Listening to God

As most of you know, Saundra and I went on a cruise from Jacksonville to the Bahamas recently. It was an enlightening trip – we had some very nice times and some very rough times. Saundra found out that she easily gets seasick – I found that I don’t like 48 mph winds and 20 foot waves hitting the side of the ship I’m traveling on.

One of the nicest times happened the very first evening of the cruise. We were scheduled for dinner in the stern dining room at 6 pm. So, at 5:45, we navigated our way to the lobby in front of the dining room, which required us to travel to deck 9 and then come down the stairs to deck 8, since the ship’s kitchen occupies the entire width of the ship in front of the dining room.

Well, we discovered that about 50 other people had the same idea. We found ourselves in line with a couple from western KY, and we began talking to them – mainly to the husband. It didn’t take much effort – “Looks like a lot of people had the idea to come early to dinner.” That’s all it took.

Very soon, he was talking about his mother passing away a couple of years ago, we gave him some advice, he teared up in thanks, and we told him we were pastors. We’re still not sure what we said to him that affected him so much, but he told us that we had been a great blessing to him and helped him more than anyone else had since his mother died. And we were joyful. We never saw him again. But I think we will one day see him in New Jerusalem. And we will all be joyful.

But that’s what happens when you try to listen to God and pass onto others what you have been told by God. Lives are changed. Joy happens.

You see, each time we speak, every time we act, whenever we don’t speak, we are teaching others how to live or die.

If we have harsh words for someone, we kill their soul just a little bit like removing a bit of bark from a tree’s trunk. If we harm another, their soul dies back just a little bit. If we fill their minds with meaningless drivel, their soul starves.

However, if we point them toward God, we give their soul new life. If we teach them a bit about how much God loves them, we give their soul food to grow. If we do something that helps them see God’s love clearer, their soul will grow like a plant that is watered and sitting in the sunlight.

And furthermore, there is a two-way effect here.

If we have harsh words for someone, our soul is killed just a little bit. If we harm another, our soul shrivels just a little bit. If we fill another’s mind with meaningless drivel, our soul begins to believe that drivel and starves also.

But if we point another toward God, our soul gains new life. If we teach another a bit about how much God loves them, our soul grows faster. If we do something to help another see God’s love clearer, our soul will grow joyfully like a tree that sits beside a river in the tropical sunlight.

And so it is important, critically important to our own souls that we listen to God’s Holy Spirit, that we follow what the Holy Spirit asks us to do, and that we do what God would ask in everything we do.

Before we left for the cruise, many of you said I’d absolutely love the cruise. When I got onto the cruise, I began to wonder – what did you think I’d enjoy about the cruise, as a pastor? Was it losing money at the onboard casino? Was it losing money at the expensive bingo? Perhaps you thought I’d enjoy the 15 bars on board – I admit the coffee bar made a good vanilla milkshake. How about shopping at the onboard jewelry and duty-free shops for expensive watches and gallons of bourbon? Maybe you thought I’d enjoy laying in the sun by the onboard pool with rap music blaring at me for hours. Did you expect me to continually cover my face with a book as the parade of bikinis walked by – Or did you expect me to gawk? Or maybe you thought I’d enjoy the Dr Seuss breakfast? Or perhaps it was the entertainment shows led by the guy who must have had a job on a Disney children’s tv show before he came to Carnival cruise – HELLO, EVERYBODY! WE’RE GOING TO HAVE FUN, FUN, FUN TO-NIGHHHHHHT! I wanted to slap him!

No, I came to the cruise hoping for two things. First, to hang out with my daughter, her husband, and their three boys. Second, to find a quiet, comfortable place to read a book, which I finally found in a couple hidden corners of the ship.

And so on this cruise, I began to think about a couple of things. First of all, I wondered – what do these people in my congregation love about cruises??? Should we open up a casino, open up gambling at the church, play rap music in our services as loudly as possible, set up open bars around the church – you pay once a year when we send you your bill – I’ve noticed attendance at church dinners is always higher than at church services, so maybe we need a free buffet each Sunday. Trustees, we could raise money for the building repairs by selling $300 diamond watches each week. And, of course, some of you have told me you’d like me to be more animated in my sermons – GOOD MORNING EVERYBODY! LET’S FIND OUT TODAY HOW JESUS HAS FUN, FUN, FUN!

Of course, the problem with cruise ships is that sometimes they have accidents, like this week when two ships very similar to the one we traveled on ran into each other. When everyone is trying to have FUN for ourselves, we often ignore the outside world.

