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Exodus – Salvaged Faith

The Lord’s Prayer: Our Daily Bread

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Text: John 6:30-35; James 2:15-17

During this season of Lent, we are taking time to dive deep and explore together the prayer that Jesus taught us. 

Already, we have thought about what it means to be in conversation and relationship with our Holy Parent. 

We spent last week thinking about what God desires and intends for our lives – for all of creation to thrive under God’s reign. 

And one of the threads that is woven throughout this entire prayer is that in all of these petitions, our attention is shifted.

We are invited to think bigger… to focus on “Thee and Thine” not “me and mine.”

But that shift is also away from a kind of individualistic “me, myself, and I” to the communal.

Every part of this prayer uses plural pronouns.

We are not just praying for what we want, but are called to be aware of the needs and hopes and yearning of others.

And that is one of the reasons I am so excited that we are joining in this study together. 

Some of you have been participating in the small groups in our congregations. 

But what you maybe haven’t realized is that other churches in our area are learning and exploring and praying with us. 

For these next three weeks, Immanuel, Windsor, and Valley United Methodist Churches are making that connection more explicit as we share our pulpits with one another. 

It is my honor to get to speak with you all today and I’m looking forward to how Pastor Lee and Pastor LaTonya will bless us all in the coming weeks. 

This morning, we have the opportunity to focus on the third phrase in the Lord’s Prayer:
“Give us this day our daily bread.”

There they are again… those plural pronouns. 

The Lord’s Prayer centers us in the body of Christ and our needs and responsibilities towards one another. 

After all, food is all about community. 

One of the things I have missed the most as a United Methodist over these last two years of Covid-tide is the potluck. 

You know – where everyone brings something to the table. 

Crocks of hamballs, jello salad, far more deserts than you could possibly imagine…

But even if it isn’t a large communal gathering, in our prayers and blessings for meals, we often invoke the truth that most food before us is only possible because of our shared life.

From the hands that planted crops and cared for animals…

To those who have harvested and butchered and packaged…

To the workers who brought our food to market and the people who work to sell them.

In the modern world, every time we eat, we do so thanks to others. 

As the authors of Becoming Jesus’ Prayer write:  “bread is a cooperative endeavor.” (p. 53)

We became far more aware of this reality early in the pandemic as so many of these employees all along the food distribution chain were labeled “essential workers.”

I find that particular language intriguing as we think about what it means to ask God for our daily bread. 

For those of you who are reading along with us in the study book, Adam Hamilton points out that our English translation doesn’t quite capture the fullness of the original languages. 

There is a word used here, “epiousian” which we translate in English as “daily.”

But it is an unknown word in the Greek language. 

Breaking it apart, scholars guess that it could mean that which is “necessary” or “that which is needed for us to be”;  something that is “sufficient” or even “essential.”  

Give us today the food that is essential for life. 

Our gospel text this morning comes shortly after the miraculous feeding of 5,000 people. 

The disciples are quick to connect this amazing experience with how God provided for their ancestors in the wilderness.

They remembered how the Hebrew people were starving in the desert, having just left the land of bondage, but every day… well, every day but the Sabbath… manna came down from heaven and quails appeared every evening. 

Every day, there was enough to fill their bellies and satisfy their hunger.

Every day, their essential needs were met. 

But as Jesus responds to this eager group of followers, he tells them that God is not just focused on the kind of bread that fills our bellies. 

The gift of bread from God, or the bread from heaven, gives life to the world. 

And in doing so, he calls them… and us… to think beyond our individual physical need for food today to what is essential for all people to experience abundant life. 

All across the world, there are children of God who do not know if they will eat today.

There are hospitals in war-torn areas running out of medicine and supplies.

We have elderly neighbors choosing between paying for groceries or their medications.

Families are fleeing violence with only what they can carry and are desperate for clothing and shelter. 

For them, this prayer is a petition spoken out of desperation and a need for survival. 

I confess that every single time I have prayed the words “Give us this day our daily bread,” there has been food in my cupboard and a safe, warm place to sleep.

Growing up, we didn’t always have a lot of resources, but we always had the essentials.  

Just a few days ago, I threw out a loaf of bread that had grown moldy. 

The truth is, compared to so many people in the world, I have more than I need. 

And maybe that has been your reality as well.   

And yet, Jesus calls us to pray these words. 

And in doing so, they are transformed into a call to action.

I might have enough, but does my neighbor? 

How am I called to put this prayer into action?

As part of the body of Christ, how can my hands and feet become the answer to the prayers of my neighbors? 

This week, the DMARC offices are closed as they transition to larger facilities here in Des Moines. 

This vital partnership between so many area churches, organizations, and individuals, is one way that we make sure that our neighbors are fed. 

And more than ever, this partnership and effort is vital. 

Food insecurity has continued to grow among our neighbors, rising 80% over six years (https://www.dmarcunited.org/capital-campaign/). 

The new facility will triple the available warehouse space, completely change cold storage capacity, and will also house a permanent on-site pantry. 

It is just one way that as a community we are putting prayer into action and making what is essential available to our hungry neighbors. 

But this prayer calls us to do more than just share our leftovers or extra canned peas with those who lack food.

We are called to adopt this mindset for all that is essential to life. 

St. Basil the Great famously wrote:  

“The bread that you store up belongs to the hungry; the cloak that lies in your chest belongs to the naked; and the gold that you have hidden in the ground belongs to the poor.”  (https://www.inspirationalstories.com/quotes/saint-basil-the-bread-that-you-store-up-belongs/)

I am reminded that when God provided manna to the Hebrew people in the wilderness, each day they had enough.

Anything that they tried to save and hoard and store up would rot away. 

Maybe part of what it means to pray and work for our neighbors to have what is essential for their lives is to also reflect upon the excess of our own consumption.

It isn’t just the bread that molds in our cupboards.

It is also the dress that is too small hanging in my closet that could benefit a woman newly released from prison. 

The bed taking up space in your storage unit that could benefit a family from Afghanistan that has found refuge in our community. 

If you are anything like me, your heart has been broken apart over and over again by the stories coming out of Ukraine. 

But one in particular that I think exemplifies the spirit of this particular prayer is from a train station in Poland. 

Polish mothers began dropping off their old strollers for Ukrainian mothers arriving with nothing but the clothes on your back. 

What is essential for life? 

What do our neighbors need to thrive?

Every time we say this prayer, we are making a commitment to center our lives around what God intends for all of creation and that means joining Jesus in reaching out to people in need.

Whether it is food, or clothing, or shelter, or the money you have saved up, it all has the capacity to be a blessing to others.   

We are praying for the strength to work and give and advocate so that others might have enough.

We are paying for the courage to see other people on the fringes of our community as children of God, people of worth and dignity who deserve food and shelter and health care and relationships. 

We are praying for justice for our neighbors.

Our scriptures are full of passages that speak of God’s justice in relation to caring for the orphans and the widows, in concern for the strangers or sojourners, the prisoners, the sick, the slaves.

Because of circumstances beyond their control, each of these groups are kept from full participation in the community and find themselves without access to things that are essential for life. 

