A Vision from the Mountaintop

Sermon given at Grace UMC 6/28/15

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Scripture Reading

^NRS  Deuteronomy 34:1 Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the LORD showed him the whole land: Gilead as far as Dan, ² all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, ³ the Negeb, and the Plain-- that is, the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees-- as far as Zoar. ⁴ The LORD said to him, "This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, 'I will give it to your descendants'; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there." ⁵ Then Moses, the servant of the LORD, died there in the land of Moab, at the LORD's command. ⁶ He was buried in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor, but no one knows his burial place to this day. ⁷ Moses was one hundred twenty years old when he died; his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated. ⁸ The Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the period of mourning for Moses was ended.

I read a story recently about a little league coach who reminisced about his childhood years playing baseball in little league. He remember back how during his first year, his coach had called together the entire baseball team for a picnic, and he asked the team, "Who here wants to eventually play major league baseball." Every single hand went up, as every child there dreamed about playing in a major league stadium and hitting the game winning hit. That boy grew up to become a little league coach himself, and the week before opening day his first year of coaching he did the same thing. He had a team picnic, and he asked the team, "Who here wants to grow up and play in the major leagues?" Not one hand went up on a team of twelve kids. He said he could see in their eyes that not one kid on his team believed that he had what it took to become a major league baseball player.

Bonnie and I have returned from Annual Conference this year ready to begin a new year here at Grace. Today we start our fifth year and there is much to tell and much to look forward to. We are standing on the mountaintop looking out into the Promised Land. But we cannot do it alone. We need to be a family of folks with a shared vision of what the future holds. Our focus this year will be to continue the vision I have had for this church the last four years, making members disciples. What is interesting to me and affirming is that it is also the conference vision for this year. What does it mean to be a disciple? It means following Jesus in His teaching, His example and His love. I also learned at Annual Conference that my gift is the gift of irritation. My purpose is to provoke you into being better, being more intentional and being faithful to following Christ and Changing Lives for Christ.

David Welch tells the story of Walt Disney. Walt Disney was a dreamer. His crowning vision was EPCOT; Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. He envisioned the perfect city of 20,000 using all of the most modern advances technology. One problem, Walt Disney died before his dream was ever realized. His dream was so big and complex and outside the box that no one else in the Disney Company ever caught the dream and had no idea what to do after Walt was gone. What Walt Disney intended as a living breathing perfect city turned out only to be an entertainment center. Disney’s world would only become a place to visit rather than the community he envisioned to live in.

Jesus also left a blueprint for His church that is just as vast, as marvelous, and as innovative. His vision was to have an expanding community organism that would permeate and transform the whole world. The problem is that as time went on His followers lost His vision. They could not wrap their minds around such a magnificent plan. Rather than a community of loving, passionate follower of Christ dedicated to demonstrating the power of the Christ-transformed life in a dark world, they began to do what they knew best, build buildings and run organizations and develop entertainment centers that would hopefully draw the crowds to hear the story but miss the transforming power of Christ. We are the descendants of that vision and though the vision still exists in our lifetime, we also are more apt to focus on the building, the structures and the organization. We want certain kinds of music or certain kinds of worship or to join the many services into one service; those are the answers you tell me every single day. I read the other day that Christianity is still growing, especially among those who are oppressed and struggling. It is growing not because of worship style or music or even buildings. It is growing because people have begun to embrace a sense of community.

We have spent this week teaching our young people about being a good neighbor. That the message of the Good Samaritan is not a nice story about a nice man, rather it is a proclamation of how we are to act in the world around us. We are to be Good neighbors to all the people of the world, not just those who look like, sound like and act like us. The children get this maybe even better than the adults do. We are to be the vision of Christ, loving each other in a transforming way to change the world.

