Tarry in the City

A sermon on Luke 24:36-49

The journey of life is filled with hopes, dreams, and passions.  I believe that when we acknowledge the presence of God in some of these hopes, dreams, and passions, they quickly turn into mission.  Yes, when our greatest, God-given desires meet the greatest needs of our world, we, as the people of God, begin to live missional lives of purpose and meaning, whatever it is we decide to do.

I would like to invite you to dream with me this morning.  For some of us this will be easy and for some of us it will require a great look back into the past.  I want to to reflect back on when we were all children with our entire lives before us.  Do you remember what it was you most wanted to do with you life?  Do you remember what you wanted your occupation to be?  Do you remember the kind of person you wanted to be?  Where did you want to live?  Did you want a family?  What were your greatest hopes, dreams, and passions?  Have you accomplished them?

I have always been a dreamer.  I get this tendency from my mother.  I am always looking at the world around me and seeking to find my unique place in it.  My earliest memory when I look back at what I thought I wanted to be when I “grew-up” was to be a race car driver.  My Dad raced at dirt-tracks around the Atlanta area before I was born and he kept picture and memories of those glory days hidden in the bottom drawer of his nightstand.  I remember as a small child sneaking into my parents bedroom and looking at those pictures and dreaming of a day I too would drive a blue #11 around a track.  Of course my dad chose #11 for his race car because in the 1980s he, was a huge Darryl Waltrip fan…

Before long my dream of driving a race car turned to dreams of being an astronaut.  In the late 80s a movie called Space Camp was released in which a group of teenagers accidentally get sent to space in the space shuttle.  Sounded like a lot of fun to me and my mom will tell you that for about a year, we rented that VHS tape every single week.  I also went through a baseball stage and during that time I wrote a large #10 on the back of all of my undershirts certain that one day I would be the next Chipper Jones.  In middle school, I discovered my golf game and the next Chipper Jones morphed into the next Tiger Woods.  In high school I wanted to be everything from a lawyer to history teacher until one evening at an FCA retreat at the age of 17, I discerned and surrendered to a call to vocational ministry.  That moment began the journey that has lead me to where I am today.

Needless to say I have always been a dreamer and if we are honest with ourselves, I think we are all dreamers.  Maybe, John Lennon understood that best when we wrote these timeless lyrics:  “you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”  At one time or another, we have all had hopes, dreams, and passions for our lives and for the world in which we live whether we acted upon them or not.

Through school, I spent more time dreaming than doing what I should in order to make those dreams come true.  It wasn’t that I lacked intelligence however I was more concerned for what I was going too do when I got out of school that I did little while I was actually in the classroom.  The result was very poor grades and looking back I feel like I was always grounded because of those grades.  Now I can already hear some of my youth saying to their parents, “Hey, it worked for Alex!”  But let me just say students, do as I say and not as I do because my mother will tell you it is only by the grace of God that I even graduated from high school!  So do you work!!!

Being a dreamer and not a doer, I cannot tell you how many times my mom had to drag me out of the clouds and bring be back down to reality.  I would constantly come to her with a new idea for my life or some way I could make money or the world into a better place.  Each and every time my mom would say, “that is a great idea.  I think you will be great at that.  You have what it takes to make that happen.”  And I would get so excited when she would say these things and begin feeling really great about myself.  However every single time she would follow those statements with something like this: “But Alex, you know what you have to do first right?  Pass 8th grade…”  Then a little later, “pass 9th grade….10th grade….11th grade….graduate from high school.”  Even when I got to college and was studying religion and began to look at divinity school’s and seminaries she reminded me that first, I had to finish my undergraduate degree.  She wasn’t raining on my parade, just reminding me of all the steps that I first had to take in order to get to where I wanted to be.  Before I could do what I wanted, there was always something that had to be done first.

I think that is exactly what is going on in our gospel text this morning.  The disciples were excited.  Finally, Jesus had done something and they understood their place in it.  They were ready to embark on a new mission.  A new hope, dream, and passion but then, when they least expected it, Jesus asks them to do something first.   

