The Arrival

Folks, we’ve come to Palm Sunday, that delightful day when the children wave palm branches in the sanctuary, maybe you do too, and we celebrate the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem for Holy Week.

Let me bring you up to date with the story of Jesus to this point. 

Gospel Reading Luke 19:28-40 (audio)    Audio Sermon

Jesus was descended from King David, the greatest king of Israel and Jordan, both on his mother Mary’s side of the family and his stepfather Joseph’s side. As such, He fulfilled a prophecy that the rightful descendant of the House of David would become the King of Israel and Judah, restoring the country to glory after centuries of foreign rule, most recently by the Romans.

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; Luke 19:28-40 

Approximately three years ago in our story, probably in the year 30 AD, Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. At that time, several of John’s followers, young men named John, Andrew, and Simon, met with Jesus and talked with Him for several hours. Jesus then walked off into the wilderness where He fasted and was tested by the devil.

Jesus’ mother Mary was catering a wedding in Cana near the Sea of Galilee, a large freshwater lake in what is today northern Israel. The wedding was running out of wine – Mary had Jesus fix the problem, which Jesus did by turning several 40 gallon containers of water into wine, very good wine.

Jesus then walked down to the lake shore and called John, his brother James, and the two brothers Andrew and Simon to follow Him as disciples. They were all commercial lake fishermen. Soon, Jesus had called an additional eight men to follow Him, including a tax collector, a would-be revolutionary, a possible assassin, a Greek-speaking Jew and several others.

They began traveling together and picked up an entourage of over a hundred people. Jesus healed people, drove out demons, and scandalously ate and drank with all sorts of people of rough and low-class nature. He taught a different sort of Jewishness, He taught differently about God, stating that God was not waiting to destroy the people who broke His Law, but instead wanted followers who would try their best to follow His Son – Jesus. Yes, Jesus repeatedly claimed and showed god-like powers and claimed to be God walking upon the earth, as in “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30)

[See particularly the "I am" constructions in the Gospel of John. These refer back to YHWH, "I am that I am", the name of God that God supplied to Moses at the burning bush. Each usage of "I am" was in implicit claim to be God in the flesh in that culture at that time.]

He skillfully debated representatives from the Pharisee group of Jews who focused upon following the Law of Moses and debated representatives from the Sadducee group who controlled the Temple about the importance of the Temple. And the crowds loved Him for His comments and answers.

Early that year, Jesus had taken James, John, and Simon up to the top of tall mountain. Jesus had given Simon the nickname "Cephas", which means "Rock", which in Greek is translated as Petros, and in English Peter. Peter the Rock watched that day when Jesus suddenly transformed into a brilliant white Being and spoke with Moses and Elijah, the two greatest prophets of the Old Testament, about his coming departure from Jerusalem. And it shook Peter deeply.

A few weeks after this, a messenger came from two sisters, Mary and Martha, who managed an inn with their brother Lazarus in Bethany, only three miles from Jerusalem where Jesus and His disciples usually stayed for the festivals. Lazarus was deathly ill – could Jesus come quickly to heal him? But Jesus delayed, finally arriving after Lazarus had been dead in the tomb for four days.

The sisters were upset and told Him, “If you’d only been here, our brother would have lived!” They understood His power to heal; they didn’t realize how deep was His control over life and death. For Jesus then raised Lazarus from the dead in front of dozens of mourners.

Jesus and his disciples then withdrew to a small village in the hill country for a week or so, only returning on Saturday evening, yesterday, to be the guest of honor at a banquet catered by Martha at Simon the Leper's house. They ate in a leper's house! Lazarus was sitting the beside Jesus during the dinner, very much alive again. During the banquet, Mary poured a pint of very expensive perfume, worth the equivalent of twenty or thirty thousand dollars over Jesus’ feet, anointing Him as the ancient Kings of Israel had been anointed to indicate that He would be king.

And many people came out from Jerusalem that night to see Lazarus and Jesus. And the rumors flew – was Jesus the Messiah, the long-predicted savior of Israel? Was He ready to take over the city from the Romans and become the rightful King of Israel?

Early this morning, Jesus and His disciples awoke and began the three-mile walk from Bethany to Jerusalem, followed by several hundred people. The walk takes you up the east side of the Mount of Olives, named for the olive trees that grow on it. Near the top is the tiny village of Bethphage, the “House of un-ripe figs”.

Luke 19:28-40

Jesus called for two of the disciples and said, “Go into the village ahead of you. As you enter it, you will find a young donkey tied there, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say this: ‘The Lord needs it.’”

So those who were sent left and found it just as He had told them. As they were untying the young donkey, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the donkey?”

“The Lord needs it,” they said. 

And just like that, the owners let them have the donkey!

Then they brought it to Jesus, and after throwing their robes on the donkey, they helped Jesus get on it.

As He was going along, they were spreading their robes on the road. Now He came near the path down the Mount of Olives, and the whole crowd of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the miracles they had seen:

The King who comes
in the name of the Lord
is the blessed One.
Peace in heaven
and glory in the highest heaven!

Some of the Pharisees from the crowd told Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.”

He answered, “I tell you, if they were to keep silent, the stones would cry out!”
And once again, it may help us understand a few things about this.

Over 500 years earlier, in 518 BC, the prophet Zechariah had written a prophecy which looked to the destruction of Israel’s neighbors and rivals, from the Phoenicians of Lebanon to the Philistines of Gaza. Zechariah 9:6 even mentions a mixed people who live in the Philistine city of Ashdod, which by the time of Christ had changed its name to Azotus and become occupied by Romans and Greeks, as well as Jews and a few remaining Philistines. There had been so much intermarriage that the city spoke its own dialect.

But the most important part of the prophecy of Zechariah begins in verse 9.

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
Shout in triumph, Daughter Jerusalem!
Look, your King is coming to you;
He is righteous and victorious,[c]
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the horse from Jerusalem.
The bow of war will be removed,
and He will proclaim peace to the nations.
His dominion will extend from sea to sea,
from the Euphrates River
to the ends of the earth.

And that morning, this morning on the Mount of Olives, the King of Jerusalem was returning to her, “Righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

And so the people of Jerusalem gathered together that morning to welcome “The King who comes in the name of the Lord, who is the blessed One.” And they gave thanks, for the chariot and the horse and the bow – all those articles of warfare – would be removed from Jerusalem and the surrounding territories, for the King riding down the hill would both proclaim peace to all the peoples and expand Israel’s territory to where it was when King David, Jesus’ ancestor ruled – from the Euphrates River in Syria to the coast. And the LORD, Yahwah Himself, would defend Israel as in the olden days when God fought for Israel with Moses and Joshua and Gideon and Deborah and Samson and David and Solomon.

No more worries. Peace. Prosperity. The end of the hated Roman occupiers. And so the people loudly chanted, “Hosanna! Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna!” The fans of the new King were ready for the game, they were ready to cheer and fight, they were ready to face the evil Romans who were on the other side!

What would you have been doing that Sunday morning? Would you have been yelling and celebrating and chanting with the fans as your savior came riding down the hill on the donkey? If you could go back in time, would you put your cloak in the mud for Jesus’ donkey to walk over? Would you have tried to shake His hand? Would you look with joy at His arrival?

Or, knowing the whole story, would you have urged Him to get out of town before He was betrayed? Or would you have looked on in tears, knowing that what He was doing had to be done, but knowing the pain that He had to face on Thursday night and Friday, trying not to think about the terrible task that He had to accomplish so that you and I and all of us could live once more, reconciled to God not by our actions, but by His choice of action? 

Do you want to yell from the sidelines “Run! Leave town! Save yourself!”? And you see Him look towards you and mouth the words, “I must do this for you!” And then you turn your face from Him, tears welling up, as you realize that it is because of what you have done that He will be beaten, hung on the cross, and die?

There were some in the crowd who were not happy, some Pharisees. It is easy to look at the Pharisees and look at them as out of touch, but this is unfair. There were some of the wiser Pharisees in the crowd who understood how nervous the festivals always made the Romans. There were some cautious Pharisees who felt that this loud procession proclaiming a new King might get out of hand – remember that this was in a time when the Romans had swords, yes, but a man with a sword could be handled by twenty men throwing rocks and swinging clubs and each Roman soldier knew this. The Roman garrison might get nervous and then there would be bloodshed. And although a rioting crowd might successfully kill the Roman garrison, the Romans would return with legions of soldiers, three or four legions, each legion having five thousand swordsmen, the most highly trained soldiers in the world. And they would not leave Jerusalem free to flaunt their freedom in front of the world, for the Roman Empire depended upon the single idea that the Romans always conquered, the Romans always won. The Romans could not afford a successful rebellion, even in the remote corner of the Empire that was Jerusalem.

Those Pharisees also saw the joy in the celebration, but they understood the evil that could be unleashed if the celebration got out of hand, if the Romans became too nervous about this new King and reacted. Jerusalem could lose everything. (As the town did in when the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD - and the Jews were exiled in 136 AD after the Bar Kokba revolt.)

No, these Pharisees did not want the celebration to get out of hand. And so they said to Jesus, “Teacher, tell your disciples to calm down! Rebuke them!” But Jesus, probably referring to Isaiah 55:12 – which says

“You will indeed go out with joy
and be peacefully guided;
the mountains and the hills will break into singing before you,
and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.”

Jesus responded, “If they were to keep silent, the stones would cry out!” 

And you know, I find it amazing that one or more of the disciples was listening closely enough to Jesus that that disciple heard the exchange in the noise of the crowd. But, then again, that’s the difference between a fan of Christ – and a disciple of Christ. Disciples are always listening to Christ, not to the crowd.

