We are unique

Sermon given at Grace UMC 8/9/15

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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.