Think back on the scenes we have discussed in recent weeks from Luke’s 24th chapter.  After walking with Jesus, hearing his message and witnessing his miracles, Jesus’ followers had watched him die and laid into a tomb.  He was gone and they had watched him go.  Then something unexpected happened.  A few brave women entered into the tomb and they became the first to experience the greatest mystery in human history.  Jesus had been raised!  Excited, they rush back to the disciples to tell them what had been revealed to them. While I’m sure these women expected big, immediate changes, they were met with the opposite. The text says the disciples “did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.”  Oh, how often the mysteries of God are written of as nonsense.

Later that day two of the disciples decided to go on a journey to the nearby town of Emmaus.  While they were walking, Jesus joins them and strikes up a conversation about recent events and their own religious history.  Of course, these disciples have no idea who they are talking to and conclude this man had been living under a rock.  Finally, after these disciples invite Jesus to share a meal with them, “their eyes were opened and they recognized him.”  Just as the women had done that morning, the two disciples immediately get up and return to Jerusalem to share what they had seen.  And according to another Gospel’s telling of this story, nobody believed these guys either…

But while they were telling their story, Jesus appears to them once more —but of course, they thought he was a ghost and still did not recognize him.  But after touching his wounds and feeding him fish, they finally believe.

We know what happens next.  The author of Luke writes another narrative, the book of Acts, which tells of the disciples, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit scattering throughout the region teaching the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, changing history forever.  While this is the formula usually presented in most pulpits for the post-resurrection life of the early Church, we often miss a step along the way.

The disciples were most certainly excited. They were witnesses of things previously thought impossible. They couldn’t wait to tell someone!  Fear had lifted and they were ready to get to work. Just as we expect Jesus to commission them for this work and send them off to all the nations, Luke’s Jesus throws them a change-up.

Now it is right for us to expect a great sending off here.  The disciples have experienced a major break through.  Their doubts and lack of hope have been transformed by the fact that Jesus had been risen and the movement was not dead.  The message was true and it was time to proclaim that message to all the nations.  This is exactly how Matthew ends his gospel.  When the disciples see the resurrected Jesus, he immediately tells them to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything he had commanded.”  

John give us something very similar.  Jesus appears to his disciples to tells them that just as the Father had sent him, Jesus now was sending this disciples, he breathed on them, and gave them the Holy Spirit.  And let us not forget the conclusion of Mark’s gospel in which Jesus tells the disciples to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation” —and that those who believe in Jesus’ message will “drive out demons,; speak in new tongues; pick up snakes with their hands; and they drink deadly poison.  This is as powerful of a commissioning as it is terrifying because if you know me, I’m not sure God himself could convince me to pick up a snake with anything, especially my hands…

But it is only natural for us, at the conclusion of Luke’s gospel, to expect something similar.  A great commissioning, sending off, or departing word from Jesus.  And Jesus does indeed come through for us here, but not in the way we or the disciples may have expected.

Jesus tells them in verse 49 to “stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”  This is one of those classic lines that really must be heard in the old english of the King James Version which reads, “behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.”

I know you are excited and I know you are ready to move, but why don’t you hang out here for a little while?  It is going to be great, but first, I want you to tarry in the city.  We can almost hear the vacuum in the room as Jesus spoke these words.

The disciples were the witnesses of all that Jesus had done and said.  They had a front row seat for the inauguration of the kingdom of God coming to earth as it is in heaven.  They were key figures in a movement that would changed the social and religious order of the world forever.  Now, with the revelation that Jesus had been resurrected and that the promises of his gospel had not been lost, they were ready and positioned to carry out Jesus’ ministry to the farthest corners of the map.  Hopes, dreams, and passions filled them.  They were zealous.  They couldn’t contain themselves.  But Jesus gives them something else to do first.  Wait.  Tarry.

See, we all hope to accomplish great things in our lives and make a dent in this world for the kingdom of God.  We dream big, but just as my mother taught me years ago, in order to get to these places, there is always something we must do first.  There is always a task that comes first.  No great visionary ever comes up with a new idea and immediately reaps its benefits.  Surely we cannot set out on a road not yet traveled and expect that road to be already paved.  We must first cut the road, smooth out its surface, lay gravel, and then have it paved.  Only then can we journey down that road towards our calling.