As St. Basil would say, whenever we keep people from what is rightfully theirs – according to the principle of need – we are committing injustice.

But over and over, scripture tells us that God hears and God responds and God calls us to act as the people of God.

According to the Holman Bible Dictionary – “When people had become poor and weak with respect to the rest of the community, they were to be strengthened so that they could continue to be effective members of the community.”

God’s justice is about meeting the needs of our neighbors and restoring people to community. 

It is our task and calling as the body of Christ to care for the poor and the marginalized.

To look out for the least among our siblings.

To band together, to hold one another up, to reach out to those on the fringes and offer each other life and life abundant through the power and grace of Jesus Christ.

We do so through prayer, but we also do so through what we share. 

Out of our abundance of food and clothing, time and money, even hope and strength, we can reach out to impact the lives of our neighbors so that every single one of us has what is essential for life. 

May it be so.

Amen.

The Lord’s Prayer: Our Holy Father

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Text: Luke 11:1-10

This year as we journey through Lent, we are being led by prayer.

Well, one prayer in particular.

The prayer that Jesus taught us.

We teach it to our children.

We recite it each week in worship.

It is often a prayer that I will recite with families at the bedside of a dying loved one.

We know it by heart…

But has it sunk into our hearts?

I once heard a story about a church and every Sunday when the said the Lord’s Prayer, they turned around and faced the back of the sanctuary.

When a new pastor arrived, she was curious about this practice, but no one could remember why they did it that way.

That is until the church did some restoration work in the sanctuary.

As they stripped back layers of paint on the old walls, they discovered that at one time, the words of the Lord’s Prayer had been painted along that back wall.

In a time without printed bulletins, the church members had turned around to read the prayer from the wall.

Just as that congregation forgot why they said the Lord’s Prayer facing the back wall, sometimes we have forgotten the meaning behind the words that we speak.

We take the words for granted or rush through them without thinking.

Yet, contained within these beautiful verses is everything we need to know about our faith.

It reminds us of whose we are.

It tells us that we are not alone, but a community.

This prayer invites us to place our lives in God’s hands.  

It asks for forgiveness and the strength to forgive others.

It calls us to acts of justice and compassion. 

It is a prayer that can truly transform our lives… if we let it. 

So, throughout this season of Lent, we are going to dive deep into this prayer and learn once again what it has to teach us. 

Richard Foster once wrote:

“Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love.” (Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, p.3)

And that is because prayer is a relationship.

The Lord’s Prayer is recorded in the gospels of both Matthew and Luke. 

In Matthew, it is included along with other teachings in the Sermon on the Mount.

But in Luke’s gospel, the disciples are seeking guidance. 

As they seek to grow in their faithfulness to God, they ask Jesus how they should pray… and he teaches them. 

But then Jesus expands upon this idea of prayer being a relationship.   

When we pray, we are asking and seeking and requesting things from the one who created us.

Now, this idea that God as our parent is not new.

Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, the prophets tell us that God thinks of Israel as a child… often a wayward child… but that God’s love is everlasting and unchanging, in spite of what the people might do. 

Yet this prayer is not simply a metaphor.

God is not distant.

Rather at Christ’s own invitation, we join in calling God “Our Father.”

We are invited to approach God in the same way we might our own parent… knowing and trusting that we are loved and cared for and believing that God will respond out of that love.

There is a level of intimacy here, of deep relationship, of ordinary acts of care, that truly is like falling in love. 

And at the same time, we are invited into a sort of paradox, for the name and presence of God is to be revered as extraordinary.

God is holy… and wholly other. 

I am reminded of Exodus chapter 3, when Moses approaches the burning bush and hears a voice thunder around him… “Come no closer!  Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 

Moses hides his face, afraid to look upon the divine presence. 

In the midst of this exchange, God claims the people of Israel as his own.

God has heard their cries and can stand by no longer. 

Like a parent who will rush to the rescue of a child who has fallen, God is acting to bring about deliverance for their suffering.

And yet, when Moses asks the name of this God…

When Moses asks, whom shall I say has sent me? 

God replies – I am who I am.   

A God who is distant, powerful, holy, undefineable…

A God who is close and intimate, full of love and compassion…

Our God is both of these things and more… all at the same time. 

And thank God for that! 

While it isn’t easy to wrap our heads around this paradox, the truth is that we need a God who is more than just an earthly parent. 

The troubles and concerns of this world are far greater than any human could tackle.

The loss of life from tornados…

Deliverance from oppression…

Peacemaking in the midst of conflict – not just in Ukraine, but in Palestine, and Honduras, and Nigeria and in our country and in our families…

Healing and restoration from illness, disease, disaster, and death…

These are not simple requests and are far greater than asking for a loaf of bread. 

We can only approach God in prayer with confidence because God is bigger than the problems we face. 

But at the same time, a holy and powerful being that holds the life of the world in its hands can itself be a terrifying concept.

I am reminded of the eighteenth century Jonathan Edwards sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

Remember…Moses initially hid his face from God’s presence!

But Moses also came to understand God’s love. 

During his time on the mountaintop in the presence of God, receiving instruction for the people, Exodus 34 tells us that the Lord proclaims again his name. 

But then the Lord continues… The Lord, the Lord, is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. 

Coming to understand God as the one who is intimately concerned for my life, my welfare, my needs, allows me to let go of fear and rest in God’s presence.

We can trust that God truly does care about my needs and we are free to approach God in love expressing the yearning of our heart. 

God is holy.

God is love and acts with parental love.

I am God’s child.

But there is one final piece of this first phrase that we cannot ignore.

While we do not capture it quite so clearly in Luke’s version of the prayer, it is part of the language we carry forward from Matthew’s gospel.

Jesus does not say “My Father.”

He does not ask us to think of ourselves as individual children.

We say “Our Father.”

Not once in this prayer do we say “I” or “me.”           

Victor Hoagland recently shared a story about his close relationship with his eight-year-old granddaughter.   She is the youngest of the bunch and they have had a chance to spend a lot of time together. 

One evening, he and his wife invited all five of their grandchildren to come over for dinner and Hoagland noticed as they gathered that this little one seemed upset.

When he asked her what was wrong, she answered: “I thought I was the only one coming.”

Hoagland reassured his granddaughter of his great love for her… but also how much love he has for all of his grandchildren and that it was such a great thing they could all be together. 

We often find ourselves in the shoes of that little girl.

We claim our relationship with this holy parent for ourselves, but we are not as quick to think about all of God’s other children.

And the truth is that prayer is not just about our relationship with God, but our relationship with one another. 

We are called to consider that others are God’s children, too.

People we love, but also people that we can’t stand.

People we disagree with and people who are actively working to harm us.

People we have never met and those whose values and perspectives are vastly different than ours. 

I have to admit that this concept hits me in a very different way this week.

Last night, my grandmother, my Babi, died from damage caused to her lungs by Covid.

I am navigating how to be present and offer love and care for family.

But it is hard and messy and complicated.

My family has been separated and split from one another by conflict that has gone unhealed for more than a decade. 

And yet, we are all still family.  We belong to one another. 

