Sunday, January 19, 2014
Second Sunday After the Epiphany
John 1:35-42
J. Brent Walker
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Good morning! What a privilege it is to be with you today to help you kick off your five-week long emphasis on your five-fold core values: perspective, place, prophecy, practice and people. I have been tasked with the responsibility of dealing with perspective — our history, our heritage and its legacy for us today— and I do it gladly.
What an appropriate place to start. We need to know where we’ve been before we can chart a course to find out where we mean to go now and in the future. We need to do this as Christians, and as Baptist Christians and as Baptist Christians assembled as Calvary Baptist Church here in the nation’s capital, eight blocks from the White House. And I want to do this, a least in part, with a nod to the much appreciated relationship between Calvary Baptist Church and the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, the outfit for whom I work.
Today’s lectionary texts teach us the importance of knowing where we come from. We are urged by the prophet in Isaiah 51 to “look unto the rock from which you are hewn, and to the quarry from which you are digged.” The writer’s colorful way of saying, “look to your past and those from whom you come. Those rock-solid ancestors (like Abraham and Sarah) who lived before and showed you the way.
The writer of Hebrews in the New Testament picks up on this theme and carries forward the linage from Abraham through Jesus calling them that “great cloud of witnesses.” And we can all think of many since then from the apostles and early church fathers (and mothers) to the Sunday School teacher who led you to Christ last week or 40 years ago. Those who watch over us, encourage us, teach us, and lift us up to greater heights, those heroes of the Christian faith — whether we call them the rocks from which we are chipped or a great cloud of witnesses who rain blessings on us every day.
The Gospel lesson today reflects the importance of understanding from whence we come. When John the Baptist transfers his disciples to Jesus, he identified Jesus as “the Lamb of God.” Andrew, one of the two who heard John speaking, immediately went and found his brother, Simon, and shouted, “We have found the Messiah.” Andrew and Simon, along with the other disciples that were recruited the next day, had a Messianic expectation. They had read the scriptures. They had perused Isaiah Chapter 49, the so- called Second Servant Song of Isaiah, foreshadowing the coming of a Messiah to lead Israel in a way that would be a blessing to the entire world. To be sure, they and the other disciples sometimes misinterpreted the meaning of Messiah. They still were clinging to the idea that the Messiah would be a political/military leader as opposed to a suffering servant in Isaiah. But still they recognized Jesus as the “Messiah,” because they knew their history and they understood their past from reading the scriptures. Jesus first acknowledged Simon’s past: “So, you are Simon. The son of John?” But then he gives Simon a new name (a nickname) — Cephas which means “rock” — for the future. Now, Jesus was thoroughly familiar with the Isaiaic prophecy. So I wonder if his understanding of Isaiah’s use of the word “rock” informed the new name he gave to Simon, Peter the Rock?
And, today, as Christians, we must do the same thing that Jesus and the disciples did. We must understand the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament and our Christian heritage, because that will inform how we live and minister today and in the future.
We, as Baptist Christians, just finished celebrating our quadricentennial: 400 years of being Baptists since John Smyth baptized himself and then others. These early Baptists were in Amsterdam, Holland — having fled England to avoid religious persecution at the hand of King James I, the man whose name appears in some of your Bibles. Yes, we “baptizers” were born in the struggle for religious freedom.
Despite our astonishing diversity and disagreements on other issues, Baptists have always fought the fight for religious liberty – for others as much as for ourselves. We have taken seriously the liberty for which Jesus himself broke the yoke of slavery and set us free. This was our birth right in the early 17th Century, our rallying cry today, and I pray, our legacy four centuries from now.
The Baptist Joint Committee continues to lead the struggle for freedom on behalf of 15 Baptist bodies – to be faithful today as our predecessors were faithful in the past. We stand at the intersection of church and state, and, literally, hold forth from the corner of 2nd Street and Constitution Avenue Northeast (across the street from the Supreme Court) proclaiming the message that soul freedom is universal, religious liberty is nonnegotiable, and church-state separation is indispensable.
We work hard to ensure that government maintains a healthy distance from religion. The theological principle of soul freedom – a God infused liberty of conscience – and its ethical expression in society – religious liberty for all – are protected by the constitutional constructs of No Establishment and Free Exercise which are contained in the First Amendment. These twin pillars of our constitutional architecture require that government neither help nor hurt religion. Rather, government must be neutral towards religion, turning it lose to flourish or flounder on its own.
And, it’s important that our “perspective” on what it means to be a Christian, what it means to be a Baptist Christian as exemplified by the Baptist Joint Committee, is followed up with the question what it means to be a Calvary Baptist Christian here at the intersection of 8th and H Street Northwest. I am grateful for the partnership, that fellowship in the Gospel. And I thank God for the way in which God has worked in our collective lives over these many decades.
Let me indulge a moment or two of reflection on this partnership and the common bonds that bind us together.