I think Jesus was asking his disciples to do such tedious work on themselves.  I think Jesus wanted them to spend time learning who they were, and discerning the work he had called them to do.  Perhaps he needed them to take time to surrender those last few bits of themselves that were not in line his his message.  Remember Peter in the garden when they came to take Jesus away?  He cuts of one of the guards ears only to be scolded by Jesus and reminded that his was a kingdom of peace.  Perhaps, Peter had to tarry in the city long enough to lay down his sword.

I’m sure the disciples were still pretty bitter towards Judas and were harboring hate in their hearts.  Maybe Jesus wanted them to tarry in the city long enough to replace that hate with love.  I am sure that as they tarried in the city they remembered all the grace they had witnessed Jesus offer to those they least expected.  How he reached out to the outcasts, and those outside their own social and religious community.  Surely they remembered that Jesus had come to “preach good news to the poor; to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind; to release the oppressed; and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  If they were going to be Jesus’ continued incarnation in this world, they too would have to do the same.

Today, we are there in the city with those disciples.  We are the witnesses of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and we have been called to proclaim his message.  But first, we have been asked to tarry in the city until we are clothed with power from on high.  Where is it you must tarry?  With whom have you been called to tarry?  Maybe today Jesus is asking you to lay down the bad feelings you have with a relative, or a co-worker, or a friend.  Students maybe Jesus wants you to tarry with those who sit alone at lunchtime or those outside the popular circles.  Perhaps as the Church, Jesus wants us to tarry and discover the spirit in places we had never before dreamed.

There are so many churches today who, full of passion and zeal, jump out in every direction without first considering the strategies and implications. These churches do a lot and build a lot of buildings, but they never really accomplish anything because they have no clear identity due to never “waiting in the city” long enough to cultivate it.  With the wealth of future possibilities before us today, it is more important than ever that we understand clearly who we are, and the message we have been called to proclaim.  Before we can proclaim that message, we must first complete the job that is closest to us, our nearest task at hand.

The late Scottish Baptist minister Oswald Chambers said it this way:  “As soon as we abandon ourselves to God and do the task He has placed closest to us, He begins to fill our lives with surprises.”  God works where we’re sent to wait!

Our future is bright.  Our greatest hopes, dreams, and passions have come near and we have been invited to help make them a reality.  We are God’s co-builders, the continual incarnation of Jesus in our world.  The resurrected life of Jesus is just as present today as it was on that first Easter morning, and today we must find own unique place in that unfolding story.  No, we cannot do everything, however, if we take time to discover who we are, we can fearlessly accept new ideas and embark on new missions which bear witness of the resurrected lives we have been given. This is what is means to be an Easter people and this is who we have been called to be.  But first, may we tarry in the city until we are clothed with power from on high.

Father Forgive Them

Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Was I there?  Was I there when they crucified our Lord?  Oh yeah, I was there.  And I heard his words loud and I heard his words clear.  Because I’m pretty sure, he was talking about me.

I was no stranger to his message.  In fact, I knew it well because Jesus he had begun to cause quite a stir.  He brought stories and promises of a better world and taught us to hope that this better world would one day become a reality.  He spoke of this better world as the kingdom of God coming to earth as it is in heaven, and not only welcomed us into experiencing this world first hand, but he invited us to become participants in creating it.  This was his Father’s will and this was his Father’s work, and he made these things open, to everyone.

The world so many of us had dreamed had come near, it seemed too good to be true.  Perhaps that is where I first went wrong.  Thinking his message was too good to be true.  It was indeed exciting, but surely Jesus wasn’t serious.  It was a nice idea to talk about, but surely it could never become anything more than wishful thinking, nothing more than the wildest hopes and dreams one shares with a friend on a perfect spring walk.  Too much would have to change.  The stakes were just too high.  He clearly had not considered the cost.

But I was wrong.  Indeed he knew the change that must come, understood the cost, yet he continued onward.  More than thought, more than mindless chatter, he moved forward in inaugurating the world he had promised, move forward even to a hill called Golgotha.  I was I who fell short.

See, he came to preach a message of love, but there were too many people I still wanted to hate.