But even more than that, we are all claimed by God as children. 

Every time we say the words of this prayer, we are speaking into being the reality that we are connected to one another.

Our loved ones… our friends… yes… but even those who have caused us pain… even those we might sometimes think of as enemies… even those we struggle to understand or forgive. 

We are all children of God. 

And just as my own heart is full of concerns and fears that I bring before this Holy Parent, so too are others. 

As the words of “This is my song” remind us:

“this is my song, O God of all the nations,

A song of peace for lands afar and mind.

This is my home, the country where my heart is;

Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;

But other hearts in other lands are beating

With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.” 

Our. Holy. Parent.

This opening phrase of the prayer that Jesus taught us invites us to claim three truths:

God cares intimately about what happens in our lives and responds in love.

God is holy and powerful and has the capacity to act and transform.

And we are called not just to think of ourselves, but to recognize that we are connected in one family.

Over these forty days of Lent, we will continue to explore this prayer and learn more about what it teaches us.

But we are also invited not just to intellectually process these words, but to allow them to transform us. 

And to that end, for this holy season, I want to invite you to claim a practice with me.

I want to invite you to pray this prayer with me not once per day, not twice, but three times every day.

I want to invite you to make it a part of your living and breathing as you go through your life.

I want to invite you to allow it to fall into your heart and settle in your being. 

May it be so. 

UMC 101: The Local Church & Membership

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Text: 2 Corinthians 3:12-13, 3:18-4:1, 5-6;   Book of Discipline 201-204, 214-221

Over the last seven weeks, we have explored together some of the foundational beliefs and practices of the United Methodist Church. 

Our focus on grace and faith put into practice.

The call to reach out and share the love of God with all people.

A charge that makes room for difference and invites us to use our brains and celebrates diversity. 

All grounded and centered in the core of Christian tradition… praising the God of all creation who became flesh and lived and died so that we might truly know life and who continues to empower us by the Holy Spirit. 

As we come to the close of this series, we also come to a transitional date on the Christian calendar:  This Sunday before the season of Lent is Transfiguration Sunday. 

It is the day that a few of the disciples retreated with Jesus to a mountain top and witnessed the glory of God. 

They experienced for themselves the very presence of God, radiating with light, in the person of their rabbi, Jesus. 

He shone like the sun and they could hardly take it in… much like Moses before them. 

Moses, too, had been to the mountaintop. 

He had spent time in the presence of God and for more than just an afternoon. 

In the account of Exodus 34, Moses spends forty days and forty nights with the Lord learning about the covenant God wanted to make with the people.

Exodus 34:29 tells us that when Moses came back down from the mountain, his face was radiant.  He shone and reflected the glory and the presence of God.  But the people were afraid and so he put a veil over his face (34:33). 

The Apostle Paul picks up on this idea in his second letter to the church in Corinth. 

He describes the law of Moses as a ministry of condemnation, because as individual human beings we couldn’t live up to what it asks of us. 

That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a reflection of God’s glory… it was!

But Paul believes that the ministry of righteousness we receive from Jesus through the Holy Spirit is even more glorious, because we are set free to truly reflect God’s glory in all that we say and do. 

We are transformed by God’s glory and Paul describes the church in Corinth as Christ’s letter… written not with ink, but with the Holy Spirit. 

They are the reflection of Jesus Christ to the world and all who see what they say and do will come to know the glory of God. 

That local community and its members reflect the light of the knowledge of God’s glory to everyone they meet.

And so do we. 

As our Book of Discipline proclaims, “The function of the local church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, is to help people accept and confess Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and to live their daily lives in light of their relationship with God” (¶202, p. 147).

It goes on to say that the members of the church gather for worship, to receive God’s grace, to be formed by the Word, and then we are sent out to do the work of Christ.  (¶203)

Or as that familiar song from our childhood reminds us: 

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…

Everywhere I go, I’m gonna let it shine…

That light, however, it isn’t my own light. 

It isn’t your light.

It is the light of Jesus Christ.  

I was thinking about the solar lamps that I installed in my garden last summer. Every evening they light up the path.

But the lamp has no light of its own… it simply captures and stores up the energy from the sun.

The more time it spends soaking up those rays, the brighter and longer it will shine.

Much like Moses shone radiantly after those forty days and forty nights in the presence of God’s glory.

And to keep our lights shining…

To fill up our lamps…

We need to continually spend time in God’s presence.

So as United Methodists, we don’t believe that membership in the local church is simply a box that we check. 

It is a commitment and a covenant we make together with God and with the other members of our congregation.

In the coming weeks, our confirmation students will be exploring these vows deeply, but maybe it is good for all of us to get a refresher. 

Membership Vows

  • Renounce, Reject, Repent
  • Accept God’s freedom and power
  • Confess Jesus as our Savior
  • Serve as Christ’s representative to the world
  • Strengthen the ministries of the UMC
  • Participate with our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness
  • Receive and profess the Christian faith

Just as John Wesley brought classes and societies of people together to focus on their spiritual life with one another, our membership vows are a commitment to “a lifelong process of growing in grace.” (¶216.1).

We turn away from sin and evil and turn our lives towards Jesus.  Then, empowered by the Holy Spirit, we become ambassadors of Jesus to the world.  We see each member as a vital part of the church and we have “method” for helping one another to keep these vows.

First – a local church provides opportunities for a member to grow in their discipleship. From small groups to worship, from mission events to our stewardship campaign, this local church offers ways for you to go deeper in your faith and to discover the will and grace of God. Each one is an opportunity to spend time in the presence of God.

Second – we share a mutual responsibility for one another.  We need you, just as much as you need us, and together we shoulder burdens, share risks, and celebrate joys.  We encourage one another along in this journey. After all, the people that make up our church are the body of Christ and we also experience the presence of God in one another.

Third – each person is responsible for their own participation.  We can have all the opportunities in the world, but ultimately, you are the one who prays, who shows up, who gives, and who reaches out to share God’s love with the world. 

However, as part of our Wesleyan heritage, we are called to hold one another accountable to these commitments.  Those early Methodist class meetings were designed for members to keep one another on track, it is the responsibility of the local church to reach out in love to invite people to return and to nurture people back into community. 

Sometimes that might look like a call or a note from the pastor, but this is the responsibility of all of us. 

It is the phone call you make to invite someone to join a small group with you. 

It is the note you put in the mail to let someone know you have missed them in worship. 

It is the way you speak up if someone in a meeting has said something harmful. 

It is the advice you offer when someone seems to be taking a wrong turn in their journey.

We do all of this, because we believe that through these ministries and this community, the glory of the Lord is transforming us more and more everyday into the image of Christ… and that we reflecting that glory to the world. 

In Sara Groves’ song, “You are the Sun” she writes:

You are the sun, shining down on everyone.

Light of the world giving light to everything I see…

I am the moon with no light of my own

Still you have made me to shine

And as I glow in this cold dark night

I know I can’t be a light unless I turn my face to you. 

The work of the local church and our responsibilities as members of that church is to turn our faces to the Light of the World and let God shine through our lives.

