The Churchgoing Habit

In Sunday’s sermon I mentioned that the churchgoing habit is an easy one to break.

If I had had more time I might have talked about how it happens, how you take a Sunday off and realize there are all those other things you could be doing during that time, all those other things other people actually are doing during that time: sleeping in, going to the beach, going to the mountains, having a second cup of coffee, reading the New York Times, mowing the lawn, lounging by the pool, or doing nothing much at all.

It’s a nice change of pace, but I’m guessing it could quickly become the new normal.  And it might take weeks, or even months, to become aware that something was missing, something you used to get at church that you aren’t getting anymore.  And on your best days you might acknowledge that what you were missing is pretty important: the fellowship of other believers, the robust singing of hymns, the prayers of the people, the Word of the Lord, and the faithful preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, one that consistently challenges the false gospels of appearance, achievement, and affluence.

So I’ve come up with a strategy that will make the churchgoing habit harder to break.

It came to me when I was talking to a couple of guys on their cigarette break.  I was just standing there, and one of them offered me a cigarette.  “No, thanks,” I said.  “I never have developed that habit.”  “Lucky you!” he said.  “I’ve been trying to break it for years.  Cigarettes are expensive!” (he didn’t mention that they can also kill you).  It struck me then that people will pay good money for something that has the potential to kill them simply because cigarettes contain nicotine, which is highly addictive.

And that’s when I came up with my new strategy.

Let’s just pump some nicotine into the air conditioning system at church this summer, let it waft over the pews along with all that cool air as people sit there and listen to the sermon.  They won’t even know they’re inhaling it, but somewhere around Monday or Tuesday of that week they’re going to say, “Man, I’ve got to get back to church!”  They won’t even realize they’re doing it, but as they keep coming to church and keep inhaling that nicotine the addiction will begin to grow stronger and stronger, until they start saying things like:

“I’m dying for a sermon.”
“I sure could use a good hymn right about now, couldn’t you?”
“I haven’t had communion in, like, forever!”
“Will Sunday ever get here?”

I know there are probably laws against adding nicotine to the air conditioning system, but the churchgoing habit has gotten a little too easy to break.

And desperate times call for desperate measures.

–Jim Somerville

What’s in It for Me?

Easter is wonderful.  No doubt about it.  It’s exciting to think that Jesus rose from the dead.  But what’s in it for us?  What does the resurrection of Jesus do for us?  That’s the question I tried to answer in my Easter Sunday sermon.  Here’s an excerpt:

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The women who came to the tomb in Matthew 28 received the same message we have received this morning: that Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed!  But it has a different effect on us than it had on these women.  We’ve heard it so many times that the good news of Easter has become old news.  “Christ is risen,” the preacher says, and we yawn and say, “Whatever!”  But notice what happens to these women.

1. They are filled with fear. And from the outset we need to notice that this is not the same thing as being afraid.  The soldiers were afraid; “they shook and became like dead men.”  But not these women.  They were filled with fear, which must mean something else.  I’ve looked up the Greek word.  It’s phobos, from which we get phobia.  And one of its meanings is “to be afraid.”  But it can also mean “profound reverence,” or “awe,” and I’m not sure I have enough experience of that kind of fear to tell you what it means.  But I’ve heard about it.   People who have been bungee jumping talk about the rush of adrenaline they get standing there on the railing of a bridge getting ready to jump.  They look down at the river, 300 feet below.  They know that if the bungee cord breaks they will die.  Their hearts are pounding.  Their breathing speeds up.  But then they do it: they dive off the edge of the bridge and scream all the way down, and then bounce up and down at the end of that long rubber band with the kind of relief you can’t experience unless you have almost died.  I can’t know this for a fact, but I believe that when those women heard the news that Jesus was alive they were filled with that kind of fear: the kind that is like a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart.
2. They are filled with great joy. And this is one of the things I love most about Matthew’s version of the Easter story.  In the earliest and best manuscripts of Mark’s Gospel, by comparison, it says that the women “went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  And that’s the end of the Gospel!  But Matthew tells us that the women left the tomb quickly “with fear and great joy” and ran to tell his disciples.  Again, I’m not sure I’ve had enough experience with that kind of joy to tell you what it means but I’ve come close.  I was there for the birth of both my children and the physical symptoms were a whole lot like bungee jumping.  My heart was pounding.  My breathing changed.  Fear may be one of the words I would choose to describe what I was feeling, but the dominant emotion was joy—great joy!  And I know: I’m one of the lucky ones.  It doesn’t always work out that way.  But if it has for you then maybe you know what I’m talking about: when that baby is born you are filled with joy and more alive than you have ever been before.
3. They are moved to worship. There they were, running through the graveyard, filled with fear and great joy, when suddenly—there was Jesus.  In most of our English translations he says something to them like “Greetings!” but that doesn’t sound right, does it?  I’m thinking he must have used that traditional Hebrew greeting, that he must have held up one hand and said, “Shalom!”  And when he did they saw the mark of the nail.  So, there is no question in this Gospel about who it is; no momentary confusion as in John’s Gospel, thinking that it might be the gardener.  These women are standing in the presence of the risen Christ and they know it.  Without a word they approach him, fall at his wounded feet, and worship him.  And if those other emotions—fear and great joy—are what we experience in those moments when we are most fully alive, then surely worship—genuine worship—falls into the same category.  I’m not talking about excitement.  I don’t mean pumping up the volume and pounding out the beat until you think you’re at a rock concert.  I’m talking about worship, about suddenly finding yourself in the presence of the risen Christ, so that your heart beats faster, and your breathing changes, and the little hairs on the back of your neck stand up.  And that can happen almost anywhere, even in a graveyard.