He called us to cloth the naked, but I refused to empty my closet.

He was concerned for the poor, but I wanted to hold onto my bankroll.

He wanted us to feed hungry, but I was just too busy stocking my surplus.

Jesus even offered to forgive my sins, to lighten my burdens, and to teach me how to walk in his rhythms of grace, but I was too consumed with my own religion and addictions to understand.

He wanted to empower the weak, but I envied the strength the powerful.

He preached the kingdom of God, but I had already sold out to the empire.

His’ was a gospel of peace, but I insisted violence.

His’ was a gospel of hope and security that told all young people they could walk down a street without fear of profiling or of being killed, but I refused embrace the stranger.

Yes, Jesus’ gospel was a gospel of equality, reconciliation, and unity that promised an end of all injustice, oppression, and suffering.  But I was comfortable with my own privilege to embrace it.

And when that comfort was challenged, I stepped back, and I let them take him.  I watched as he was beaten and marched up that rocky path to be nailed on an old rugged cross.  I watched as blood ran down his body and dripped all around.  It splattered from the sands of Afghanistan to the sidewalks of Sanford, Florida.  But I did nothing.

So as the crowd gathered around the cross to watch this gospel die, I heard him cry out.  Not in pain or agony, nor anger or fear, but in love.  With love and concern in his eyes he shouted towards the heavens, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.”

And my God forgive me, because I didn’t know what I was doing either…

In Lent, congregations find new life in death

Each year the season of Lent invites us to reflect on the reality that even the most well-lived lives eventually come to an end. For the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday, Christians around the world participate through fasting and other self-sacrificial acts in order to better identify with the life, suffering and death of Jesus.

At the beginning of the season we are reminded that from dust we have come and to dust we shall one day return. From this starting point we embark on a long, hard journey marked by suffering which finds its end on a hill of skulls and tossed out of memory into a dark, dark grave. Sure, we know that a victorious Sunday is just over the horizon. During Lent, however, that horizon is veiled by the truth that if we want to get to the resurrection, we first travel through Golgotha.

Lent then reminds us of the fact that life on this Earth is short, and one day, all of our glories will fade away.  Perhaps it was the 22-year-old Scottish Baptist minister Oswald Chambers who said it best while reflecting on his ministry ahead: “I feel I shall be buried for a time, hidden away in obscurity; then suddenly I shall flame out, do my work, and be gone.” Eventually, we all flame out and are gone.

While Lent provides individuals an opportunity to reflect on the promise of death, the same is true for congregations.

As Baptists, we have a rich history of “bearing witness.” Whether a church is centuries old or a recent church plant, each congregation has been established by its founders to bear witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ at a particular time and place and in a unique way. Churches write a covenant, constitution, list of values or affirmations and, in recent years, a mission statement describing the purpose and vision of the congregation. Ministers are appointed and programs are designed all with the goal of effectively bearing witness to that church’s interpretation of the gospel.

Looking at churches today, we are reminded that many of those programs have run their course. Values change and covenants are rewritten to better reflect the church’s presence in its context. Our founders, the champions who first taught us the old, old story, are laid to rest and in many cases, entire churches follow suit, shutting their doors forever. We need not think long to remember a church program or ministry or leader no longer with us. Even the greatest and well-planned witnesses eventually come to an end.

If Lent invites individuals to reflect on the fragility and limits of life, the season should serve as an opportunity for churches to do the same. From dust our witnesses have come, and to dust they shall all one day return. Lent communicates to us that this is O.K.

Many will interpret these words as defeatist and suggest that if there is no hope of escaping what is ahead, why bother with bearing witness under a charade of good news? This, however, is not the point of Lent. Lent invites us to the gospel truth that we find our life, our true existence, after first losing them. Like a perennial plant that dies every autumn and winter only to be resurrected by its own root-stock every spring and summer, the Lenten season reminds us that from death, the newness of life always springs forth.

As we continue to journey into a Baptist existence in the 21st century, we have do so accepting the fact that we must die in order to live. History and current church decline have taught us that if the church is to thrive in the world today, there are some programs and witnesses that must come to an end in order to make room for fresher expressions.