As the Book of Discipline says:
Each member is called upon to be a witness for Christ in the world, a light and leaven in society, and a reconciler in a culture of conflict… to identify with the agony and suffering of the world and to radiate and exemplify the Christ of hope” (¶220).

And we don’t do it alone.  We do it together. 

The work of the local church is only possible because all of us have gathered our resources and our talents and our time together so that we can reach out to the people in this community, and work to help one another grow.  And we also are part of a larger connection, so we partner with other local churches – like inviting students from Windsor UMC to join us for confirmation.  We work to be stewards not just of our resources, but of God’s creation as we participate in the mission of the larger United Methodist Church.  (¶202, p147-148)

Let us keep soaking up the light of God so that in all of these things, the glory of God might shine through us. 

Amen. 

Remember Enough

Text: Exodus 16: 1-18

Friends, over the next several weeks in worship, we are going to talk about how we connect our faith, our life, and our finances. 

And while on one very practical level our stewardship time helps our church leaders to set a budget for the coming year, there is a much bigger reason that we take time every year to talk about generosity and stewardship.

Because even if we want to avoid the conversation, Jesus is very interested in what we do with our money and resources. 

Your money story is a spiritual story and when we let God into this part of our lives, we find grace and love and transformation and joy. 

Let us pray…

“Enough” by John van de Laar

Worry and stress are not hard for us, God,
We do them without thinking:

There is always the potential of threat
To our security,
Our comfort,
Our health,
Our relationships,
Our lives.
And we foolishly think that we could silence the fear
If we just had enough money,
Enough insurance,
Enough toys,
Enough stored away for a rainy day.
It’s never enough, though;
The voice of our fear will not be dismissed so easily.

But in the small, silent places within us is another voice;
One that beckons us into the foolishness of faith,
That points our gaze to the birds and the flowers,
That in unguarded moments, lets our muscles relax.
And our hearts lean into loved ones.;
In unexpected whispers we hear it,
Calling us to remember your promises,
Your grace,
Your faithfulness;
And, suddenly, we discover,
That it is enough.
Amen.

In the words that I just shared with you from John van de Laar, we hear echoes of the story that the world tries to tell us about money. 

There is never enough.

We live with fear and stress and worry… and so much of that has been compounded by the pandemic and economic uncertainties and supply chain disruptions and… and…

There is always something out there with the potential to bring it all crashing to the ground.

Even in the moments when everything is okay…

When we find our footing…

When we have experienced a transformation for good…

We struggle to let go of the fear.

That is what we find in Exodus. 

It is a story of a people who just a month and a half before were still in the land of Egypt. 

They were living in “an economy of fear and deprivation,” writes Erin Weber-Johnson but God liberated them from oppression. 

Can you imagine the joy and the freedom and the excitement of being able to write a new story for your life? 

And yet they struggled to let go of their fear.

They were not yet sure what it meant to trust in God, they were already looking back upon their days in captivity with rose-colored glasses. 

You see, they remembered that at the end of those days, they could sit by the fire and their pots were full and bread was plentiful… or at least it seemed that way in their memories.

They forgot that they could never produce enough to satisfy their oppressor.

Whether they lived or died, how many bricks they had to make, what materials they had to do so with… it was all based upon the whims of Pharaoh and their overseers.

The work was brutal and unending… or as Walter Bruggemann describes it “the endless rat race for sufficiency.” 

Like livestock must be fed and equipment has to be maintained, the Egyptians knew they had to keep their workforce alive in order for them to work. 

But it was never really enough. 

The bare necessities of food and water… which the Israelites found themselves crying out for in the new barren land… are not enough

And to be honest, many of us experience this in our own lives, don’t we?  

We work and we work, thinking eventually we might have enough money to provide for more than our basic needs… we work incredibly hard so that someday we might enjoy our life and by the time we get there we are too tired and worn out to experience it.

Our quest for “enough” is killing us. 

Or perhaps your story is more like that of Pharoah. 

We so fiercely guard what we have acquired that we begin to see outside forces as a threat to our power and position. 

So we rail against taxes and we bemoan immigrants and we cry out about what belongs to us.

Or maybe it is far simpler… we hoard what we have without even being aware of the people we have impacted. 

We have moved far beyond “enough”; filling our closets, and homes, and garages, and storage units with things and we cannot even remember why and we are too afraid or ashamed to consider the consequences of such a life. 

Both of these stories are ruled by fear. 

A fear that there never has been and never will be enough.

As Rev. Sarah Are writes,

Our anxiety is loud.

Our fear is loud.

Our anger is loud.

Our shame is loud.

Mental illness is loud.

Doubt is loud. 

But there is another voice that is whispering in the background. 

A voice that hovered over the waters of creation.

A voice that led the Israelites out of slavery with a pillar of fire. 

A voice that promises not just to feed us, but to love us, to guide us, to give us rest.

When the Israelites found themselves in the middle of nowhere, utterly dependent upon God, it terrified them.

But that is precisely when God steps in and reminded them… I am enough. I will provide.

“At twilight you will eat meat.  And in the morning you will have your fill of bread.” (Ex. 16: 12)

This food comes without requiring any labor other than stepping outside of their tent and gathering it up.

The only strings attached were that they didn’t take more than they needed. 

If they did, it rotted and became infested with worms and stank.   

OOF…  Do you hear that… if we take more than we need it is just going to rot away. 

And then, here was the kicker. 

On the sixth day, they were told gather enough so that on the seventh they could rest. 

God provided. God was enough. 

You know, I got to thinking about that prayer that we say every single week in worship. 

We ask for God to give us our daily bread. 

Our manna from heaven. 

And if you look at the Greek work that Jesus uses here it is: epiousios, which we understand to mean that which is necessary and sufficient, that which gives substance to our lives. 

We are asking for God to teach us, shape us, remind us what truly is enough. 

As we remember this story of manna in the wilderness, it wasn’t just about food.

It was also about learning who they were, who we are, as people who are loved by God. 

It was about learning to obey God’s commands.

It was about learning to trust in God’s faithfulness.

It was about learning what it meant to share with one another.   

And it was about learning to rest on God’s Sabbath.

And we are called to remember that our fears and our anxiety and what Walter Bruggemann calls “the endless rat race for sufficiency” (Money and Possessions), are never going to bring us enough. 

We are called to remember God’s provision, God’s grace, and God’s faithfulness – not just with our minds, but to let these truths sink into our very bones and our daily existence so that we, too, will be shaped as God’s people. 

You know… maybe the Lord’s Prayer should be our daily practice.

Our daily gathering of manna from heaven.

Our daily reminder of who we are and whose we are. 

Because when we cry out, “give us this day our daily bread,”  we are not simply asking God to make sure there is food on my table tonight.

We are asking for God to provide for all who hunger. To make sure that everyone has enough.   

Those who hunger for rest.

Those who hunger for connection and relationship.

Those who hunger for liberation and freedom from oppression or addiction or worry. 

We here at Immanuel believe that God is calling us to love, serve, and pray so that all who hunger might be fed by God’s grace. 

We dream of a future where no one in our zip code goes to bed hungry at night.