And so the grand procession entered into the city, into Jerusalem, the “city of peace”, as Jesus rode into the city that never has known peace, the gentle man on the little donkey who would be violently killed that week to bring us peace with God. And the celebrations continued throughout the day all over the city.

But here today, 2000 years later, what is the meaning of this day for us? Is it just a fun day, a day to begin the celebration that leads up to Easter Sunday? Is it a day for remembering joy?

I have a few thoughts for you. Please bear with me.

Everybody loves a winner. On this day, almost everybody was joyful and celebrating the arrival of Jesus and his followers into the city. Everybody pinned their hopes on him, that perhaps even this week there would be a great movement of freedom, that the Romans would be overthrown, that the burden that the Romans brought, the feeling of impending doom that was always there when ordinary people thought of the Romans would be lifted. We want to feel happy, don’t we? But when we look at the world around us, we cannot help but feel impending doom, don’t we?

I probably read the news more than most people. I try to balance my sources – I get a liberal view from NPR and I get a conservative view from the Drudge Report. And I see things happening in the world which, in a vacuum, would lead me to assume the next few years will be terrible. Our competition with the Russians is back, the Chinese are beginning to push at us around the world, the North Korean and Iranian rulers are a threat. Here at home, politicians that years ago behaved more like professional wrestlers – enemies as long as the cameras were on and then they’d go out to eat dinner together – today’s politicians seem almost mortal enemies of each other – and I’m talking on both sides. Even here in this state, there is a loss of the civility in Charleston that used to be there twenty years ago. We have mostly chosen to join sides as fans in the ballgame of politics.

It is all well and good to be excited when “our side” is winning the political battles, whichever side “our side” is. But when everyone chooses up sides and no one stands in the center helping arrange compromises, the history of the world shows that riots happen and people die. Sometimes it goes beyond riots and more people die. We need more people in the center looking for compromises, for moderation in change, for civility in conversation. With politics, there is much more at stake than in football or basketball games. Remember this before you post on Facebook.

Additionally, our technology is advancing very quickly, and, as always, technology can and will be a double-edged sword. Technology has become seen as our modern day savior and is entering our lives like that Palm Sunday procession entered the city. Robots can allow people to be removed from dirty, dangerous, repetitive jobs. But like the Pharisees, a few people stand by and look at the evil that could be unleashed if there is too much, too soon. Those same robots and artificial intelligence software can completely eliminate jobs, putting millions out of work.

We’ve already seen it happen – we just didn’t call vending machines “robots” as they helped eliminate the corner groceries. We didn’t worry about the pay-at-the-pump technology that eliminated a million jobs at gas stations across the country. We walk into Kroger or Walmart or Sam’s and can check out without an employee. Or pick out our groceries online and when we get to Kroger, someone puts them in the car while we wait. Amazon has even developed a physical store which doesn’t even have a check-out counter – just cameras that see what you pick up and take with you. How much longer will we have retail check-out clerks?

We didn’t complain when personal computers and printers and copiers replaced millions of typists who used to use carbon paper – Do you realize that the Pentagon was built mainly to accommodate the number of typists that were necessary to type the form letters and form orders for the army in World War II? Do you realize that typist was the most common job title for women in 1960?

We can order a pizza from Little Caesar’s on our cell phone and pick it up, not even talking to a person. With the push of a couple buttons, a machine fills our drink order at McDonald's, even accounting for whether or not we want regular ice or “light ice”.

Today’s technology is even rapidly replacing jobs we used to think of as highly skilled.

Last spring, from my home, I wrote a book, designed the cover, laid out the text, and had printed 60 copies of my book without ever talking to anyone. The books arrived ten days later. They could have arrived in two if I’d paid for the express shipping. I can do this with a book of sermons that brings life – or the next generation’s Hitler or Marx can do this with a book that brings death.

It used to be that lawyers and legal secretaries were needed for every will – now you can answer a few questions online and a will is automatically generated for you.

I have seen missiles made in a factory in Texas where humans never touch the parts, with the materials being put automatically into a warehouse, taken out of the warehouse automatically, machined completely without a human present, assembled, and just await a single fork truck driver to load them on the truck. I know of a hydroelectric generating plant in Georgia that has no one on site, it is controlled from the desk of a man in Cincinnati and only visited when there are problems.

In the same way, I have been in an industrial egg farm in Georgia where the eggs roll down padded chutes from the cages which hold the one million hens. The eggs move along a padded conveyor, are individually washed, inspected by a machine vision system for embryos or cracks, automatically put in a carton, the cartons are put into boxes, the boxes on a pallet and then, finally, a single fork truck driver loads them on the truck. There are a couple of maintenance men, an FDA inspector, an accountant, a shift supervisor, and in each of the ten hen houses are two women per shift, 60 altogether, who do nothing except check all the hundred thousand hens in their houses for dead chickens and throw them away. They haven’t been able to automate that part. Yet.

Self-driving trucks are being tested – no need for a truck driver, which cuts the costs and probably improves safety. But truck driver is the most common job for American men today. Ninety percent could be replaced in fifteen years. Self-driving taxi’s, delivery drones, even smart computer-controlled submarines that lie in wait for the enemy, just waiting for a signal from the fleet command to become active – they are all in development. And we remember that coal mining used to be done with pick and shovel – now one man can mine in a day what used to take 20 men to do.

On the medical front, everyone has a friend that has a new knee. This year, they’ll be introducing a new technique where they scan your old bones and 3-D print a new titanium knee that exactly fits where the old one was removed, an exact match in size to better than a millimeter fit, reducing the pockets that lead to infection. There are new cancer treatment techniques which have the ability to hunt down and kill every single cancer cell in your body by training your own immune system to work better, much better. And yet using much the same basic science, known as CRISPR, people have the ability to change children’s genes before birth to automatically immunize infants to the measles, to HIV, to small pox, to give children extra intelligence at birth – or less intelligence and strong muscles at birth. Or that same science can use a modified cold virus spread a disease so that it only affects people of certain ethnic backgrounds. The same technology that promises so much good could be used for so much evil.

So what is the answer to the sense of impending disaster that is coming, as people celebrate the great achievements of our modern day savior which is technology – and others look at the evil that may be unleashed if the disciples of that modern day savior get too far ahead of themselves? Who knows which technology will be the savior and which will cause the downfall of our civilization? We don't know, but Christ knows.

Folks, we would do well to remember that we are inclined to go with the crowd. And the crowd can be fickle and stupid. The very same people who were celebrating Jesus’ arrival on that Palm Sunday morning in Jerusalem were chanting “Crucify Him” on Friday morning, less than a week later.

As Christians, with the Holy Spirit, we daily make decisions that seem like simple economic decisions. This is cheaper, faster, takes less time – and that takes longer, costs more, or requires more effort. Our technology savior can be worshiped in this case – or we can question whether or not this is idol worship, which will always get us in trouble. But when we make our decisions about which store to shop at, which phone to buy, what job to train for, do we listen for the voice of our Lord – or the voice of the Pharisees who proclaim doom – or the voice of the crowd who has no idea of what will be happening next Friday?

Consider this. When my grandmothers were first married, they lived in homes without indoor plumbing, with washboards and clotheslines for laundry, with brooms for the floor, wood stoves for cooking on, and a sink for washing dishes. My grandfathers walked to work or road a horse. They had an icebox – no refrigerator or freezer, no air conditioner. They had no electricity – even that came later.

Most people today have vacuums, electric or gas stoves, microwaves, laundry machines, dishwashers, refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners, and plenty of electricity. Most people drive to work. The amount of free time we have compared to the people of a hundred years ago is tremendous.

Yet, with what have we filled this time that we've been given?

Do we read our Bibles daily? Do we have an hour of prayer - or struggle for five minutes of prayer? Do we teach our sons and daughters, our grandchildren about Christ?

I suspect we waste our time. Instead of focusing on the true God, we spend our extra time worshiping at the altar of our technology god, a god we carry in our hands and pockets and purses.

We make our decisions daily about what is important, what we will worship. Do you follow the King that rode down the hill on the donkey? Or do you spend your time worshiping the false god in your hand...the phone, the Facebook, the technology.

Or can you truly say that you have been using this device in your hand as a way to spread the Gospel, a way to teach yourself more about the man who rode the donkey, a way to learn more about how much He loves you? You see, technology can be good – or bad. It depends upon what Christ wants of it – and you. Today. In this hour. In this instance!

If Jesus had listened to the Pharisees, the doomsayers, quieting the crowd, if Jesus had turned around and left town with His disciples, He would not have been killed on the cross. But our lives would be hopeless, for Jesus’ death is what made salvation possible for us. No human could have worked this out. Only God had the wisdom, and God’s Son the love for us to go into Jerusalem that day.

The wise person, the person who truly is following Christ, understands when to follow the crowd, and when to walk against the crowd and leave town. Not of his own understanding. But instead, the wise Christian is always asking, “Lord, what shall I do today?” and listening for the Lord’s voice. Will He ask me today to find a donkey’s colt? Will He ask me to sing "Hosanna!" so the stones don’t have to? Or will He ask me to help Him climb on that donkey’s colt, so I can see Him beaten and whipped and killed by those He loved?

The wise Christian disciple, you see, is always listening for His Lord’s voice in the crowd. The wise Christian disciple is asking the Lord for guidance. The wise disciple of Christ is more concerned with what our Lord wants … than with what the crowd says. And when that happens to you, my friend, when you are steadily more concerned with what our Lord wants than with what the crowd or the Pharisees say…you have arrived!

The Anointing

Back in the days when I taught mathematics at a Catholic high school, every once in a while some of the students would complain, as students always do. They’d complain about the food, they’d complain about the town, they’d complain about the monthly worship service. And their root complaint was always the same about each of these things – “It’s always the same.” 