But I asked a couple of you when I got back last week what you had liked about the cruises you’d gone on. And I found that you liked the service from the staff – rooms cleaned up, food made, a chance for a few days to be worked for instead of working. Naps. And I understood. You’re tired, and so you assume that I’d be tired and want to be served instead of serve.

It is the way men and women in this world mostly feel. We look upon serving others as drudgery, as heavy work, as unfair.

But this is not what we see with Jesus Christ. He did not come to earth for a relaxing vacation. He came to serve us deeply.

When we read the story of Jesus Christ, we find that He left heaven, a place where He was served by the angels, a place where He had the power to create anything in the Universe – want a mint-chocolate milkshake with a touch of pineapple juice? No problem! Here it is! Not even a five minute wait!

Christ left the place where He was in charge and had anything He wanted, to come to earth, powerless, to work in carpenter’s shop for His stepfather, to be attacked by other children, to grow into a teenager, to turn His face from attractive women, to grow into an adult, endure questions about why He wasn’t yet married by age 30, and then endured attempted stonings, hatred, and eventually arrest, whipping, and crucifixion. Why?

Because of the joy of rescuing all people from death. And we’ve seen that ourselves. Nothing beats leading someone to turning their life over to Christ. Can you imagine the joy of rescuing someone from certain death? And of course, that’s where everyone is headed. Certain death. For all people. And Jesus rescued them all from death. All people, that is, who were willing to walk Jesus’ path of holiness. Remember that Jesus told people to believe in Him three or four times, but He told people to follow Him about eighty times. That’s more than asking Jesus into your heart. That’s the first step. Baptism is step two. But there are thousands of more steps along the path, including helping others take the first step. How many adults have you led this decade to the saving love of Christ? Even one?

About ten years after Jesus’ resurrection, people made fun of the people who were following Him in a town called Antioch. They began calling these people “Christians”, which, in the original Greek meant “little Christs”. What a badge of honor to be seen as men and women who imitate Jesus so well people attach the name of Christ to them! For Christ was the Greek version of the word Messiah, which may better be translated as “Savior”. Christians are the “little saviors” of the world. Forgetting false modesty – are you trying to save your portion of the world?

Listen to what the Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, the capital of the entire empire:

1 Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle^[a] and singled out for God’s good news— ² which He promised long ago through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures— ³ concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was a descendant of David^[b] according to the flesh ⁴ and who has been declared to be the powerful Son of God by the resurrection from the dead according to the Spirit of holiness.^[c] 5 We have received grace and apostleship through Him to bring about^[d] the obedience of faith^[e] among all the nations,^[f] on behalf of His name, ⁶ including yourselves who also belong to Jesus Christ by calling:

⁷ To all who are in Rome, loved by God, called as saints.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

He has been declared to be the powerful Son of God because of his resurrection from the dead. THIS IS HOW WE KNOW JESUS is God, as He claimed.

Paul tells us that We, the Christians, have received grace and apostleship through Jesus  - WHY? – to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations on behalf of His name – including yourselves who also belong to Jesus Christ by calling.

Now folks, it is my practice to have a large amount of scripture read in our services. Why? Because it is the Word of God. What God says is more important than any jokes I tell, than any stories I tell, than whether I move my hands in entertaining ways. Do you believe that God’s words are more important than my words?

“But pastor,” you say, “I can’t understand what the Bible says.”

Of course not. You need to learn the language first. You don’t understand the Bible because you have not lived with the language. You don’t understand the Bible because you have been trying to learn the language with a paragraph a week.

My Chinese friends could read English, but they didn’t understand our English because of the idioms. “He drove me up a wall.” “It’s raining cats and dogs”. It confused them. In the same way, when Mary pours scented perfume on Jesus, we miss the meaning because we don’t know the idiom, that this is how the kings of Israel were crowned. We don’t understand why Bethlehem is so important to Jesus unless we understand that King David was from Bethlehem. We don’t understand the importance when Jesus calls Himself the Son of Man unless we have read Ezekiel and Daniel. We don’t know the idiom because we have not lived with the language.

When I was in high school, I took three years of Spanish. Five days a week, we’d study the language. When I went to college, I took two years of German. In particular, the second year, we’d have class two days a week, and have to translate five pages of scientific German from German language technical papers for each class.

It is said that Queen Elizabeth I – the Queen of England just before the Bible was translated into English – she practiced writing letters in English, then translating the letter the next day into French, then the next day she translated the French into Spanish, then the next day the Spanish into Italian, then the Italian into Dutch, then the Dutch back into English. And so she learned those languages – French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch.