We dream of a church where children and grandparents are growing together as they share meals and laughter. 

We dream of a community where every need is met because we have so many volunteers at Immanuel willing to give of their time and talents and resources.

And that means putting hands and feet on this prayer and rolling up our sleeves and getting to work. 

In our church money story, we can remember times we all rallied together to accomplish big things with God’s help – like when Faith Hall was built.

But with the uncertainty in the world today, stories of fear and scarcity and doubt start to creep in again. 

We can get focused on making sure there is enough to keep the lights on and lose sight of God’s promises and faithfulness and who God has called us to become. 

This fall, as our leaders wrestled with our goals for 2022, one step we knew we wanted to embrace was leading with mission.  We want to be a church known for how we are reaching out to love our neighbor. 

And so, we have a few goals related to that like focusing on a local 2022 Volunteers in Mission Trip, but we also discussed how we might have to adjust our own church money story to truly lead with mission. 

We want to get to a place where 100% of our budget is supported by annual pledges SO THAT everything else that comes into our church, all of the other money and gifts that we receive can be given away. 

We are trying to realign our own money story around what is enough so that we can turn around and bless our neighbors with everything else. 

That is just one way that we are going to become the church God is yearning for us to be.  A church where all who hunger are fed by God’s grace. 

It is just one way that we are going to remember that God is enough.  Amen. 

The Wilderness: Gotta Serve Somebody

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Text: Exodus 32:1-4, Matthew 4:8-9

Before we get started today, I want to invite you take just a minute of silent reflection.

Somewhere, on your bulletin, I want you to write down the top five things that demand your time, attention, and responsibility. The top five things that you are called to focus on.
Take a minute… and if you can and have time, try to number them with 1-5 with 1 being the thing that is most important.

Hang on to those… we’ll come back to them

Today on our journey through the wilderness, we come to the third temptation Jesus encounters.
The devil takes Jesus up onto a high mountain and shows him all of the kingdoms of the world.

I have to admit. Every time I read this passage, I can’t help but think of Disney’s “The Lion King.” I imagine Mufasa strolling to the top of Pride Rock with little Simba at his side as they watch the sun come up over the savannah. “Everything the light touches is our kingdom,” Mufasa explains. “One day, Simba, the sun will set on my time here, and will rise with you as the new king.”
The young cub gets a glimmer in his eyes… “and this’ll all be mine?”

“This will all be yours,” the devil says to Jesus.
“Just bow down and worship me.”

There is a hidden question lurking just behind this offer from the devil. How and why does the devil have any authority whatsoever to be able to give these kingdoms to Jesus?
Our Lord and Creator made this world, and it all belongs to God, right?

Well, maybe not.
You see… from the very beginning, God has always entrusted this land, this creation, all the creatures to us.
As we are told in Genesis 1 – God made those first humans in God’s image and made them responsible for the fish, the birds, the cattle, and one another. God blessed them and gave them everything in all of creation.
And it was very good.

But what did we do with that gift?
We used it and abused it.
We took advantage of the creatures and one another.
Piece by piece, we have handed over this responsibility to our baser impulses.
With our actions and our inactions, through our impatience and fear, we have allowed the world to be controlled by the devil.

Our scriptures are full of these kinds of stories and they are clearly found during our time of wandering in the wilderness.
Exodus tells us about how the Israelites made their way to Mount Sinai after three months of travel and Moses went up the mountain to receive from God instructions about how the people should live. The very first declaration was this:
“You saw what I did to the Egyptians, and how I lifted you up on eagle’s wings and brought you to me. So now, if you faithfully obey me and stay true to my covenant, you will be my most precious possession out of all the peoples, since the whole earth belongs to me. You will be a kingdom of priests for me and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:1-6)
And the people shout out a resounding “YES!”

But there are more details to be fleshed out in this instruction and Moses goes up to the mountaintop to receive them.
Twelve chapters go by in the book of Exodus.
And the people start to get impatient.
So by the time we get to our scripture for today, from Exodus 32, the people have had enough.
They agreed to follow the one who rescued them from slavery… the one who made the heavens and the earth… the one who was going to create of them a holy and mighty nation…
But as soon as fear and impatience set in, they are ready to move on to something else.

The people ask Aaron to make other gods for them.
They want to turn their allegiance, their hearts, over to something besides this God who terrified them and Moses who seemed to have disappeared into the clouds above.
They have needs.
They have desires.
They want to get going.
And they don’t see it happening anytime soon, so they are moving on.

It happens again after the people arrive and are settled in the promised land.
They want to be like other nations and have kings and rulers like they do.
So they turn away from God’s personal leadership and demand that they get a ruler (1 Samuel 8).

Over and over again, we take this precious gift of life, creation, and relationship that God has blessed us with and we say, “no.”
We instead allow other people, powers, and values to guide our lives.
In fact, if you were to look back at that list you created at the start of this time, what you will likely see are good important things that pull us in a million different directions.
They compete for ownership of our lives.
They compete with one another for a place of priority.
And every time we say yes to one of those things, we say no to something else.

Let me cut straight to the point.
Where is God on your list?
Or have we already decided to hand over this world and our lives and everything we do to something else?

It’s no wonder the devil has this world firmly in its grasp.
We have been selling it off, piece by piece, action by action, priority by priority for a long time.

So when Jesus finds himself standing on that mountaintop, he, too, has a choice.
Jesus could play the age old game where he lets fear and impatience and competing values rule the day.
He could take back this world by giving in to those baser desires to have it now and to have it your way and to have it be easy.
And… to be honest, once he had control of all the kingdoms of the world, he would have accomplished what he was there to do and he could kick the devil out!

OR… he could wait.
He could let God continue to rule.
He could take the more difficult path through the cross and the tomb and all the way to the gates of hell to wrestle the keys to the world from the devil’s grasp.
“Get out of here, Satan” Jesus responds. “it is written that You will worship the Lord your God and serve only him.” (Matthew 4:10)

Even Jesus has to write down a list of priorities.
Save the world.
Usher in the Kingdom of God.
Eat with sinners
Love the people.
Serve God.

Jesus has a choice that will shape every other item on that list.
In the words of Bob Dylan, You’re gonna have to serve somebody.

The Wilderness: Trust and Manna

Text: Exodus 16:1-8, Matthew 4:2-4, Deuteronomy 8:1-8
This week, as we continue our journey in the wilderness, we come to the first of three temptation stories.
Three trials.
Three decision points.
Three opportunities to be shaped by God.

The first is about a basic necessity for life: food.

Jesus has been fasting for forty days and nights and Matthew’s gospel tells us that he was starving. And so the tempter comes and whispers in his ear, “You’re God’s son… tell these stones to become bread.”
It would be so easy wouldn’t it?
For God I mean, not for us.
But for the Son of God, the one who could turn water into wine and multiply loaves and fishes, the one who was literally the Bread of Life… wasn’t this an opportunity to demonstrate that miraculous life-giving power within him?