- Spanning over 75 years, your pastors have had a special friendship with the Baptist Joint Committee – William Abernathy, Clarence Cranford, George Hill, Lynn Bergfalk and now Amy Butler. And, at least two of your formers lay leaders have served on the BJC board— Brooks Hays and Bob Tiller— and Courtney Rice serves today.
- At least five past and current members have worked on the staff of the Baptist Joint Committee: John Baker, Victor Tupitza, Karen McGuire, James Dunn and Kathleen Lansing. And former interns, Rachael Johnson, Jason Smith and Lauren Hovis.
- The Northern Baptist Convention – the predecessor of the American Baptist Churches (USA) – the Baptist Joint Committee’s third largest participating Baptist body – was founded right here at Calvary in 1907, and a member of your church, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, served as its first president.
- Two Congressmen – who did more over the years than probably anyone else to advance the cause of human rights and religious liberty, Brooks Hays and Fred Schwengel, were members of Calvary and close friends of the BJC. Both these thoroughly Baptist, Christian gentlemen were “profiles in courage” worthy of our respect and imitation. They both lost their seats in Congress as a result of stands they took on human rights and religious liberty.
I have had the privilege of reading the wonderful history of CBC titled, At Calvary, written by Carl and Olive Tiller. It is quite a remarkable volume and I recommend it to your reading if you haven’t already.
It tells, first, about Brooks Hays. Raised a Southern Baptist, his political career began when he became Assistant Attorney General in Arkansas at the age of 27. In 1942, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives where he served for eight terms. He fought for school integration in Arkansas, clearly an unpopular position to take during those days. And, at a time of overblown fears of international communism and irrational red-bating, Brooks Hays and then-pastor Clarence Cranford toured the Soviet Union to visit Baptists there – speaking in churches and bringing well wishes of the American people and words of encouragement. Coincidentally, in 1958, Congressman Hays served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention while Cranford was president of the American Baptists. His stand for racial justice and (no doubt) his outreach to Baptists in the Soviet Union cost Hays his congressional seat in the next election.
Fred Schwengel was one of a kind. He was a German Baptist who, as the Tillers’ point out, “had religious freedom in his blood.” In 1970, when attempts were made to return state-sponsored prayer to the public school, he took a firm stand against it. Fred knew, as a teacher and a Baptist, that genuine prayer could never be removed from the classroom. And he understood that we didn’t need Caesar telling our kids when, where and what to pray. Unfortunately, he was thrown out of office for that stand. But he continued to work for religious liberty as president of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, whose offices are on the floor just above ours at the Baptist Joint Committee. Indeed, in 1986, he was one of two persons to receive the first J.M. Dawson Religious Liberty Award from the Baptist Joint Committee.
Though I never knew Brooks Hays, I did have the privilege of knowing Fred several years before he died in 1993. I can still see him roaming the halls of the Baptist Joint Committee regaling us with stories, quoting poetry, and when he couldn’t remember lines, he would pull something out of the virtual file cabinet he kept in his breast pocket and read it to us with flair and vigor that belied his advancing age. Probably my fondest recollection of Fred is accompanying him on a tour of the Capitol dome and watching him, on the heels of a rather debilitating heart attack, climb the ladders and traverse the platform several hundred feet above the rotunda floor.
Yes, Calvary Baptist Church has always known that the Kingdom of God is far wider and far deeper than what goes on here at the corner of 8th and H. Calvary has always cooperated with others beyond the narrow confines of Baptist denominationalism. It has been involved in ecumenical endeavors including the Council of Churches of Greater Washington, as well as the Baptist World Alliance. You have extended the ministry of hospitality, allowing others — Christian and Jewish congregations alike — to enjoy these premises. During World War II, under Cranford’s leadership, Calvary set up a “Freedom of Conscience Committee” to give support those who refused combat service because of religious objections. You take seriously the full gospel that has social as well as personal dimensions. You represent the best of Baptist Christian life that journeys outward into the world, as well as journeys inward to the soul.
The Baptist Joint Committee has labored long and hard in the same vein over these decades, fighting for religious liberty abroad, cooperating in coalition with groups from one end of the political and religious spectrum to the other. Our vision of religious liberty is not limited to us Baptists. We are not hired guns for Baptists. We are advocates for the principle of religious liberty for all — for every child of God on the planet.
But you know we must not linger too long in the past. It is my prayer that we not forget our heritage; that we remember our forbearers like Charles Evans Hughes, Brooks Hays, Fred Schwengel — and the principles of soul freedom, religious liberty and social justice that they and others worked so tirelessly to advance. And then — having gained some perspective — march forward into the core values of place, prophecy, practice and people.
“Perspective on the past?” Indeed, so, but also girding to embrace the future …together (as partners), turning our grand Baptist Christian Calvary heritage into a legacy for the years to come. May God bless us and guide us as we go! Amen!