Special Note
The weekend of February 8-10, our church will engage in a week of reflection and study called, “First Things.”  Dr. Jim Baucom, pastor of the Rivermont Avenue Baptist Church in Lynchburg, VA, will be our guest facilitator.  Rivermont is a church very similar to Cliff Temple.  For years it was a declining congregation in a transitional inner-city neighborhood.  Under Jim’s leadership, the church has reclaimed its identity and embraced a new dream for its future.

The purpose of “First Things” will be to create a process by which our church defines the non-negotiable core values upon which we can all agree as essential to our church’s life and out of which we will do our ministry.  These “values” will be intended to help us redefine our mission and give unified focus and purpose to all that we do.

This sermon is the third in a series intended to provide the necessary focus in preparation for February 8-10.  Much of what is said in these sermons will assume what is only being communicated orally in our worship services at Cliff Temple.  The purpose of this special note was to provide a better context for understanding the sermon.

Thank you.

Someone once asked an old black preacher, “What do you pray for when you’re ninety-two?”  The old man thought for a moment and then said, “I pray for three things.  I pray that my body won’t outlive my mind.  I pray that I won’t outlive my mourners.  And, I pray that I won’t drown in shallow waters.”  When Jesus got table-turning angry in the Temple that day he wasn’t just bent out of shape because they weren’t singing his favorite music or because the preaching was a little off.  Jesus was concerned that these folks were in danger of drowning in shallow waters.  This is supposed to be “‘a house of prayer,’” he said, “‘but you are making it a den of robbers.’” 

In that day, before Christ’s death and resurrection made it unnecessary, faithful people went to the Temple in Jerusalem to make animal sacrifices for their sins; they traveled from all over, mostly on foot.  A whole industry of making religion more convenient and accessible had grown up around accommodating these travelers.  With merchants and moneychangers on hand, folks could exchange their foreign currency for local and purchase the animal they needed for sacrifice on the spot.  In the beginning, this whole system probably worked well.  But, over time, more than money had been exchanged.  Holy values had been exchanged for more shallow ones, too.  By the time Jesus walked into the Temple, what had been meant as a means to a holier end had become an institutionalized end in itself.  Process had supplanted purpose.  Money changers were charging exorbitant rates and folks were being taken advantage of by those who knew how to work the system.  God’s house was being overrun by for-profit religious entrepreneurs.  Jesus saw it for what it was and said, “Enough!  This is supposed to be “‘a house of prayer,’” he said, where people meet God.

A house of prayer, Jesus said.  God’s house.  People praying.  People listening to God and talking to him, hopefully in that order, and making meaningful, personal connection with their heavenly Father.  That’s what our heavenly Father’s house was meant to be.  Anything less, Jesus said, is shallow, just deep enough to drown sincere people in the illusion that they are practicing faith. 

I’ve often wished for that kind of clarity.  In more ways than they could know, these folks were blessed that day when Jesus drew a clear line of distinction between what was deep and holy and what was shallow and empty.  Don’t you sometimes wish that Jesus would crash our party and show us that line? 

I’m reminded of the little nine-year-old little leaguer who had just whacked the ball at home plate enough to make for at least a double.  He’d started for first base where I was standing, acting like I knew something about coaching.  He’d been told to just follow the line from one base to the next.  But, over the course of the game, the chalk had been worked into the dirt by dozens of little feet so that it was now hardly distinguishable.  Still, you’d think that even a nine-year-old would know enough to run from home to first and then to second.  Everyone knows the basic rules, right?  But, not this kid.  He needed lines, clear ones.  And, there weren’t any.  So, when he got to first, he just kept running, straight out into right field.  I yelled, “Go to second!”  But, by this time, he was literally running around in circles in right field, staring at the ground like a chicken looking for a piece of corn.  I yelled again, “Go to second!”  He turned around and yelled at me, “Where’s the line?” 

We know how he feels, don’t we?  Lost, sometimes, because the line between what is clearly right and clearly wrong has been trampled and blurred with people yelling at us trying to tell us which way to go only adding to the confusion.  The lines seem pretty clear between right and wrong on some things.  To murder or not to murder, that’s not the question.  To commit adultery or not, that’s not the question either.  That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re not going to step across those lines.  It just means that with those things that are clearly immoral, we rarely break the rules because we don’t know them.  But, this thing called church gets tricky.  Where’s the clear line of distinction between show and substance?  Between depth and shallowness?  Between what we should do because this is God’s house and what we do simply because, well, that’s the way we’ve always done it, even though no one can really recall why anymore.  Those are the lines that give me trouble.  How about you?

We’re not the first ones to struggle with all of this.  It started early on, even in the church.  In fact, the very first church business meeting was called to answer a question about where the line between substance and shallowness fell.  It seems rather simple to us now, but not then.  Acts 15 tells of some Jews who had become Christians telling Gentiles that, if they wanted to become Christians too, they had to first become Jews.  They had to get circumcised.  In a way, that makes sense, if you think about it.  Maybe all these Jewish men wanted to know was that it was at least as painful for others to become believers as it had been for them!  But, the apostles knew better and all got together in Jerusalem to discuss the matter.  And, here’s what they decided.  They decided that anything that stood between any person and Jesus, that kept them from simple, saving faith, was shallow and dispensable.  Even then, they didn’t get it exactly right.  They still had some hang-ups about eating habits and such.  But, at least they ended closer to the truth than where they started.  James summed it up this way, “‘we should not make it difficult for (anyone) who (is) turning to God (Acts 15:19, NIV).’”  Even now, churches thrive best when they are willing to do no more than just remove man-made barriers to growth, barriers that hinder people from just making meaningful connection with God.

