CCC Blog

“The Gospel Embodied”

This weekend we wrapped up our sermon series “The Great Exchange” based on stories in John 20.  After Jesus’ resurrection, he appeared to his followers in different ways.  We spent a week each on the figures of Peter, John, Mary Magdalene, the disciples (as a group) and the disciple Thomas (in particular). Ultimately, we noted that John closes his gospel by commenting that Jesus did “many other things” that are not contained in this book (the gospel / bible)  because no book in the world could hold everything Jesus did and said were indeed everything recorded.

It is true, and something we often experience at a funeral service.  After family and friends come forward to speak words of eulogy for the deceased, I will often say something to the effect that “even if we stayed here all day and night, we wouldn’t have enough time to convey what this person meant to us.”  How do we accurately report what our dearest loved ones mean to us?  How do we accurately report the full weight of Jesus’ life on earth?  We don’t.  We can’t.  Which means that we don’t know everything Jesus said and did and will always have unanswered questions to the historical life he lived.  But what is recorded in scripture is enough to believe. 

My mother’s role in my life is a living illustration of this truth for me.  From an early age, I found it much easier to open up to mom.  I loved my dad and knew he loved me.  But he wasn’t overly warm and didn’t always express emotions of compassion very easily.  But mom???  She was warmth personified.  Mom was a “hugger” – not afraid to be physical like that.  And every time I left the house, whether it was for long trip or a day or evening out, mom would drop whatever she was doing, walk to the front door, and hold my cheeks in her face, smile, and whisper to me “be careful.”  Even today, as I near the age of 50, before she hangs up at the end of phone conversation, mom will say in hushed tones, “Slow down and get your rest.”  When I reached the high school and college years and asked my parents for advice about possible summer jobs, my mom  was always a proponent of “do-what-you-love-the-money-will-follow.”  She wanted me to find work that would bring me happiness, regardless of how much it paid.  My father, on the other hand, was of the “how-will-you-pay-for-it?” school of thought.  He consistently reminded me of the reality that there is a cost to everything in life.   When it came to sharing, I wasn’t necessarily afraid to open up to my dad, but I honestly looked forward to sharing my insecurities and vulnerabilities with mom.

I don’t intend to make my mother out to be a saint.  She and I are both too  honest for that kind of implication.  There were many times when she didn’t have the answers I was looking for.  Or when she couldn’t offer explanations that would have been helpful.  But I have never doubted her love for me.  And in the last analysis isn’t that a personification of John’s Gospel?  For God so loved the world…  Love is the essence of the Gospel.  Communicating love is essential.  Having unlimited answers and explanations is not.  Which is why John reminds us that there were “many other things” Jesus did which are not written down.  To remind us that there will always be empty spaces that our answers and explanations can’t fill.  But everything John gave us in his 21 chapters on Jesus’ life is enough: enough to generate faith in us.  Similarly, all the love my mom has shown me – and continues to show me – is enough to embody the spirit of the Gospel and sustain that faith in me. 

Blessings – Michael

“Seeing is Believing”

But Thomas … one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came …  he said, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails… I will not believe.”                                                                                                                                    John 20:24-25

It was exactly one week after Easter in 2007 or 2008. We were living in Baton Rouge at the time. It was a glorious afternoon in early spring and after worship I decided to go for a run. I had just turned onto Hagerstown from Stones River (all the streets in our subdivision were named for Civil War battle sites) when I stepped on a nail. I didn’t see it, but didn’t need to. I felt it.  It was a biggie,  penetrating the heel of my shoe all the way into my skin. I certainly didn’t need to go to the hospital but the nail had punctured the skin and left a decent-sized blood stain on my sock. I had to call off the run and hobble home. I limped in the door to find Amy and Thomas in the living room. “You’ll never guess what happened to me,” I said and proceeded to tell them about my injury. My son looked up from the page he was coloring (he was about 5 or 6 at the time) and said with great boldness, “No way, dad.  I don’t believe you. I won’t believe you unless you show me the nail mark in your foot first.” Did I mention his name is Thomas?