But it seems to happen most often in church.

In my work I sometimes talk with people who are unhappy.  They’ve tried to make a life for themselves and fill it with every good thing they can think of, but it still hasn’t worked.  They still aren’t happy.  They come to me thinking I might have some clue about what’s missing.  And often as they talk I think of that line from John’s Gospel, where Jesus says, “I have come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.”  He doesn’t only mean that they will have more quantity of life; he means that they will have more quality of life, what we sometimes call “the good and beautiful life,” and that life, apparently, is found in his presence.  So where would you go if you wanted to find yourself in the presence of the risen Christ?  What about the kind of place where every effort has been made to enhance that possibility?  A whole room that has been set apart for that sacred purpose and a whole hour when we turn our thoughts toward him: when we listen to his word, and stand to sing his praises, and sometimes, in the silence of prayer, almost hear him breathing beside us on the pew, and feel the little hairs on the backs of our necks stand up?  Expectation makes all the difference.  When we come to church like those women came to the tomb, expecting an encounter with Jesus, we will not be disappointed.

Because Christ is risen, friends.  He is risen indeed.  It’s the same news those women heard on that first Easter so long ago and it’s as true now as it was then.  On this Easter may it fill you with fear, and fill you with joy, and move you to worship…

…the risen Christ.

–Jim Somerville

What a Fellowship!

Editor’s note: A few weeks ago Beth Fogg told me such a good story I insisted she write it up and submit it for publication.  She did.  She wrote it up and sent it to me.  So, I’m publishing it here and hoping you will find it as encouraging as I did.  Thanks for sharing, Beth!

I am privileged to be one of the many people who gather in the basement of Richmond’s First Baptist Church on Wednesday mornings for Community Missions.  There we gather as a team of volunteers to pray for each other and for our guests as we prepare for their arrival.  Then we welcome our guests with a brief time of devotion and prayer before working together to meet the needs of our homeless and near-homeless brothers and sisters for hot showers, clean clothes and food.  It has become a real community for me, and is one of the highlights of my week.

It is a place of trust and caring.  We all pray for each other, joke with each other, and love each other.  The fellowship is real.

On a recent Wednesday, two different guests brought something for us.  One guest brought a bag of clothing, newly washed and neatly folded, that she no longer needed.  She wanted to share back with others who have needs.  Another friend brought a bag with a variety of items to donate back, including about 20 washcloths.  We had just been discussing that we were running low on washcloths when the gift arrived!

I can only recall one previous time that I received a gift from a homeless person.  It is a humbling experience.  As a person who has more than she needs, I am motivated to come closer to the spirit of the early Christians described in Acts 4, as they made sure that none of the fellowship was in need.

I am thankful to be part of a church that shares love with our neighbors and receives it back from them!

–Beth Fogg

Freedom Isn’t Easy

Back in 1984 I got fired from my job.