“No,” Jesus replies, and he looks back to the scriptures of our faith… “We live on more than bread, we live on the word of God.”
He is actually quoting from Deuteronomy 8:3.
Moses has reminded them about the ten commandments from God and now is expanding upon what it means to live them out.
He tells them that this long road through the wilderness has been working to humble them, to test them, to discover what is really in their heart and if they were capable of truly following.
God humbled them by making them hungry… and then by feeding them with manna… so they could learn that life was sustained by more than basic necessities – whether we live or die is in God’s hands.

This is not an easy lesson to learn.

It wasn’t easy for the Israelites and it certainly isn’t easy for us.

Imagine, that just a month and a half ago, the Israelites were still in the land of Egypt.
Already they were looking back upon their days in captivity with rose-colored glasses.
They were fondly recalling that at the end of the day, they could sit by the fire and their pots were full and bread was plentiful. They were stuck in a system of injustice, but at least they knew what to expect.
What they were conveniently forgetting is that during their time in captivity, their life was not their own. Whether they lived or died, how many bricks they had to make, what materials they had to do so with, whether they had food in their pots or not, was all based upon the whims of Pharaoh and their overseers.
Their life was not their own.

There are two pieces of this lesson that we need to wrestle with.

First… when your entire life was controlled by another person, how are you supposed to act when you are suddenly free?
Like livestock or equipment has to be fed and fueled and maintained, the Egyptians knew that if they didn’t provide for the people, they would lose their labor.
When the people cry out – where is our water? where is our food? part of the reality is that these basic necessities had been provided by their masters in the past.
Many didn’t know what it meant to provide for themselves and those who did found themselves in a barren wilderness with no access to streams or game.

But we shouldn’t rush too quickly into the flipside of that coin.
You see, we live on that other side.
As citizens of this great nation where we have freedom, we imagine that every single person has the opportunity and the responsibility to provide for themselves.
We believe in the American Dream, that if everyone just pulls themselves up by their bootstraps that they will have a house with a white picket fence and 2.5 children who will grow up and go to college.
We do have a sense that life is sustained by more than just basic necessities like bread and water… but sometimes we overreach and in our striving for unessential things, we limit the access of others to basic needs.

What we forget, whether we are suffering under the oppression of others or we believe we are free to provide for ourselves is that either way, in both situations, our life has never been our own.

When Jesus is tempted to turn bread into stones he says no.
And that’s because Jesus knows, as Melissa Bane Sevier writes, “where bread comes from. It’s a gift from God through the acts of nature, farmers, and bakers. Any other process – especially one that only pretends to be miraculous – shortcuts the involved process that is part of what makes it a gift…”

“Bread takes time. Place seed in the ground. Wait for sun and rain. Weed and harvest. Thresh and preserve. Grind. Add ingredients. Knead. Bake. Serve. Enjoy.” (https://melissabanesevier.wordpress.com/2017/02/27/of-stones-and-bread/)
Every drop of rain and ray of sunshine. Every person tasked with tending the earth and forming the loaves. Every piece, every part… it’s all a gift and it is all from God.

It is easy to follow when, like the Israelites, we see God’s power manifest in might acts like parting the sea or leading them with cloud and fire.
But that daily sustaining trust and reliance upon God’s grace?
That’s much harder.

This decision point, this temptation, it is all about daily bread and the Kingdom of God.
It is about a daily commitment to turn to God first.
It is about our daily trust in the one who sustains life.
This is a story about life and death.
This is a story about salvation.

Our culture tells us that if we work hard enough and we are good boys and girls and if we are generous with our time and our money that we will be rewarded. If we keep our noses clean, there is a place waiting for us somewhere in heaven. A place we earned by our actions.
We think it’s all about us, and so why wouldn’t Jesus use his power and turn some stones into bread.
But God’s ways are NOT our ways.
And God says, NO.
My Kingdom has nothing to do with what you have done and everything to do with what I have done.
Life depends on God.
Salvation depends God.
Freedom depends on God.
Daily bread depends on God.
Every breath that you take depends upon the God who created you.

When the Israelites found themselves in the middle of nowhere, utterly dependent upon God, it terrified them.
But that is precisely when God steps in and reminds them… I am enough. I will provide.
And just like the rain gently fell this morning, bread rained down from heaven.

Like those Israelites, we, too, struggle to remember this simple truth.

But when we are pulled away from that temptation to focus on our jobs and the competition and the battle to get what is ours, we, too, discover everything depends on God.
It is all grace.
From the rising of the sun to the rain that falls… it is all grace.
From the bread on the table to the money in our pockets… it is all grace.
We didn’t create it and it wasn’t ours to begin with.
We are nothing but cells stuck together and formed into amazing bodies – and even that is a gracious and generous act of God.

No… it is all grace. It is all a gift.

And God reaches out to us and says, come my children.
Come and walk with me.
Come and work with me.
Come and be a part of what I am doing.
Turn to me every single day, and I will provide everything you need for life.

The Wilderness: Learning to Lean on the Lord

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Text: Exodus 15:22-27, Luke 3:21-22, 4:1-2a, 4:14-15

This year, we are taking a journey through the wilderness during the season of Lent.

Most years, we spend one Sunday, if that, focused on the time that Jesus spent in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry.
However, the wilderness is not something to be glossed over.

So over these six weeks of Lent, we will take our time with these stories.
We will slow ourselves down and really chew on them.

Today, we focus on what the wilderness itself represents for Jesus and the Israelites.
It is the In-Between place, a liminal space, a transition between what was and what would be.

While it looks like we have a collection of random verses in our gospel text today, what we have are bookends of a transition into ministry.

Jesus was born and grew up in the home of Mary and Joseph. He was obedient to them and matured in wisdom and years, Luke tells us. But we don’t really know much else about his life as a child or a young person. Not until he suddenly shows up on the banks of the Jordan River to be baptized by John.

There, the heavens split open and the Holy Spirit descends and Jesus is named the Son of God.

But what next?
How do you go from a nobody to a viral sensation who teaches and preaches across the region as our third set of verses tell us?
How do you transition from a quiet life in Galilee to a world-transforming movement of love and grace and justice that challenges the religious and secular leadership of the world?

You pause for a minute.
You take a breath.
You figure out who you are and whose you are.

That same Spirit that descended upon him, led Jesus into the wilderness. Led him into a time of temptation and wrestling. A time to clarify his values, his power, his mission, his message.
Over the next several weeks, we will look individually at each and every one of those temptations and what they tell us about who Jesus is and how we are supposed to live.

For today, we simply want to remember that he took this time, this beat, this moment between those two realities to get ready for the future.

And when he was ready, the Spirit sent him back into the world.

When he was ready.

Scripture tells us that Jesus was in that wilderness for forty days, but the reality is, Jesus was in the wilderness for as long as it took him to get ready.

That number, forty, shows up 159 times in scripture and it is not a coincidence.

Instead, the number itself is a representation, a symbol, a clue as to the significance of the moment. It speaks to the reality that this is a time of testing that is meant to form the person or the people into a more faithful future.

The earth was flooded in the days of Noah for forty days, Jonah warned Nineveh for 40 days of its impending destruction, and Ezekiel laid on his side for 40 days to symbolize Judah’s sins – all represent a transition from our sinful past to the possibility of a new future.

