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Outside the Gate
A sermon by Dr.
Jesse Fletcher
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Hebrews 13:11-16
It’s so good to be
back into Virginia. When I was coming in last night with my driver from Groome,
just the two of us coming through the long shadows of the evening which makes
this beautiful landscape such a special place. And then this morning: I like to
get out and greet the dawn and Venus has already assumed its role as morning
star and it was high enough to see over the trees and it was good to be back in
Virginia.
I realized when I first came here. The first trip was to
Fort Lee, as a young officer. In 1960 we moved here to join the Foreign Mission
Staff. And we bought a house just off of Skipwith, on a little street called
Green Gate. Our next door neighbors were Winston and Margaret Crawley with the
Foreign Mission Board. Some of you may remember them: Margaret, a very talented
musician, and Winston, a great missionary and administrator. But I didn’t know
the people on the other side. So, shortly, soon as I had an opportunity, I went
over to meet my neighbor. As I was visiting, I mentioned that I guess I was
having culture shock. He got very serious and looked at me and he said, “You
know I guess it would be shock for a Texan to meet culture for the first time.”
It’s sure fun to be back in the midst of culture again and this particular
environment.
The text this morning is found in the Book of Hebrews, and
I want to begin reading with the 10th verse of the 13th
chapter and again, using the lively translation called The Message.
“The altar from which God gives us the gift of himself is
not for exploitation for insiders who grab and loot. In the old system, the
animals are killed and the bodies disposed of outside the camp.” That goes all
the way back to the idea of the Jews in exile and on their pilgrimage. “The
blood is then brought inside to the altar as a sacrifice for sin. It’s the same
with Jesus. He was crucified outside the city gates. That is where he poured out
the sacrificial blood that was brought to God’s altar, to cleanse his people. So
let’s go outside, where Jesus is, where the action is. Not trying to be
privileged insiders but taking our share in the abuse of Jesus. This insider
world is not our home. We have our eyes peeled for the city about to come. Let’s
take our place outside with Jesus, no long pouring the sacrificial blood of
animals, but pouring out sacrificial praises from our lips to God in Jesus’
name. Make sure you don’t take things for granted and go slack in working for
the common good. Share what you have with others. God takes particular pleasure
in acts of worship, a different kind of sacrifice that takes place in kitchen
and workplace and on the streets.” May God add his blessing to the reading of
his Word.
When I went to Hardin Simmons University, time passed very
fast. After 14 years as president, and on the occasion of completing our
centennial and my sixtieth birthday, I decided it was time to retire. I’d
outlasted all but one of my predecessors, tenure-wise and so I had a new start.
Not without a lot to do. I’d been chancellor of the
university which means, of course, you have to chancel a lot. Also, I had been
named to a chair in the School of Theology and had been commissioned to write a
sesquicentennial history of the Southern Baptist Convention. So, I had plenty to
do and for the next few years it kept me busy and out of most trouble and off
the golf course—more than I wanted it to.
Then I decided it was time to retire again. But the
community decided that retired people are just not be tolerated around there and
so they made me president of the Chamber of Commerce—first preacher they’d ever
put in that role and I’m not sure that they haven’t seconded guessed themselves
a few times since them. But I was soon involved deep in the community and
because one of my first roles was to help us survive what was called a BRACC, a
Base Realignment and Closing Commission, which comes along and threatens
military instillation all over the country periodically. I spent the next few
years working to defend the Air Force Base and spent a lot of time at the
Pentagon and Langley—it did bring me back to Virginia now-and-then.
Soon I decided, well, I’d had enough of that. But before I
could retire again, I was hailed by one of my friends to see if I wouldn’t run
the Grace Museum for a year. I didn’t know anything about museums and we had
re-done this beautiful old building to house the museums of Abilene and they
named it the Grace Museum. They invited me to be interim director. The first
time I ever set foot in the place was as interim director. I learned a lot about
museums in a hurry. Pretty soon we had a director. He didn’t last very long and
I was interim director again. After that, they made me Chairman of the Board and
said, “Now raise us some money.” And so I was out and about doing that again.
And then I decided it was time to retire again.
Then I began to realize that one of the things we lacked in
Abilene was a psychiatric institution. Somebody very close to me had become
extremely depressed and jumped off a bridge in another state and survived the
fall, although an undetected broken vertebra in the neck was later to be a major
problem. In keeping with the law, they handcuffed this young lady and put her in
the back of a sheriff’s car for the two hour drive to the state hospital. That’s
still the procedure in most cities. If you look at it from law enforcement you
understand why. Many people they have to deal with have to be restrained. But
for me it was a great source of sorrow.
So, I began to work in Abilene to try get us a psychiatric
hospital. I’m proud to say a 28-bed hospital opened, that is now a 48-bed
hospital and is being joined to a national operation. And I decided it was time
to retire again.
But by then, I didn’t have to worry what I was going to do
next. With the help of this passage of scripture and experiences I’d had out in
the community during those years, I had a calling. I had a sense of what I was
to do. It started with this passage.
