KOH2RVA: Day 252

It’s the Day of Pentecost, everyone! Get out the leaf blowers and flame throwers, because this is the day we celebrate the birthday of the church, that time when the Spirit came with a sound like the rush of a mighty wind, and tongues of fire hovered over the heads of the believers (Acts 2:1-3).

But that was just the beginning.

Peter, filled with the Spirit, preached a fiery sermon, and at the end of the day 3,000 people had been added to the church. In the chapters that follow we hear how the apostles healed the sick, raised the dead, confronted the authorities, smashed through the barriers of prejudice, and carried the gospel to the ends of the earth.

So, I’m thinking…today is the Day of Pentecost. If what happened to the early church happens to us the Kingdom of Heaven will come to Richmond, Virginia. There will be no stopping it.

Which makes me wonder what’s stopping it now.

Is it us? Are we unwilling to let the Spirit take charge? Is that why we don’t wait for it and pray for it as those early disciples did? Today may be a good day to realize that if we try to bring in God’s Kingdom under our own power we will surely fail. But if we couple our efforts with the power of God, anything is possible. Just looked what happened in the early church. Eventually their critics began to say, “These people are turning the world upside down!”

Maybe soon they will say the same about us.

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KOH2RVA: Day 243

Every day I find a fresh poem in my inbox from the Writer’s Almanac. Some mornings I’m in too much of a hurry to read it (if you can imagine that), but when I’m not I do and I’m glad I had time to read this one (below).

The first time I read it, it seemed like a description of heaven: “The Land of Beginning Again, where all our mistakes and all our heartaches and all of our poor selfish grief could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door and never put on again.” The second time I read it, I thought it could be a description of church, or at least, church at its very best, as that place where heaven comes to earth. The third time I read it I thought that this could be the good news the church takes to the world: that there is a Land of Beginning Again, and Jesus knows the way. And this is how we might bring heaven to earth for those people outside the church; we might share with them this great good news.

I’m going to try to find someone today who needs to hear that there is a way to begin again, someone who needs to drop all her mistakes and heartaches and poor selfish grief like a shabby old coat at the door.

And I’m going to invite her to church this Sunday.

The Land of Beginning Again
by Louisa Fletcher

I wish that there were some wonderful place
In the Land of Beginning Again.
Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches
And all of our poor selfish grief
Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door
and never put on again.
I wish we could come on it all unaware,
Like the hunter who finds a lost trail;
And I wish that the one whom our blindness had done
The greatest injustice of all
Could be there at the gates
like an old friend that waits
For the comrade he’s gladdest to hail.
We would find all the things we intended to do
But forgot, and remembered too late,
Little praises unspoken, little promises broken,
And all the thousand and one
Little duties neglected that might have perfected
The day for one less fortunate.
It wouldn’t be possible not to be kind
In the Land of Beginning Again,
And the ones we misjudged
and the ones whom we grudged
their moments of victory here,
Would find in the grasp of our loving hand-clasp
More than penitent lips could explain…
So I wish that there were some wonderful place
Called the Land of Beginning Again,
Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches,
And all of our poor selfish grief
Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door
And never put on again.

“The Land of Beginning Again” by Louisa Fletcher, from The Land of Beginning Again. © Nabu Press, 2011. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

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KOH2RVA: Day 231

Is it just a coincidence?

On the same day I’m preaching about the time Peter went to the home of Cornelius, a Gentile, someone who was considered “unclean” by the Jews, I have been invited to a reception for the retiring pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church—what some people call “the gay church.” After that I’ve been invited to serve on a panel at Congregation Or Ami—a reformed Jewish synagogue just off Huguenot Road—for a discussion on aging with dignity that will include end of life issues. After that I’ve been asked to say a few words at the ordination of Krista Mann Manuel, a recent BTSR graduate who is now serving at Tomahawk Baptist Church.

Fifty years ago there wouldn’t have been a “gay church,” I probably wouldn’t have been invited to serve on the panel at a Jewish synagogue, and a Baptist church would probably not have been ordaining a woman. The times they are a-changin’ as Bob Dylan might say, and the question I have to ask is this one: Is the church caving in to the culture, as some people fear, or is the Holy Spirit on the move?

Here’s an excerpt from today’s sermon:

The Jewish Christians, the ones Luke calls “the Circumcised,” wanted to know why [Peter] had been spending time with the Uncircumcised and eating with them. It was against the law!—the Law of Moses, that is—it was contrary to the clear teaching of Scripture! I was trying to imagine a comparable situation last Friday when I bumped into Victor Davis over at Clark Springs Elementary School, where I tutor. Dr. Davis is the Baptist minister who did our January Bible Study last year. I said, “Victor, in our time and place, who is it that would be considered ‘unclean’ by the church?” And without hesitating he said, “The gays.” And so, on the way back to church, I thought: What if a local Baptist minister went on a mission trip to New York and found out when he got home that pictures of him hanging out at a gay nightclub in Manhattan had been published on the front page of the Richmond Times-Dispatch? Don’t you think there would be a special called deacons’ meeting that very afternoon where the chairman would hold up the newspaper and ask, “What’s this all about?”

