My Light and My Salvation

“There is no greater cowardice than a criminal who enters a house of God and slaughters innocent people engaged in the study of Scripture.”  This was from a statement made by NAACP President Cornell Brooks.  

Predictable as always, the country is now engaged in a debate over what kind of hate crime the attacks were on Wednesday in Charleston.  Were they motivated by race or religion?  Why does it matter?  

On Wednesday evening a young man entered Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, shot and killed the pastor and 8 other people who were engaged in a bible study and prayer meeting, human beings who had come seeking the shelter of the Lord, “and to inquire in his temple,” as the Psalmist says.  

Our psalm for today is a bit more hopeful than last week’s psalm 69, this is a psalm written during a time of crisis, but it is not a crisis of faith or a cry to a God who may or may not even be listening, it is a psalm of trust.

“I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!” he says.  And so he comes into the Temple, the house of the Lord, to find God.  The place of meeting in a church is called a sanctuary for a very specific reason.  It is a place of refuge, it is a place to come and find rest, to gain strength for the journey of life.  It is a place to meet God, a place to worship and celebrate our faith, and to welcome all who seek newness of life.  

It has also become a target.  Personally, I believe that Wednesday’s shooting was not about either race or religion...it was about both.  What more of an unsuspecting, naively trusting group of people are you going to find than in a church sanctuary during a Bible study or a church service?  

I don’t say that to scare anyone, but the truth is often frightening.  I say this, actually for a different reason?  Where do we go to find God?  Is God really in this building?  Of course He is, but this is not the only place to find him.  

Jesus said, “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret (Mt. 6:6).”  Now Jesus wasn’t encouraging anyone to skip church, but in the Jewish religion, God’s house was the tabernacle, later the Temple.  He literally resided in the place where the ark of the covenant was kept, and only the priest could open the curtain and enter into that Most Holy Place.  Only the priest could actually enter into the very presence of the living God.  

And so as King David wrote this psalm, that is where he was going, whether physically or, more likely, in his mind, he was entering the Temple, he was going into the very House of God, a little piece of heaven on earth.  The temple was like an embassy for heaven.  When a government sets up an embassy in a foreign country, they actually purchase the ground that it sits on, so if were to visit the U.S. Embassy in another country, we would actually be on U.S. soil.

That was what the temple was to the Jews.  That was where David was looking to for his place of refuge.  And the enemies of Israel, they were terrified of it.  The Old Testament histories recall the Israelites actually carrying the ark of the covenant into battle with them, and Israel’s enemies shook with fear, because they knew that the Lord of Israel himself was leading those men into battle against them.  

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”  said David, and in another psalm (118:6) it says, “the Lord is on my side; I will not fear.  What can man do to me?”

David knew full well what man can do to us.  He spent a good chunk of his life running for his life, yet he writes, with hopefulness and trust, “though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident.”  

A Christian new commentator wrote about the shooting on Wednesday, and pointed out that whenever God is at work, Satan is at work too.  Between 2003 and 2010, terrorist attacks against Christians escalated by 309%!!  In the past fifteen years, more Muslims have converted to Christianity than in the past fifteen centuries, and look at what Satan is doing with groups like ISIS and al Qaeda.  

In China, much of the church has been forced underground, to meet in secret, because the government is shutting down and destroying churches all over, yet the Christian movement in China is growing more rapidly and gaining more strength than their government can handle.  

And when Jesus finally gained national attention and fame, what did Satan do but turn his own disciple, Judas, against him.  

Rabbi Gamaliel, a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council, said to his colleagues, “leave them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail;  but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them (Acts 5:38b-39)!”  

In the world of King David, the people needed symbols, they needed arks and tabernacles and temples in order to assure them of the presence of the Lord in their midst, but when David wrote these words, “He will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent (or tabernacle),” he didn’t mean that he was going to hide out inside the temple as the disciples did after Jesus was resurrected from the dead, cowering in fear behind locked doors, waiting for their enemies to come and find them.  

No, where does David go to find his refuge and shelter?  Where do we go to seek sanctuary and rest?  We go to the Lord.  

The congregation of Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston have experienced persecution before.  In 1822 that church was burned to the ground, and the people were forced to worship in secret until after the Civil War.  Today the church is without its pastor, but they will continue to enter the sanctuary of the Lord, because our sanctuary is not a place that can be taken from us by a man with a gun.  Amen.

Feeding 5,000: A Sermon on Mt. 14.13-33

John the Baptist has just been put to death by King Herod Antipas, the son of King Herod the Great, who was king when Jesus was born.  John had been preaching against the immorality of Herod’s marriage to his half-brother’s wife Herodias.  Both of them had divorced their spouses and married each other.  John the Baptist spoke against that, and Herodias asked her new husband for his head, and the story goes that he presented it to her on a platter.  

John’s disciples buried him, and went and told Jesus about it, and immediately afterward the gospel narrative reads that Jesus, who had been preaching in Nazareth, withdrew from there and went off to be alone.  John the Baptist was Jesus’ cousin, he was and evangelist for Christ, a herald of the Messiah.  Some believed that he was the reincarnation of the Prophet Elijah, and for preaching the truth, he was put to death.

