God and the Two Year Old

Sermon given at Grace UMC 8/23/15

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^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

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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.

  

We've only just begun

Sermon given at Grace UMC 7/5/15

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Scripture Reading:

^NRS  Hebrews 12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, ² looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. ³ Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart. ⁴ In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. ⁵ And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as children-- "My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by him; ⁶ for the Lord disciplines those whom he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts." ⁷ Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline?

Paul Williams wrote the song, “We’ve only Just Begun” which was a huge hit for the Carpenters. It is a song about beginnings, about young love which has the whole future of life ahead of it. The second verse reminds us of this:
Before the risin' sun, we fly
So many roads to choose
We'll start out walkin' and learn to run
And yes, we've just begun
We arrive at this point today with the future in front of us. There are many roads to choose as we move from this point forward. Roads paved with good intentions, roads paved with successful conversions and roads that lead to decline and closure. Our momentum at the moment is good but it needs to be reignited by the passion of the spirit that was in your confession’s to Jesus Christ so many years before. We must relinquish the forces that hold us apart and pull us away from this place. This week I had the pleasure of working with young people at Camp Occohannock. Young people who were there to spend some days exploring and learning. But in the midst of that they were open to the touch of the Holy Spirit. I remember one incident where they attempt to climb a wall with small rock like things used as foot hand holds. This particular day a young woman who was scared of heights was attempting the wall. Her fellow campers were gathered round encouraging her. As you watched them suggest hand holds or foot placements, you could see their bodies moving as if they were on the wall with her. That focus is what we understand in the Body of Christ. When we become one people and we begin to work together as one people to do the task at hand. She made it to the top and rang the Bell. We make rules and policies for the church so that we can become the Body of Christ. Pulling, sharing and working together for one goal, one people and one God.

We have just begun to journey to the place where God reigns supreme. We are part of the Kingdom of God and we share in the love of God that permeates the Kingdom. In the last few weeks I have talked about Grace, about God’s unwavering love, about following Christ, my vision for the future and what God wants from us. Today we begin a new year and a new opportunity to transform not only the church we love but the community we live in. Abraham began a journey on faith to a place he did not know but God had called him to new realities and so he went. So too we are Abraham being called by God to new places and new realities. Some of them may be difficult and others complicated, but with God behind us, there is absolutely nothing that is impossible.

What will it take for us to survive? What are we doing well or what are we doing wrong? What is to become of us? And the number of similar questions worded different ways. There is a problem here. The problem is that those asking the question are hoping that I have a simple answer. The challenge is always how one answers a closed ended question when the answer is complicated and open ended. I am going to attempt to answer this complicated question by starting if you will at the beginning of our churches. The answer in simplest terms is that when we truly become Disciples of Christ; God will direct us to become the instruments of his glory. That seems so simple. I liken it to a story I heard once of a child who came home from Sunday school to tell his father about Moses at the Red Sea. The young man described how the Israelites had put down pontoon bridges for their jeeps to cross on. Then, as Pharaoh approached and his army came over the bridges, they were dynamited and the whole Egyptian army sank in one fell swoop. The father calmly asked the excited son if that was really the way it happened. The child's response was, "No, but if I told you what they really said at church, you sure wouldn't believe it." Paul is trying to focus us on two important truths in this scripture which has as its goal to lead us to becoming more focused on our own lives. And this story reminds us that sometimes complicated questions have simple answers that people will either not believe or chose not to follow.  

We gather today Independence Day. It is a day that celebrates those who laid down their lives so that we can live here in this country with freedom. We are reminded of the heroes, young men and women who fought for that freedom, who gave all they had. Their names now stand in stark contrast on plaques and monuments across the country. But for the families they stand as reminders of lives cut short, futures that went on without them and families that grew up without brothers, sisters, and fathers. We need to celebrate their sacrifice today as we gather in this place. But we also need to realize those who went before us in the church also made sacrifices. Many of the early Christians gave their lives that we might worship freely here in this space and know the truth of Jesus.

