News from Japan on our American Baptist Missionaries: All Are Safe

VALLEY FORGE, PA (ABNS 3/11/11)—Please keep the people of Japan and other affected areas in your prayers, after the most powerful earthquake to hit Japan in at least 100 years caused a tsunami along the coast. The quake struck at 2:46 pm local time and caused the U.S. National Weather Service to issue tsunami warnings for at least 50 countries and territories.

International Ministries has received word that all of the American Baptist missionaries in Japan are safe.  Despite phone service being unavailable in many areas, word is coming in via Facebook and Twitter. 

"Our hearts go out to the people of Japan as they begin the task of recovering and rebuilding from this disaster," said Roy Medley, general secretary of American Baptist Churches USA. "We pray for those who have lost family and friends and their source of income."

Our Japanese partner churches and schools have been affected by the earthquake and resulting tsunami.  One Great Hour of Sharing is accepting contributions for emergency relief and rebuilding efforts.  Please visit the IM website for more information.

American Baptist Churches is one of the most diverse Christian denominations today, with 5,500 local congregations comprised of 1.3 million members, across the United States and Puerto Rico, all engaged in God’s mission around the world

Looking Back & Ahead

I thought I’d take time out, review where we’ve been at Meriden's First Baptist Church and what we’ll be doing in the near future. 

Where we’ve been:

We’ve just sewed up a sermon series on the Kingdom of God.  In essence, we’ve discovered that the Christian life is not about waiting for the sweet bye and bye in which we play harps on clouds.  The bye and bye will, indeed, be sweet – and I’m sure we can play a harp if we want – but Jesus came so that we can live the life of the future second coming right now.  We explored the nature of the kingdom (God’s reign is already here; it is not yet complete), the power of the kingdom (Christ did miracles to show what the future will be like), and the ways of the kingdom, which are found in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7.  We finished up by talking about one of the several parables of the Kingdom in Matthew 13:1-9, the so-called Parable of the Soil, which challenges us with the question: What kind of soil are we?  Can the seed of the kingdom flourish in us?  We discovered that rich soil if we rip our agendas and adopt Christ’s agenda. 

The four be-quicks function as tools in nurturing our soil: Be quick drop our assumptions and priorities and follow Christ; be quick to confess our wrongs and seek reconciliation; be quick to pray; be quick to study and apply the Scriptures, which often run against the culture’s grain.

 

Where we will be:

We’re about to launch a new series on peacemaking.  A little teaser: Peacemaking is far more than avoiding conflict.  In fact, we may need to stir controversy in order to bring true peace.

 

Where we are:

We’ll look at the Gospel According to John in our New Testament Survey series on Sunday morning.

Ash Wednesday & Lent

We’ll be celebrating Ash Wednesday tomorrow, at 7 p.m., so I thought I’d supply a little background.

What is Ash Wednesday?

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, which, traditionally, is a 40-day countdown of fasting and prayer leading to Easter (the Sundays in this period are not considered part of Lent because they’re a “mini-Easter”).   The Roman Catholic Church recently re-adjusted the season to last until Holy Thursday (or Maundy Thursday), although Lenten practices continue until Easter morning.

Lent need not be morbid.  It is simply a season of fasting, repentance (changing our minds under the power of the Holy Spirit), and, consequently, spiritual growth.   The so-called “Lenten disciplines” can be means by which we quiet ourselves before God.  They involve a process Eastern Christians call theosis, which a great church father, Athanasius, described as “becoming by grace what God is by nature.”

Ash Wednesday begins it all, with many Protestant, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox churches placing ashes on foreheads in the sign of the cross as a mark of repentance.

Some Protestants resist the ashes because it reminds them of Catholicism and rote ceremony.  Our church has no tradition of ashes and we will honor that tomorrow.  However, it’s useful to appreciate the biblical roots of Ash Wednesday and Lent.  Lent’s forty days echo the flood in Noah’s life (Genesis 7:4), Moses’s stay on top of Mount Sinai (Exodus 24:18); Israel’s wandering in the desert (Numbers 14:33); Elijah on Mount Horeb (1 Kings 19:8); and Jesus’s 40-days in the desert (see the accounts in Matthew, Mark, and Luke).

Ashes are used throughout the Bible, and I’ve listed passages under various categories:

A Biblical sign of mourning, grief, and repentance: Job 42:3-6; Jeremiah 6:26; Ezekiel 27:3; Esther 4:1-3; Job 2:8; Psalm 102:9; Daniel 9:3

A sign of shame and mourning (placed on the head): 2 Samuel 13:19

A sign of punishment for disobeying God: Exodus 9:8-9: God commanded Moses and Aaron to take ashes from a furnace and toss them in the air, which would then become fine dust and spread throughout Egypt, resulting in the plague of boils.