Moses and Elijah, like Jesus, fasted for forty days in the wilderness – and these times were important transitions as they waited upon the Lord to give them instructions for leadership.

And then there were the Israelites.
They had been slaves in the land of Egypt.
All they knew was oppression and toil.
They didn’t know what it meant to live without Pharaoh’s rule, much less what it meant to live as the people of God in a new land.

The wilderness was not just the path they had to travel to the land of milk and honey.
It was also a time of transformation and testing where they would be strengthened and learn how to lean upon the Lord.

exodus mapExodus tells us that as soon as the Israelites were truly liberated on the other side of the Reed Sea, they celebrated their victory and began to move forward into this new land.

Together, they traveled for three days. Three days is all it took for the Israelites to journey through the wilderness without water before they started to grumble and complain and fall apart.

And God does a miracle in that place. The Lord has Moses throw a stick into the bitter, undrinkable water they had discovered, and suddenly it is sweet and refreshing.

They are learning to lean on the Lord.
They are learning to trust in God’s power.
But they are really just beginning to learn.

I look at this map and you know what really strikes me…. Where Marah, this place of bitter water is situated.

It only took them THREE days to travel this whole distance.

And it took them forty years to make the rest of their journey.

Because days were not enough time.

Years were not enough time.

It was going to take a generation of testing and transition and wilderness wandering before the people of Israel could leave behind what was and truly be ready for what was coming next.

Forty days…. Forty years… it took however long it needed to take for the people to be ready.

Right now, the wilderness is calling out to us.

Matthew, Luke and Mark all tell us that Jesus is led by the Spirit out into this liminal space, but Mark uses even stronger language. The Spirit forced him to go. He was pushed out there.

Just because you are led doesn’t mean you have to go. You chose to obey.

But to be forced… it means I don’t want to do something, and I don’t have a choice.

Did Jesus want to be in the wilderness?

Did he want to spend forty days wrestling with Satan?

I get the sense that any rational person wouldn’t choose this situation.
Jesus didn’t want to be there, but he had to do it.
He had to spend this time apart.
He had to get ready for what was to come.
Jesus had to make sure his head and heart and body were aligned before his ministry started.
It was going to be a rough journey and he was going to be working with some knuckleheads of disciples… not to mention the cross that would loom before him.

This time apart was necessary, because after the wilderness, there was a job to do.

Friends, we also have a job to do.
We are called to be disciples of Jesus Christ.
We are called to be God’s church, the Body of Christ, and to live according to his example.
We are called to make other disciples and to transform the world.

Are we ready? Have we prepared ourselves?
Or are we like those Israelites who are only a few days into a journey and already we are making excuses and want to go back to the way things were and we need to be forced to stop and take it slowly and re-orient ourselves to God.

I think some of us have to be forced into the wilderness of Lent… and that includes myself.
I’m too busy to spend any extra time in prayer and fasting and study… I’ve got a job to do, right? That’s what we tell ourselves.
But when we force ourselves to stop…
When we hand a piece of our lives over to God for a while…
Well, then suddenly we find that all those priorities re-align.
We remember it’s not about me or my desires or my needs… but about God.
And about getting ourselves ready for what God needs us to do in the world.

To be God’s people.
To repent and live differently.
To lead in a new way.
To offer ourselves for others.

This time of testing and preparation and wilderness is not about suffering for the sake of suffering. It is not in itself pleasing to God for us to be tempted and tried.

Remember, after all, that Jesus was already beloved, dearly loved, just the way he was before being sent into the wilderness.

No… the wilderness, these forty days, are only pleasing to God because they get us ready to come back OUT of the wilderness.

I am reminded of that old gospel song, “Come Out the Wilderness.”

It reminds me that we are going to come out of this time of wilderness.

Sometimes this time will make us want to weep… or pray… or shout.

But most importantly, when we come out the wilderness, when we finish this journey, when we get to the other side of this “in-between” we will do so leaning on the Lord.

So during this season…
During these forty days…
During this time in the wilderness….
What do you need to do to get yourself ready…
What do you need to do to lean on the Lord?

A Way Forward? Fixed And Free

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The United Methodist Church is at a crossroads.

On the one hand, we do incredible work together because of our connection across the globe.  Missionaries go from everywhere to everywhere.  We are present amid disaster and crisis providing relief.  New faith communities have been formed in West Des Moines, Camaroon, and Russia. And these things happen because we pool our resources to do the most good.

On the other hand, we are a diverse, expansive, global denomination working in many different contexts from many different backgrounds.  Within that diversity is blessing and also conflict – including conflict about the role of LGBTQ+ persons in the life of the church – particularly whether they can be married in the church or ordained/consecrated by the church.

Next week, we’ll turn our attention to scripture and dive deeper into how they relate to what it means to be Lesbian, Gay, or Queer today.

But for today, we wanted to start with the big picture of how we got to this place as a denomination.   Behind any particular verse is the tension between flexibility and permanence.

What is written in stone?

What is subject to change in time and context?

How do we know the difference?

In February, our denomination will hold a special session of General Conference and how we answer these questions will determine our identity for the future.

 

How did we get here?

As people of faith, we are heirs of both the tabernacle and the temple.

That is the premise that the pastors of Lovers Lane United Methodist Church shared with their congregation when they addressed our current dilemma at the beginning of this year.  (https://soundcloud.com/llumc/sets/fixed-and-free)

As we heard in our scriptures for the day (Exodus 25:1-9 and 1 Kings 6:11-13), as the context and the people of the Bible changed, God had different ways that the people could come to know and worship God.

 

In the midst of the wilderness, the people had no home.  They were always on the move, never setting down roots, everything was always changing and uncertain.

And so God sends them instructions to build a tent – a tabernacle – a movable place of worship that would go with them wherever they were.

Every person within the community was called upon to contribute something – richly colored yarns, gold, silver, wood, leather, precious stones – all of them used to create a moveable place for God to dwell among them on the journey.  Wherever they traveled – God was with them.   (Exodus 25:1-9)

 

Generations later, the people stopped moving.  They had established themselves in the land and they wanted permanence.  They wanted a king like the nations around them. And they wanted to build God a temple.

King David himself looked around at the palace he was living in while the Ark of the Covenant was still residing within the tabernacle.  But it wasn’t until his son, Solomon, was established on the throne, that the temple in Jerusalem was constructed.

This temple, this permanent dwelling place for God, was important for the people in the time of the Kingdoms.  No longer did the people all travel together with God in their midst.  Now they were settled in far off places.  The temple represented something stable and unchanging, the home base to which they could return.  God now dwelt somewhere a part from the vast majority of the people – but if you followed the rules and went to the temple, you could be with God.  (1 Kings 6:11-13)

 

That tension between what is fixed and free, an institution and a movement, is at the core of our struggle and our identity.

Are we focused on the God of the tabernacle – who hears the cries of the oppressed and marginalized and who makes a home among the people wherever they might be?

Or are we focused on the God of the temple – who has made a covenant and established laws and who calls us to repent and return home so we might experience life abundant?

