “rekindle the gift of God that is within” it (1:6), to “Hold to the standard of sound teaching” that it has heard “in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (1:13) and to “Guard the good treasure entrusted” to it, “with the help of the Holy Spirit living in” it (1:14).

On World Communion Sunday, we celebrate the diversity of God’s household of many communions that are at the same time in a God’s-eye view, one holy communion of brothers and sisters in Christ.

Photo of computer-generated DNA by Geoff Hutchison, licensed by Creative Commons.

Photo of Saint Anna Orthodox Church, Rosedale, CA, by Joshua Trevino, licensed by Creative Commons.

Photo of Avondale Patillo United Methodist Church, Decatur, GA, by apmethodist, licensed by Creative Commons.

Photo of Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) Assembly, by christianchurch, licensed by Creative Commons.

Photo of English Martyrs Roman Catholic Church, by DannyMcL, licensed by Creative Commons.

Photo of St. Mark's Lutheran Church, Asheville, NC, by Bill Rhodes, licensed by 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.