Ordinary

Sermon given at Grace UMC 8/30/15

Click here for audio

Scripture Reading:

^NRS  1 John 1:1 We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life-- ² this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us-- ³ we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. ⁴ We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. ⁵ This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. ⁶ If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; ⁷ but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. ⁸ If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹ If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰ If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Sometimes there are great books that come into my consciousness, books that change the way I think about things, important things like life. Bruce Wilkinson’s little book, The Dream Giver, is one of those works that I think everyone would enjoy reading and having a copy available in their libraries. It is a short book which makes it even more likeable to my way of thinking. The central character is someone that all of us can identify with, a person called Ordinary. I believe that this book is wonderful in its illustration of faith and perseverance.

You see this fellow Ordinary lived in the Land of Familiar. There he had the usual job, friends and family, and lived a life that could be considered by us as routine and well, Ordinary. Each of us can identify with this type of existence, for the most part; it is how we live our lives each and every day. We bumble along in our ordinary existence, wandering from place to place, looking for something to fulfill our needs. So too is the story of Ordinary. In the midst of this existence, Ordinary suddenly had a dream and in the window sill he found a feather. When he talked to his father, he found out that his father also had had a big dream when he was young, which included the feather. But unfortunately, his father never followed up on his dream and feather wilted away. What strikes me as rather extraordinary about this story is the inclusion of the feather. For a feather is the instrument that was used to write words on a page in the early days of our ancestors. So isn’t it interesting that a Big Dream would include a reference to a written record. It is my belief that we have here an analogy to the one true written record that records our big dreams and the story of each of our lives, the Bible. The other fact that strikes me in this story is the dream itself. For I believe that God reaches us sometimes through dreams. In our dreams we are given insight into our future opportunities as well as being instructed on his will for our lives.

So in our story, Ordinary decides to act on his dream. He decides to go in search of the land of opportunity. He doesn’t know where he is going or really how to get there. This story to this point really begins to remind me of the story of Abraham and Sara. They had a very comfortable life in the land of Abraham’s father, with land and wealth and means. And then one day, God sends Abraham a message, a Big Dream. Just as Ordinary decided to seek out this dream, so too did Abraham and we all are thankful for that decision.

I read the other day that we do not come to Jesus because we are righteous and strong, but because we are needy. Once in his presence, then he lifts us up so that we may become instruments of his ministry. As we experience our Big Dreams and begin to contemplate what they mean, let us be reminded to pray and experience then the discernment of God’s will. That is a difficult thing to do as each of us has at different moments in time experienced a strong urge to go in one direction or the other.

So Ordinary begins his quest. He sells all that he has, quits his job and says goodbye to all of his friends and sets out on his journey. Have you ever experienced this? Have you began a college career, gotten married and moved from where you were to a new place, gotten a new job or began a new phase of your life? Now several members of my family are in this phase of their lives today, college, marriage and new jobs. With each passing moment we experience anxiety and fear as we move out of that magical place called our comfort zone. I often ask myself what Abraham must have felt, moving to place as yet unknown to him, to a life he could not even imagine, for a future he could not even see. Each of us finds ourselves being asked to move out of our comfort zones many times during our lives and it is a difficult thing to do. We find hundreds of excuses and reasons why we should stay right where we are. If we are not careful, we then find ourselves stuck in the ordinary world and miss out on the extraordinary opportunities that God has in store for us. It is during these times that we must learn to pray, one with another and alone to discern what Big Dream God has for us.

As Ordinary begins his journey, he encounters bullies. Now these are not the bullies whom you might expect. They are his friends and his family. They have come to talk Ordinary out of this dream. I am reminded by this story of the story in Matthew where Mary and the brothers of Jesus had come to take him home. The reason that they try and help talk you out of your dreams is that the dream itself is taking them out of their comfort zone. While we are busily moving along in search of our purpose, we interact with others. That interaction can disrupt their lives as they are themselves forced to look introspectively into their purpose and their lives. So too it was with Ordinary as he first talks to his mother and then his friends. But we must prevail, God has a purpose for each of us and we cannot waver. When we do, the devil puts bullies in our path to discourage us or force us another way.