Audio Sermon, Part I, Part II

They complained that the food was always the same – which it wasn’t, but every four weeks it did repeat. They complained that there was nothing new in town – which was not totally true, but it was true that the town did not offer something new and exciting every week. And they complained about the monthly worship service being the same, which, to them, was the fact that the order of service was always the same, even though the songs, the scripture, and the sermons varied every month. Seen through the eyes of a young person, much of the world seems to be the same day after day, week after week, month after month.

Of course, they were looking at the big picture, the routine of the school cafeteria, the town shopping area, the worship service. Those of us who were a bit older looked at the fine texture and saw the subtle changes in the menu – green beans instead of corn on chili day, sliced peaches instead of sliced pears on hot dog day – after all, there’s only so much you can do and be assured that 90 percent of the students will eat your food. Sushi or curried chicken might be different, but it never would be as popular with the students as pepperoni pizza is.

The town slowly changed, with a couple of new restaurants every year, a couple old ones dying, a couple of new stores, a couple old ones dying. And the worship service did not change because that was something that was commanded by Rome and the bishop. And the day in 2011 it DID change – when new words were sent out to the English speaking world for the responses to the priest’s calls – the students didn’t like that either. For it had become different – and even those high school students found that they had nostalgia, a love of the old and established, a love for memory, a love for the past.

We all have nostalgia, don’t we? We look back and remember that golden age when our town and county was filled with good paying jobs, when our churches were full of children, when our neighborhood was a fun, joyful place to play in. We remember a time when our town was safe.

Or was it?

Clarksburg in the 1960’s and 1970’s was a rough place. The town had gained a reputation for murder beginning in the 1930’s with the Quiet Dell serial killer. Illegal gambling led to murders. The coal strikes around the state got people shot, the glass plants began downsizing. Smart people began to pack up their families and move to North Carolina and Georgia – or across the hill to what they saw as a safer, quieter town - Bridgeport. Yes, the churches were full of children because people were having 3 and 4 children and more per family, and the kids had fun. But our parents didn’t let us hear about the shootings that happened downtown. And the mines were closing as the companies opened up cheaper, cleaner mines in Wyoming. And our parents? They remembered the wonderful times back in the 1940’s and 1950’s while complaining about how bad things were in the 1960's and 1970's...

For some reason in America – and particularly here in the mountains, we always have a tendency to look at the past as golden and the future as dark. So many people I run into look at their childhood as grand and look at a future return of Christ, as Revelation speaks of it – as a scary, dark future.

Some of us even look at change in the church as a scary, dark thing. Why is this? Is it because pastors in our youth who were comfortable with a nostalgic world taught us to be suspicious of all changes? Were they – and then us – so focused upon a dark reading of Revelation that we forgot to look at the joy of Christ’s return? 

Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:4-14; John 12:1-8  John 12:1-8 Audio Version

But that is not the way to look at things. That is not how God wants us to look at things.

2800 years ago, Isaiah, who was awaiting the destruction of Jerusalem, listened to God and wrote for us what God had to say:

“Do not remember the past events,
pay no attention to things of old.
Look, I am about to do something new;
even now it is coming. Do you not see it?
Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert.

(Isaiah 43:18-19)

God assured Isaiah and the people who listened to him that the future would be better than the past. God even told us to not remember the past events, to pay no attention to things of old because God is about to do something new. God was to make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert!

Does it seem sometimes like your life has been a struggle in the wilderness, a dry, parched journey through the desert without water?

The people of Israel had every reason to feel that way, the way you might feel. They lived in a land where outside bandits and armies might show up any day and burn down their farms. They lived in a land where they never could count on rain to come. They lived in a land where the dry wind from the desert would blow sand on them, where lions might walk into the sheep pen one night and take a sheep or two, a land where they paid all their extra money to the ruler of the year who promised to protect them from his rival next door.

All of life was a struggle, all of life was difficult, all of life was a constant battle – and then…you could expect to die and face your God with a guilty conscience because that God had given your people the Law, telling you 613 specific things to do and not to do, and yet you had broken so many of those commands you couldn’t count them. God had specified the fines for each one of those broken commands, but you had no spare sheep, cattle or even pigeons to pay those fines. And so you were doomed. In fact, it appeared that all of Israel was doomed to be destroyed by the God that claimed them as His own.

Have you ever felt that way, doomed because of your sins?

“Do not remember the past events,
pay no attention to things of old.
Look, I am about to do something new;
even now it is coming. Do you not see it?
Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert.

(Isaiah 43:18-19)

God Does Something New

So eight hundred years after Isaiah, God sent part of Himself to earth as the man Jesus, who became known as the Christ, a Greek word that means “the Savior”. God did something new. And Jesus began to preach that people had got things wrong, that God did not want to destroy everyone, but rather, God loved everyone, but wanted them to also love each other. And Jesus also mentioned repeatedly that God was His Father, that Jesus and God were one and the same, and even called Himself the “Son of Man”, which prophets had used to talk of a divine leader who would rescue Israel from its enemies. Jesus claimed to be God on the earth.

And the people around Him understood this claim, but did not see that this was God doing something new, and so the people often began to stone Him for this claim to be God, which they saw as blasphemous, despite the signs and wonders Jesus did – healing the blind, deaf, and lame, chasing out demons, turning water into wine. The people preferred what they knew over what was new. And so, since these signs and wonders were not getting people’s attention, when his friend Lazarus fell deathly ill and Lazarus’ sisters sent a message to Jesus to “come quickly”, He delayed. And Lazarus died. 

Audio Sermon Part II

The sisters were upset when he finally arrived to find Lazarus dead and in the tomb four days. They said, “If you had only been here, our brother would not have died!” They saw the new, hopeful future in Jesus, but they were still living in the past, a time when people died and stayed dead, like plants lying dead in the desert without water.

And then Jesus did something new. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, in Bethany, just three miles from Jerusalem. And then Jesus took his disciples and went off to a small village nearby for a week or so of rest and teaching.

Lazarus and his two sisters, Martha, and Mary apparently owned an inn in Bethany, were long-time friends of Jesus, and had made good money over the years with their business, in the “good ole days” of the past. But that money, that “thing of old” had proven worthless when Lazarus died – the friendship with Jesus was priceless. Jesus was the new thing God had done. He was the river in the desert of life. 

John 12:1-8  John 12:1-8 Audio Version 

The Passover was coming, a festival which was as important in Jerusalem at the time as Christmas is to us today. Six days before the Passover, on Saturday evening after the Sabbath had ended, Lazarus’ sister Martha catered a party at her neighbor Simon’s house. It was something new - Simon the Leper threw the party, a party held at a home where an untouchable leper lived. Jesus was the guest of honor and Lazarus was sitting at the main table with Him. A resurrected man, a new man, was sitting at the table with beside one of the three oldest Persons in existence, Jesus who was God the Son.

And so they’re eating when Mary walks into the room, Lazarus’ younger sister Mary, and talks a pint bottle of pure oil of spikenard, an expensive perfume made from the resin of a plant that grew near present-day Punjab in the Himalaya Mountains (corrected from audio sermon). She pours it on his feet and wipes his feet with her hair. It was something new, no one did this, but God had started something new, so Mary continued with it.

In ancient Israel, a land short of water, but heavy in olives and olive oil, there had developed a custom. That custom was to pour oil on the head of someone as a gift – or more particularly, to pour oil onto someone who would be the next King of Israel and/or Judah. This custom, this old thing, dated back a thousand years to the first kings of Israel, Saul and David. The oil acted as perfume, but it also acted to heal any wounds, and to cleanse the hair of the person on whom it was poured. Spikenard oil was also often used to anoint dead bodies. They were old customs, but Mary mixed them together that night in something new.

Many did not take ordinary olive oil like had been done of old. She took the most valuable thing she owned, the most expensive oil in existence and poured it, not on Jesus’ head, but on His feet, which both signified that she was acting as a lowly slave, cleaning His feet which had walked behind camels and donkeys and sheep for many miles – and also bringing to mind the homage that Ruth had paid Boaz for his kindness to her and her stepmother. An old story, but told in a new way.

Judas, the moneybag holder – which is what “Iscariot” may have meant – was outraged. The oil should have been sold for 300 days wages and the money given to the poor! That is what would have been done in the old days. And there is nothing wrong with selling valuable objects and giving the money to the poor – if your heart is generous. But John, the other disciple who wrote this account, tells us that Judas was a thief who used to embezzle the money in the bag. He wanted to sell the perfumed oil and put 10 percent of the money in his pocket. He wanted to sell the perfumed oil for 300 silver pieces – and put 30 pieces of silver in his pocket. The old ways of Judas were threatened by the new things God and Jesus and Mary had done. For those of you who know the complete story, did you notice that later that week Judas got his 30 pieces of silver? For a few hours. Then God did something new.

O Judas! If only Judas had stopped being so selfish, he would have gained so much more! Instead, his selfishness cost him everything, his friends, his life, even his eternal soul!

Archaeologists and historians have confirmed that Judas was a good judge of the value of the oil. It did indeed sell for about 300 day’s wages – 300 denarii or 300 pieces of silver – that pint or pound was worth the equivalent of 20,000 to 30,000 dollars in today’s money.

And Jesus essentially told Judas to shut up and leave Mary alone. For “she has kept it for the day of My burial” Jesus said. “You always have the poor with you, but you don’t always have Me.” It was a new idea.