A good example.  We require people who want to join this church to walk the aisle of this church during a morning worship service in front of several hundred total strangers.  I understand why we do that.  It’s just that there is nothing in scripture that requires it.  And, for many in this culture, it is a man-made barrier.

Another old preacher tells about the first church he served as pastor, a church that eventually died.  It was in a rural place near Oak Ridge, Tennessee where, during World War II, the government built a nuclear research laboratory essential to the development of the first atomic bomb.  It turned the place into a boomtown overnight.  People were moving in from all over and living anywhere they could put up a tent.  The preacher’s church was 112 twelve years old, beautiful white frame.  He asked the folks to consider reaching out to all these newcomers but met resistance.  The new folks just wouldn’t fit in, someone said.  A business meeting was called and someone made a motion that, in order to be a member of the church, you had to own property in the county.  The pastor opposed it, but the motion passed.  Years later, he and his wife were back in that country and he wanted to show her that old church where that painful event took place.  It was hard to find.  An interstate had been built and the roads had changed.  But, eventually they found it.  Same white frame building and all.  But, this time, the sign outside read, “Barbecue, all you can eat.”  Organ and pews had been shoved aside to make room for aluminum tables.  Money changers and animal sacrifice in what was once God’s house.  The old preacher said he couldn’t help but notice that the place was just full of all kinds of people eating barbecue.  He told his wife, “‘It’s a good thing this is not still a church, otherwise, these people couldn’t be in here.’”  (Fred Craddock, Craddock Stories, Chalice Press, 2001, pp. 28-29)

When Jesus cleansed the Temple, all he was demanding was that the things that were barriers to the Temple’s true purpose be removed so that the people could meet God.  A line had been crossed.  Shallowness had replaced substance.  People who needed God were being robbed instead by those who thought they were serving God.  It took a lot of courage for Jesus to question what had become institutionalized as true religion but was actually nothing more than shallow water.  People were drowning. 

It takes courage, moral courage, to step back from our institutionalized religious practices and ask about substance vs. shallowness.  Especially if it’s the place where we’ve worshipped and served, maybe for decades.  February 8-10, we’re going to be asked to step back and take an honest look at ourselves through the eyes of our Father who owns this house and keeps trying to remind us that relationships are sacred, systems never are.  Through the eyes of a Father who loves his church too much to ever allow her the fatal luxury of believing that just looking like a church means you are one.

At a forum this past week hosted by the Interfaith Coalition Against Domestic Abuse I heard a chilling and sad story about a widow.  Every Sunday she met her family for lunch after church.  Well-dressed, nice car.  But, as they became increasingly concerned about her mental condition they insisted on going to her home. They were horrified by what they found.  Though she still had enough mental acumen to keep everyone outside impressed that she was OK, inside her house she was living in absolute squalor and indescribable filth.  Even her well-tended yard masked the poverty-like reality of her day-to-day life.  That story should not only remind us of the importance of checking on the real condition of our elderly relatives and neighbors.  It also ought to remind us of how easy it is, Enron-like, to keep everyone on the outside impressed with how good we look when, on the inside, we’re living in the day-to-day squalor of spiritual bankruptcy. 

Jesus just wanted his Father’s house to be the place for which it had always been intended, a place where God’s family made meaningful connection, a house of prayer, he said.  It’s worthy of note that, as soon as Jesus cleansed the Temple, “The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them.”  Once the house was restored to its intended purpose, people made meaningful connection with God and lives were changed. 

We buried Pearl Price just this past summer, about a year after she’d become totally blind.  She was almost one-hundred-two years old.  About six months before she died, a man for whom she’d been praying for years stopped drinking.  This man had been lost in a bottle, every day, for decades.  And, Pearl had been lost in prayer.  Just as her outward form was decaying, her inward heart was crossing further and further into the depths of prayer most have never known.  Just before we buried her, he buried the bottle and his family is in the process of healing now.  Pearl’s house was a house of prayer, and people were brought to Jesus there, and healed.  I believe that.

We don’t always know where the line between substance and shallowness lies.  But, we can know when we’ve crossed it.  Just like at home, when we’re so busy making a living that no one is really living, no one is making meaningful connection.  So it is at church.  Maybe the single most telling factor in whether we’re busy in matters of substance or only treading shallow water is whether or not people are making meaningful connection with God and each other and lives are being changed.

One reason this church is not only still here but is still viable is because, over the years, you kept asking the hard questions.  And, answering them well.  Gracious and beautiful old buildings that once stood on this corner are gone now because this church came to new places where old buildings no longer served holier purposes.  Questions that some churches to this day won’t even dare discuss this church long ago asked and answered.  Over two decades ago this church ordained one of the first women in Southern Baptist history to the ministry.  This church had the courage to ask, from scripture, why it was that the only way a woman could become a minister of the gospel would be, Gentile-to-Jew-to-Christian-like, she’d have to become a man first, instead of just being truly Christian.  This church had the courage to stand back from religious orthodoxy and ask why.  We need that courage again.

Yet again, as the culture, the community and the world have changed with increasing rapidity, some of our structures and methods have not.  If we will continue for another century, even another decade, to be a community of faith that faithfully answers Jesus’ commission to call others to be his disciples and then nurture them when they say yes, we’re going to need courage to ask and answer hard, deep water, Temple-cleansing questions.

Maybe the old black preacher’s prayer can serve as a good guide for us.  His prayer that his body, his structure, his frame, wouldn’t outlive that part of him that thinks clearly and loves truly.  That he wouldn’t just survive so long that there wouldn’t be anyone left to even miss his passing.  That if he had to die drowning, at least the waters would be deep enough to be worthy of the struggle.  That my body won’t outlive my mind, that I won’t outlive my mourners and that I won’t drown in shallow waters, he prayed.  Not a bad prayer for an old man, at ninety-two.