A week (after the resurrection) … Thomas was with them … and Jesus came and stood among them and said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my   hands …”

John 20:26-27

 The Disciple Thomas will be our focus in worship this week. Unfortunately, he’s remembered for the name “Doubting Thomas,” as this one event in his life has determined the way history views him. But his skepticism represents a fundamental theme in the Gospel of John — Believing without seeing. Not   everyone, after all, would (or will) have an experience with the risen Jesus Christ in the flesh as the disciples did. In that sense, the story of Thomas asking to see the nail marks is designed to move us to v. 29 of chapter 20. Jesus said, “Have you believed because you have seen me (Thomas)?  Blessed are those who have not seen, yet have come to believe.”

Doubt and skepticism are things we experience because we are human. Even the popular phrase, “Trust but verify,” is a bit of an oxymoronic homage to doubt and skepticism (after all, can you really trust if you have to verify first?).  And yet as Thomas shows us faith does emerge from skepticism. Untold billions have come to follow the path of Christ over a span of two millennia without having “seen” the risen Christ. We will spend the sermon time this week considering how faith emerges from doubt. I invite you to think of times in your life when you have been skeptical, but God gave you faith in the midst of it (maybe it was a financial situation you came through; or a health situation; or something else). Some situations are admittedly easier to find trust in the midst of than others, but God desires our faith to be strengthened through them all – and not be dependent on concrete and tangible realities for its existence.   

  Blessings – Michael

“A-Ha Moments”

In our scripture last Sunday (John 20:1-10), one of Jesus’ disciples had a profound “A-Ha” moment. He’s officially called the “Other Disciple” (as compared to Peter), or “the Beloved Disciple” (because he’s known as the “one whom Jesus loved”). Tradition claims that he is John the author of the Gospel and that’s how we referred to him in the sermon.  When he arrived at the tomb on the first Easter, entered the tomb and saw the stone rolled away and linen wrappings on the ground, he “sees and believes.” At that moment, everything that Jesus had done and said came back to him and a light of faith turned on within him. “A-Ha,” he realized, “I get it now.”  He didn’t yet understand the full extent of the resurrection, but faith changed him. 

As it so happens, I finished a book this past Saturday called “The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South.” It’s the true story of a former Grand Cyclops of the KKK and an African-American female neighborhood organizer working together on a school desegregation project in Durham, NC, in the early 1970s. From this work developed an enduring friendship such that when CP Ellis died in 2005, Ann Atwater was the only     non-family member to attend the funeral. Ellis, the former Grand Cyclops, had an “A-Ha” moment through his interactions with Atwater. But author Osha Gray Davidson writes this about it: “The single unifying element in the history of transformations in the West, (such as) Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus … is the instantaneousness of the process … the psychological equivalent of a lightning strike…” This was not Ellis’ experience.  Just because he had discovered a commonality of experience between himself and Atwater didn’t mean he would immediately leave the Klan and join the NAACP. But still, it is no  exaggeration to say that C.P. had been profoundly moved by the experience and even changed by it – although he could not have said how. Perhaps the best way of putting it is to say that a door previously unknown to C.P. had been opened. 

Ellis’ “A-ha” moment was not sudden change, but more like a slow, meandering journey of transformation and it echoed in my mind as I heard Jodie Walwer’s testimony in worship on Sunday.  She described part of her life story, reflecting honestly on a state of discontentment she was experiencing several years ago; how this led to continual prayer about her situation but the realization that no sudden lights or “neon signs” were given in return; yet how God guided her to a conversation with a career counselor and how that one conversation began a long and slow – but steady – path toward career change, and ultimate hope from an initial place of despair. 

 God moves in each of our lives in different ways.  Sometimes they are with   sudden lightning flashes or in single moments of new perspective and  understanding.  And sometimes they are in ways that shape and refine us over days, weeks, months and possibly years.  As you reflect on your own life story, how has God worked in your life to create transformation within you?  How has the process of coming to “A-Ha” unfolded in your life?      

Blessings – Michael

Congratulations Ashely and Alex Sparks!!!

We celebrate with our administrative assistant Ashely and her husband Alex on the arrival of Baby Faye into their (and our)  family. Faye Lorraine Sparks was born on April 20. We wish Ashely well in the remainder of her maternity leave and look forward to meeting Faye in person in the near future.