As we begin the journey, many of us have been fortunate to receive help from friends and new acquaintances. These champions help sustain us, lift us up and give us strength. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are great examples of those whom we can rely on when things do not go well or we need help and strength in the face of adversity and fear. We often refer to our guardian angel when we talk about those times that we were weak and yet we were given the strength to overcome the obstacles in front of us. One of the tragedies of the story is the loss of a champion who on the road to the Land of Promise gives all they have. The bright spot is that they are lifted up as a true hero. We have an excellent example of this type of champion in the story of Jesus who gave all that he could, so that we might yet attain our dreams.

This story would not be complete without a time of testing. As we move forward in our journey, we encounter the waste land and giants. Again I am reminded of a biblical story of the forty days in the desert and then of Paul who went off alone to prepare for his ministry. Many years ago, I was reminded that we are all tested and over the last few weeks, months and years, I have felt tested to limits of my very being. At times I have failed and have stood before God in tears and asked for forgiveness. How about you? Have you not had similar experiences in your journey and throughout your life? Why even now, one or all of us may be in the midst of the greatest trial of our lives. Before us stand giants who are prepared to keep us from our path. These giants are familiar beings, hate, financial woes, discouragement, lust, fear, anger, and bitterness. But we must lift our battle up to God to help us. We ourselves are not prepared or able to win these fights. Oh, we think we can our egos bigger than the world around us. But the reality is that we cannot. Much of our world’s noise and activity seems designed to silence our hungers and longings of our heart. Maybe we are unaware of these deep, inner hungers. They are there, but perhaps no one has encouraged us to pay attention. If we would listen to Jesus, we will discover that these longings are the doorways through which we come into the land of God. As we travel through the waste lands of our lives, occasionally we come to a place of sanctuary. In those places we may be tested even more by being asked by God to give up our dreams. Remember the story of Abraham and Isaac? After all he had been through, Abraham was asked to give it all up. When he did, God knew that he truly was a man with God in his heart.

How would you do? Today I fear that asked to give up everything, I would waver from the path or fail in my strength to fall to the giants in my life. How about you? We must hold to the path, stay the course as the expression goes. And open our hearts to the God’s message. Will we falter, sure we will. Will we fail at times, we most certainly will. But God knows this and has sent champions into the world to help us fight these battles. Think about the pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. Even Jesus was having a weak moment, faced with death and fear. But he lifted it up to the father who sent angels to strengthen him. If you have not had the opportunity to see the movie “the Passion”, I highly recommend it. But be prepared to be challenged in how you currently thought about the last hours and how they actually were. Champions, who give their all in the struggle for righteousness, are beaten severely before they fall. Be thankful for champions.

And then one day when we least expect it, we have arrived. We begin our life of service as instruments of hope on a dark world. We become the means through which others may experience their big dreams and start on their journeys. But don’t get too comfortable. Just when things are going really well it’s time for a new big dream and off we go again. But don’t let that discourage you, for each dream takes us closer and closer to him, upon whom, all big dreams reside. You see my friends, God is always calling.  “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.” (NRSV 1 Jn 1:5)

God and the Two Year Old

Sermon given at Grace UMC 8/23/15

Click here for audio

^NRS Hosea 11:1 When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. ² The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols. ³ Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. ⁴ I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them. ⁵ They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me. ⁶ The sword rages in their cities, it consumes their oracle-priests, and devours because of their schemes. ⁷ My people are bent on turning away from me. To the Most High they call, but he does not raise them up at all. ⁸ How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. ⁹ I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. ¹⁰ They shall go after the LORD, who roars like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west. ¹¹ They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria; and I will return them to their homes, says the LORD. ¹² Ephraim has surrounded me with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit; but Judah still walks with God, and is faithful to the Holy One.