Do you want to learn the language of the Bible? Read the Bible every day – study it with friends weekly. For the song we sang earlier, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” makes little sense unless we know that Emmanuel was the name given in prophecy to the child of the virgin who was to conceive, a name that means “God is with us”. We don’t know the idiom. And with that knowledge, things begin to make sense. And we develop our faith just a little bit deeper because we have listened to God’s Word and understand a bit more today than yesterday because of that connection between the prophecy of Isaiah and the Christmas story.

But instead, we have a deep desire to have FUN, FUN, FUN! Deep down, our natural desire is to run from God. Instead of singing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” and teaching this and its meaning to our children, we’d rather sing “Jingle Bells” and go play in the snow.

This, my friends, is the difficult part about following Jesus. Jesus walks up a steep spiritual path – will you follow Him up the mountain? Or will you run across the flat and level to be with the world’s toys.

C.S. Lewis pointed out, even back in the 1950’s, that there are two holidays celebrated at this time of the year. And he was ignoring Hanukah, which is a third holiday celebrated at this time of year.

Lewis spoke that there is a loud holiday, with sleigh bells and snow and presents and popular music and family celebrations and honey-baked ham and hustle and bustle and car horns honking in the streets. Jingle Bells, Frosty the Snowman, Grandma got run over by a reindeer, I’ll be home for Christmas. It is listening to the radio, watching the television special, cooking the ham and opening the wrapping paper.

And he spoke of a quiet holiday – a holy day – with a sleeping mother and child, a quiet like the quiet before a thunderstorm bursts across the land, a quiet of preparation, a time of listening to God and pondering, yes, pondering why God cared enough about us to send His Son to earth, knowing that one day that Son would face the shame and agony of the cross. It is the holiday of What Child is This? In the Bleak Midwinter, Silent Night. It is sitting quietly, listening to the wind and the fire, reading the first few chapters of the Gospel of Luke to yourself and your family, discussing it – and asking God what we can do in the coming year to somehow show our gratitude for that child – and then LISTENING for God’s gentle whispered response.

Christian, this is the time of year that Satan is most likely to take us away from God’s Son, to lead us to the path that leads to the world and the loss of our birthright, this is the time when the serpent talks to us and tells us that the most important thing is to have FUN!

But seeking FUN takes us away from joy.

And so, let us return to Chapter 8 of Isaiah, verses 11-15 to hear what God told Isaiah.

Isaiah 8

¹¹ For this is what the Lord said to me with great power, to keep^[h] me from going the way of this people:

¹² Do not call everything an alliance
these people say is an alliance.
Do not fear what they fear;
do not be terrified.
¹³ You are to regard only the Lord of Hosts as holy.
Only He should be feared;
only He should be held in awe.
¹⁴ He will be a sanctuary;
but for the two houses of Israel,
He will be a stone to stumble over
and a rock to trip over,
and a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
¹⁵ Many will stumble over these;
they will fall and be broken;
they will be snared and captured.

The Apostle Paul later referred to Jesus as the Stumbling Block. If we are to follow what God told Isaiah, we must consider only God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit as holy. We are not to fear anyone or anything else. We are not to be overawed by anyone or anything else. For that little baby in the manger is the mighty Lion of Judah, the one through which all things that were created were made. This tiny baby is the one who would grow up and go to the cross to defeat death forever.

Remember this. Behind every manger lies the shadow of the cross – and the joy of eternal life!

And so, let this year be the year where your family moves from the FUN, FUN, FUN celebration of the loud holiday – to the quiet celebration of the quiet holy day, regarding only the LORD of Hosts as holy.

Read Luke Chapter 2 to your family. Explain it. Ask God to show you what you are to do in the coming year – and LISTEN! And join us here with your friends and family at 7/11 pm.

God in the Flesh

As we move into the holiday time, it is good to remember that God has blessings waiting for us. Some people say the way to these blessings is the practice of spiritual disciplines. John Wesley preferred to use the term “means of grace” to describe those practices that bring us closer to God, those actions which we do which result in God granting us grace, blessings in our lives which help us see the reality of God and the presence of God more directly. 

Audio Sermon/Podcast Version

One of those is Holy Communion, which we practiced last week. Another means of grace is generosity with our finances, which is particularly appropriate this time of year. Let me set a goal, a way of allowing God to bless us, a way by which we might learn more deeply what God would have us do with the money God has blessed us with.