It is clear from reading the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament that Jesus was strongly behind doing practical things for the poor, giving them money and food and clothing and shoes (see Matthew 25). And yes, we still have the poor with us – and we still need to give practical help for the poor. But in this case, Jesus recognized the gift of oil from Mary for what it was. It was God doing something new.

Jesus had done something no one else could do for Mary, Martha, and their brother Lazarus. And so, Mary had taken the most valuable thing she owned, and given it to Jesus. Not in hopes that He would do more for her – but in simple gratitude, for Jesus had done something new for her and her brother, bringing him back to life, so she had symbolically given everything to Jesus, made Him her King, given up her most valued possession and stooped down to become His lowliest slave of her own choice. People did not do this in the old ways. This was something very new.

What do you offer Jesus out of gratitude for what He has done for you? How will you change from your old ways and do something new?

Just six days later, Jesus voluntarily remained to be beaten and executed on the cross – supposedly for the crime of claiming to be God – but actually because we needed someone willing to pay the fines for all the crimes we’ve all committed against God, the sins, the wrongs, the hurts we’ve done against others. And Jesus’s execution became God’s new sacrifice to God from God on behalf of us. No one else, nothing else was valuable enough except the Son of God, the Son of Man, the perfect man, the new man who was Jesus.

What do you offer Jesus out of gratitude for what He has done for you? How will you change from your old ways and do something new?

Your consistent presence? Your special talents devoted as a slave to Christ? Something that you would consider a treasure? Your consistent praise to everyone you meet telling them what Jesus has done for you? Your life devoted to Christ?

After your normal offering today, I ask you to go home and consider what sacrifice you might make for the poorest people in this state to show them love. Can you choose not to have some coffee this week and give $10 or $20? Can you choose to eat some hot dogs at home instead of a fine meal at a restaurant and give $20 or $30. Do you have some money saved that you were planning to give yourself a gift, maybe some flowers, maybe some clothing, maybe a new tool?

Perhaps you are one of those people who could give $50 or $100, or even $500 to the poor, to the Celebration of Mission Event box on the table back there. This money does not go to this church, but goes to support mission projects throughout WV. As always, whatever you give, write your check out to the church and put in the memo field COME. I know you may not have done this in the past. It may be something new for you, giving above and beyond what you have done in the past. But what did Isaiah say?

“Do not remember the past events,
pay no attention to things of old.
Look, I am about to do something new;
even now it is coming. Do you not see it?
Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert.

(Isaiah 43:18-19)

Jesus was the something new. But Jesus is not finished making things new.

On the night before He was arrested, Jesus took a very old custom – the Passover Meal – and made it new. He changed the meaning of those symbols into something very new.

Jesus did something new. But Jesus is not finished making things new. He is making you new even now. Will you let Him? Or will you cling to your things of old?

Going to See Dad

Today, I want to make sure everyone here is sitting by a friend. So, turn to your neighbor and ask, “Neighbor! Are you my friend?”

And now, turn back to your neighbor, and answer, “Neighbor! Of course I’m your friend!”

Audio sermon

I have a friend from my days in another town, a friend who is a very devout Christian. But my friend is also a modern day Pharisee – he is very, very concerned that we follow the rules. Just this week, I read one of his posts which is very upset with Francis Chan, a California pastor who walked away from his megachurch in Los Angeles to start up multiple house churches in the San Francisco area because he felt the focus had become more on the entertainment aspects of the church than on Christ. Chan now feels that the ideal size for a church is very small, about 12 to 30 people, because he feels that this forces more people to become true disciples rather than spectators of religion.

Any way, my friend was upset at Chan, not because of Chan’s views or teachings or lifestyle – but because Chan had appeared at a big conference with several other pastors my friend doesn’t like and said nice, polite things about the other pastors instead of condemning them. It was like someone who had loved ribeye steaks suddenly getting mad because he had found ribeyes at a meal with okra, grits, and tofu – all things he hated. Rather than celebrating that at least ribeyes were being served, he focused his fire on complaining that the ribeye was associating with okra, grits, and tofu.

Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32  Audio Gospel Reading

But, you know? Francis Chan is a mature Christian and he can take it. After all, much the same thing happened to Jesus. One day, a bunch of tax collectors and sinners were coming close to hear Jesus speak – and a group of Pharisees, the holy bunch of the day, were upset because, as they complained, “Jesus welcomes sinners and even eats with them!”

And we might be tempted to immediately condemn those Pharisees, but then again, it is always wise to ask ourselves what we would have honestly done in their place. I want you to think – who would you rather I had lunch with tomorrow – a group of pastors, a group of ya’ll from this church, or a house full of people a couple streets down the road from me who I know are regular users and possibly even sellers of pot and meth? Who would you rather I have lunch with tomorrow?

If you are honest, you’ll say, “Well, my first thought was I’d rather you were with us, but then I thought it would be better if you were learning from other pastors, but then I realized the right answer is for you to be with the drug users.”

And so it is. For they are the people who need to hear the message most.

At the time of Jesus – and still to a large extent today – we considered someone holy if they only hung around holy people and holy things. And how do things become holy? It is almost like magic – people and things become holy by hanging around with holy people and holy things. It is like the holiness rubs off on them. Let me give you an example. Do you see this candleholder? Do you treat it better than you treat your own candleholders? It has become holy over the years. Try to remove or change anything in this sanctuary, and you will find out that it has become holy to someone in this church. A picture, a candleholder, an oil lamp, a pitcher – let it stay in a church sanctuary for ten years and it will become holy.

One day, a few years ago when I was teaching math at Parkersburg Catholic High School, the regular monthly Mass was held. Because of necessity, a girl took the missal – that’s a big book, like a Bible, that contains the daily readings and prayers for Catholic services – she took the missal and placed it gently on the floor because she needed the space on the lectern for something else going on. From the crowd there was an audible gasp! How dare she put a holy book on the floor! The priest was cool with it, but to the people, it had become holy. 

Our idea that holiness somehow rubs off on objects also transfers to people. We somehow think that pastor’s holiness may get dirtied by association with the wrong people, the wrong places, the wrong things, even the wrong words. (It is amazing how people speak around me until they find out I’m a pastor – and then their language suddenly changes, and their stories change, too. )

Now we know that Jesus taught us that the right place for a pastor is to be with sinners, teaching them about God and Jesus. We’ve all got that up here in our heads, even if down in our hearts we are concerned that somehow those drug users, those alcoholics, those felons, those, those… “bad” people will contaminate our pastor.

But how come we didn’t get the same lesson for ourselves? Why don't we understand that we should also spend our time with "sinners"? Why is it that when we invite the neighborhood into the church, many of us kind of back up against the far wall rather than mingle? Why do we even avoid coming to special events like a clothing giveaway or a community dinner?

I’ll tell you. It is because when you were a child, your parents taught you not to hang around with “those kinds of people.” We even developed the idea watching television that there are “good guys” and “bad guys”, “good girls” and “bad girls”. And we still teach our children and grandchildren not to associate with people who are “bad”, don’t we?

Folks, that is a good way to keep our children out of trouble. Children don’t know when they are being led down the primrose path to the pile of manure. Children don’t understand that what sounds very good can be very evil. Children don’t understand that much of what the devil brings us is dressed up with fun and excitement. But we know…and we help our children to know where and with whom trouble lurks. 

Yet when we mature as Christians, we also need to mature in our understanding of people and who we should spend time with. For what was an appropriate instruction for children - avoid certain types of people - is not an appropriate instruction for a mature Christian who understands right and wrong, who is capable of recognizing evil in the world, and who has faith in God's protection. Instead, mature Christians need to step out from the safety of our fellow church-goers - and eat and drink with "sinners", just as Jesus did.

There is a point we have to make. And it is the point that Jesus made that day with the Pharisees. It is the point that God loves even the “bad guys” and the “bad girls”. God and Christ know that all of us are sinners, even those who have attended church faithfully for decades. The value of an individual is not in his or her behavior, but everyone is valuable simply because we are all images of God, made in God's image. When the Pharisees complained about His dinner partners, Jesus quickly told three parables that day – one about a man’s lost sheep, another about a woman’s lost coin, and a third one about two sons. I'll update that last one so we can better understand it...

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

A man had two sons. The younger one, the more foolish one, probably after some anger and a fight, asked Dad to distribute his share of the farm to him now. So Dad did that. And the young man took his $100,000 or so and traveled to Myrtle Beach, where he spent his money on booze and loose women, on seafood and souvenirs. After he had spent his money, a hurricane came through up country, caused a flood which meant no food could get in to Myrtle, so he hiked up to North Carolina where an industrial pig farmer offered him a job feeding okra to his hogs while standing in pig manure. Do you like okra? A lot of people can’t stand it.

Finally, the younger son came to his senses, and thought, "You know, back in West Virginia, my dad has 400 acres of beef, even his hired hands have plenty of pepperoni rolls to eat, and here I am with a choice of eating nothing or okra covered in pig manure." So he decides to go back to Dad, humble himself, tell him he’ll work at minimum wage on the farm like a hired hand. So he hitch-hiked up the interstate.

Dad saw him walking up the road to the house and ran down the driveway to him, grabbed him in a big ole hug and even kissed him on the cheek. The son said “Dad, I’ve messed up big time – I’m not worthy to be your son.”

But Dad yelled at the farm hands and his mom – "Quick! Get him a new set of jeans and a new flannel shirt, get him some size 11 cowboy boots and a new cell phone! Get a yearling steer, butcher it and turn on the grill! We’re gonna have a party since we thought this son of mine was dead in the hurricane, but he’s alive and found!"

Now the older son was out in the field on the John Deere, and when he pulled up to the barn he heard Lynard Skynard playing, saw a bunch of them dancing and smelled the steaks a grillin’. So he called over one of the farm hands and asked him "What is goin’ on?"