I don’t have time to tell you how the sermon comes out, not now, but if you’ll come to church at 8:30 or 11:00 this morning, or tune in to our webcast at http://www.fbcrichmond.org, you’ll hear the rest of the story. And maybe tomorrow or the next day I’ll tell you what happened at the pastor’s reception, and the panel discussion, and the ordination service.

It’s an interesting world we live in.

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KOH2RVA: Day 200

My friend and colleague Ralph Starling recently shared this brief article by Seth Godin about paracosms.  What’s a paracosm?  Literally it means “a world alongside,” but listen to how Godin describes it:

A paracosm is an ornate, richly detailed imaginary world. Whether you’re a three-year old with imaginary playmates, or a passionate inventor imagining how your insight will change just about everything, a paracosm gives you the opportunity to hypothesize, to try out big ideas and see where they take you.

[Let me interrupt long enough to say that the Kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus talked about it, sounds like a paracosm].

Managers at established organizations have a very hard time with this. Take book publishing as an example. Ten or fifteen years ago, I’d sit with publishing chiefs and say, “let’s imagine how the world looks when there are no mass market books published on paper…” Before we could get any further, they’d stop the exercise. “It’s impossible to imagine that. Paper is magical. Are you saying you don’t believe in books?” (I heard variations on this from people as recently as a year ago.)

[Let me interrupt again to say that the way the scribes and Pharisees responded to Jesus’ talk about the Kingdom of Heaven sounds like that].

The emotional response is easy to understand. If one of the core principles of your business needs to be abandoned in order to act out the paracosm, it feels disloyal to even utter it. Sort of like asking your spouse if he’s going to remarry after you die…

And yet.

The most effective, powerful way to envision the future is to envision it, all of it, including a future that doesn’t include your sacred cows. Only then can you try it on for size, imagine what the forces at work might be and then work to either prevent (or even better, improve on) that future and your role in it.

It’s not disloyal to imagine a future that doesn’t include your founding precepts. It’s disloyal not to.

If that’s true, do we need to spend some time today imagining a future that doesn’t include the church as we know it, but rather the kingdom as God knows it?  And if so, what would that future look like?  According to Seth Godin, “A paracosm gives you the opportunity to hypothesize, to try out big ideas and see where they will take you.”

Go ahead. Knock yourself out.

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KOH2RVA: Day 183

If I’ve got this right (and I’m never sure when it comes to Math, not even with simple addition and subtraction), we have reached the halfway point of our year-long, every-member mission trip. Today is Day 183, and if you double that you get 366. That’s more than a year, and if you haven’t found a way to “get off the bus” and onto the mission field by now you’re probably not going to, right?

Wrong.

For six months now I’ve been nagging the members of Richmond’s First Baptist Church, saying things like, “When the youth group goes on a mission trip nobody gets to stay on the bus and read comic books, and on this year-long, every-member mission trip it’s the same. I want everybody to participate.” Because I really do; that’s my vision. If we were giving out trophies for participation at the end of the year I would want everybody to get one. So, imagine how much this letter from Sandra Harris meant to me:

Dr. Somerville,

On December 29th some members of my family and I traveled to Mesa, Arizona, to attend the Buffalo Wild Wings game. My great nephew, Darius Harris, plays for Michigan State. Yes, we won—17-16! After the game I went to Tucson to spend New Year’s with my brother. Therefore I missed your December 30th sermon. However, I returned home on Sunday, January 7, just in time to hear the last part of that sermon on television (our broadcast is delayed by a week).

I have heard you say numerous times, “Everyone needs to join the year-long mission to help bring the Kingdom of Heaven to Richmond, Virginia.” You have reminded us each Sunday and every Wednesday night. But I guess like many others it went in one ear and out the other. I have always participated in the ministries of First Baptist. I’ve given money, food for the food pantry, filled shoe boxes at Christmas, purchased socks, T-shirts, and underwear for the shower ministry, and much more. But I have not given of myself and my talents. I have always been an active church member. [At my former church] I sang in the choir, taught Sunday school, was director of VBS, was the church treasurer, and secretary.

On Sunday, January 7, when I was home alone, you had my undivided attention. I heard, I understood, and I made a commitment!!!! I have already written Mr. Blanchard and volunteered to help at Glen Lea Elementary School. At Bainbridge Baptist Church I worked with at-risk children from Hillside Court with Margaret Allen.

I have written all this to say: “Keep on saying, reminding, and encouraging the church to be willing to take that first step to use our God-given talents. You may think you sound like a broken record, but keep it up!! One by one we will hear and obey.”

May God continue to bless you and your staff as you lead, guide, and direct our church to do all that we can to help bring the KOH2RVA!!!

Sincerely,

Sandra E. M. Harris

Thank you, Sandra, for this eloquent testimony. May it inspire every other hesitant soul at First Baptist to “get off the bus” until God’s kingdom comes, and God’s will is done, in Richmond as it is in heaven.

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