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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.
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