I had only been married a year.  I had a wife at home who was depending on me for income.  I didn’t know what to do.

So, I called my dad, and he said, “Son, I believe everybody should get fired at least once, and spend at least one night in jail.”

That didn’t really help much, but it was an interesting thought.  A few years later, when I was in seminary, I thought I would try that other thing dad mentioned, spending a night in jail.  I had a friend at seminary who was just crazy enough to try it with me.  So, what we did is go to the county courthouse and sit there all morning waiting for the judge to work through his other cases.  When everyone else had gone he looked at us and said, “What are you here for?”

I said, “May I approach the bench, your honor?”

He said yes.  I came up and said, “My friend and I are students at the seminary.  We think it would be a good experience for us, as future ministers, to spend at least one night in jail, so we’ll know what it’s like, and so we can have more understanding and empathy for people who find themselves in such unfortunate circumstances.”

He said, “You want to spend a night in jail?”

“Yes sir.”

He laughed and said, “Well, I’d love to accommodate you boys, but the truth is, my jail is full.  We got three inmates in cells built for two.  You might go over to the next county and see if you have any more luck.  And so we did.  We spent all afternoon in another courthouse, but at the end of the day the story was the same.  They didn’t have room for us.

So, I still don’t know what it’s like to spend a night in jail, but maybe some of you do, and maybe you know that for all the things you could complain about there are some things that are not so bad.  I heard someone trying to look on the bright side once who said, “Well, at least you get three hots and a cot!”  And what he meant was three hot meals a day and place to lie down at night.

And some people seem to be more comfortable with that than with freedom.

In our Old Testament lesson for this Sunday God’s people have escaped their slavery in Egypt, they have been led out into the wilderness by God’s mighty hand, but there, in the wilderness, they begin to miss the comforts of their old life.

“Oh, that we were back in Egypt,” they moaned, “and that the Lord had killed us there! For there we had plenty to eat. But now you have brought us into this wilderness to kill us with starvation” (Exodus 16:3).

Freedom isn’t easy for any of us, but God seems to believe it’s worth it.

I hope you will join us for worship at 8:30 or 11:00 this Sunday at Richmond’s First Baptist Church, in person or via our LIVE webcast at www.FBCRichmond.org.

–Jim Somerville

 

Are we supposed to be afraid of God?

Sunday’s sermon touched on some questions I’ve been getting in “Talkback,” my weekly question-and-answer sessions with First Baptist Church’s adult Sunday school classes.  This excerpt deals with one of those questions.

Sometimes, in my Talkback sessions, someone will ask about that biblical expression, “the fear of the Lord.”  “Are we supposed to be afraid of God?” they ask.  No.  That’s not what the word fear means, not in that context.  It means something more like “awe,” or “reverence,” or “profound respect.”  But you can see where the word came from, can’t you?  From an experience like this one at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19): where Moses went up to receive the Ten Commandments and the people trembled in fear before the mountain of the Lord.  And when the writer of Proverbs said, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (9:10), he had something like this in mind, where you have such reverence, such awe, such profound respect for God that when God says, “Thou shalt not” do something then “Thou dost not” do it!  And this really is what wisdom is all about in the Old Testament: it’s about listening to God, and doing what he says, so that your life will turn out well.  If you don’t believe it just try not listening to God, and not doing what he says.  Try murdering and stealing and lying and cheating and worshiping idols and dishonoring your parents and then tell me how your life turns out.

That’s why these are not the Ten Suggestions, but the Ten Commandments; it’s because God doesn’t want our lives to turn out badly.  That’s why he put “the fear of the Lord” in his people all those years ago: so they would sit up straight, and pay attention, and do what he said.  But as I said in Talkback last Sunday we seem to be losing that, and it’s not only in the way we treat the Bible.  I think about how we come to worship these days, or how we don’t come to worship.  This place, for example, has been consecrated as a sanctuary.  It has been set apart for the worship of God.  When we come here we come to meet with him.  And yet we sometimes saunter in, talking and laughing with others, unwrapping a fresh stick of chewing gum, as if we were coming to a basketball game.  Where is our reverence?  Where is our awe?  And when it comes to Jesus, we talk about him as if he were an old friend, or at least someone who used to be a friend.  And maybe when that happens what we need more than anything else is a healthy dose of Transfiguration.