We began as a church interestingly enough with a movement that never intended to become a church. William Morgan and a group of students began intentional faith development. So much so that other students began to make fun of them and called them “methodical” as a joke. John Wesley was part of that group and upon Morgan’s untimely death, became the leader. John Wesley and this small group of Methodists begin to expand across England, Wesley travels on mission to Georgia, fails at evangelizing to the Indians and returns home depressed and questioning his call. Then on May 24^th, 1738 while listening to a sermon in Romans, his heart is “strangely warmed” and at that moment he claims his understanding of what God is calling him to do. From there the movement extends across the ocean to America where the flame of a relationship with God burns fiercely among the peoples of America. And then the revolutionary war happens and all things England are despised.

In 1771 Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke are sent over to provide leadership to this growing movement within our country. By 1773 the cries for sacramental authority have grown so fierce that Wesley appoints Coke and Asbury as ministers with the authority to ordain new ministers. By 1784 this movement becomes a church. There were some important and significant things about this early church that set it apart from other churches in the world. Women were included in worship from the start centered on the understanding of Paul’s ministry and the role of Mary Magdalene and Mother Mary in the early church. And African American’s were a part of our weekly worship, with the church ordaining a female African American in 1790. This early movement was focused on two important foundational blocks. One, that inclusion means something. Each week classes would gather and hold each other accountable to discipleship. They would share with one another the answers to three questions:

How is it with my soul?

Where have I stumbled this week?

Where have the fruits of my faith been evident?

Continued inclusion in the group meant that over the long journey members had stories to tell each other about the status if you will of their relationship with God, how that relationship had shown itself in their daily lives and when they stumbled, that they shared that, expected accountability of it and received forgiveness.

And the second thing was that the group had a responsibility to witness and share their faith with others with the goal of growing their community. These two things were not optional for early Methodist and should not be optional for us today.  Maybe that is part of the answer to the question we ask. We need to return to a time when our discipleship of evident, active and accountable. The other interesting part of this is that the weekly meetings were not the central part of their lives, discipleship was.

The foundation of early Methodism was a focused on biblical truths. The first truth is that original sin is our disobedience to God. Nothing more, nothing less! The second is that Grace is given by God because God knows that we fail at being obedient because of our natures. That is not an acceptable reason or excuse, but Grace allows us forgiveness in spite of ourselves. Third that we have "free will" to accept or reject God’s gift of Grace. And finally, these things, original sin, Grace and free will become self-evident to us when we strive to become disciples of Jesus Christ. In that journey we will build our relationship with God. We build that relationship with God through our daily disciplines of bible reading, prayer, being involved and active in our community of believers and reaching out to the world to share this love of God. And it is that journey that each of us must be on or we are wasting our time being here this morning. Early Methodism permeated this area of Virginia. And this brings us to the history of Grace.

Grace began as Parksley Methodist Church in 1892 and Dr. J.E.T. Ewell was its first pastor. On October 30^th, 1908 the frame church burned but the spirit of the church remained and so a new church was built, the cornerstone laid on October 13, 1910 and completed in 1912. By the way, Andrew Carnegie donated one half the money for the organ, $1250, which was installed in the church in 1912. And the church thrived and grew as the center of its community, sharing the love of God with all that would come. In 1974 the church discovered that its beloved sanctuary was literally falling apart. Did that stop them or slow them down, no. With God’s assistance they built the current sanctuary and dedicated it on December 12^th of 1976. Some say to me that to get back to the church they remember we need to go to one service. Really? Did you know that the Chapel service began in 1993 under the direction of Rev. O.H. Burton? It is as much a part of our tradition now 22 years later. All along this path we have been moving on the journey to share the Kingdom of God with the communities we live in and serve.

We have to decide what course we are going to take. Are we going to stand united in the manner of early Methodist, working towards perfection individually and collectively, holding each other accountable to become true Disciples of Christ? Are we as individuals in a focused intentional relationship with God? Are we working together to bring the “good news” of the Gospel to the community around us as our ancestors did before us. For the last one hundred and twenty three years this church has stood here at the crossroads of Bennett Street and Wilson Avenue. Where it goes from here rests on our shoulders. Where will we go? What miracles of faith will be performed here for the next one hundred and twenty three years? How many lives will be changed? The answer is up to you and me? What path will we choose?