God loved the people of creation. And they disobeyed God and loved the idols of their culture. Sounds a lot like the story of today when so many of us immerse ourselves in the culture of today and forget what God calls us to do. To love one another! So we have a story of repeated disobedience as the people of Israel blended into the culture of the world around them. And God allowed them in their choice to be beaten by an enemy that God could have conquered. And in their history they knew this but still felt they were in control. And God allowed them to be scattered to the four winds. And yet God also loved them so much that God promised them God would bring them back to the Promised Land again. Because within the remnant of God’s people were some that were faithful.

But more importantly, God had promised and God never breaks Gods promise.

Our prism for understanding the heart of God is Hosea 11. The prophet ministered during the 9th/8th century BC. That was an age of apostasy, an age of open rebellion against God by the special elect people, Israel. Prophet after prophet was sent in a futile attempt to stem the tide of sin and evil that was propelling Israel to its ultimate doom. By virtue of his personal experience, Hosea, more than any other person, understood perfectly the heart of God. His wife, Gomer, had proven to be an unfaithful a spouse as could be found. It appears that at least two of their children were not Hosea’s. Gomer’s trysts finally led her to leave her husband and children. She eventually ended up in a slave market. Following instructions from God, Hosea went to the market and bought his wife back and restored her to her rightful place as his wife. Through his eyes we will now gaze into the heart of God. So often in life we are Gomer. We search for love in all the wrong places. We give ourselves and our bodies, our money and our allegiance to the world in hopes that the world will give us back the kind of love that we desperately want. And every single time we give all that we have to the world, what we get back is somehow lacking in what we expected, wanted or desired. God’s story is the story of the bible. I want this morning to talk with you about God and humanity. It is a story of a people who had the love of God who found ways to share that love with the Hebrew people. And repeatedly they blended into the culture of their world and disobeyed God.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis tell us the story of God saying yes and the people saying no. It begins with Adam and Eve being given the Garden of Eden. A perfect existence where they could live, no pain and no struggles, everything taken care of. And then they disobeyed. And then we have the twelfth chapter when God asks Abraham and Sarah to live in communion with God. And what does Abraham do? He tries to pass Sarah off as his sister and disobeys God. In the book of Jonah we have a story of God wanting Jonah to go to Nineveh and bring healing and love. Jonah wants justice. Jonah meets a big fish. You know the story.

So what does this have to do with me you ask? I heard a story of a shopkeeper that was in competition with his competitor from across the street. They constantly marketed their own goods and talked badly about the other one. They raised and lowered prices in order to cause the other harm. One day an angel arrives in an effort to stop this madness. The angel offers the one man anything he wants with a caveat. The caveat is that whatever the man gets, his competitor gets double as long as the request is for good, not evil. The man asks if I ask for a million dollars what will I get. Two million the angel replies. What if I ask for lifetime health, he asks. The angel replies he will live beyond you. Any guess what the owner asked for? He refused the offer because he could not bring himself to accept God’s gift if it meant that his competitor benefitted. Isn’t that how we are? We hope for people to have good things happen to them. That is, as long as those things don’t happen to our enemies.

Do you know the three favorite words of a two year old? Me, Mine and No! If we follow the story of the bible from beginning to end, what we see over and over again are those three words. I want the world to be about me not God! I want everything to be mine, not someone else’s. Why else do we have wars?

And when confronted with rules for living, we yell, not simply say, no to God. No we don’t want the Ten Commandments. No we don’t want to love our neighbors. No we don’t want to be told how to live. God constantly wants to share with us the three words we, us and our. We have been created for communion. Communion amongst our neighbors! Communion in the world with all of God’s people! God wants us to share in God’s love and to share that love with the entire world.

A friend of mine said in one of his sermons that love is the thread to ties all of these stories together. And this thread, this communion is a part of our brokenness. While we want grace to be earned, God wants to give it to us. It isn’t free you understand. But God knows that. So we look to the power of God shown to us through Easter. Not Easter morning, rather we find the answer in Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. We find the answer in the communion service of Jesus to his disciples that we will celebrate the first week of every month. We find the answer in the cross on Golgotha on Friday and the placing of a body in a tomb before sunset on that day. We find the story there because that is God’s gift to us. The atonement of sin, of our very nature, the nature of a two year old, me, mine and no. We want our grace to be earned; God wants to give it to us. And then we find Mary standing in the presence of the living, resurrected Lord. And she wants to hold on to him, just as we want to hold to our past. And Jesus tells her and us, take on a new identity.