Because on that day Jesus went up on a mountain with a few of his old friends and something happened.  His face began to shine like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light, and suddenly Moses and Elijah were standing there with him.  And poor Peter!  Can you imagine?  Where only moments before there had been Jesus, a dusty carpenter from Nazareth with bread crumbs in his beard, now there was this angel of light.  “Rabbi!” he stammered. “It’s a good thing we’re here.  Do you want us to build three shelters, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah?”  He didn’t know what to say.  But no sooner were the words out of his mouth than a bright cloud settled on the mountain, just like the cloud that settled on Mount Sinai all those years before.  And there may have been thunder and lighting, there may have been the sound of a trumpet, the whole mountain may have trembled just as it did back then but one thing is certain: a voice spoke from that cloud and the voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”  And that’s when they fell on their faces in fear.

I don’t mean “reverence” or “awe.”  I don’t mean “profound respect.”  I mean fear—good old-fashioned fear, where you have trouble breathing, and your heart starts to pound, and your chest gets tight, and your legs begin to shake.  There was a belief in those days that to look on the face of God was to die, and there they were, those disciples, looking on the face of God’s Beloved in a blaze of glory so bright it burned their retinas.  My Bible says they were overcome with fear, but when I looked up that word in the dictionary it said that to overcome is to overpower, or overwhelm, and when I looked up that word it said, “to bury or drown beneath a huge mass.”  So picture, if you will, Peter, James, and John buried beneath a huge mass of fear, flattened by it as you would be flattened by a tidal wave breaking over your head, or by an avalanche that chases you down a mountain, catches you, and buries you beneath tons and tons of snow.

They thought they were goners.

Who knows how long they lay there like that, trembling, terrified, wondering how it would feel to die, or if they would feel anything at all, when Jesus came to them and touched them?  I tried to picture it, and realized that if they were lying face down on the ground Jesus, in order to touch them, would have had to stoop down to their level, he would have had to reach out, put a hand on their shoulders, and say what he says next, which is, “Get up, and do not be afraid.”  And Matthew says when they looked up they saw no one there but Jesus alone—that same dusty carpenter from Nazareth with bread crumbs in his beard.

He’s not someone we have to be afraid of, but he is someone we disciples have to listen to.  How about it?  Have you done anything recently simply because Jesus said so?  Have you not done anything simply because he said not to?

“This is my Son, the Beloved; in him I am well pleased,” God said.

“Listen to him.”

–Jim Somerville

 

What would Paul say?

Here’s a post from guest blogger Ann Carter, on mission in Greece where she and her teammates are administering aid to Syrian refugees.  She reports on a very special service that occurred over the weekend. 

How many Baptist Deacons have been ordained in Greece on a site where the Apostle Paul actually preached? Not many, I would wager. But Shannon Harton was ordained as a deacon at the Saint Paul Tribune last night. After spending the day serving refugees awaiting resettlement in Camp Veria in northern Greece, the First Baptist team serving with Shannon ordained him as deacon in the dark, amidst the sound of traffic, at the place where it is believed that Paul preached to the Jews of Berea.

Note: Shannon was ordained at roughly the same time his five fellow candidates were being ordained in the sanctuary of Richmond’s First Baptist Church.  Since he couldn’t be here, for that service, we asked Associate Pastor of Christian Compassion, Steve Blanchard, to conduct a service there, in Greece, just for Shannon.  Shannon is in the center of the picture above.  A statue of the Apostle Paul stands just behind him.

Deacon Ordination services are always special – a time when individuals are called out in service and leadership – through blessing and the laying on of hands, they are set apart to be the hands and feet of Christ in their congregation. Everyone who was ordained today is living out their faith in ways that are personal and authentic to them. It is exciting to see the way God works so uniquely in our lives.

It is especially exciting for one of our deacons to be ordained in the midst of service to “the least of these” in a place where Paul preached the good news of the hope we have in Christ.

From the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Thessaloniki, Greece (a mere 45 miles from where we sit) this is our prayer for all those who were ordained today:

“We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you” (I Thess. 1:2-4).