As individual Baptists participate in Lent this year, may entire congregations also reflect on how the death of one witness may lead to the resurrection of another.

Article originally appeared in The Religious Herald 

The Caffeinated Road To Hell

Several times a week as I travel from the campus to my apartment in Old Town, I stop by the Starbucks located on Reynolda Road.  I do this at least three times a week.  The staff knows me by name and prepares my grande skinny caramel macchiato the moment I walk though the door.  After presenting my gold card, I unpack my bag at the place I sit every visit.  It is here that I wrote the first word of my thesis and from that same seat I received a round of applause when I typed the last.  I love this place!  No, it is not a hip place. Honestly I am usually the closest thing to a hipster there. There are trendier coffee houses in town that get by without yielding to corporate models and I am reminded of this fact every time I reveal my presence there via social media.  Still, I love this place and I feel at home with the consistent Starbucks experience.

According to a recent New York Times article, Steven Andrew, president of USA Christian Ministries, believes I am following Satan “on that caffeinated road to hell.”  Andrew, along with many other evangelical groups, recently called for a national boycott of my beloved Starbucks for their its support of Washington state legislation legalizing same-sex marriage.  Due to this support, Andrews believes that no true “God-fearing American” would support the coffee chain do to its position on this issue.

According to the same New York Times article, other corporations such as Microsoft and Amazon have also supported the same legislation.  Ironically, Steven Andrew’s book Making a Strong Christian Nation, can be purchased on Amazon for the low price of $11.04, and as a Mac, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that most of Andrew’s work is done on a PC.  Way to take the moral high road.

In the words of Jesus, as played by Jack Black in the 2008 production of Prop 8: The Musical, “It seems my friend that you pick and choose so chose love instead of hate.” The bottom line, if we are all honest with ourselves, be it the bible verses we use to trump other positions or the products and companies we chose to support, we all pick and choose.  I am proud that the corporation that I chose to support several times a week has chosen to stand for the same love and equality I too advocate for rather than a policy of hate and injustice rooted in a misguided notion of the separation of church and state.

The times are changing.  A recent gallup pole suggests that 70% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 support same-sex marriage.  While one’s choice of coffee shop may be only a small witness, I believe it is witness none-the-less.  So if you are feeling bold (pun intended), I invited you to join me in following Jesus down the caffeinated road to hell!

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry: a Sermon for Mardi Gras

Today is, if we are truly honest with ourselves, a rather awkward day for worship.  Since the end of the season of Epiphany we have experienced a period of the calendar known as Carnival.  Today, we join together towards the culmination of the Carnival season.  Today is Fat Tuesday, or, Mardi Gras.  Every grocery store in town has begun placing their king cakes on display and every hotspot of after hour entertainment is gearing up for what they expect to be a very, very busy night.

Now I don’t know about you, but when I think of Mardi Gras and the kind of activities that oftentimes surround this holiday, a service of worship is the last thing that comes to mind.  In fact, the whole carnival season strikes me at first as even a bit anti-church.  We binge and we gorge, and after hours or days of binging and gorging, many of us begin to wander into the realms of other deadly sins until the moment we find ourselves face down on a tile floor somewhere, or at the very least with feelings of horrific acid reflux promising the Almighty, “Never again!”  

Some of you are looking forward to this and I can tell that many of you just got really excited! 

While many ministers would feel the need to offer an alternative to the evening ahead and the porcelain surrender that is certain to come with the morning, I simply cannot.  In fact, today it is my persuasion that this is exactly the point of this day and it is perhaps the best preparation for the long journey of Lent which is just around the corner.

Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras is also celebrated in the church as Shrove Tuesday.  This word “Shrove” is an Old English word meaning “to repent.”  We call today “Shrove Tuesday” because of it represents the last day of Carnival, a word which itself is derived from Latin carnem levare (removal of the meat) or carnem laxare (leaving the meat).].  On Shrove Tuesday then, we repent from or remove meat and other fatty foods by consuming our entire surplus.  We do this in preparation for the season of Lent in which no meat will be eaten and we, along with the entirety of creation, enters into a time of rest and reflection on the suffering of Jesus.

