I trust that springtime has found you all well.  We enjoyed another great Sunday School lesson this past weekend and discussed the community project that is occurring this coming Sunday.

Whether you missed last week, or did not participate in the “Knock on Nine” event, and even if you haven’t attended Sunday School in a long time, you can still come and join our class in helping to make 2 homes in our “Mile of Grace” better places.  The Mary Virginia Thomas Sunday School Class volunteered to clean up two yards this Sunday.  The more help we have the less time it will take us – however, we have been assured of being done by 10:45 am.  Afterwhich we will enjoy a nice church picnic. 

WE ARE NOT MEETING AT THE CHURCH.  To help us, come to Helping Hands at 8:45 am.  We will have some brief instruction and then head over to our 2 projects.  Wear yard clothes, bring gloves, clippers, weed eaters and the like, plus a little picnic food and join us.  Many hands make light work!

For more information, please read the letter below and/or call the church.

There won’t be a Sunday School Class this weekend.  Hope to see you at Helping Hands.

Brian

5 Then I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor with you, I ask that you send me to Judah, to the city of my ancestors’ graves, so that I may rebuild it.” 
11 So I came to Jerusalem and was there for three days.
12 Then I got up during the night, I and a few men with me; I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. The only animal I took was the animal I rode.
13 I went out by night by the Valley Gate past the Dragon’s Spring and to the Dung Gate, and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that had been broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire.
14 Then I went on to the Fountain Gate and to the King’s Pool; but there was no place for the animal I was riding to continue.
15 So I went up by way of the valley by night and inspected the wall. Then I turned back and entered by the Valley Gate, and so returned.
16 The officials did not know where I had gone or what I was doing; I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials, and the rest that were to do the work.
17 Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we may no longer suffer disgrace.”
18 I told them that the hand of my God had been gracious upon me, and also the words that the king had spoken to me. Then they said, “Let us start building!” So they committed themselves to the common good.
19 But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they mocked and ridiculed us, saying, “What is this that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?”
20 Then I replied to them, “The God of heaven is the one who will give us success, and we his servants are going to start building; but you have no share or claim or historic right in Jerusalem.”  Neh 2:5, 11-20 (NRSV)

Of course, the problem isn’t the ultimate goal – it’s how we get there.  Nehemiah shows us that careful measurement and contemplation of the task, together with prayer for God’s guidance, is necessary before we commence to rally support.  There is a lesson in the reaction of the people as well.  We must also be mindful of keeping open minds toward the leadership of others.  We could scoff with the Sanballats, Tobiahs and Geshems of the world, but it is better to lay our hand to the work; to say “Let us start building!”

It’s not just about servant-hood, but about the spirit in which we practice community:

1 We who are strong ought to put up with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves.
2 Each of us must please our neighbor for the good purpose of building up the neighbor.
3 For Christ did not please himself; but, as it is written, “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.”
4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.
5 May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus,
6 so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Romans 15:1-6 (NRSV)

We don’t bear the weakness of others to make ourselves feel good – we bear weakness to please God.  When we do so, that is true joy.

In recent years we have sometimes practiced a watered down form of faith in which all is forgiveness and there are no consequences.  That’s not the accountable discipleship that Wesley preached and practiced.  In the fifth chapter of St. Paul’s first letter to Corinth, we’re told that “anything goes” doesn’t cut it.  If this sounds tough, it’s because we’ve allowed ourselves to accept just about any behavior so as to avoid the appearance of “judging” another.  We need to “remember” that the sacrifices made before – at Sinai and at Calvary – were about reconciliation, but not about putting our selfish and sometimes wrongheaded interests before God.

In today’s lesson scripture, St. Paul makes two points.  The first is simple: you have among you someone who is acting in a disgraceful manner and this person is hurting themselves, the community of Christians and the witness of that community to the wider world.  Much as you may want to, you can’t ignore this behavior.  The solution is to separate that person from the community:

1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father’s wife.
2 And you are arrogant! Should you not rather have mourned, so that he who has done this would have been removed from among you?
3 For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present I have already pronounced judgment
4 in the name of the Lord Jesus on the man who has done such a thing. When you are assembled, and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus,
5 you are to hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
6 Your boasting is not a good thing. Do you not know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough?
7 Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.
8 Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.  1 Cor 5:1-8 (NRSV)

The second point is that just as this one person can contaminate the entire community – just as a little yeast leavens a whole batch of dough- so too does the sacrifice of Christ serve to save all creation: past, present and future.  Bad news, good news – and good news triumphs!

Read our lesson scripture again and post any comments you have about this demanding but illuminating scripture.