Gospel Storytelling

We’ve got a big storytelling festival coming up at Richmond’s First Baptist Church on the weekend of January 27-29.  It’s called the “Hearts Afire” Festival, and it’s going to be amazing, featuring some of the best storytellers in America (like Tim Lowry, above).  But it’s also a good analogy for what happens when you pick up the Bible and begin to read.

For example:

There’s a kind of storytelling festival going on in the first four books of the New Testament.  One at a time Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, step out on the stage to tell us their stories of Jesus. All of them are stories about the same person, but all of them are different, and that can be a little confusing. For example, we’ve just come through the season of Christmas, where we’ve heard two different versions of the Christmas story—Matthew’s and Luke’s. Sometimes we get the details mixed up, and think the shepherds and the wise men ended up in the same nativity scene (nope!). But maybe we could do better than that in this new year. Maybe we could let each of these Gospel storytellers tell the story of Jesus in just the way he wants, and maybe we could be grateful for the differences.

I sometimes say that if there has been an accident at a busy intersection, the investigating officer will be grateful if there were four witnesses, one standing at each corner.  That gives him four different perspectives on the same event.  And even though there was only one accident, and his final report will tell only one story, it will be informed by four different stories, and because of that he will have a better, clearer picture of “what really happened” than if there had been only one witness.  In the same way we should be grateful for the four different perspectives we have on Jesus, and the four different witnesses who provide them.

Matthew, for example.

This is Year A in the three-year lectionary cycle, which is Matthew’s year.  From now until Advent we will spend more time in the Gospel of Matthew than any other Gospel.  For that reason today might be a good day to let him step out on the stage all by himself, and tell his version of the Jesus story, or at least the beginning of it.

• It begins in an interesting way, with the genealogy of Jesus. If you’ve ever been asked to read it aloud you know how hard it is to pronounce some of those names.  You may wonder why Matthew started his Gospel like that.  But I think he wants us to know that this is not a new story, but the continuation of a story God has been writing from the very beginning, from the time he called Abraham and promised that through him the nations of the world would be blessed.  I think Matthew wants us to see Jesus as the fulfillment of that promise.   And so he tells us that there were fourteen generations from Abraham to David, and fourteen generations from David to the time of the Exile, and fourteen generations from the Exile to Jesus, the Messiah.
• And then he tells us how the birth of the Messiah took place, and his version is very different from the Christmas story we usually hear. According to Matthew Joseph and Mary didn’t travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem: they already lived there, though not in the same house.  But after Joseph had a dream telling him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife he did take her—he married her—and brought her into his own home, but did not have marital relations with her until she gave birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.  So, no stable, no angels, no shepherds in Matthew’s Christmas story: just a newlywed couple having a baby at home.
• And then, after a year or so, they got a visit from some magi from the east. Jesus would have been a toddler by then, a beautiful brown-eyed boy clinging to his mother’s skirts, staring at those wise men. We don’t know how many of them there were; there might have been two, there might have been twenty.  But they came bringing gifts for the new king of the Jews after learning from Herod’s wise men where that new king might have been born, and following a strange star that came to rest over his house.
• And can I pause long enough to tell you how much I love the image of that star shining over that house? Because this is the story we tell on the Day of Epiphany, January 6:  we tell the story of the wise men coming to visit Jesus.  All they had was the light of that star to guide them to his house, and I can almost see the starlight shining on his beautiful face, reflecting in those big brown eyes.  But in the same way the days get longer and longer at this time of year, the light that shines on Jesus gets brighter and brighter on these Sundays after Epiphany; we see him more clearly for who he really is, so that by the time we reach the end of this season—Transfiguration Sunday—his face will be shining like the sun!  But I’m getting ahead of myself…

The wise men were warned in a dream not to go back to King Herod, and not to tell him that they had found the child, but to go home another way.  And when Herod found he had been tricked he was furious.  He rounded up his troops and sent them to Bethlehem, to kill every baby boy under two years old.  But Joseph was warned in a dream to get up that very night, to take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, and that’s what he did.  Good old Joseph.  Good old faithful, obedient Joseph.  When Herod died he brought his family back to Israel, but when he heard that Herod’s son was on the throne he kept moving, and settled his family in Nazareth.  That’s where Jesus grew up.  That’s where he learned his father’s trade.  And that’s where he was when he got the news about John baptizing in the Jordan…

(for the full sermon from January 8, 2017, click HERE)