As we buy presents this year, we will spend $10 here, $10 there. In some cases, we may spend even a $100 for a present or a set of presents. Let me suggest that when ever we spend a certain amount on presents for loved ones, we set aside half that amount for a donation to help the neediest people in West Virginia. So, for example, if we buy a $100 present for our niece or nephew, we set aside $50 for the needy. And then, when Christmas rolls around, we will collect the money in a special collection which will be sent to the ten Methodist Mission projects around West Virginia in early January to get them off to a good start this year. The money will go to provide food, clothing, budget training, and children’s programs. If we all jump into this, I suspect that we can raise several thousand dollars between our two churches. Remember – Christmas is not our birthday. It is a time for remembering Christ and sharing the gospel. It is a chance to let God show us that giving to the needy helps you come closer to God.

One of the types of people we pastors run into is the person who likes to play word games, who likes to argue just for the sake of arguing, who looks at God’s issues of eternal life and death as just a fun mental game. This is the person who asks you, “If God is all-powerful, can God make a rock so heavy God can’t lift it?” Or “Can God change His mind?” Or, “If God knows everything, can God create a puzzle He can’t solve?”

And, of course, the answer is that God can do all these things – if God wants to, because God created logic, and God can create any form of logic that God wants to – including the ability to resolve paradoxes that are impossible for humans stuck in Aristotelian logic to solve. It’s like playing God a game of checkers – you forgot before you decided to play that God created the board and can rearrange the board if God wants to. God can even win at tik-tac-toe all the time, even though I could play tic-tac-toe in a way that you could never win. If you are a good player, we’d draw most of the time – but God can win, if only because God can outlast us.

Jesus ran into a handful of these jokers one day in our reading from Luke 20:27-38. They were Sadducees. (Audio Gospel) 

There were four major groups of Jews at the time of Jesus – The Pharisees, who were focused upon a strict interpretation of the Law of Moses, acting right and doing right. The Pharisees liked to twist you up, because no matter who good you were, they could always find another way to show you that you’d been sinning. You were always working so very hard to be a good Jew if you listened to the Pharisees. The Pharisees seemed to hate ordinary people because ordinary people sinned so much. Have you ever been in a church with modern day Pharisees?

The second group were the Zealots, to whom begin Jewish was a patriotic issue. The Zealots hated the Romans and people who helped the Romans in any manner. For them, Jewishness was wrapped up in the nation and national symbols. For them, Jewish holidays were first and foremost national holidays. Have you ever been in a church where the American flag and Christianity were too tied up together?

The third group were the Essenes, who were focused upon a personal relationship with God. They had a community by the Dead Sea where the would retreat to and study scripture, withdrawing from the world around them. They hated the other groups because they paid too much attention to the world. Today, we have similar Christians, people  of various denominations who become monk-like or nun-like and go off on retreat every few months, people who withdraw from the world as much as possible.

And then, there were Sadducees. The Sadducees were concerned with proper worship, for they were the group that controlled the Temple. Bring your lamb for sacrifice on the proper days, your wheat and barley for sacrifice. The Sadducees were most upset at people who stayed at home on the festival days, who did not come properly prepared to the sacrifices, who tried to cheapen their sacrifices. We have Christian groups today where proper worship is the most important thing, don’t we? And the Sadducees believed that only the first five books of the Bible were sacred, and because of this, they did not believe in a resurrection. That was why they were sad, you see.

A group of Sadducees began to question Jesus with one of those logical traps like I mentioned at the start of this talk. In this case, following Jewish law, when a man died, his brother married the widow. He died and the next brother married her, etc, etc. until seven brothers had taken turns marrying the woman. Then, they were all dead and were supposedly resurrected, and so the question was “Whose wife was she?” This, according to the Sadducees, proved that there can’t be a resurrection.

You can almost see Jesus looking at them with a grin on his face, as if to say, “You guys don’t give God much credit, do you?”

34 Jesus told them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage.

Marriage, he said, is an earthly custom. You can almost see him thinking, “do I explain to them that it’s only because life is so tough on earth that women need husbands and men need wives?”

But Jesus just goes on and tells them:

35 But those who are counted worthy to take part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.”

Marriage is not needed in the resurrection. Why?

36 For they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are sons of God, since they are sons of the resurrection.

Once you are resurrected, you can’t die! Marriage is a way to keep people living longer on earth because it is so hard to work a farm with wooden tools in a land with poor soils without much water with unimproved seeds. If you can’t die, you don’t worry so much about these things. Modern day people, consider what you would stop doing if you weren’t worrying so much about dying?