Bosco Peter’s writes that “in Springtime…in order to have chicks, one must leave the eggs with the hen to hatch. One stops eating the eggs during this time – Lent. And can start eating them at Easter time – the origin of Easter eggs. In the quaint manner of liturgical developments, not eating eggs during Lent means one gets rid of all the eggs before Lent! Hence, the development of Pancake Tuesday – of using up all our eggs by eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.  If we sit still for a moment, we can almost smell the pancakes cooking on the griddles downstairs!

From this early, practical tradition comes a wealth of meaning.  For the 40 days that are to follow, no new meat will be slaughtered and no eggs will be picked.  For many of us, we will choose to abstain from other products and activities resulting in one’s surplus of alcohol or soft drinks and other vices going temporarily un-stocked.  In the past, in addition to following the traditional diet and rules of Lent, Allison an I have tried to limit our evening television time.  Thank God Masterpiece Theatre comes on Sunday evenings, the day of celebration!

Knowing then that the journey ahead will be long and in order to prevent our surplus from going to waste, we consume and have our fill.  We empty our storehouses of whatever they may hold and indulge ourselves in just a few days of what I like to think of as “holy gluttony.”

When I realized that I would be called upon to provide a sermon for Shrove Tuesday, I spent a great deal of time looking to the biblical tradition for words that communicates the acceptance of such foolish frivolity.  But suddenly, as I sat at Starbucks searching the scriptures for a word, the holy spirit spoke to me in the voice of Dave Matthews.  “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.  

Immediately I remembered the many times this ancient-near eastern call to “eat, drink, and be merry” appears in the bible from the prophets, to the Apostle Paul, and even Jesus himself.  Of course, many of these texts use the phrase in the negative as a form of condemnation for a lifestyle of selfish surplus and mindless consumerism.  Yet as I pressed onward, I discovered a use of the phrase in the wisdom literature that I think fits the mood of this time perfectly.

The book of Ecclesiastes reminds us that for everything, there is in deed a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.  If we follow that anthem to the book’s eighth chapter we can truly commend that for at least one day a year, “there is nothing better for people under the sun than to eat, and drink, and enjoy themselves.”

As we approach the season of Lent, we do so also echoing the words of the ninth chapter to Go and eat our bread with enjoyment and to drink our wine with a merry heart…for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol.” 

Tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, we pass through the gates of death and enter into Sheol.  Tomorrow we are reminded that from dust we have come and to dust we shall one day return.  On Ash Wednesday we begin the long, hard journey that is marked with suffering, and finds its end on a hill of skulls, only to later be tossed out of memory into a dark, dark grave.

We shrove, or repent after the emptying of our storehouses during this time to be better identified with our gospel story and the narrative of our Lord’s life.  Sure, know that victorious Sunday is on the horizon, but during Lent, that horizon is veiled with the realities that if we want to get to the resurrection, we first travel through Golgotha.

It is with the knowledge this journey ahead we gather during this time.  Soon we will begin our march into darkness, hunger, and suffering.  Soon we will fast, and repent, and shrove.  Soon, but not yet.  No, today, we feast.  Today, we have our fill.  Today, we empty our pantries to the nourishment of our bodies because the journey is long, and we will need our strength.

So today, as we have come to the conclusion of the Carnival season, may we all eat, drink, and be merry, because on tomorrow, we begin to die.

Finding our future in our past

Although it is often messier than our present and at times even more uncertain than our future, the past must never be forgotten. Where would we be today without such champions of Baptist life as Roger Williams, Walter Rauschenbusch and Martin Luther King Jr? Surely there were times they were tempted, as are many Baptists today, to shed the baggage of a name marked with so much ambiguity and controversy. We should all thank God they did not. Just imagine a history book absent of voices for religious liberty and justice! It was their Baptist identity, passed down to them from previous generations, that inspired their movements and changed the world as they knew it.

In this quest to rediscover or revitalize Baptist identity in a way that better reflects life in the 21st century, our first steps down a path not yet traveled are always dependent upon where we have already been.

