WWJSAY?

What Would Jesus SAY?

Psalm 19, Ephesians 4:25-5:2

            I value finding good, relevant insight from old sources.    And I actually became an insight giving old source in a humorous moment last Wednesday evening at Camp Johnsonburg.  I had been there to give a chapel talk to all of the week’s young campers and the moment I told them I was 42 years old there was a very audible gasp ‘n giggle, as if everyone at the same time was wondering aloud how a T-Rex was there to speak about God to them!  

            The sources I frequently consult when studying the Bible actually are old, often centuries old, like this helpful quote I found this week from a famous 17^th century Presbyterian clergyman named Matthew Henry.   “The Scriptures were written,” he preached, “not to make us astronomers, but to make us saints.”

            I understand this to mean that when we read and relate the teachings of the Bible, it’s not for the purpose of training us to first and foremost look and listen for God “up” and “out” there, in some faraway very distant place.   I agree whole-heartedly!    Granted, there can be great comfort and humbling in our scanning the skies to be reminded that our lives are just one very important part of God’s good and vast creation.    And this can help with our sense of belonging, with our faith in being ultimately cared for by our gracious Creator, and with reclaiming God’s original purpose for us to be caretakers.   I also find it does help many folks to talk to God as a “higher” power who exists above and beyond worldly ways.    This is how I first came to faith myself. 

              Yet the epic stories and holy encounters that fill the pages of Scripture mostly locate God at work on the ground, right in the here and now and the roots and raw needs of people’s lives.    Why did the Magi follow a star?  It wasn’t to find God up in the remote heavens; it was for the purpose of locating God at work at the most important and most miraculous moment ever to happen on earth, in human history, to help them discover the new beginning for all God’s children through the birth of our Messiah.

            Keep God’s location in mind when reading from the Book of Ephesians.    This “book” is really a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to Christians in an ancient, bustling cultural melting pot city of the Roman Empire called Ephesus.   The start of the letter is addressed to the saints there who had been born anew through their baptism in Christ.    It wasn’t addressed to people who were somehow perfectly faithful, or to people who are just “up there” in heaven next to an “up there” God.  Paul understood saints differently.    He knew them to be the people set apart by God in a particular time and place to follow, indeed to imitate, Jesus.   Let me put it this way – it’s the same as if I welcomed you all this morning by saying, “Good morning to all of you saints of Fairmount Presbyterian!”  

            So what did Paul teach the Christians in Ephesus about how to be saints instead of astronomers?  How does this ancient counsel help us today, we saints who are of one faith, one Lord, one baptism?  One significant thing he taught that I’m highlighting today was that they were to mind their mouths.

            Listen once again to part of Paul’s faithfully wise words – “Let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another … let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear … live in love, as Christ loved us.”  

            Paul’s emphasis in Ephesus was spot on.   Many of our intentionally and unintentionally aimed words can cut down and cause crumbling to relationships and entire social foundations.   So how we choose to speak to one another and to every person we meet really and deeply matters.  Not just because it reflects upon who we are, how we’re known, how we’ve been raised … but more importantly because it directly reflects and represents our identity as baptized people who have been signed and sealed into the Way and Word of Jesus Christ.    Our words should be further expressions of His grace.   The reconciling truth spoken to us through His teaching is not for us to just absorb and keep silently to ourselves.   It needs to flow into and then out of us like a sacred symphonic sound in the world, enhancing human relationships and enriching human communities.   He is our Head, we are His Body, our vocal chords can be and should be instruments for helping to make His always amazing, abundantly loving, freely forgiving grace known.

            One biblical commentator has noted how today’s passage from Ephesians is summed up in the words of the song “They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Love.”[i]    Do you know that one?   I believe it’s in our Blue hymnal, and I know for sure it’s in the new Presbyterian hymnal that’s about to be published.   Anyone who has ever been part of Camp Johnsonburg sure knows it very well.    This commentator rightly points out that the unity and working side by side that is sung about in this song must be put in action, absolutely lived out.   And the ethical practices found in Ephesians about living out Christ’s love through truthful, tenderhearted, forgiving words can save this song, and, to quote the commentator directly, other “ditties of devotion to love and unity” from becoming “sentimental schlock.”

             There was one particular Olympian this summer who minds his words very well, whose witness is far from schlock, who knows how important it is to share speech that strongly represents God’s grace in Jesus Christ.      Lopez Lamong finished third this year in his 5000 meter Track and Field final, but this 27 year old was also at the 2008 Olympics.  In fact, he was the flag bearer for the United States at those opening ceremonies.     Does anyone recognize the name?  

            At the age of 16, Lopez Lamong became a US Citizen.  This was after he had been born in South Sudan and had been abducted during the Second Sudanese Civil War.  After nearly dying in captivity, he was helped to escape by three others there from his home village.   The four of them ran for three straight days until arriving in a refugee camp in Kenya.    His story is just one of 20,000 displaced or orphaned boys known as the “Lost Boys of Sudan.”   There is a documentary available to you by this name that I highly recommend.   