“Your brother is here”, he told him, “and your dad has butchered the year-old steer because he’s home safe and sound.

That made the older brother hopping mad. So Dad came over and pleaded with him. The brother replied, “I’ve been working on this farm for years and always done what you asked, but you never even gave me a turkey for my friends. But when this no-good son of yours came back from his time with the beach hookers, you butchered a steer for him!”
So Dad looked at him and said, “You and I are always together. We work together and play together. We’re the best of friends. We go to the Mountaineer games together! Everything I have is yours, you know that, from the John Deere to the Ford King Cab. But we had to celebrate, because your brother was dead – and is alive again. He was lost and is found.”

And this sort of love is why Jesus spent time with the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the drunks, the Roman collaborators, the trouble-makers, the thieves, the drug users, the drug dealers, the immigrants, the zealots, the blind, the lame, the Deaf, the mentally ill, the lazy, the godless. He knew that any one of them who simply recognized his or her need for God’s guidance, who just asked for the help of their heavenly Father would be welcomed back into the family with honor and celebration.

But did you notice the story doesn’t end with the return of the younger son? It continues with the recognition that those people who are consistent followers of God’s will often become jealous of the attention paid to the lost souls, the people who have gone far from home. And so the Father reassures the elder son of God’s continued love and support. Jesus assures the regular church goer that God still loves them too!

Folks, as we grow this church, there will be times when there will be stress in our family. There will be people who come into the church who will have a history, a history that you will remember and I and any other pastor you have will not know. You will remember what a deadbeat they were, what a drunk they were, how you couldn’t trust a word they said – and yet God and the pastor will welcome them with open arms, with a celebration, with a party.

when you hear them take vows to follow Jesus, it will be tempting for someone to say, “I wonder how long that will last”. Don’t do that, for there may have been people who wondered the same when you took your baptismal vows – or your father or mother took their vows. Don’t be like the older brother, upset because someone has come back to the Father.

Instead, become like the Father, always looking to spot someone coming back from the pig manure of the world. Be like the man who leaves 99 good sheep and goes to search for the lost sheep. Be like the woman who has 9 silver coins and spends all day and all night searching by candlelight for the one missing coin.

As Paul wrote: 2 Corinthians 5:16-21

From now on, then, we do not know anyone in a purely human way. Even if we have known Christ in a purely human way, yet now we no longer know Him in this way.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.

In other words, look at people who come to Christ as butterflies instead of the caterpillars they used to be – the old died – the new is here.

Everything is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:

We have a ministry – a ministry to go into this community and bring people back to a good and proper relationship with God and Christ. Will you join into this ministry?

... in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us.

Christ’s death on the cross was to pay for all the sacrifices that the Old Testament Law had demanded be paid. The one-and-only Son of God was the only thing valuable enough in the whole Universe to be sacrificed that could pay for all of our sins, our trespasses, our crimes against God. And it was through that crucifixion of Christ that we have been reconciled to God, that we’ve been restored to a right and proper relationship with our Creator. And He has trusted US with that message of reconciliation to go into the world around us. Investigate this and tell others!

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, certain that God is appealing through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God.”

Think of what God did…

He made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us,

He took the sinless Jesus to become the scapegoat, put all of the sin of the world on Him just so we could become right with God. And Jesus did not do this for everyone, but did this for each one of us, and would have done it if it had only been you...or me.

“so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

Just so we could walk with our heads up right, standing tall, knowing that our life stories show Creation how righteous God is, how righteous Christ is, how GOOD they are. Have you ever thought about how your life story, from your time before you knew Christ to today shows just how good God is? Tell that story to someone this week.

David wrote: Psalm 32

Be glad in the Lord and rejoice,
you righteous ones;
shout for joy,
all you upright in heart.

You know the story of the prodigal son. Almost everybody here has heard that story before. Most of the people in America know that story. Yet there are still people who do not feel that they are good enough to come to God. There are multiple people reading this who feel that they are not good enough to even be baptized, who feel like they must be more holy, more pure, more perfect before they can come to God.

The story of the prodigal son is the story that shows us how imperfect we can be and still receive God’s love.

You know, we all dig pits and graves into which we then fall. And we often take the shovel with us into the pit and dig deeper down still, as if that would get us out of the pit.

And then we think that the only way that we can stand tall again is to climb out of the pit by ourselves. But that is not true.

The younger son had not climbed out of his pit – he was at the very bottom of his pit. He simply decided to stop digging and go home, to throw himself on his Father’s mercy. He admitted that he was not worthy – and that was what allowed him to go home, wasn’t it? He admitted he wasn’t able to handle it himself.

That’s the point. God simply wants us to recognize that there are things we cannot do ourselves, things we are not strong enough to do, smart enough to fix, good enough to handle by ourselves. God wants us to admit that we need God. We need God. That’s all!

For when we admit that, we can be taught...

Little Timmy was four years old and was trying to teach himself to read books. He’d look at the book and try to remember the words Mommy had said. But he had trouble remembering the whole book. And even when he remembered all the words of the one book, he couldn’t remember the words of the next book, but Mommy knew the words of all the books. And it was very frustrating. But he was going to read the books, so he had Mommy to read the books to him over and over again so he could remember the stories.

Finally, one day, he said to Mommy, “I’m not as smart as you, Mommy.”

“Why not, Timmy?”

"Because you can read all the books and I can’t remember the words to them.”

And Mommy said, “I don’t remember all the words. I figure them out. Do you see this letter, it looks like a house? We call it the letter A” And Mommy taught Timmy about letters and how to read that afternoon. She gave him the key and he became a great reader and writer after that.

Sometimes, you see, we are trying to learn the wrong way.

Like Timmy thought he had to memorize all the words, we think we have to memorize all the rules and be perfect. 

Actually, the key is we need to learn to listen to the Holy Spirit, which God can give us. If we will turn to God and stop trying to memorize all the rules and be perfect, God will give us the key to becoming holy, which is listening to the Holy Spirit.

Will you turn to God and say, “I’m not good enough. I need You!”

Will you turn to God and say, “I can’t do it on my own. I need You!”Will you turn to your godly neighbor and say, “I need God. Will you pray for my soul?”

And when you are ready, one of you lead the other to say something like this, repeating the words after one another:

“Father God,

I’ve messed up. I can’t handle it alone. 

I need you. 

I’m sorry for what I’ve done. 

Will you take control of my life? 

Amen.”

And you can do this for yourself, or with another person at work or at home. It doesn’t matter. 

Our heavenly Father is waiting, watching, looking down His driveway for you to come home. Come home!

If this sermon or another one has changed your life or touched your heart, we'd like to know. You can leave a comment below, or visit us some Sunday morning at Calvary United Methodist Church (in Clarksburg's Adamston neighborhood, 390 S 22nd St, Clarksburg, WV 26301. Services are at 9:30 am and 7 pm Sundays.)  or at Mt Clare United Methodist Church in Mt Clare, WV at 11 am.

Sin, Rebellion, and Sloth

When we lived outside Marietta, Ohio, I decided to develop most of our land into an orchard. Over the course of three years, I planted about 85 trees – about 50 apple trees, a dozen peaches and nectarines, a couple dozen blueberry bushes, some pie cherries and some sweet cherries, several pear trees, and even some persimmons, with about 50 seedless grape vines and some raspberry bushes, hazelnuts, and elderberries to top things off. But by far the prettiest trees were the apricot trees.

Audio Sermon

While apples have their white blossoms with a touch of pink, and the peaches have those intense pink blooms, apricot trees have the most beautiful blooms, with five large white cupped petals surrounding a center of red with yellow stamens standing up in the middle. But those blossoms arrive generally in early March, and that means that the blossoms or the fruit is generally destroyed in a frost before spring finally arrives for good.

We planted those apricot trees and watched their blossoms the next three years. And I’d more or less decided that we’d just have to consider the apricots to be ornamental trees, trees that would never have any fruit – nice to look at for a while, but just taking up space, never bearing any fruit. And so, I was wondering whether or not to cut them down and replace them with something that would actually bear fruit. 

Isaiah 55:1-9; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9  Audio Gospel

Jesus talked about bearing fruit.

And He told this parable: “A man had a fig tree that was planted in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit on it and found none. He told the vineyard worker, ‘Listen, for three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it even waste the soil?’

“But he replied to him, ‘Sir, leave it this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. 9 Perhaps it will bear fruit next year, but if not, you can cut it down.’”

Now let’s put this in context. At my orchard in Lowell, I was not counting on my fruit to supply me with a living – or even my own food. I’d planted the trees mainly because I realized our children were going through a 10-lb bag of apples every three days. Besides, it was fun, interesting, light exercise – and a good hobby. So nothing much mattered with my decision whether or not to cut down the ornamental apricots, or just leave them there for their March blossoms.

But in Jesus’ day, everybody was stretched thin. Production of fruit was so difficult, farms operated so close to the edge, that the land and water and fertilizer used by this particular fig tree could mean the difference between a profitable farm and a farm that operated at a loss – even the difference between a worker living well or starving. So the owner asks his worker to cut down the fig tree that isn’t productive.

And the worker, who loves the tree, begs the owner to wait another year, giving the worker a chance to loosen up the soil and fertilize the tree. If it doesn’t bear fruit next year, the worker says, the owner can cut it down.

Naturally, we are to read the parable in this way – the owner is God, the worker is Jesus. And the fig tree? The fig tree is the church – or possibly individuals? Clearly, Jesus is saying in the context of the time that if the people of Israel don’t soon bear fruit for God’s purposes, then God will cut down Israel and plant a new tree. And possibly, if we read this through today’s eyes, any church that does not bear fruit will be cut down. Isn't it clear that "fruit" equals new souls won for God? The people of Israel of the day, particularly the Pharisees, we keeping people from God by raising the barriers, and Jesus let them have it! 