When I taught at Hardin Simmons my specialty was church
history. The Chair of Missions, which I held, had to teach one New Testament
course because we required that course for all courses of study. So I would
periodically be involved in teaching New Testament and invariably I would find
myself in a discussion over who wrote the Book of Hebrews. Because, while early
tradition was that Paul had, most scholarship had long since left that position.
Whether they were conservative scholarship or liberal scholarship—didn’t
matter—they didn’t think that Paul wrote. It wasn’t his language, it wasn’t his
syntax, wasn’t even his particular ideas. It seemed to be coming from another
direction for another reason.
I became convinced that the writer was Apollos.
Now some of you may remember this young man who appeared,
almost out of nowhere, in the New Testament Book of Acts. Then you see him again
in 1 Corinthians and two other letters before he disappears. When he was first
discovered, he was so erudite and so well trained. He had studied under Philo of
Alexandria before coming over into Asian Minor where he became a Christian and
began to minister. He was quickly a very bright light. In fact, in one place in
Corinthians he becomes a part of the big three and before he became a part of
it, it was only the big two. And that was Peter and Paul. Here is Paul in his
letter saying you don’t want to follow individuals, whether Peter or Apollos or
Paul.
The particular approach he had to the Old Testament, the
common allegorical approach which he applied then to the Christian experience,
became almost a dominant way for us to understand the Old Testament in light of
the New Covenant. And as you read it, you find yourself over and over again
thinking, “Yeah, isn’t that the way it always was?” Well, it was kind of new
thinking because before that most of the proofing of Christ as the Messiah came
from the fulfillment of certain passages, which the Gospel writers and others
would site. But in Apollos and the Book of Hebrews, you’ve got the whole
environment undergirded.
But that wasn’t really his point. He was addressing a major
problem that had developed in the early Christian community. You see in the
early days of Christianity, they flew under the aegis, so to speak, of Judaism.
Judaism, to the Romans, was a legal religion. In other words, they could
establish their synagogues, they could practice their faith, they could practice
it with the support and the protection of Rome. So, they were good citizens and
legal citizens. Christianity was seen as a kind of a sub-set of Judaism for a
long time because the earliest churches developed in the synagogues and around
Jewish enclaves and so it was associated with Judaism.
But, a little before the time of Nero and especially during
the time of Nero, Judaism and Christianity got separated and Christianity was
named “religeo-illegeta” - illegal religion. All of a sudden, Jewish members of
the synagogue who’d become Christians were realizing they were at risk out
there, they were in harm’s way out there, and they begin to retreat back into
the shelter of Judaism.
Apollos wrote his treatise to say, “Don’t do this. You’re
leaving something so much better for something so inferior.” This is not a
put-down of Judaism, but the whole Letter of Hebrews is trying to show the
superiority of Christ and his priesthood to any priesthood from which it had
grown.
Now, when it came to this particular passage, he’s making a
final metaphorical point. He uses the sacrifice of Jesus in analogy with the
sacrifices that used to be made to pour out blood on the altar of the temple.
Said, “They took Jesus outside the gate.” They crucified him there and his blood
was poured out there and that’s where the sacrifice was made for us. What he
wants is for us to make this kind of sacrifice to Jesus.
The more I got into that, the more I began to see it—not in
terms of ancient Judaism, not in terms of getting out of harm’s way, in terms of
just how acceptable my faith was or wasn’t, but that I was called to be out
there also.
I hadn’t gone out there planning to do that, but being out
there, I began to realize that we’re all called to be there, in Jesus’ name. I’d
found myself in the community, interfacing with people over and over again who
didn’t have any church ties, who didn’t know a minister and weren’t sure what to
do with one—and they became my congregation, they became the people I tried to
share my life with and my faith with. And I finally recognized in a special
moment of insight, a of wave of clarity, if you will, that this was my new
calling. I wasn’t pastor of a church, I wasn’t associated in the old way with
formal religious institutions, I still drew an awful lot of support from my
Sunday school class and I called my Sunday School teacher last night just to
remind him I was out here and I need their prayers. But my ministry is outside
the gate.
I don’t know of many churches that have better ministries
that you have. You are working in so many areas, doing so many things. But I
guarantee you they pale in number beside the ministry that this church ought to
be having day-by-day in the market place, in the home place, the schools, the
playgrounds, the social enterprises. It’s when we’re outside the camp that we
make our best sacrifices for Jesus.
Let’s look at those sacrifices just for a moment. There’re
three of them mentioned there. One is the sacrifice of praise. You say, “Well,
that doesn’t sound like much of a sacrifice.” Well, in one sense it is not. It’s
just that the sacrifice is unto God.
I was with a friend the other day and I said something
about coming up here to Richmond periodically. He said, “God bless you.” And I
said, “But I’m enjoying it.” And he said, “Well, praise be to the Lord.” I guess
that’s praise. Now that’s not the kind of praise I’m doing regularly, but the
praise I’m doing from my heart is the praise of thanksgiving, it’s the praise of
seeing and hearing and sensing what God is about in my life and in the lives of
the people I come in touch with, especially when I get the opportunity to do
something for them or to tune in or learn from them or listen to them. Then the
praise rises up and I find myself wanting to thank God.