            Lopez’s specific story came to my attention through Relevant magazine, a quarterly publication about God, life and progressive culture I subscribe to.   Through an interview, I read how the amazing power of God’s grace in his life is not something he quietly keeps to himself.   He hears Jesus’ voice saying, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be children of God.”  (Matt. 5:9).   He understands this voice needs to be further expressed in order to give hope and build other people up.    He speaks as a saint, as one who is set apart by God to help people in a specific time and place receive grace.   He accomplishes this mostly through his own foundation for bringing about healing in Southern Sudan.    And he did so through the Relevant magazine interview in which he said the following faith-building words –

            “I’m here because God rescued me, gave me a second change, kept me alive today. I cannot run a step without God giving me the strength to run and be happy. I’m doing this for the people who are not able to run anymore, who are dead.   I’m that voice.”

            Friends, have you found your baptismal voice?    The voice that expresses with conviction that you have been reborn and raised to new life in Christ?   Do you understand how even your slightest words can be creative acts conveying God’s grace?   

            As you strive to live in love as Christ loves you, do more than just ask What Would Jesus Do?   Actions that imitate our Lord are vitally important, but so too are the words we choose that do the same.  We need to also ask, “What Would Jesus Say?”    When His loving truth is heard by people in need of kindness and forgiveness, it just might be what directs their desperate attention from God being distantly “out there” to God being securely and intimately known right here.   Amen.

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[i] Richard F. Word, Feasting On the Word, Year B, Volume 3, commentary on Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Surprise in the Wilderness of Sin

           
Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15; John 6:25-34

            Many of you know that I’m a life-long, ardent Philadelphia Phillies baseball fan.    This facet of my life was cemented in 1980 when I was eleven year’s old -- Rebecca’s age -- and they won the World Series title for the first time since the team’s inception in 1883, when they were known as the “Quakers.”    Steve Carlton, Mike Schmidt, Tug McGraw … talk about some giant childhood heroes!   My nostalgia bank remains in full account of that season.  

            I didn’t think about the strictly business side of baseball back then.    Nor did I think about it when the team won the World Series for just a second time in 2008, or when they got to but lost the the big title series in ’83, ’93 and ’09.    But this season, we Phillies fans – and fans of a great many other teams, excluding, yes, yet again, the Yankees – realize that the strictly business side of the national past time can stare you hard in the face.   I say “national pastime,” but there are times when I kind of have to agree with Erma Bombeck who believed gossip was really our national pastime!   Anyway, the strictly business side of the game stares a fan hard in the face when it’s the mid-season trade deadline and your beloved team is but a spent shell of its former championship self.     The usually formidable Fightin’ Phils are dead last in their division and have nearly the worst winning percentage in all of baseball (poor Houston helps our self-esteem).   So the team ownership traded away two fan favorite star players to teams still in the race this year and thus cashed out on this season in the hope of being able to invest in rebuilding the next.

            What a tough spot to be in, knowing when to make sacrifices, to turn away from presently unpleasant and despairing circumstances in order to start building-up hope again for the future.    There is always the possibility of more failure, that tough decisions, inspired by glory-filled days of the past, are made that might end up creating deeper disappointment and disaster.   

            In sharing these words about the crossroad of past, present and future, I’m no longer just talking about baseball.   It’s a long-time great sport with many people involved, but what I’m much more significantly talking about in this time of worship is a great nation with multitudes of a historic people.   I’m speaking about the Hebrew people at the time of the great exodus from Egypt.   I’m speaking about the fact that in a time of desperation, many of them were fully tempted to make a huge, extremely risky trade while the nation was wandering in the Wilderness of Sin (really, the region was called “Sin” … though the hard to translate Hebrew word, which also is the root of Sinai, as in Mt. Sinai, does not refer to our lapsed spiritual condition; metaphorically, though, it’s gold!)

            Recall the earlier movement of the epic story.  The Hebrew people had been living in Egypt.   A life that had begun there as foreign but safe sanctuary under the authority of their ancestor Joseph and a different, deeply grateful Pharaoh, had shifted several hundred years later into a life of horrendous enslavement.    The Pharaoh of several hundred years later was threatened by the sheer number and rigorous strength of the Hebrew people living under his dominion, fearing that they might one day choose to side with enemies.    So he decided to force them en mass into ruthlessly enforced hard labor.    Plus, in a monstrous population control project, he also at one point ordered the murder of baby boys.   

            The very brave, totally inspiring actions of two Hebrew midwives saving one special baby boy followed, sparking God’s plan for life beyond the hopeless, entrenched injustice of Egypt.    This boy was, of course, Moses, whom God -- many years, one particularly mysteriously burning bush, and one miraculously split open sea later -- worked through to deliver the Hebrew people to freedom.   