Become the new person that God wants you to be. So what do we do?

Some will run as fast as they can in the opposite direction.

Some will accept this gift and be blessed. Some will walk away from God because they believe the world offers them a better deal.

And everyday we will act like two year olds. We will answer God’s offer with me, mine and no.   

In a testimony an evangelist one time described his mother as being love personified. As a boy he found her sitting at the table with an old tramp one day. Apparently she had gone shopping, met the tramp along the way, and invited him home for a warm meal. During the conversation the tramp said, "I wish there were more people like you in the world." Whereupon his mother replied, "Oh, there are. But you must look for them." The old man simply shook his head, saying. "But, lady, I didn’t need to look for you. You looked for me."

When that mother reflected her Christian kindness toward the tramp she did something more than simply offer him welfare. It was a compassion that went out of its way to love the unlovely. And that’s the story of our Savior’s live, death and resurrection. He came looking for us in the sick, the maimed, the lame, the bruised, the broken hearted, the wretched wanderer, the poor and forgotten, the prisoner, and the lonely rich. Has he found you?

We are unique

Sermon given at Grace UMC 8/9/15

Click here for audio

Scripture

^NRS  Romans 1:1 Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, ² which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, ³ the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh ⁴ and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, ⁵ through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, ⁶ including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, ⁷ To all God's beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. ⁸ First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed throughout the world. ⁹ For God, whom I serve with my spirit by announcing the gospel of his Son, is my witness that without ceasing I remember you always in my prayers, ¹⁰ asking that by God's will I may somehow at last succeed in coming to you.

There are five things that make us uniquely United Methodist. While we share individually some of these things with other denominations, all five of them together make us uniquely who we are. It does not make us better than someone in another denomination; it just makes us unique in the way that we do these five things and all of the together makes us uniquely United Methodist. I often have this discussion with other United Methodist ministers as we explore Wesleyan concepts. This is to say, we explore what John Wesley wrote about being a Methodist or more importantly, what it means to be a Christian. There is no particular order in priority. There is a sixth thing of course we seldom talk about. It is the desire to move to the back of the church and fill the last pews first as we enter into the worship space.

The first is Baptism. We believe that baptism is a sacrament. In other words, God is the principle actor and what happens is a mystery to us. In baptism we are cleansed of the taint of original sin, welcomed into the Kingdom of God and participate as community in the sacrament. Since God is the principle actor, when it happens and how it happens is not as important as that it happens. We simply show up and God does what only God can do. Whether we are baptized as an infant, a young adult or an older adult, baptism is an act of God. Since what God does is always good, when it happens and how it happens does not require it to happen again. Whether you were sprinkled, poured or immersed, God was at work in your baptism.

The second is that we believe communion to be a sacrament. There is a theme here. God is the principal actor and we acknowledge the mystery of Holy Communion. We believe Christ to be present in the communion with us, the bread is still bread and the juice is still juice but through the mystery of God there is a presence. We acknowledge the connection to Passover, the Upper Room, the cross and resurrection and the Feast on the Mountain of God. We are not Catholic and so we don’t believe that the bread and wine are actually the body and blood of Christ. We also do not believe that this is simply a celebration of the act that happened in the Upper Room that night. Communion can be a converting experience where someone experiences the Holy Spirit maybe for the first time. I love little children who come asking for Jesus. We also believe that this is a gift of God which is why we give the bread and offer the juice to you rather than letting you take it from us.