The result of the burnt offering: Leviticus 1:9-17.  Such an offering is a “fine aroma pleasing to the Lord;” Leviticus 4:12; Leviticus 6:10-11

As a cleansing agent: Numbers 19:1-9 [see Hebrews 9:13]

An emblem of our own humility, showing we know what we are before God: Genesis 18:27: Abraham answered, "See now, I have taken it on myself to speak to the Lord, who am but dust and ashes;” Job 30:19; Job 13:12; Isaiah 58:5 (the point of this verse is that ceremonial fasting and laying in ashes is pointless without character change); Daniel 9:3.

New Testament:

Matthew 11:21 [Luke 10:13]; Hebrews 9:13: Ashes are a cleansing agent; Peter 2:6

Christians the world over in various denominations remind themselves of biblical teaching and their heritage through this ceremony.  We can appreciate them.

Vitally Vital News for the First Baptist Church of Meriden, a vital scene

An Announcement That Pulsates With Vitality:

The first announcement here is vitally important because it’s vital, so vital that it’s … well, vitally important (?). The other announcements are merely important. They are simple “must reads” as opposed to rock-the-earth reads.

The First Announcement – the one that’s vitally important:

David Bryant

We are compiling signatures for the Iron Sharpens Iron conference, to be held on March 19 at the First Cathedral in Bloomfield. We need to know who is going so we can purchase the tickets at the group rate, which adds up to $39 per individual, by this upcoming Sunday (March 6). We’ve taken measures to assure that all men can come (this is a men’s conference) – whether they have the money or not. Do not allow the price to chase you away.

Voddie Baucham

Iron Sharpens Iron is an annual men’s conference – which I said already – and is held in cities and towns across the land. This year’s gathering features David Bryant, who has played a key role in launching a world-wide prayer movement, and Voddie Baucham, a Christian apologist and pastor. There are plenty of smaller sessions as well.

Please e-mail me and tell me you plan on going: charlesredfern@hotmail.com. It’s vitally important that you do so.

The merely important announcements:


For Sunday:


Deeper learning (otherwise known as Adult Sunday School):

We’ll be talking about the miracles of Jesus in our on-going survey of the New Testament before the 11 a.m. service. We gather at 9:45 a.m. in the room with the comfy chairs (otherwise known as the lounge)

The Service:

Remember that it’s Communion Sunday. We’re slated to sing the following hymns: 69, 92, 284, and 560.

The Sermon:


We’ll sew up our series on the Kingdom of God with a talk on Parable of the Sower, which could just as easily be called the “Parable of the Soils,” in Matthew 13:1-9 (see the parallel accounts in Mark 4:1-9 and Luke 8:4-8).

Into The Future

Spaghetti Night: We’ll be holding a fun night in April for the missions trip, which is slated for late June in Savannah, Georgia; there will be a church-wide retreat October 13-14. Much more will be discussed in future posts concerning this. Suffice it to say that we’re encouraging people to read The Celtic Way of Evangelism by George Hunter, and Organic Community: Creating A Place Where People Naturally Connect, by Joseph R. Myers.

Do we see curses as blessings and blessings as curses?

Wilt in the desert while strolling through a meadow; feel drought in the lake; bear tedium while riding the wild surf. NASCAR is snail-paced. The ocean is too wet and there’s lint in my mansion and I can’t dig a ditch because gold clogs the ground …

It happens. We sign covenants with disillusionment, blinding ourselves to eventual blessings and mocking them when the blinders fall. We cuddle ourselves into the curse of unanswered prayer and cling to it when our wishes are finally granted. One example: Zechariah, a priest and father of John the Baptist, the sympathetic figure of whom we read every Christmas season in Luke 1:5-25.

The text challenges me: Am I like him? If so, how can I change?

The Curse

I find odd comfort in verses 5-6: The best fall prey to this ailment. Both Zechariah and his wife, Elizabeth, are “upright” and ever obedient, which must have intensified their dismay: Elizabeth’s barrenness brought cultural shame because God was supposedly punishing her. I can hear her mental barrage: “I’m honorable, I think … I’m decent, probably … I’m honest, or so I try … But did I unknowingly trip over the unforgivable sin?” And the interrogating cerebral committee must have cackled over Zechariah: “Who says your wife is pristine? Does she really do laundry at the river?”

Yet he stuck with her even when the rabbis said he could file for divorce (see the Babylonian Talmud, Ketthuboth 77a). What a guy. Really. He was a lemme-fix-your-muffler-at-my-own-expense guy. Even agnostics would drop in a prayer: “Give him a break, God – or, better yet, a kid.”

Prayer Fulfilled

The blessings began unfolding in verse 9: He was chosen by lot to burn incense in the Holy Place, the outer half of the temple’s inner sanctuary. This was a once-in-a-lifetime moment, a veritable priestly Superbowl, a ceremony few performed. Hint-hint, Zechariah: you are not cursed. Another blessing comes in verse 11: “An angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense,” the first of 23 angelic visitations in Luke’s Gospel. Later verses reveal this is Gabriel, a mammoth whose name means “man of strength” and before whom Daniel cowered (see 8:17).

Goodbye to babies with wings.