It’s understandable that Jesus needed time to grieve, but he was not given that opportunity.  His intent was to be alone, but crowds of people followed him.  However, instead of getting back into his boat and shoving off again in order to find the much-needed rest that escapes him, Jesus “had compassion on them and healed their sick,” says the text.

Jesus returned to his ministry of compassion, even in the midst of his own grief and loss.  

Now, I think that we can read too much into this text.  After all, this is Jesus we are talking about, it’s not a metaphor or an analogy about how we ought to put everyone else ahead of us all the time.  As Christians, there will always be times when we need to set aside our own worries and respond to the needs of others, but there are also times when “life” just needs to be put on hold for a while and we need to run to Jesus and be fed by him.  

But this story is about us as well.  Maybe you are one of the 5,000 who comes to Jesus to be fed, or maybe you are one of the disciples, trying to do what is right by Him.  Either way, the need was somewhat the same.

What happened when evening came and the people had been with Jesus throughout the day?  As the disciples observed, there was nothing for the people to eat, and nowhere for them to stay.  And so they suggested that Jesus disperse the crowds so that they could see to their needs.  But Jesus said to them, “You give them something to eat.”

Jesus is tired, he has received terrible news about John the Baptist, was denied a chance to grieve, and pursued by crowds of people, all of whom had very real and immediate needs that he could not ignore.  And now they have another need, but now Jesus delegates.  

“You give them something to eat.  You feed them.”  Do we expect to only sit around while Jesus does all the work?  Do we just go to church to be filled and then go home again without any intention of actually doing the things that we hear just commanding us to do when we are at church?  Why are we disciples at all, if not to learn to become apostles, ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, servants who reach out to bring Christ to the world around us?  

Now is the time to put faith into action, now is the time to feed the hungry with the same word that has fed us.  “You give them something to eat,” says Jesus.

But Jesus, the disciples said to him, “we have only five loaves and two fish.”  Basically what they are saying is that they have nothing.  How can we feed so many people with so little?  That’s the problem of ministry.  We really don’t have much to give.  We have nothing.  How can I, who have nothing worth bringing, possibly make a difference in a world that needs so much?  How can I feed a world that is hungry for the truth, hungry for the gospel, when I am still hungry myself?  

This is the point where much of the so-called hope that the world offers us begins to fail.  Food runs out, it fails to satisfy.  

But Jesus does something very different.  He says to his disciples, “Bring them here to me.”  Bring me your five loaves of bread and two fish, bring me your inadequacy, bring me your nothingness, and through it, I will feed the hungry.  Of course the disciples cannot do what it is that Jesus expects of them, but Jesus takes their nothing and transforms it, he makes something out of nothing.  

This is what God does for us.  In the beginning, there was nothing, and God spoke and the whole universe came into being.  He created us out of nothing, and without Him we are nothing.  Jesus Christ gives us substance, he gives us meaning, and only He can fill us when there is nothing else.  But He does it through our ministry to one another.  

Consider the second story.  Again Jesus attempts to withdraw.  He sends his disciples back across the Sea of Galilee while he disperses the crowd and hopes to get some time to himself.  Again that doesn’t happen.  A storm picks up, and the disciples are stranded in the middle of the sea.  Jesus walks out to them, to give them hope, to give them courage and strength.  

And at first, they react out of fear, then Peter jumps out of the boat with a sort of reckless faith that isn’t really faith at all, and finally, as he is sinking into the water, probably terrified out of his mind and feeling like a complete fool because of what he has gotten himself into, Peter calls out to Jesus, “Lord save me.”  

Immediately, Jesus reaches out his hand and took ahold of Peter.  The disciples had nothing, Peter had nothing, not as it compared to the enormity of the troubles that were facing them.  They could not face the storm alone.  Peter could not walk on water!  They had nothing to bring, nothing to give.  

So often in life, we forget that we are not alone, we forget to cry out to Jesus, “Lord save me!  Lord I don’t have enough to give, not if I want to make any sort of difference.  There is no way that I can do this on my own.”  But we are not alone, ultimately of course, it is Jesus who feeds the hungry, it is Jesus who calms the storms that threaten to overwhelm us and destroy us.  

Jesus takes our nothingness, he takes our brokenness, and He transforms it.  Sometimes we just need to hold on to Him in order to keep from drowning, and sometimes we are faced with 5,000 people who have no food to eat, and they are looking to us to feed them.  

What do we have to save us, what do we have to give?  Not nothing.  We have Jesus Christ.  We are not alone, we do not have to go away hungry.  We do not have to fight the storms on our own.  But we do need to cry out, “Lord, save me!”  in order to remember that He is already here, offering us His hand.  

I love how Jesus has this way of both scolding Peter for his lack of faith, and also encouraging him at the same time.  He allows Peter, and the disciples, to grasp the impossibility of the situations that they are in, and in so doing they learn the lesson that they need to learn, but He does it lovingly, without snapping at them, “Well, you should’ve known that in the first place!”  

Jesus never gives up on us.  May we never give up on ourselves.  In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.