            But freedom from Egypt’s institutional oppression meant entering harsh times of trial in the wilderness.    This wasn’t a well-packed up and prepared for camping trip; this was escape and survival, holy calling and desperate hunger.    As desperations danced with their wandering steps, holy hope for a better life dimmed and greater grew bitter, ungodly complaining. 

            We can understand this with great compassion.  Who wouldn’t express such fearful misery after being led out by the Almighty into a new adventure, all the while faithfully trusting in a better life to come, but then landing in a life-threatening wasteland, a season of despair where needed commodities and hopeful conviction are scarce?

            In that climate, so also arose a particularly dark and idolatrous temptation.  The people contemplated making a trade -- a trade back to Pharaoh’s team, a trade back to regular meals despite the bloody brutal bondage of bodies, minds, hearts and souls.      How was God to respond to this?  To all of the second-guessing, faith-choked cries?   

            God listened and loved.   God received the laments and did not condemn the people for having a lack of trust in divine power and provision.   God steadfastly honored and further invested in the promised plans of glory God had for these chosen children, for team salvation. God immediately provided the needed, demanded nourishment – in the form of manna and quail -- in order to dispel that sinful temptation of turning back.   It was a bit of test of faith, for the choice was before them – they could keep playing out fear-induced fantasies about life under Egyptian oppression or continue living on into the field of holy promise and expectation that no matter what, God provides. 

            The Scripture tells us that for a space of time they chose rightly.  They chose to turn away from the false face of Egyptian life and instead turned toward the fresh face of hope that, in God’s providence, was looking at them through whatever lay ahead in the wilderness.   The team vote was for further restoration, not liberation-reverting re-entry.   They chose what some writers of Judeo-Christian spirituality call the Way of Leaving, which is also just as much the Way of Arriving.[i]     It is the way of people putting roots down not in land or houses, but in God alone.

            In reading this part of the great epic story of Israel, we must be careful not to miss a very vital detail and all-around applicable teaching about life with God.   This decision making process, this faithful discernment, happened only after choosing to obey Moses and Aaron’s summons of the whole congregation of Israel to “come near before the Lord.”   In other words, in that season of despair, in that faith challenging crisis, the people were called to be in worship together.    Once gathered, they then had fresh faithful courage to take a second look over at the wilderness.   To their great surprise, what they saw of the wilderness during that gathering of praise and prayer was “not an empty, deathly place, but the locus of God’s sovereign splendor …a nurturing place.”[ii]     They further and more fully understood that they were God’s team, that their salvation was trustfully in play.  

            In what places today are people struggling to look through and across a wilderness of desperation, of sin?    Where are people, and more personally, where are you having trouble detecting and trusting and hoping in God’s promises of glory days to come?   How are we, as the great body of Christ, who is our Bread of Life, providing “manna” and “quail,” the kind of provision that calls attention to the biblical truth that God always provides?   These are vital, ongoing questions for us as faithful individuals, as faithful families, and as a faithful body of Christ’s fold.

            Before we move from sermon to further songs, prayers and offerings of praise, I’m inspired to lift up one way to do this as FPC, as Faithful People in Christ.   We do so through our teaming up in ministry with the Open Cupboard Food Pantry in neighboring Clinton.   Coordinated and delivered by congregational leaders Bill and Angela Mannion, I encourage you to understand how your many contributions to this ministry as extending real, tangible hope in God’s steadfast promises and provisions.    It fills physical, emotional and spiritual needs for people in need across northern Hunterdon County, people wandering through the realities of sin, hoping to receive the grace of their daily bread.  We love our neighbors by helping them turn toward their wilderness experiences and see glimpses of the holy, abundant life God desires for all.    

            I could not locate more recent statistics this week, but I know that back in 2009, over one hundred thousand pounds of grocery store items – food and health necessities – were donated and distributed.    I understand that FPC is presently giving an average of 20 pounds per week, and that we have well exceeded a ton of provisions since we partnered with this ministry a couple years ago.   My heart is so warmed each time I see items for donation being dropped off, especially when I happen to know well that the person giving these gifts of faith, hope and love is also struggling through a wilderness experience.    If the Way of Leaving is also the Way of Arriving, then it’s also true that the Way of Giving is the Way of Receiving.     

            And you know what I really love and give thanks and praise to God about?   Location, timing … how our congregational giving of modern day needed manna and quail mostly takes place at the entrance to our sanctuary, just when we are answering the faithful call to come near the Lord in worship.   That collection box is kind of like the jar with a piece of manna in it that the ancient Israelites were commanded to have present during worship.   What better location and time to turn in hope and face God’s good glory alive in the wildernesses of this world?     Amen.

           

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[i] See introduction to Exodus in the Renovare “With God Life” Bible

[ii] Exodus 16:1-36, Manna and Quail, New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary