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by Reverend Dr. John T. Martin, Jr.
The other evening at the Church Council meeting I commended the members of our Council for their talent, commitment to Christ, and ability to carry the church forward in this important time of transition. These were not idle comments, but words spoken in confidence that the laity of Annandale Church is strong, well equipped, and steady at the many tasks that are helping to ensure this wonderful congregation’s future in faithfulness to God. My feelings toward the Council were reinforced in positive ways, after taking part in a lively discussion in which we worked through some important issues as to how we want to grow both spiritually and in our outreach to community to invite new persons into the life of our church. It was wonderful to see people of varying points of view speak from the heart on matters of vital importance to our church’s future. Once again, I saw how important matters well up from the grassroots of our common life and the positive way these matters are dealt with in an open forum. We do our best work when everyone knows what is going on and has a voice in what is happening. Paul the Apostle must have had similar experiences with the church in Rome to which he wrote the wonderful letter we know as the book of Romans. In the next to the last chapter he expressed confidence in how they were doing: “I myself feel confident about you, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.” In other words, he felt they had what it took to be a church and he was obviously proud of them, just as Rev. Deb Fair and I are proud of this congregation, the things we have accomplished together and the great things that are yet to come. To be “full of goodness” suggests the idea of a sponge. A sponge will soak up a tremendous amount of water or other liquid, its recesses expanding to absorb every possible drop. When it is full, however, and you press on it, even a slight amount, the liquid will run out on whatever surface is there. If you don’t know what is held within a sponge, just give it a little squeeze and you will soon find out. It isn’t much of a leap to see the parallel to our own life. Someone has rightly said, “We can tell what fills us on the inside by what comes out under pressure.” Perhaps Jesus had something like this in mind when he said to his disciples in the Upper Room on the night before his death, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” If you are filled with God’s love, you will keep faith under the pressures of life. The heart of love is the practice part, isn’t it? Last week, the Bi-district clergy were treated to the culinary delights and hospitality of our church with special thanks to Alice Snitzer and her blue ribbon crew! Our guest speaker that day was retired United Methodist Bishop Roy Sano from the Western Jurisdiction, who shared throughout the day on the subject of spirituality. He made an interesting point, drawing on the Christian ethics classic by H. Richard Niebuhr, The Responsible Self, from which he gleaned that ethics begins not in the question, “What shall I do”, but in the question, “What’s happening?” Walking us through a number of scripture passages in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, he showed how important passages begin with the secular context. For example, the call of Isaiah in Isaiah 6 starts by saying, “In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple.” The passage tells us when it was and in whose secular reign, then goes on to show God’s entry into the scene. We move from a general context to a very specific moment in the life of Isaiah, who is about to be called by God to be a prophet. An example from the New Testament, Luke 1, says, “In the days of King Herod, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was a descendant of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years.” What a setup for the powerful story of the incarnation! Remember, Elizabeth was the one to whom the Virgin Mary went when she discovered she would be the mother of the Messiah. Also, she was already six months ahead in pregnancy with a child the world would one day know as John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Messiah. We know this event happened under the oppressive rule of King Herod. This was the secular context, yet within that context God was moving. Everything earthly that God does happens in a secular world. The secular world rolls along having its say, but in the midst of it all God is working. There may be political powers, rulers and authorities; there may be troubles, cataclysms, turmoil, but God is working. So the ethical question is WHAT IS HAPPENING? WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOD DOING? And the obvious question that follows is HOW IN THE WORLD DO WE JOIN GOD? How do we join God who is already active? We are not the initiators in God’s work. We are the followers. Bishop Sano pointed out that God is righteous. God makes righteousness in the face of sin. Love in action is God’s manner of working and we know it as grace. God’s love is working in the world in overcoming hate. God is working to promote life, overcoming sickness and death. The righteousness of God is the way God is working in a particular direction. God is the Holy One in our midst, “Yahweh.” God is Sovereign Lord, the God who saves - the God who has saved US through Jesus Christ, and we are called into God’s righteousness to live holy lives. An image that comes to my mind when I think of God moving in the world came from a friend’s son who is a top gun F-15 Air Force pilot. He told of an IMAX film made for the new Air and Space Museum near Dulles in which a group of fighter jets is flying about a hundred feet above the desert floor at supersonic speed. He said that at that speed the pilot can look in his rearview mirror and witness the effects of the sonic boom, or shock wave that goes out from the plane. It stirs up the dust on the desert floor in a powerful way and is an exciting thing to see. That image makes me think of God on the move in our world. God enters the common place of our life and a spiritual shock wave is set up that is unavoidable. It is God’s righteousness moving in the midst of the people. God goes on the offensive to make things right, to make persons whole, to restore nature. God is working to help people be healthy and transformed. God’s Spirit intercedes for us in our inarticulate groaning and sighs too deep for words. God knows and feels our situation and is working to bring us out of sin and into new life. God’s call to righteousness is spread throughout scripture, but let me name a few passages. In Romans 12:21 we read, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” In John 16:37 Jesus declares, “In the world you face persecutions. But take courage; I have overcome the world.” In Genesis we find the saga of Joseph being sold into slavery. At the close of the story we find Joseph, the one sold by his brothers saying to them as Prime Minister of Egypt, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people.” We see in all these passages the world having its little say, but then God weighing in to bring a saving, holy and righteous result. What does this mean for Christians? Simply this: We are called to holy living, nothing more or less. I recall a day many years ago going in to see my principal, after deciding to give up public school teaching to become a minister of the gospel. He looked at me for a long moment, and finally said, “Then you must be a holy man.” I knew I was not that, but he was giving me the direction I needed to grow spiritually. The life of holiness comes as we move along the path John Wesley called “going on to perfection.” Jesus said it plainly to his disciples: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” When we think commandments we often think first of the Ten Commandments God gave to Moses. Jesus honored those commandments, saying that he had come to fulfill the law, but he went a step beyond to give the motivation for keeping the law: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” All that Jesus said or did was couched in the requirements of love, which were exceedingly demanding for him, particularly at the last. So how do we keep our eyes set that we keep the commandments? How do we focus? Bishop Sano made it sound simple, and indeed it should be. He quoted from Psalm 16:8, where the Psalmist wrote, “I keep the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” In NIV translation it says, “I set the LORD always before me.” There is a gospel hymn he sang with the words, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face, and the things of this world will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.” Bishop Sano offered two words of substitution for this familiar text. He changed “world” to “earth”, and “dim” to “clear”. It then goes, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely clear in the light of his glory and grace.” Good substitutions, wouldn’t you say? How do we keep his commands? You’ve got to let Christ in the room! A Prayer of Saint Patrick says it well: Christ be with us, Christ before us, Christ behind us, With Christ all around us like that, there is no room for sin. An empowering gift of love through the Holy Spirit enables us to see the world as Christ saw it and to do the things that he did, according to the gifts we have been given. If we let Jesus fill our lives as water fills a sponge, we will be full of the love of Christ and will surely do his bidding. The author of the book of Colossians understood this well when he encouraged the people saying, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Col. 3:16-17) To keep Christ’s commandments means never compromising our witness. In this caring congregation I think we have come to embrace the idea expressed by a certain Gene Barron: He said, “The world will not care what we know until they know we care.” By the same token the witness of our love will not be convincing if we have not kept our Lord’s commands. To do this is not a burden at all; rather, it is the way to experience and enjoy life in all God’s abundance!
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