The third is that we are a connected church. We are connected to other UMC churches on the Eastern Shore through the District Conference, to other UMC churches in Virginia through the Virginia Annual Conference and to UMC churches throughout the world through the General Conference. We are all brothers and sisters in the Christian faith but we are also uniquely United Methodist brothers and sisters in connection. The Methodist church came into being right after the American Revolution and so we are modeled on the government that was formed. We have a legislative branch called conference. Our denomination determines the business of church through conferencing where members of laity and clergy come together in a democratic type process. Pastors are members of the Annual Conference, not the local church and serve at the appointment of the Bishop. The local church is governed by the Charge Conference and operated day by day through the Council with all other Committee’s holding allegiance to the Charge Conference through Council. We have a judicial branch that meets and decides issues of church law, i.e. whether decisions have followed the Discipline in its language and intent. And finally we have an executive branch in that we have District Superintendents and the Bishop who appoint pastors and perform administrative function within the church. They have somewhat limited power in that they cannot tell a Pastor what to preach or dictate a certain worship style.

One of the foundational tenants of our faith is that we believe that God gives us free will. We believe that we have free will, that God gives us choice to decide whether to return God’s love or not. Our lives are not predetermined but God sees all possibilities of every choice. Free Will is the greatest expression of true love. If we were to take this moment and look at all the possible choices in life and all the consequences and choices from now until the end of our lives, God can see them all. That is not to say that God doesn’t nudge us from time to time, but God does not set the path for us. We believe that when you give your life to Christ free will still prevails and some may choose to turn their backs on God before they die.

Finally, the one element that sets us apart from many other understandings is our belief in God’s grace. The biggest element of the five is that we believe that we are saved by Grace alone. We understand that we have Free Will to accept that grace of God and without the grace of God we would all be condemned. God looked upon the world and saw that inherent to every human being was this desire to be in control, to have what we want when we want it. And God realized that it was an inherent part of creation so human beings were unable to fix it. So God set about fixing it by bringing God into the world through Jesus Christ. His death on the cross atoned for that inherent nature, not taking away free will mind you, but giving us the ability to have a relationship with God.

 

We believe that there are three points in life’s journey when we experience Grace. Prevenient Grace is the offer of God from the moment we are conceived until the day we die. God constantly desires a loving relationship with us. Justifying Grace is that moment when we finally accept the offer of God’s love. Sanctifying Grace is that path to perfection that all Christians are on – a desire to live into a life completely submitting oneself to the will of God. Sanctification does not mean that we are sinless; rather, it means that when we sin we immediately recognize it and ask for forgiveness.

There is the Quadrilateral that we use as a tool to determine the Christian response to life’s challenges with Scripture, Tradition, Experience and Reason. We believe that scripture is the sole source of information concerning salvation. But on other issues, scripture might be ambiguous or difficult to determine the answer. Take slavery, war and cloning for example. In the Bible slavery appears to be acceptable, as does war and cloning is nowhere to be found. So the next step for us is to look at the tradition of the church throughout its history. How did the church respond? When we look at those three things we see that the church allowed and condoned slavery in some cases, argued against it in others, that the church has also condoned or argued against war and so we can be confused about the proper response. As far as cloning, there is no response in the tradition of the church. So we arrive at the experience of the Holy Spirit in the Body of Christ through the church. How does the Body respond to those situations so that we might glean the answer? In our examples, the Body has been all over the place when it comes to slavery and war. So we come to reason. At the end of the day when we observe the biblical story concerning slavery we realize that slaves in the Biblical story are human beings, entitled to be treated with respect and have the opportunity to win their freedom. Our own countries history of slavery saw us treat slaves like property, not human beings and because of that we understand that the Christian response is to stand against slavery in any form. War is another example of the ambiguity of scripture, tradition and experience. With reason we can all agree that though we may disagree about the war itself or reasons for war, we can support our young men and women who go to war. Cloning is new. Our biblical story tells us that we are to do good for humanity in all that we do, love our neighbors. So if cloning is to be used to eradicate illness then the response is to accept cloning. If however it is to be used to bring about genocide, then we are against such offensives uses of technology.

We are United Methodist. We are unique but we are all brothers and sisters in Christ.