So....are you an ornamental apricot, never bearing fruit? Are you a fig tree, ready to be cut down? How many people have you personally led to Christ, especially adults? How about in the last five years?

It is interesting to me that Jesus told this parable in response to a question about sin. Jesus had just been talking about the up and coming end times, when some people came to tell him about an episode that had just happened between some people from Galilee and the Roman governor Pontius Pilate:

At that time, some people came and reported to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. And He responded to them, “Do you think that these Galileans were more sinful than all Galileans because they suffered these things? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as well! Or those 18 that the tower in Siloam fell on and killed—do you think they were more sinful than all the people who live in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as well!”

The people had heard of a disaster. The Roman governor Pontius Pilate had killed some Galileans and then mixed their blood in with their sacrifices. There was in implied question – were these men more evil than the average person, and was this why they were killed and their bodies treated in a particularly savage way?

“No,” Jesus says. “They weren’t more sinful than the average person” But then Jesus points the finger to his crowd and says, “Unless you repent, you will all perish as well.” He brings up a tower that fell in the Siloam district of Jerusalem and killed 18 people – they also weren’t any more sinful than the average person – “but unless you repent, you will all perish as well!”

Jesus was combating a common view of the world and of God from that day. Many people thought that sinful people died young because God wanted to get rid of them. We might not see their sins, but the fact they died accidentally was supposed proof that they were sinful and God wanted to get rid of them. Jesus disagreed. Jesus held that everybody sins – and thus everybody “perishes” - unless they repent first.

You know, “to perish” is a more complete end than “to die”. Jesus is implying that all people will “perish”, will come to an end. Except those who repent, who rethink their relationship with God. And being sinful not only includes the bad things we do, but the good things we don't do! Add in Jesus’ parable of the fruitless fig tree and we see that Jesus was very concerned with the fruit we bear, considering those who bear no fruit to be sinful, not following the commands of God, just as a fruitless fig tree is not living as it should. Are you a fig tree that never bears fruit? Are you an ornamental apricot – pretty to look at but never fulfilling your purpose – which is to bear fruit? Are you sinning because you never lead people to Christ?

Sin and salvation have an interesting and complex interrelationship, don’t they? The world around us thinks that we Christians believe that we are saved by being very good people. The world also thinks that Christians are hypocrites, preaching a need for excellent behavior and then not practicing what we preach. And there are some congregations where the bulk of the people believe that Christianity is all about acting in a certain way – or not acting in a different way.

But that is not what Jesus preached. In fact, that idea that following the moral law is the way to get right with God is the central idea of the Pharisees, a group of Jews who became the ancestors of many of the Jews of today. And when we read the Gospels, we see Jesus reserving some of His harshest words for the Pharisees and their insistence upon following the moral laws, their insistence upon finding and pointing out the sins of others.

You have all heard of Martin Luther King, Jr, the famous civil rights activist? He was named after his father, Martin Luther King, Sr. And Martin Luther King was named after a famous German theologian from the early 1500’s, Martin Luther.

The German Martin Luther studied the Bible intently, the words of Jesus, and the words of Paul. He came to the conclusion that the word we translate as “sin” actually had two meanings, and most people confused the two meanings.

To get into this, let me ask you – what is the worst crime in any country around the world? Here’s a clue – it is the only crime that is punishable by death, regardless of the country. It is not murder, it is not child murder – it is rebellion. If a person decides to become a rebel to their government, to their king, that person risks being shot without trial in any country.

Martin Luther wrote of the situation of being in rebellion to God, our heavenly King. Being in rebellion to God is the worst crime, for this means you will not obey any other rules that God the King has. In fact, you’d like to set yourself or another up as your king, your god. You might want to be your own king, your own god. And therefore, it is critical that the rightful King, the Living God, establish a rule that rebellion is punishable by death.

Luther called the condition of being in rebellion to God the “state of sin.” It doesn’t matter if you obey the speed limit if the only reason you obeyed the speed limit today is because you are in rebellion is because you were trying to sneak around and not get caught while you prepared your even worse deeds of rebellion. It doesn't matter if the rebel has never committed murder because eventually, the rebel will commit murder, steal, and do anything and everything wrong, because the King's laws mean nothing to a rebel.

Furthermore, Luther argued that every person is born into the rebellion. If you think a baby is an innocent creature, you’ve never had a child. For a baby is the most selfish creature imaginable – if you don’t do exactly what the baby wants – and NOW, it will cry. Loudly and constantly until you give in or the baby wears itself out. A baby does not care for anyone else, for anyone else’s comfort, for anyone’s sanity! If you try to ignore it, it will scream at you. We must train it to not be selfish. We must teach the child to “share”.

Luther said we are all born selfish and in rebellion to God. And because of this, we break God’s moral laws – we commit “acts of sin”, which is the other usage of the word sin. We steal a pencil, we yell at our brother, we do all those things we know we are not to do. Sometimes it is because we don’t know any better, we didn’t know that God didn’t want us to tattoo our bodies (see Leviticus 19) – other times it is because we knew better but didn’t care about what God or anyone else thought, like when we said those mean words to our family last week. (By the way, if you didn’t know and got a tattoo, apologize to God and go on. God will understand and forgive, just as God forgives all sins when we repent!)

Eventually, God, who loves us very much, sends people to us who gradually lead us to change our mind about God, to repent. For some people, this happens at a very young age, even at a week old when we are baptized and our parents make vows that they believe in the teachings of Christ and promise to raise us in the church. For others, this happens as a teen or even a full adult – or even as an older adult. 

And so we declare one day that we accept that Christ is the Son of God, worthy of being followed, and we decide to follow the teachings of Christ, eventually following Christ Himself. We are no longer in rebellion to God – God and us are now "cool", we have been justified by our belief and loyalty – and God declares us not guilty of rebellion, we are no longer in the state of sin, but are in a state of grace. We have been saved from God’s wrath and anger. We are now God’s adopted child.

And then we should be baptized. For we have been saved from God’s anger, but we have not yet been saved from our own foolishness. And this is the reason we are baptized – we must take our first step on the road to personal holiness.

There are a lot of disagreements over the meaning, timing, and style of baptisms. The Baptist community maintains that baptism is simply an announcement that you’ve already become a Christian – yet they have the most stringent rules regarding when, who, and how.

The older churches, those who trace their ancestry back to the earliest Christians, agree upon a few points. All Christians are to be baptized. There is no minimum age for baptism. And it does not matter whether you are sprinkled, have water poured over you in a pitcher, or whether you are dunked in the river. For we Methodists – and many other groups – believe that God does the work of baptism, it is not something you do, or I do, but it is something God does, God never makes mistakes, and so to be baptized a second time is arrogantly telling God that God made a mistake the first time.

And the important work of baptism is this: When the water is applied, God flips a switch in your heart – or changes your heart in a special way. Before, you might do good for selfish reasons – to avoid Hell, to improve your reputation, to raise your status. But afterwards, you want to do good just to do good. Just after the water is applied, the pastor lays on hands and prays for the Holy Spirit to come upon the one being baptized. And now, it is like handing someone a cell phone with God’s direct line programmed in. Now, the new Christian can just listen carefully and be guided to do good by God. They have been baptized by water and the Spirit.

Our life after baptism is a life filled with second chances. As my wife has said, every day is an opportunity for us to start again with God, starting with a blank slate, another chance to do things right in our life. Each day, we can start over and do better. Even on those days that we stumble, God is there, looking over our shoulder like the best parent, the most wonderful coach, the greatest teacher – "Pick yourself up – here, take My hand – let’s try it again – I know you can do it if you’ll just listen to My advice!" And each day, we get stronger, better, more holy as we follow Christ’s example on the Way of Holiness.

And now it is a matter of avoiding the sloth of spiritual laziness, for now it is a matter of listening to the Holy Spirit, reading the Holy Word of God, and exercising those new spiritual connections with God so that day by day, month by month, year by year we learn how to walk like Christ, talk like Christ, and follow Christ down the path of holiness toward sanctification – what some call “saintliness”. It is what gives us a full, abundant life. It is what makes us more than a declared Christian and turns us into a full disciple of Christ. It is what ultimately leads us to be the person whom younger people point to when they say, “I want to be like him” or “I want to be like her”. You’ve known these people – many have passed on. It is only the act of sin called spiritual sloth, spiritual laziness that keeps you from becoming like those great saints that led you to God -  that and your attachment to the things of the world rather than the things of God.

Consider the years that you’ve sat in the pew, listening to different pastors and speakers. Isn’t sitting a mark of laziness in the ordinary world? Perhaps it is time for you to look around you, looking for someone for you to lead to Christ, someone to hold out your hand to, someone who can benefit from what you’ve learned about life over the years! 

Jesus showed us the way to change the world – now, like children with messy rooms, it is time for us to clean up the areas around us, picking up the discarded, dirty clothing of anger, putting away the piled papers of past problems, making a neat life for ourselves and others by tossing away the clutter of unimportant idols, vain pursuits, and useless desires. We shall allow what we know of Christ to change ourselves and we shall encourage others to see the Holy Spirit that is within us to lift them out of dark despair, and our room, our community, our world, will become just a bit better!

I decided to leave my apricot trees to grow for another year. And it was that spring that the frost held off, the trees put out their blossoms yet again, and the blossoms grew into ripe apricots. Folks, you have never tasted anything as wonderful as a fresh apricot just off the tree in June, for the apricots we find in the stores were picked early so they would keep for several weeks, and thus they don’t have the sugar or the juice that a fresh apricot from the tree has. They are picked two weeks before they are ripe, so they never got the sugar, and each day after they are picked, the sugar declines and the apricot dries out. But if you leave it on the tree it gains sugar and juice for two more weeks, and mmm!...pure nectar. 

And so, it is the same with our Christian life – there is nothing like the joy that comes from personally being part of leading a friend, a neighbor, or a family member to the Lord and hearing them declare that they believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God – and watching them be baptized and receive the Holy Spirit.

And for those who were baptized at a young age – it doesn’t matter what word is used, as long as water was applied and the vows are made – some call it christening, some call it dedication – at a point in their teen or adult years, a person should make their own public profession of faith, a formal beginning for themselves with Christ, what we call confirmation, and begin the journey down the path of holiness for themselves.

 And so, we will have a confirmation service here in a few weeks. Four young people are meeting every week to understand the faith more and more. And soon, they will take upon themselves that faith that was held in waiting for them by their parents and grandparents, and they will become full members of this church.

Perhaps you have never officially joined the church. Perhaps you have never been baptized. Let me know – and we’ll help you officially join, that you may be able to proudly proclaim to the world that you are a follower of Jesus Christ, that Christ has done much for you, and then ask your listener – would you like to hear more about what Jesus has done?

And so, consider one more time...are you a fruitless fig tree? Are you an ornamental apricot? Or are you ready to bear fruit for your Maker's glory?

Christian Hospitality

When I was in high school, the St Marys basketball team played in the regional playoffs, which was held at Glenville State College with a wintry mix moving in. So my dad drove and I rode over in his top-of-the-line F150 pickup, complete with every bell and whistle, including a spotlight. We drove south on Rt 16 to Grantsville, then followed Rt 5 to Glenville. Those roads were just as crooked in the day as they are today. The trip took a couple of hours. 

(Listen to the Audio sermon)

We lost, and the St Mary’s contingent began the long trip back. But just outside of Glenville, we spotted a couple of friends pulled off the road. The guy’s electrical system was failing – he had no headlights on a cold, rainy/snowy March night. So we came up with a plan. Another friend drove slowly ahead of him, and we followed, manually directing the spotlight ahead of him as we turned right…then left…then right…then left for hours until we got him back to St. Marys, while another couple hundred fans followed us slowly up the road. It was how the community helped each other out, especially in my Dad’s generation. It was Christian hospitality. I wish I could say that I’ve always experienced such hospitality… 

Genesis 18:1-8; Acts 16:22-34; Luke 14:7-14 (Audio); Luke 14:7-14 (Text) 

Abraham gives us an example of excellent hospitality in our Genesis reading today. Did you notice these points when he saw three men standing near his tent? “When he saw them, he RAN …to meet them and bowed to the ground.” He didn’t wait for them to approach him, for that would have implied he was superior to them. Instead, he RAN to them and greeted them with great respect – in his case, by bowing. We might say, “Welcome, we’re so glad you could come!”

And then he brought them water, had them rest in the shade under the tree, had Sarah make some bread, and himself found a “tender, young calf” – choice veal – which he had one of his servants prepare. Then he took the men curds – or butter – and milk, the calf, and then he “served” them – more literally, he “stood by” while they ate.

Abraham was quick to welcome his guests. He worked very hard to make his guests comfortable and welcome. He gave them the best he had – if we dropped by Abraham’s house today, he would invite us in, not for sandwiches, but for rib-eyes. He didn’t just give the water, but milk, not just milk and veal, but butter also – at a time when butter had to be churned. And now, for the kicker – when Abraham asked Sarah to take three measures of flour, he was asking her to take over 20 quarts of flour to make this bread – enough not only for today, but to take with them!

And these three men turned out to be the LORD and two angels.

But unless we get the idea that Christian hospitality should only be shown to people who could be angels, or otherwise help us, listen to what Jesus has to say to his host at a dinner, as Luke tells us:

“When you give a lunch or a dinner, don’t invite your friends, your brothers, your relatives, or your rich neighbors, because they might invite you back, and you would be repaid. On the contrary, when you host a banquet, invite those who are poor, maimed, lame, or blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Jesus said to invite those who need the food rather than inviting those who you need. Don’t look at a dinner as a business deal, but as a command from God who will repay you for your kindness.

We all know that Christ tells us to love our neighbors. Well, folks, the first, necessary condition of a growing church is that we are hospitable to all people. But over the years, we’ve forgotten what it means to be hospitable because we have gotten so used to going out to a restaurant for restaurant hospitality, we’ve forgotten how to be hospitable ourselves. When was the last time you invited people who were not family over to your house for dinner?

Being hospitable means taking the essence of the golden rule and applying it to people we haven’t yet met. “Treat others the way you would like to be treated!”
But it isn’t easy for us, because to be hospitable, we have to become vulnerable. Think about it. Instead of Abraham calling his wife and servants to prepare food and drink for his visitors, he could have just as easily called his servants to gather weapons and chased away his visitors. After all, there were bandits in the countryside in those days.

But Abraham was confident. He knew that relationships are more important than things. Abraham knew that his stuff wasn’t as important as making friends. And so he became vulnerable, helping these new strangers become new friends by sharing valuable food and drink. He wasn’t worried about his stuff – he wanted to make new friends.

Folks, I could tell you multiple stories of churches that I’ve seen that had decided that their stuff was far more important than making friends, that had given into fear of the stranger instead of fellowship of the friend-to-be. I could tell you multiple stories of churches that had become so inwardly focused on maintaining the church and their own comforts, their own safety, that they had forgotten how to be hospitable to visitors.

And so I'll tell you of a couple of these stories...

One day, while Saundra and I were living in another state, we decided that it was time to try out a different church. We had moved with our business about 40 minutes from our old church, and it was just getting too difficult to get all four kids together, dress them, load them into the van and drive through traffic to our old church. Plus, our daughter was getting old enough for the youth group – and over a third of the youth group girls were pregnant in high school. So we decided it was time for a new church.

We had seen a cute little church about 5 to 10 minutes from our home and stopped by the parking lot on Saturday evening, where we found a sign that told us that the Sunday school was at 9:30 and the main service was at 10:30. So we went home, and the next morning we dressed our children and ourselves in “visiting clothes”. Since this was in back in the 90’s and we were visiting a Baptist church in the south, that meant I wore a sports coat, Saundra and the girls wore dresses, and the boys wore dress shirts and pants. I think Ian may have even worn a tie.

Well, we were the second car in the parking lot, arriving about 9:15. We walked in and were greeted by…silence. As we found our way to the sanctuary, we noticed a man working on a karaoke system up front. After a couple of minutes, he waved once and went back to what he was working on. We found a place to sit, about the second row from the back, on the left side. We admired the décor, which appeared to be just as it had been when installed in 1962. The children squirmed. I think we heard crickets... We waited.

At about 9:28, about 10 people came in. They all sat on the right side. Saundra and I would have been the youth group at this point by about ten or fifteen years. One older woman said "hello" and brought us bulletins and the Sunday School quarterly. She also offered to take our two youngest to another room for their Sunday School, which we agreed to.

Sunday School began.

A man read the lesson. I don’t mean he explained the lesson. He READ the lesson – poorly – from the Sunday School quarterly. I remember it was about the Kings of Judah. At one point he did make a comment – he noted that the Bible said that one king was about twelve years old when he took over as king, but he didn’t think that was right – and besides, his Bible, which had the years BC printed at the top of each page, implied that the kid might have been twenty years old or so because there was a twenty year gap in those years printed at the top of that Bible.

Saundra said I looked like Bill the Cat from the Bloom County comic strip as I tried to keep my mouth shut. 

Well, the hour ended, that torture was over, our kids were brought back to us, and another five or ten people came in. We noticed that all except one family sat on the right side with everyone else. That family of four sat in front of us.

The main service began.

After a prayer and a song from the karaoke machine, the man who had been fixing the karaoke machine earlier – who turned out to be the pastor – began to have a business meeting about the roof repairs, which took 20 minutes to resolve. In the middle of this, we noticed the ten year old from the family in front of us got up and went somewhere and then came back.

Finally, after determining that they could afford about $6000 to spend on the roof - I remember the figure clearly because they took so long to get to it - and determining that one of the trustees would get estimates, the service continued. I think there was another song, and then a few more minutes while cancers and heart attacks and jobs of people we had never met were discussed, then a pastoral prayer. It was during the prayer that the family in front of us began to argue, punctuating the argument with slaps to the kids.

Finally, there was a sermon. Now, I have listened to many different types of sermons. Some tell a story, some are 5 bullet points and a summary, some cover a topic, some work their way through scripture. This sermon was none of the above. Following it was sort of like tracing a piece of spaghetti in a plate piled high or following a strand of Christmas lights that your five-year-old put in the box last year.

Somewhere in the middle of the sermon, though, I understood where the ten year old kid had disappeared to, for we began to realize why everyone was sitting on the right side of the church. It seems the air was flowing down the left side of the church past us from the back area – the area where the restroom was. The restroom that apparently had no ventilation to the outside. A porta-potty would have smelled better.

Saundra said my Bill-the-Cat impression was coming back. I have no idea what the point of the sermon was. I was trying to keep from gagging.

Finally, it was over, an invitation to the altar was given – no one went – a song was sung, and the service was over.

The older woman who had greeted us talked to Saundra for a minute, and we made our exit, following everyone else who had rushed for the doors.