Still another comes in the latter half of verse 13. Gabriel proclaims God’s deliverance: “Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John (meaning, “God’s gracious gift”). Elizabeth stands in the heritage of Sarah, Rebecca, and Hannah – special women bearing special children for special times. Many will rejoice; he will never drink (a promise for which many modern mothers long); he’ll be filled with the Holy Spirit from birth; he’ll bring many to the Lord; he’ll minister in the spirit and power of Elijah as he prepares the path for the Lord. Hunt down the best Cuban cigars, Zechariah, because you and Elizabeth will raise one of the most important babies of all time. No doubt he’ll be a handful, but we’re glad to help as long as we can hand him back when he howls.

But Zechariah couldn’t handle the blessing: there’s drought in the lake and the surf is boring and the NASCARs are slow and the ocean is wet and there’s lint in my mansion and I can’t earn my paycheck in my ditch-digging job with all this gold in the ground! What gives? What’s a salt-of-the-earth kind-a guy to do?

The priest requests a sign (verse 18): “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”

Gabriel becomes even more non-babyish. Maybe he muttered: “Hel-lo! I’m an angel. And you’re in the Temple, the scene of divine revelation. And I’ve just give you three signs. And now you want a fourth? Fine: You won’t talk for nine months. Not a word.”

Zechariah is silenced.

Who, me?

He is not alone, of course. Many see the drought in the lake and the boring surf and the slow NASCARs and the wet oceans and the lint-filled mansions and the gold-clogged earth hassling our ditch-digging jobs. Our life-long curses become our friends, our warm blankets, our familiar teddy bears; they enwrap us. We don’t know we’ve abandoned our prayers even as we’ve mouthed them. Perhaps Zechariah was accustomed to a neat house with no temperamental rug-rats destined to assail the complacent (“You brood of vipers!”) and shout down kings. He reminds me of one muffled family: a father, who had withheld his affection for years, saw his errors and began kissing his wife and buying her flowers. She was enraged. She viewed herself as the prototypical martyr. She pulled out every trick from her bag of passive resistance to fend off the affection. Needless to say, the kisses and flowers were soon gone and the curse’s warm blanket returned. It was back to normal: Two people merely living in the same house.

Entire communities fall prey, including businesses: If only we were innovative; if only we ran like start-ups … if … but … might … maybe … If truth were told, we run innovators through gauntlets of passive resistance and inertia leading to exit signs – and don’t even mention those pastor-chewing churches soaked in fatalism masquerading as faith – especially the one packed with CEO’s and artists that smoked with potential creativity – except “bad things” plagued its past, and “the past” reared its ugly ghost at every idea. The church languished under the curse’s blanket.

Welcome to the good life

How do we avoid this trap?

I’m sure the answer is complex, but a starting point comes with Luke 1:26-38. Gabriel delivers the shocking news to Mary: She’s pregnant despite her virginity. God’s “blessing” could have prompted Joseph’s accusation and a village-sponsored stoning. She was in a mess – and yet, after a reasonable question, she declared, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.” Mary said yes to the mess that blessings inevitably bring. Her mess would include the vagaries of raising God incarnate (no tips from us on that one, Mary; good luck to you), the mystery of Christ’s ministry and the crucifixion’s grief. She said yes to the mess – and, because of that, she said yes to the resurrection, yes to the Day of Pentecost, and yes to the world’s largest religion in our time.

Curses can be neat. Blessings can be messy.

And that means we face a choice: Will we allow God to fling off curse’s warm blanket? Will we bear our own shivering as we become accustomed to a lifestyle of blessing?

It takes time. We’ll long to reach for the blanket. But we’ll soon find that our comfortable curses were smothering us. We’ll breathe again. We’ll feel the new energy. We’ll be wide awake again, no longer semi-sleep walking. We’ll love adventure and relish risk-taking. We’ll sing praises like Zechariah eventually did at his son’s birth (it all had a happy ending). We’ll swim in the lake, surf the waves, cheer at NASCAR, soak in the ocean, scoff at the lint, and mine the gold. No more ditch-digging curses for us.

And we’ll wish everyone a merry Christmas.

Why Did He Do It?

A friend sent me this. I'm posting it while honoring her request for anonymity.

A happy Christmas season to you all.

I was just thinking the other day, why did He do it? Why did the Son of God go through being born here? And then I thought. . .

Imagine Heaven. A place brimming over with goodness, rightness, satisfaction. Not a pain or an anxiety to be found anywhere. Nobody mad at anybody else. Everybody knows who they are, and why they are alive; and they are so, so glad about it.

Now think about earth. Think about the worry, the fear, the injustice that characterize the human condition. Think about the fact that even the most well-meaning human actions often result in misunderstanding and conflict. Whenever someone does manage to do or say something noble, caring and redemptive, it gets swallowed up the next minute by gossip, selfishness and ill will.

Now think about God. Why, why would God the Son choose to spend 33 years here, given His heavenly alternative?

There is only one answer, really. He did it for love. He did it exactly because we ARE here. Coming here was the only way He could take us back with Him to His own home. He came to save us from our sins and from ourselves, and to end our isolation from Him. And that is what He did - and it’s what He is still doing.