It is both… a tension we must hold… but sometimes it becomes a tug of war that threatens to tear apart the church.

Even when we focus on the Word – both the one who walked among us and the living word we discover in this text – we see this tension.

As the gospel of John reminds us, “In the beginning was the Word…  the Word became flesh and made his home among us.”  (John 1: 1, 14) The roots of this passage are that the Word tabernacled among us.

But Jesus also said that upon the rock of Peter, he would build his church.  Solid, foundational, able to withstand time and changing winds. (Matthew 16:18)

Too often, what we find reflected within the words of scripture are our own predispositions towards temple or tabernacle.

And, we must be aware that there is also a shadow side to either of these inclinations.  If we lean too heavily upon viewing God through the lens of the tabernacle, we might be tempted to believe that wherever we are, whatever we believe, must be okay because God is right there with us.    On the other hand, if we lean too heavily upon viewing God through the lens of the temple, we might be tempted to believe that faith means being rigid, legalistic, unmoveable.   The tabernacle needs to be balanced with accountability.  The temple needs to be balanced with grace.

 

There is an awful lot of history between the time of Christ and our denominational roots in the 18th century.  The church spread and conquered and fractured and reformed.  The bible itself was put in the hands of everyday people.  The Holy Spirit moved, and institutions grew.

One of our beginning points lies with John Wesley, a priest in the Church of England.  The institutional church around him was very removed from the people of the day.  And so, he felt a call to leave the cathedral and John Wesley went out into the fields, where the people were.

He preached in homes, and from the top of tombstones in the graveyard, and his brother, Charles, took old drinking songs and turned them into hymns.  They gathered people into small groups for accountability and care and formation, but always encouraged them to remain connected to the established church.

Now, something that is important here is that Wesley never wanted to start a new church – he simply wanted to reform his church and help the people reconnect and experience the power of God in their lives.  From England to Scotland to the American colonies – wherever the church was, small groups of Methodists were growing.

 

If you ever have trouble placing our history as a church, remember this – the Methodist movement grew up alongside the American Revolution.  And when England lost and the Church of England left the colonies – all of those in the Methodist movement were left without churches and leadership.  And so reluctantly, John Wesley ordained Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury as superintendents or bishops and sent them to lead the people called Methodist in the new country.

And because we were established around the same time as this nation, our governance matches the governance of the United States.   Our church is a democratic based structure with three branches – a Judicial Branch, an Executive Branch, and a Legislative Branch.

 

When the people wandered in the wilderness, God dwelt among them in a tent that was free to move.

When the people were established in a kingdom, God dwelt among them from an established temple in the capitol.

And when the people were forming a new nation, our church came to look like the new democracy with a book of laws and rules at the center of who we are.

 

I know we’d like to think that book is the bible, and… well, it is… but there is another book that holds us together as a denomination: The Book of Discipline.

In many ways, this has been our attempt to hold the tension between the fixed and the free, the movement and the institution.

This book provides stability in the sense that it is our reference point and foundational document of our identity.  It contains the Articles of Religion that have been handed down through generations and a constitution describing who we are and how we function, and which is very difficult to change.

But it also provides flexibility in the sense that everything else within this book can be changed every four years by a simple majority of delegates to the General Conference.

 

Like the United States Government, we have a judicial branch – a Judicial Council of 9 persons who are elected to rule on matters of disagreement.  We also have an executive branch, our Bishops, who are tasked with upholding the Discipline and caring for the ministry of the church.

Lastly, the General Conference is our legislative body. It is our version of Congress, only our gathering time is much shorter – for a couple of weeks every four years.  It is where we gather to discern God’s will for the future of our church in the world.  It is the place from which we boldly proclaim where God is and sometimes we have gotten it wrong and sometimes we have gotten it right.

 

37814071_10155608720195866_3274315691594874880_nIf you look at the history of our church, it has not been one continuous solid history.

If you trace the line from the Church of England, the lighter brown set of roots, (and the side of our history that I know better), we can see that our lack of welcome and inclusion for African American siblings led to the formation of not one, but three new denominations.

Conflict over slavery and the authority of the bishops split the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844 – years before the Civil War.

Sometimes splits were the result of contextual differences.  Sometimes because there was greater freedom needed that the more established church couldn’t hold within itself.

But the church has also merged and reconnected and joined with others for missional reasons.  In 1939, previous splintering was repaired as we became the Methodist Church.

And in 1968, we merged and formed a union with the Evangelical United Brethren Church.

One of our own – Rev. Harold Varce was a pastor in the EUB at that time and he was there at the founding of the United Methodist Church.  In fact, thanks to Harold, that “United” from the EUB tradition made its way into our name.

 

What would be the witness of this new denomination?

How would we hold in tension the call to find God at the margins with the oppressed and to boldly proclaim the established truth of God?

One of the first things that we undertook was to write our Social Principles.  While not church law, they are “the prayerful and thoughtful effort on part of the General Conference to speak to the human issues in the contemporary world from a sound biblical and theological foundation as historically demonstrated in United Methodist traditions.” (Preface)

And so in 1972 – with the denomination only four years old, much of the attention was focused on our section regarding human sexuality.  It was a time of great experimentation and misconduct in society at large and this was our first opportunity as a church to speak.

In the midst of our larger statement was a phrase “persons of homosexual orientation are persons of sacred worth.”  An amendment was made and approved which said, “We do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider it incompatible with Christian teaching.”

In many ways – right there in the midst of that statement which says two very different things – is that tension between tabernacle and temple.  God’s presence dwells in the life of LGBTQ+ persons – they are of sacred worth… and the practice of their orientation is sinful to God and requires repentance.

Since 1972 – we have experienced a back and forth, push and pull, tug of war over whether we will fully embrace and include gays and lesbians in the life of the church or if we will stand firmly against the tides of culture upon the traditions of our established church.

That tension has reached such a point in the life of our denomination that it has overtaken much of our witness and work.

And so we reached a point in 2016 where we could not move forward without discerning a new way forward.  Over these past two years folks have gathered to pray, discern, converse, pour over scriptures, wrestle, and finally we are at a point where their recommendations of various possibilities will come to a special General Conference, focused solely on this topic in February.

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll back up and look at the scriptures behind our conversation.  We’ll look at the landscape of our current dilemma.  And in the final week, we’ll explore together the implications of the various proposals.

 

Here is what I want us to remember today.

When we were in the wilderness AND when established as a powerful nation – God dwelt among us.

When the temple was in ruins AND when the church was being persecuted – God was with us.

God has been leading, calling, pushing, prodding, rebuilding, connecting, pruning, and forming God’s people from the very beginning.

Not once has God left our side… although sometimes we have turned our backs upon God.

 

In some ways, I think God gives us what we need as far as a structure for whatever moment we might find ourselves in history.  Anything that will help us grasp onto the very simple fact that God love us and calls us to be God’s people.

Through the ups and downs of churches that have split and reconnected and reimagined their existence, what is constant is the Lord and Savior of us all.

So whatever comes, whatever changes, whatever new possibilities lie before us, I pray that we would trust that God is present in the midst of it all.

Amen.