It’s what I did last night watching the waxing, harvest
moon. It’s what I did this morning with the rising of the morning star. I
praised him. It’s what I did a few moments ago when I watched this very moving
baptism, I felt praise rising. It’s what I did when the three youngsters came
off the platform a moment ago and I found myself being so grateful for the kind
of ministry they brought here. But you know what, that kind of praise means
you’re going to be sensitive to things and, folks, it’s easy to be insensitive.
When we do, we’re passing up one of the major sacrifices we get to offer to God.
A few years ago when I didn’t have anything to do, I took
up art. It was to kind of balance the golf. Not only that, I knew a lady who
taught and she would let me come in there one day a week and she taught kind of
inductively—that is she gave you some paints and a canvas and she said, “Paint.”
Then she would try to help you learn what you were doing as you went along.
Well, I had really enjoyed it, mostly in oils, mostly landscaping. I don’t get
to backpack and camp and do so many of the things I used to love to do anymore,
but I can paint them and I love to do that. But the main value of painting for
me is not the stuff that’s hanging in my wife’s house— (she’s my major
collector, by the way) or in anybody else’s home or businesses and there are a
few of them. It’s that I see things differently. I see light and shadow in ways
I’d never seen it before. I see color in relationships, I things that are hazy
and I things that are sharp. I see edges, I see things I just didn’t dream were
out there. I’ve traveled all over the world and there was so much that I saw
that I didn’t see, until now. It’s been the most exciting thing in my latter
days. It’s a wonderful thing.
Folks, try to take that into this praise thing that I’m
talking about. Try to get to where all of life, for you, is sensing things you
can thank God for: feeling blessings when you’re around them, seeing things that
you can praise him for. That’s one of the sacrifices you’re called to do.
The second one, doing things for people. That ought to be
the easiest thing you ever do. In Matthew 24, Matthew reached the epitome of his
Gospel, as far as I’m concerned, when he recited Jesus’ story of the visitors
who came and he ended up by teaching, “when you do it unto the least of these,
my brethren . . .” Well, I see it, not only in the least of people that you
reach out to help, but in the least thing you can do for them. It’s still
important in his eyes; it’s still a sacrifice to him. If you’re doing it with
that intent, if you’re doing it with that consciousness, if you’re trying to
say, “Unto you O Lord.”
Funny little thing, we play golf with a group that kind of
show up everyday, then the computer matches up the teams and we have three or
four teams out there. There’s no gambling, there are some incentives for
excellence. But, you meet some interesting people. One of the guys I play with
must be 10 years younger than I am. He doesn’t have real good balance any more
and on those rare moments when he sinks a putt, that’s just the beginning of the
drama. Getting the ball out is the real excitement. Everybody there is not sure
he’s going to get down and then we’re real uncertain whether he’s going to get
up again. So, I finally got to where I go over there and retrieve that ball.
Now, I’d like to tell you my motives are the best, but I think sometimes, I’m
just trying to get us on. But it’s a funny thing; kind of a crusty old
curmudgeon has become a good friend. A person that didn’t trust me and share
with me, now wants to tell me his story. Try doing little things, anytime, in
Christ’s name as a sacrifice to him.
The third thing he says, in most of your translations it
says, “Forget not to communicate.” Now, this translation has it correctly,
“share.” It has to do with sharing what you have with others and he starts off
this passage in many ways by being ready to share a meal or bed up in the first
part of the 13th chapter. Sharing what you have. We’re not asked to
share what we don’t have—just what we have.
Every one of us has something. Maybe it’s a word of
encouragement. Maybe it’s a touch. Maybe you’re opening a door. Maybe you’re
picking up somebody’s books. Maybe you’re giving them something you have that
you know that they don’t have and they could use.
Have you ever taken a long look at your closet, besides
worrying about where you’re going to put the next thing? I always hate to bring
cleaning home. Where was it before you took it out of there? Can’t find a place
for it. All over this town there are places where you can take things you don’t
need. And every now-and-then try including something you really like.
The business of sharing is one of the best things we can do
for ourselves. It could mean something special to somebody else. But if you do
it from this point of view, as a sacrifice unto him, outside the gate, then
you’ll find anew that sense of being bonded to God in Christ in every way, in
every day.
I don’t know whether this is a way to purge your sins or
not. I got a new definition of death just a little while ago. “Death is a sudden
separation from sin.” Sometimes that’s what it takes, doesn’t it? Get ourselves
away from our own propensities to do the things we ought not to and to not do
things we should. But folks, in the kind of awareness and sensitivity I’m
talking about, you’re not going to have time to sin a whole lot. You’re going to
be offering something to God and you’re going to be making a difference and
you’re going to be outside the gate where Christ is.
Would you bow your heads with me?
Our Father we thank you for loving us and sending your Son
to us, for making all the difference in history and all the difference in our
lives and all the difference in all of our futures. Let us praise you, reach out
to others in your name and share the blessings you’ve given us, as sacrifices
unto you, in Jesus name. Amen.
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