The next week, we gave them a second chance, this time skipping Sunday School. At least there wasn’t a business meeting – and this time we sat on the right side. But there just didn’t seem to be any point in the service – no one seemed to be friends with each other in the church, the teaching was poor, and no one welcomed us since the older woman wasn’t there that week. They might want me to mention the name of their church…

So we tried a different church, a fast growing church nearby that was building an addition onto the main building. The parking lot was almost full.

Here, we had a bit of problem since we arrived after the first service had begun, about half way before the second service. But which entrance to go to, since there were no signs? I said in my best Dad voice – “This way” and we promptly entered into a lobby behind the sanctuary platform, with no way to sneak around and come into the sanctuary from the rear. We wandered for a couple of minutes, finally realizing where we were and sat down on a bench. A couple of people came by, too fast and too busy to flag down. Eventually, the girls found a restroom. Meanwhile, Saundra and I began to notice that we could see an occasional teenager walking past – and they were dressed to kill. The guys were wearing colored dress shirts with ties, the girls were wearing short skirts that looked like they were headed out for Saturday evening on the town. We looked at each other and said, “This is what we wanted to avoid.” So we packed up and drove down the road. I’ve forgotten the name of their church…

A couple miles down the road was another church. We knew a bit about this other church. The owners of the building our company was renting attended it. They had invited us to the church, and one of the retired pastors had actually stopped by when he was talking to one of the other companies in the building just to meet us. We’d gone there for a Wednesday evening dinner or two.

When we had showed up there at that Wednesday evening dinner, 18 people had introduced themselves to us – and were doing the same to the other first time visitors. Different groups took turns preparing and serving Wednesday dinners, which cost a buck or two per person. A couple of the elders of the church had helped us get our kids into the right rooms for Wednesday evening, led Saundra to a study group and me to the choir.

And the same thing happened on Sunday morning. We were introduced all around, especially to people who lived close to us and were parents with kids. There were wonderfully clean hallways, comfortable study rooms, and restrooms. The carpet was new, the paint was kept up and the décor looked like the latest issues of Southern Living.

The Sunday School teacher was an intense man about our age who was well-prepared. He dropped by our office that week to check on us. There was also a baptism that Sunday morning – and we found later there were baptisms about twice a month. Is it any wonder that this church of about 800 people was growing about 150 people a year?

By the way, it was called Calvary Christian Church. We stayed there until we moved to Ohio.

Notice the differences in hospitality between the three churches.

Folks, I could tell you multiple stories of churches that I’ve seen that had decided that their stuff was far more important than making friends, that had given into fear of the stranger instead of fellowship of the friend-to-be.

You know how Jesus told his disciples that they would become fishers of men? I’ve seen many churches that decided they didn’t want any of these men-fish in the boat unless they’d already been cleaned and fillet. And these churches were almost always tiny churches that had been in decline for thirty years. They had become so puffed up about who they were, about how holy they were, about how much better they were than the people who lived just down the block from their churches, that they didn’t want anyone who needed them – they only wanted good, clean, perfect Christians in their churches. Which may explain why every year there were less people in their churches than the previous year.

Christians! This is a fine line we walk when we have guests. On the one hand, we know we have what they need – for we have all received the grace and forgiveness and love that comes with Jesus Christ which has lifted us out of despair, lifted us out of the mud, lifted us out of the ditch that leads to destruction. We have been truly blessed and we want to bless others by sharing God's love!

But we must also remain humble, like Abraham did, treating our guests, our visiting neighbors as better than ourselves, for nobody wants to be looked down upon. Condescension is such an easy sin to acquire once we've received God's love!

At one church, I noticed that nobody who lived within two blocks of the church attended the church. It might be because of the "no parking except for church" sign. Of course, that church loved to have fellowship meals on a regular basis – but just for church members and those that were former church members, of which there was a very long list. So I finally convinced the church to have a community meal instead of a fellowship meal. And…they actually invited their sister church on the charge…and people came! But they didn’t invite anyone from the neighborhood. “Oh well, we’ll fix that next time,” I thought.

So it comes time for the meal and the people of the church brought in the ham and chicken and baked beans and corn and desserts and green beans and meatballs. And it looks like it’s going to be a wonderful meal. And then, the people of the church set up a table with all the food on it and they stand on one side with the spoons and serving forks and they carefully dole out the food to their guests as they come through the line, like cooks in the middle school cafeteria feeding the kids. And when they were finished serving, they took their plates and served themselves and then they all sat down together at a different table from their guests!

AAGH!

They had missed the whole point! For you see, they made two major mistakes:

First, they treated their guests like they were children, not to be trusted with their food! They treated them like soup kitchen clients, like they were afraid some guest might actually eat two chicken wings or have a double helping of green beans. They did not treat them like neighbors in a community that they all lived in!

And the second mistake was they didn’t sit and eat with their guests. The whole purpose of a community meal is to make friends, to get to know each other, to show that we are friendly and have faults just like our neighbors. We bond when we eat together – but have you noticed that we rarely bond with the people at the table across the room in the restaurant?

First of all, I know that in the past, some churches, including this church, had a policy of never having fundraisers. Instead, all our funds were raised internally. I agree with that policy and applaud that policy. But this is not a fundraiser.

You see, this is a community dinner. It is not a "community outreach dinner". We considered making it free, but our neighbors don’t want or need charity from us. We’ve found that people don’t want to go to free community dinners, because it makes them feel like they are helpless, they feel ashamed, they are children that are being taken care of. They don't want to feel like they are a project, being "reached out" to. They want to be welcomed into the community that we share.

The purpose of this dinner – let me be clear – is to connect the church once again with our local community. We won’t make money with the $2 per family charge – we aren’t that efficient. Yet, it is a really good deal. And what we are trying to do is to step back into our proper spot as a center of the community, a place where people meet friends, a place where people catch up with their neighbors, a place where people come together to be comforted, and yes, a place where people connect with God through Christ. Hopefully, this will be the first of regular monthly dinners.

When we chose years ago to not have fundraisers, we also chose to disconnect ourselves from the community. We didn’t realize that when we chose to not have fundraising meals, we also chose not to connect with the community. Since I’ve been here, we’ve had several fellowship dinners – we’ve had the fall clothing giveaway. We even had the Halloween candy giveaway. But this is the first ministry we’ve done that rides on the edge between the church and the community.

And that is why we are having a community dinner. For hospitality is when we ride on the edge between our community and those who are outside our community, hopefully connecting us together. You can’t connect to other people without becoming vulnerable yourself, and you can’t connect any two things together unless you go to their edges. We have to go to the edge of our community - our church - and look for the people beyond the edge. We, as the ambassadors of Christ, have to become vulnerable to the world, for the world will certainly not become vulnerable to us.

And so, if you chose to come to the community dinner, we ask that you plan to do a couple of things:

First, try to bring a friend or a friend and their family. Yes, this means you will have to risk rejection. But Christ was rejected – He was killed – I don’t think your friends will kill you over a meal invitation.

Second, be hospitable to everyone you come into contact with. You may not feel comfortable introducing yourself to strangers, but remember that this is your home turf – imagine how uncomfortable those strangers feel! It is up to us to become vulnerable – they have become vulnerable just by showing up. Also, remember that other visitors will be watching how you treat each visitor.

So take a minute and introduce yourself to someone you meet. Ask them where they live, ask them what they do for a living. Tell they about yourself. Try to make a connection and a conversation. If they have kids, tell them about our Sunday kid’s program and the parent’s group that meets at the same time. Tell them a bit about yourself – and tell them a bit about the church and the Men’s group, the Women’s group, the Tuesday night study, the Kicks for Kids shoe giveaway.

Third, sit beside strangers. Don’t sit with people you already know except by accident. We need to put our edges beside their edges. Our purpose is to mingle. I know it is easier to stay in the middle of the herd, to sit at a table surrounded by this community. But studies have shown that people will make a serious effort to attend a church when they make three friends at the church. So after you have talked with someone a bit, introduce one of your church friends to your new friend, someone who has a bit in common with them – kids the same age, the same line of work, lives near them. And if someone tries to introduce you to a stranger, take the time to become vulnerable and open up to them, welcoming them and talking to them.

Be ready to give a tour of the church. Offer it to your new friends. Invite them to stay with you for the Bible study at 7 pm/6:30 if they appear to able – this might be tricky if they have three young children, so use common sense. (We’ll work to get child care on Tuesday evenings eventually, if some of the young parents would like it.)

Treat everyone you see, church friend or stranger, equally – as our neighbor. Remember that we are trying to make friends, not provide charity. We are trying to extend the edges of our community. If your new friend opens up to you and tells you some secret about themselves, it is not something to spread around. Love the person. Be welcoming. Show them that you are so delighted to make a new friend. And if you hit it off, trade phone numbers with them.

Above all, be friendly and positive about everyone you mention and the church. I generally will ask them “which church do you currently attend?” assuming that they attend a church, even if I’m pretty sure they don’t. And when they say they attend “such and such Baptist Church”, I say, “That’s great!” And when they say they really haven’t attended anywhere for a while, I say, “You’d be very welcome here. Our services on Sunday are at 9:30 am in the morning and 7 pm in the evening. Look for me!” And if they have kids, I’ll tell them about the 5 pm kids groups and parents group and introduce them to a parent that attends that group, like Adam or Amy Hamrick.

Imagine, if you will, that everyone who shows up here is stranded on the highway, a friend trying to get home on a dark, rainy/snowy night in March after a depressing basketball game. What can you do to help them get Home, a place where the light of our Lord glows brighter than the sun, a place where the fruit of the Tree of Life is borne twelve times a year, a place where people walk in safety and gladness and joy. A place you know the way to – can you get out your spotlight, shine it on the road in front of them, and help make friends beside the road, to help lead them Home? 

And what is Home like? Take a look at this video.