But the real question is how do we move beyond the barriers? We have barriers whether we realize them or not. Barriers we have erected because of culture, language, prejudice, and our own human existence. Barriers that Jesus wanted us to remove so that we could fully embrace the loving relationship that God. But how do we get there? How do we do what we have been unable to do in over two thousand years? How can we accomplish what our own human existence fights against, leaving our desire to be first and becoming a place of equality? There is only one way to do what we should all desire to do. We desire to become disciples of Jesus learning what He desires for us to learn and doing what He desires us to do. The truth is that we have an almost insurmountable mountain to climb. The biggest obstacle in the way is not society, the courts or even a disagreement on what a particular flag really means. It is our inherent desire to be first, to do what we want when we want and how we want. It is our desire to achieve the things of materialism even if it means climbing over the bodies of those around us.

We can only achieve this great change in our world through prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit. We cannot do it alone and when we finally realize that we are on the way to achieving the kind of world that Jesus wants us to enjoy and embrace. It is a world where love is the central element of human relationship. Where we find ways to overcome our diversity as difference and use that diversity as gain. We become a family making life together, facing the future together and living in a harmony together that can only come when we place Jesus first, others second and ourselves last. We cannot achieve this success when we have determined that rules for the common good don’t apply to us because we perceive ourselves as special, more important than other members of our family. This only works when we work hard at focusing on the common goal of one people under God, indivisible with liberty for all. That is the mantra of our country and yet we somehow find ourselves too often divided into ideas about what liberty really means. Jesus tells us that liberty is the right to live without fear, without hunger, without discomfort and to share in the abundance that God has given us. Not everyone will share our dream; some of you may even leave here to find a place where you can enjoy your own ego centered focus. But mind what you hear this morning. That is not the dream of Jesus.

We are climbing a mountain. Some days the sky is clear and we can see the peak, the goal and the climbing is easy. There is excitement and energy to achieve the goal. But some days the clouds come and obscure the peak. Those are the days when our journey gets difficult as depression and fatigue set in. But the goal is unchanged. So those days are the days when we need to support each other with greater care and compassion. The ropes we tie around one another are not ropes of bondage but are the safety line of strength that comes when people surround each other with love to lift each up in the tough times. We are climbing that mountain and so far the road has been easy. But the tough times are ahead of us. The reward is a church that is the center of its community, focused on being the source of strength for the community that it serves. The reward is a life filled with joy and love that is shared with those who also share this vision of Jesus.    

So where are we going and how do we get there? Let me answer the last question first. We only can get there through prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit. We need to be a church fully embracing individual and corporate prayer. Don and I felt your prayers this last week at Annual Conference. But when we begin to prayer together as a church asking God in we can become the church God intended. Bishop Cho has a prayer that I suggest we all incorporate. It is a simple prayer. It is, "Your will be done, nothing less, nothing more, nothing else." Let us do it together. Your will be done, nothing less, nothing more, nothing else. If we pray this with the intention of not only asking God for direction but opening ourselves to hearing, God will do great things with us. If we invite the Holy Spirit in we can become Disciples in the image of the original Disciples, performing miracles, bringing others to God and changing the world. Without the Holy Spirit we are nothing. Which probably explains the mess we are currently in in the world around us.

In the current newsletter I tell a story of a ship’s captain who was floundering because the wind that moves him had stopped. Nothing is more serious to a sailor than the loss of wind. Without it we cannot move, we are caught in a place of inaction and despair can set in because we have no control over the moment. Knowing that a man of God was below deck, the captain went down and talked with him. He asked the preacher to pray for wind. Sometime later the preacher came up on deck and was surprised. He sought out the captain and told him, you ask for God’s help and yet the sails are not unfurled, open to the wind that will come. You pray and yet you don’t believe that God can provide defeating the very power you seek. We are a church with the sails that are not yet unfurled open to the wind that will come. 