7 Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed.
8 So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover meal for us that we may eat it.”
9 They asked him, “Where do you want us to make preparations for it?”
10 “Listen,” he said to them, “when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him into the house he enters
11 and say to the owner of the house, ‘The teacher asks you, “Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?” ‘
12 He will show you a large room upstairs, already furnished. Make preparations for us there.”
13 So they went and found everything as he had told them; and they prepared the Passover meal. Luke 22:7-13 (NRSV)

We’ve talked about this in class before when discussing the church calendar and the Eucharistic prayer.  The concepts of anamnesis and prolepsis – of bringing the past into the present and the future into the present – are part of sacred memory.  Slaves as we are to the concept of time – we find it impossible (absent faith) to imagine a cosmos outside of time.  Today’s verses are part of an overall story that recounts a moment – a time - an event (see? we have problems with defining something outside of time) when God’s dimension intersected our dimension.  This holy mystery is something that we invoke with the Eucharist – one of the reasons that Wesley felt so strongly about communion as a “means of grace”.

All this week we’ve been talking about remembrance in one form or another and the point of this Sunday’s lesson is to “experience the power of sacred memory expressed in ritual”.  But sacred memory – as suggested above – does not look backward only, but forward as well: foward to redemption and to perfection.

Jesus, in the verses that follow today’s lesson scripture, spoke of the new covenant – a fulfilling of the old covenant – anamnesis and prolepsis combined.

Sacred memory consists of remembrance of things past and remembrance (or anticipation if you will) of things future.  Remembrance of past only can degenerate into nostalgia – an illness . . . more about this tomorrow.

The crisis of this moment has several parts, and like Episcopalians, particularly the ones in Mississippi, they’re all related . . .
          — Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori
             Opening Address at General Convention 2009

I really need to let some one with better wit and means of expressing it (Danny Mac or Otis) take this one on, but I can’t resist posting at least the quote.  It’s from Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s opening remarks at the Episcopal Conference in Anaheim, California.  I’m not sure if she’s complaining about conservatives in Mississippi, or making a joke about first cousins and matrimony.

She does go on to make a statement of theology that’s bound to cause more than a little discussion in the Bible Belt:

The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God.  It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus.  That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being.  That heresy is one reason for the theme of this Convention.

Okay, class . . . surely someone has a comment to make about one or the other of the foregoing.  The full text of Bishop Schori’s address is here.

17 When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was nearer; for God thought, “If the people face war, they may change their minds and return to Egypt.”
18 So God led the people by the roundabout way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of the land of Egypt prepared for battle.
19 And Moses took with him the bones of Joseph who had required a solemn oath of the Israelites, saying, “God will surely take notice of you, and then you must carry my bones with you from here.”
20 They set out from Succoth, and camped at Etham, on the edge of the wilderness.
21 The Lord went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, so that they might travel by day and by night.
22 Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.  Ex 13:17-22 (NRSV)

Yesterday I posed a question about how we are sometimes concerned by what others think of us – that we may come across as too religious or judgmental.  Gary’s comment is an excellent answer to that question from the standpoint of worry about the world judging us by worldly standards.  But . . . there’s always a “but” . . . we should be concerned about how the world views us based on divine standards  Bear with me a second on this and how it relates to today’s scripture.

These few verses follow the final plague, the death of Egypt’s first-born, the institution of the Passover and the Exodus of the people of Israel.  The verses are a break in the action before picking up again with the flight of the people to the Red Sea (or “sea of reeds”) and – well - and the rest of the story.  It’s interesting because we literally “hear” God murmuring to himself  about his newly freed people.  I think the pause in the narrative here, with its reflection on the divine intent, serves to emphasize that the Passover and Exodus are a beginning – not an end – of God’s plan for saving the world.  Moreover, it’s a beginning that occurs in every generation.

Now for those three points I mentioned to begin with:

1. In verses 17 & 18, God is concerned that the people of Israel will be tempted to return to the comfort and status quo offered by Egypt.  And this is the point in all of our lives.  We turn toward God, we answer his call and repent, and then we not only encounter the desire to return to the ways of the world, we are constantly tempted to cling to traditions for traditions’ sake – because those traditions are familiar and comfortable.  How is that different from the temptation of Israel to return to the comfort of civilized Egypt?
2. But we are also, by human nature, geared toward re-inventing ourselves with each new generation – often casting aside tradition simply because it is tradition.  Vanity – disguised as enthusiasm – can lead us to disdain what our parents try to instill in us.  Verse 19 reminds us that we should honor the values that tradition has to offer us, and the lessons of faith that the lives of those who have gone before can teach us.
3. How do we strike the right balance between these two temptations?  That’s right!  Just as Israel depended upon the leadership of God (verses 21-22) so we should pray for God’s guidance both day and night.

This is important not only for this present time, but for the future.  Joseph, imperfect though he may have been, ultimately acquited himself well in faith – thinking of generations to come.  We should aspire to no less.  God give us the wisdom to exhibit those standards that are essential and important from God’s point of view, that we might fulfill the Great Commission and witness to God’s plan of good news to the whole world both in our own time and in times to come.

They may see the good you do as self serving. Continue to do good.

They may see your generousity as grandstanding. Continue to be generous.

They may see your warm and caring nature as a weakness. Continue to be warm and caring.

For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It never was between you and them anyway.

Have a great week….Gary