As second-generation reformers, Baptists have always been “ancient-future” Christians, seeking to discover their peculiar identity out of their desire to be linked to the earliest Christians. Our founders looked back to the Bible and hoped to become in their own time the truest representation of the New Testament church. In cultivating an ancient-future identity for today that captures what has been historically and essentially Baptist and revitalizes this identity for the present, it is important to note that such a worthy endeavor is fundamentally Baptist.

As good Baptists, our quest into the past always begins with the Bible. We must always look at the biblical tradition and ask how we may embody those narratives in our own era. Jesus is just as active today as he was then and we must, with those texts as our guide, begin to do in our own day what Jesus did in his. Through this our churches will be known not only as proclaimers of the Kingdom of God but also those who are actively participating in its existence. 

Likewise, the Baptist tradition continues to speak to us today. As this fringe movement of 17th-century dissenters looked to their own past, they discovered and covenanted around such timeless principles as soul freedom, biblical authority, church autonomy and religious liberty. As those responsible with continuing this tradition, we must find new ways to interpret these principles for post-modern audiences.

Finally, as we cultivate our new identity by looking to the past, in many cases we need not look much further than the histories of our own congregations and communities. Often these local narratives, as heirs in their own time to our rich collective heritage, possess a remarkable power in guiding us to where we ought to be going.

This has been my experience in the congregation I serve. Our church, since its founding in the late 1890s, has always been known as a friendly, welcoming church, the kind of simple, down home people who are quick to do for others much more than they would ever think of doing for themselves. Throughout the decades our small community has organized several “missional” programs geared solely at helping to make the lives of our neighbors just a little bit better.

Today, many Baptists call the type of missions of which I speak ministries of hospitality and we, like many Baptist churches I have visited recently, have participated in these ministries for more than 100 years. Our greater community has changed much since our first cornerstone was laid and this change has brought many new types of neighbors and issues. As a church, we have decided to look back to our congregation’s witness in our neighborhood so that we may build on that heritage and meet our new neighbors with the spirit of true Christian hospitality.

Sometimes we must move backwards before we can move forward. For that reason, may we never forget our past as it is our most direct path into our future. Let us then join our great cloud of witnesses and live with the same passion for innovation and hope for the future as those who have gone before us. May we do in our on way and time what they did in their own.

Article originally appeared in The Religious Herald

Romanticism, Futurism, and a Midnight in Paris

Do you ever feel that maybe you were born in the wrong era? Have you ever watched a film, read a book, or seen an old advertisement and thought, “That is it! That is when I should have lived!” I have done this most of my life. I have always felt I would have done well dancing to Billie Holiday in the 1940s or drinking with F. Scott Figerald in the 1920s. Although the South gave up the great lost cause years ago (as we well should have), I find myself long- ing to ride off with Ashley to protect Atlanta from the Yankees every time I watch Gone with the Wind. Even though life was harsh during his time, it would have been something to have been at court with Erasmus as he sought to bridge orthodoxy and reform. It is only human to long for an ideal past. When faced with a messy present and an uncertain future, we have the tendency to look back at a previous time as the “good old days” when things were easier, beer, or more alive.

Recently released on DVD and BlueRay, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris speaks to this well. Set in Paris about dead literary figures, the film quickly puts one in a state of nerdy bohemian ecstasy! In addition to beautiful cinematography and a brilliant plot, Midnight in Paris offers a message relevant to mod- ern church culture. Like me, the main character of the film romanticizes the past. He feels he should have been in Paris in the 1920s with figures such as Hemingway Dali, Figerald, Eliot, and Picasso. When he inadver- tently gets to experience his ideal past, he learns that many Parisians in the 1920s have an ideal past that is different from their own. The spiral continues with the message that romanticized nostalgia for the past is often only a way to escape or deny our present realities.

While it is easy to romanticize the past, I am certain that if we could visit our ancestors during any era, they would tell us there is nothing glorious about their time and they are just as scared and unsure of the future as our church members are today. Emerging church leaders must find innovative methods for moving forward amidst the uncer- tainties of postmodernity in ways that celebrate the past but stretch towards future possibilities. We should keep the heirlooms and artifacts of yesterday proudly displayed and allow them to shape us, however we must con- tinually be revitalized and transformed, never losing the freshness of our message.

Article originally appeared in The Tablet