What would you stop doing if you knew you live forever?......

But what about love? Jesus asks us to love all people. If we lived in a world where people truly loved each other, there would be no need for a special person to love, because we’d all love each other, feel secure in that love, and wouldn’t need the special relationship with a wife or husband, because all relationships would be special. Marriage would not be necessary because the entire Body of Christ would be part of us all. But Jesus is mainly concerned here with proving the resurrection against those who would play logic games with words and laws.

So Jesus goes back to the Book of Exodus, the second book of the Bible, a book the Sadducees accepted as holy scripture. Jesus said:

Moses even indicated in the passage about the burning bush that the dead are raised, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.
Jesus is focusing here on the tense, which is the present tense. The Lord is the God of Abraham and is the God of Isaac and is the God of Jacob. Moses didn’t say, “The Lord WAS the God of Abraham and then was the God of Isaac and then was the God of Jacob.” No, he speaks as if they are all alive – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – at the same time, even the same time as Moses.

And Jesus concludes:

He is not God of the dead but of the living, because all are living to Him.”

God exists outside of time. But what does that mean?

Let me use the example of a modern video game. Many of the better modern video games record every move of the game. Then, at the end of the game, players and friends can go back and watch the game again at any part of the game. Players who were in one region of the game can even watch a totally different region of the game’s action. If the original run of the game is normal time, we can say that the players and friends who watch the re-runs of the game are “outside of time”, for they can watch any part of the game from any different viewing angle.

Perhaps this is how God is situated versus our Universe. Since God can see any part of time or space, God is outside of our normal time and space, able to insert Himself into any location in the Universe, from the moment of Creation to the end of the age. For God, the entire Universe is known, from beginning to end. For God, we are all living to Him constantly. 

How about angels?

There are many people in this world who believe that when we die, our soul floats up to Heaven, where we are given wings and become angels. This, my friends, is a myth, a fairy tale, a lie. It is Hollywood fantasy, a mistaken understanding of death that is part medieval Catholicism, part ancient Jewish myths, and part Christian Science belief modified for the benefit of those who make money off of movies.

No human ever becomes an angel. Angels are the created servants of the House of God. We are God’s children, and while the angels protect us and guide us today, they are the servants. When we reach our maturity, they shall serve us also. It is this future servitude that may explain why Lucifer, the greatest of the angels, fell in rebellion to God and became Satan, the enemy of God and humans.

Flitting around in the sky on angel’s wings is a fun fantasy.

But this ignores the reality of the real resurrection. For the standard belief of Christians since the earliest days is that we are resurrected. It is not just our spirits who come alive again, but our bodies also. For just as there are three parts to God – God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit – there are three parts to every human – our soul, our body, and our spirit.

In baptism, our spirit is taken over by the Holy Spirit, and this gives us the potential for eternal life with God. When we die a natural death, our body decays, our soul sleeps for a time, and the Holy Spirit stays with us, like a pilot light burning, until it is time for the general resurrection. And at that time, the creative power of God the Father, directed by the wisdom of Christ who is God the Son, and pulled together by the Holy Spirit, pulls us together again from all the atoms and molecules of the Universe and we shall walk again in the flesh in front of Jesus Christ, just as Job declared in Job 19:

But I know my living Redeemer,
and He will stand on the dust at last.
Even after my skin has been destroyed,
yet I will see God in my flesh.
I will see Him myself;
my eyes will look at Him, and not as a stranger. (HCSB)

Who was Job? His story is told in the Old Testament Book of Job. He was a man who loved God, who cared what God thought of him and his family, whom God allowed Satan to torment by killing his family and destroying his wealth, all in one day. God even allowed Satan to give Job a skin infection which itched like crazy. For God wanted to teach Satan the lesson that some men will have faith to the end. And so Job’s four friends came to him, asking him how Job had sinned, how he had offended God. But Job maintained that he had not sinned. He held that God must have his reasons, that God must be good, but that Job had also been good. Job held onto the hope, the faith, that in the end,

But I know my living Redeemer,
and He will stand on the dust at last.
Even after my skin has been destroyed,
yet I will see God in my flesh.
I will see Him myself;
my eyes will look at Him, and not as a stranger.

The Book of Job records that God restored Job, with a larger family and even more wealth in the end. And Job faith was rewarded with words directly from God while he was alive.