We must become the church where people can find the answers to the struggles of their lives. We must become the church where people can feel welcomed with no regard to their culture, their language, their lifestyle or their journey. We must become the church that finds ways to make poverty less, make hunger less, make oppression less and make community more. We must become the church that spends as much time outside its doors as inside, maybe even more time out than in. We must become the church that finds ways to teach people new skills, assisting people to find financial security not through entitlements but through reliance on proven financial tools. We must become the church that people come to not out of a sense of loyalty but out of desire to be a part of a family making a difference in the world. We must become a church that focuses on being Disciples individually and corporately through the power of prayer and the Holy Spirit. We cannot feel the wind of the Spirit if we keep the sails furled against the mast. We must become a church that focuses on the common good for all, compromising to bring out the best God has to offer through the gifts and talents God has given us.

Moses led the Israelites through the wilderness for forty years. His role was to bring them to place where they could find relationship with God, learn to be obedient to God and to become the instruments of God to change the world. Moses did what he had to do always listening to the will of God, nothing less, nothing more, nothing else. God allowed Moses to see the land of promise from the mountain, but Moses would not lead them there. His work was done. Martin Luther King in his famous speech brought a prophetic message telling us that his dream would be realized even though he would not get to the mountaintop with us. Like Moses, King never saw his dream realized. But God is fruitful.   

Sir Frances Drake: "Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little, when we arrive safely because we have sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess, we have lost our thirst for the waters of life; having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity; and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new Heaven to dim. Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes; and to push into the future in strength, courage, hope, and love."

What good is a fruitless fruit tree?

Sermon given at Grace UMC 6/14/15

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^NRS James 2:14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? ¹⁵ If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, ¹⁶ and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? ¹⁷ So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

Many years ago a great craftsman had a vision of the perfect violin. In his mind he could hear the beautiful sound and the incredible music that would come from this instrument. So he set about building the violin. He took the finest pieces of maple and shaped them into the ribs of the instrument. He spent months on gluing the joints together and often would start over when he was not satisfied with his work. It took him two years but he finished and he stood back and looked upon his creation. And he was satisfied that it was the best that he could do. Many musicians had learned of his work and though he himself could not play, he had built some of the best instruments for musicians throughout the world. The musicians all desired to play this work of art that he had built. But his fear that something would go wrong prevented him from allowing anyone to pick it up and play it. So throughout his life, the perfect violin stayed in its case and the only music from it came in the craftsman’s head. When he died, the violin could not be found. Musicians the world over commented on how the world would have been a better place if only he had allowed someone to play the perfect instrument. You see, the craftsman might have created the perfect violin. But without it ever having been played, the world cannot be sure whether it was as good as the craftsman said it was. We are left wondering what kind of beautiful music the violin would have made and left with never knowing.

James is considered by many as the misunderstood apostle. Did he get it wrong or do we read into his scripture on works from the wrong point of view? Is he in fact saying that faith is not the answer in direct contradiction to Paul? Is he saying that it is truly what we do that creates salvation? There are many in the world that believe that and preach and teach it as the road to heaven. Day in and day out, they do good works and believe that as long as they are good people that God will look down with favor upon them. Now I for one believe that God is bigger than anything that I can understand. But I also know that the God of the Bible, Old and New Testament is a God who works hard to make us understand not what we want, but what God wants from us. God utilized the prophets and the apostles to help us to understand the most basic of concepts of life in accordance with God’s point of view. And of course when all else failed, God came down to earth as Jesus the Son, to assure that those who would listen would finally understand. Jesus himself spoke on this many times in his teaching. ^NRS Matthew 19:16 “Then someone came to him and said, ‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?’” And Jesus tells the rich young man that he must obey the commandments. And then if he desires to be perfect, that he must give up all that he has to the poor and follow Jesus. We know the story. And for many of us, this story has become the mantra of our lives, the words we live by as we follow a risen Christ. But for many, it is the story that stands as a barrier between them and becoming the Christian in their hearts they desire to be.

