Three Simple Rules

Sermon given at Sydenstricker UMC July 16th and 17th

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Micah 6:6-8 "With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?  ⁷ Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"  ⁸ He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Galatians 5:14-15  For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  ¹⁵ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.

Last Sunday I reminded us that we are Methodist’s. What that means ranges from how we relate to God to how we relate to the world. It does not mean that we are better than any other denomination in the world. It does not mean that we need to think our doctrines, polity and theology are any less than anyone in the world. I know a man who often tells me that because he has not been immersed that his salvation is at stake. And I often tell him that the only thing at stake is the sanity of the person who keeps telling him that. God don’t make mistakes and God certainly did not make a mistake when you were created, claimed or redeemed. This morning I want us to again shout the mantra, We are Methodists. And to do so should bring pride or shame. It just depends on whether or not you are living up to that standard.

Remember when you were in Kindergarten or the First Grade? Remember the basic rules? They were share with others, play fair, don’t hit people, clean up your own mess, say you are sorry when you hurt someone, take a nap every afternoon, hold hands and stick together when you go out into the world and  live your life enjoying the wonder of the world. What happened? Did somehow we forget all these things when we began the second grade? Bishop Reuben Job wrote a little book some years back called, Three Simple Rules. In it he tried to summarize what Jesus taught us so many years ago. And what John Wesley was so passionate about all his life. So I have to ask the question this morning, when we are out in the world, do others see God in us? Do we this morning look around at each other and see our transformations to become more Christ-like? If not, why not? We profess to be Christian’s right? We with a smile on our face tell others how we go to church on Sunday and how wonderful it is. So do they believe that we are somehow different than they are if they are not professing Christians? Truth is, we live in a world today that is too fast, too complicated and turbulent, and it strives to divide us as it forces us to blend in.

The first rule is “Do no harm.” Now that seems simple enough to me. I remember that old saying, Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Remember the toothpaste? Words do hurt don’t they? And sometimes we say those words without thinking about the harm they may cause. Sometimes words are spoken and the effects of them last lifetimes. I know families that don’t speak together anymore because words were said that divided them. So what does no harm really mean? Simply, it means when we enter the playground, you know, work and such, it’s just the toys that got more expensive; we must work hard not to hurt anyone. Imagine with me for a moment that every thing you say and everything you do not once causes another to be harmed. In the Old Testament there was a man called, Jabez. His name literally meant causing others pain. And so he prayed for God to assure he did not. And God answered his prayer. So each day we wake up, we pray that God will work within us so that we do not hate, do not gossip, do not bad mouth others, and do not do anything that causes another human being to be hurt. Sounds like a tough job to me.

The second thing we must do is to “do good.” Hmmm! That sounds easier than the first one Pastor Don. I think I will try that one first. Well, what does it mean to do good? What if tomorrow morning you woke up, went to work and there on your doorstep is a homeless person. Would you pass him or her by as you go into your air conditioned office? Or would you offer to feed them, clothe them and bring them out of the weather. Hmmmm! Doing good suddenly doesn’t sound so simple anymore. What if I told you that our Discipline, the book that defines us and drives us, says that we must use every opportunity to be merciful and kind? Sounds a bit life our Galatians scripture doesn’t it? Proverbs 25: 21 tells us that if our enemies are hungry, give them bread and if they are thirsty give them water to drink. But Pastor Don, these are our enemies. We don’t like them and they don’t like us! REALLY? HMMMM! This doing good stuff is tougher than I thought. And Jesus said to us in Luke, one of the passages we just heard, to love our enemies and to do good to those who hate us. Is it getter a little hotter in here or is it just me?

I love Micah 6: 6-8. It should be our mantra each and every day of our lives. The final simple rule is to “love God.” Micah puts it best when he says do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God? There are ways to work at this. Daily bible reading, constant prayer and sharing in fellowship with one another are ways we work at our relationship with God. Never heard that before? Stick around a while. You’ll hear it a lot from me. There was a time when I was in management in an industrial setting. When I left there a young man paid me a great compliment. He said, you know, I did not always agree with the things you did. But you never surprised me and when you fired me, I knew it was coming. That caught you by surprise didn’t it? Our love for God should not surprise us or God. It should and needs to be the same kind of love that God gives to us. When we are having a great day, thank God! When we are having a bad day, thank God too! We should thank God that our day is not worse than it is. Or better yet, thank God because no matter how bad our day is, it doesn’t end on a cross bleeding and suffocating to death. Hmmmm! That puts it better perspective don’t you think.

Truth is that we have to work at this some. So what does the world look like if you had never had the opportunity to view it from the perspective of an outsider? I used to spend a lot of time in airports, sometimes waiting for flights for hours. It was an incredible experience in which I had the opportunity to view humanity. All walks of life, people from different states, different countries and different walks of life. On any given day you could see every hair style, every clothing style and hear every language, even some that dialects that are English and yet not understandable by the average person. On any given day you would have the opportunity to see the best and the worst of humanity. I have seen people shoved, fist fights in airplanes, sickness and hatefulness. But I have also seen the young man who reached out the older gentleman to help him up the stairs, the older woman who befriended a young person down on their luck, people stepping up and stepping out of their comfort zones to assist others in some of the most difficult of circumstances. See, what I am suggesting is that national origin, culture and language have nothing to do with the concept of being who you can be. Even someone who was born on the other side of the tracks and lived their life in the squalor of a lower social class can be the one person who steps up and lifts a person out of a burning car or assists an elderly lady across the street. Have you seen the commercial where one person helps another and that leads to the person who watched this event helping another and so on and so on? It is a great reminder that sometimes we affect the lives of people we never meet and never see by the actions that they see in us on any given day. Kind of incredible to believe that you could befriend a person in Springfield Virginia and the results of that action cause a person in Bangkok Thailand to befriend a person! It happens every single day in places all across the world. And it can happen here and now with you.

Part of our heritage is that we reach out to people. As Methodist people, we are known throughout the world as the people who bring hospitals into communities, help those down on their luck pick up the pieces and put their lives back together again. We do it through our hands on ministries that touch people’s lives. We do it through our contributions to World Services, to missionaries and to firemen and EMT departments across America. You have probably been wondering why I have a Bear up here with me today. A friend of mine serves a church with a powerful ministry. They buy Bears like this little fellow and then put a sign on him that says he is a ‘prayer bear.” And then they do the unthinkable, they give them away. They take them to hospitals, to nursing homes and to people that are ill. They give them to police departments who put them in police cars to be used with children who may need something to hug onto one night because mommy and daddy hurt each other or are injured in a car accident. And they make blankets for police cars and ambulances to wrap up a little child. There are hundreds of ways to spread the love of God.

One day a policeman pulled a woman over. When he got to the window, she asked him what the problem is. He asked for her driver’s license and registration. She promptly gave them to him. He said to her, “Ma’am, I thought maybe your car was stolen.” “Well how can that be”, she asked. “Well he said”, with a slight hesitation. You just cut off a driver back there at the turn, stuck your finger at another driver as you passed him, and ran a stop sign. I noticed your bumper stick that says, ‘Honk if you love Jesus’ and ‘I’m a Christian who believes in Life.’ So I figured the real owner of this car would not do all those things, so it must be stolen.” Hmmmmm!