So what is James saying in this scripture? Let us explore the scripture this morning and see if we can figure out what James is saying and what we need to do as a result of it. James begins with a question. He asks us what good is faith if we do not have works. If someone lacks food and you have the ability to feed them and do not, what good have you done? That is a question that we need to ask ourselves every day of our lives. If we have the money or the hands or the food that can provide someone who is hungry from starving, then it seems the only answer is we must feed them. Makes sense doesn’t it? If we have the ability to provide clothing for the poor, or housing for those who are homeless or education for those who need re-training then this scripture sounds like we have an obligation to do something. If we truly believe that being a Christian means being more than simply that we are baptized and have confessed our belief, then we believe that we have an obligation to do good works in the world around us. But is it works that gets us ultimately in good grace with God or faith? Is James saying something contradictory to what we profess or embracing it?

Let me see if I can explain it in a different way. The early Methodist were focused on living their lives in the perfect imitation of Christ. I say early Methodist, because it was a requirement of those early Methodist to make their fruits of their spirit public to one another. And when you are making something public to one another then you had better be doing the things you say you are doing or someone would surely call you on it. And fruitless living could be grounds to be expelled from the group. Each time they met they would ask each other, “How have the fruits of your spirit made themselves known this week?” I wonder what our world might be like if we began our worship service each week with that question to each other. You claim to be a Christian. Well I am from Missouri and I want you to prove it! What is the proof of your Christianity? And what are the fruits of the spirit if not the things that make us different from the world around us. Patience, kindness, grace, and love to name a few. And if in fact we abide by the commandments that Jesus has given us to love God with all that we are and love our neighbors as ourselves, then how can we not reach out to each other in kindness and with love? How can we not clothe the cold, feed the hungry and house the homeless? And if we are not doing these things, then isn’t it possible that our Christianity might be suspect to those watching. John Wesley believed that. Our early brothers and sisters in Christ believed that. And this scripture tells us that James believed that. In other words, we who claim to be Christians must in fact be in the world doing the things of Christ, helping, healing and teaching, or our own salvation may very well be questioned by those around us. Maybe more importantly, James is suggesting that God may question our belief.

We focus on Discipleship in the church as the answer to this question of faith. Truth is we spend more time talking about works issues, feeding, clothing, etc. But true Discipleship means that we spend out lives in imitation of Jesus as we follow His example and His teaching. The things that James is taking about and the things we tend to focus our efforts on are fruits of the spirit that comes through true Discipleship. Our faith life is built around the concept that we believe what God has told us through the story of the Bible, through the prophets, and through Jesus and the Apostles. And if throughout the story, we constantly hear God calling us to reach out to the poor, to overcome social injustice wherever we see it, to teach those who need to be taught, and to provide housing for the homeless, then how is it that the church of today fails in many of these things? Is it possible that like the rich young man, we can do the things that cause us little compromise or pain, but digging into our pockets or taking our time is more than we can bear? Or maybe our concept of church is, “as long as nothing else is happening today then we can go.”

What James is saying to us,

What Jesus is saying to us,

What our ancestors in faith are saying to us, is that without the viewable works that a true faith life brings, how is it that anyone, including God, can know that you truly believe.

Now that may seem harsh or unfair. But just like the perfect violin that is never played, how can we know how good something is if it is never played, never acted out and never worked with? And what James is trying to tell us is that if we truly believe and have faith, then we must see transformation. And when we are transformed, we must act. Once transformed it is impossible to walk by a starving child or a homeless person or watch someone abused without acting. And when we act, the world will see our fruit through those actions as we allow the works of the spirit within us to interact with the world around us.

If there are no works, then there must be no spirit.

If there is no spirit, then there is no faith.

If there is no faith, then what exactly is it that you believe?

Get the picture?

So if we call ourselves Disciples, then our actions, words and deeds will set us apart from the world around us for all to see.  

I planted an apple tree once. I prepared the ground for it by putting in the best soil, fertilizer and dug a hole just the right size. I planted the tree and watered it, pruned it and gave it all that I had to offer it. As it grew I nurtured it, loved it and cared for it. It grew into a great tree. But it never bore any fruit. I checked with those that knew a lot about apple trees and they said that I have done all the right things. But the fact is the tree never grew the first apple. Well let me ask you a question. What good is an apple tree that grows no apples? What good is a fruitless fruit tree? Is the tree of your faith life bearing fruit?