But when and how will we see God in our flesh? Paul tells us in 2 Thessalonians 2:

Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to Him: We ask you, brothers, not to be easily upset in mind or troubled, either by a spirit or by a message or by a letter as if from us, alleging that the Day of the Lord has come.
In other words, don’t fall for the people who are constantly saying that the end of the world is coming next June 21st or April 10th, or at the next election. (My son points out that the end of the world has been declared five times just in his life!) Paul tells us:

“Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way. For that day will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction. He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he sits in God’s sanctuary, publicizing that he himself is God.

A huge percentage of Christians must turn away from God. I know that studies show that the percentage of people in America claiming to be Christian has declined from 90% to 80% to 65% today. But this is mainly the result of people being raised in families who were Christian in name only, people who confused Christianity with politics, people whose parents claimed to be Christian but rarely or never attended church, people whose parents may have attended church but never had time for Bible Studies, people who thought that being a Christian meant you “believed in God” – and then kept God as a nice idea about a nice grandfather who gave you everything you wanted as long as you tried to be good, even if you had some strong issues you needed to work on. 

In other words, these folks that have finally announced they are not Christians are simply telling the truth for once, for many have decided that their political beliefs are stronger than their adherence to standard Christian belief. For deep down, they have felt that Christianity is all about being a good person, whatever society meant by that, and now that society has moved from standard Christian belief, they have too. For they were never truly believers in the death and resurrection of Christ to begin with. They never grasped the central importance of that story.

On the other hand, the "great apostasy" is when people who are dedicated Christian believers will turn away from Christ because they will see a man or demon who claims to be Christ sit in a new Temple and declare that he himself is God, and he will not be Jesus Christ.

Paul tells us more, though:

But we must always thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God has chosen you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel, so that you might obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions you were taught, either by our message or by our letter.

Salvation is not a simple belief in a god. Salvation begins with the belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God Himself, God walking upon the earth in a complex manner. Salvation begins when we understand that Jesus died to pay the penalties for all of our sins, that His death was His choice and sacrifice, that his resurrection proved He was and is God as He claimed. Salvation continues as we receive the Holy Spirit at baptism and that Spirit leads us along the path of holiness to sanctification, our setting aside to holiness.

The Gospel, the good news of the story of Jesus Christ, is how we are called to salvation. And we are saved to obtain the same glory that our Lord Jesus Christ has, a glory where people point to us and say “Christ lives in him” or “Christ lives in her”. 

It has happened throughout the ages to other men and women who chose to follow Christ ever so closely, who sought the means of grace where they could learn about Jesus, where they could receive blessings from God, where they deliberately tried the uncomfortable so they could lean to rely more upon God than upon their employers, their government, even upon their families. They gave away their last money and God restored it to them. They spent valuable time praying instead of doing and God granted their prayers. They sacrificed their spare evenings to visit friends in the hospital and were blessed with the inspiration that comes from watching someone closer to God than themselves.

• The Christianity that Jesus taught calls us to has a standard of behavior more stringent than any Pharisee asked for, for our standard of behavior includes our thoughts, yet Jesus always forgives us when we mess up. 
• The Christianity that Jesus taught calls us to make sacrifices more intense than any Sadducee ever thought about making, for we don't sacrifice lambs or goats or cattle, but sacrifice our lives for others. 
• Jesus’ Christianity calls for a patriotism more intense than any Zealot, for it is the patriotism for God's Kingdom that calls for the defeat of all evil, and the love of all good, no matter the country of origin. 
• And Jesus’ Christianity calls us for a closer walk with God than any Essene had, for it calls for us to accept God’s Holy Spirit inside us, listening to that still small voice every day, indeed, every hour. 

And Jesus loved all people. All people. He asks us to find God and love God – as well as all people. 

To find God, we must leave the world’s ideas of success behind and spend time seeking God through the story of His Son. 

• We must go beyond the front porch of Christianity and follow Jesus into His home made from fine scripture and the gossamer strands of prayers said. 
• We must follow Jesus into the workshed behind the house where He has made you the fine chair made from the tree of life. 
• We must follow Him into His garden where He has set up the special view of the white dove’s nest and the blood-red poppies that only His closest friends are shown. 
• We must try on the crown of thorns and carry the cross to feel the pain and the weight that He felt and carried so we can enjoy his fish cooked over red-hot coals on the lakeshore, and listen to Him talk about the joys of fishing for men and women. 
• We must deeply understand the joy of sacrifice for others that made Him go to the cross, the great sadness of the first garden, and the joy and wonder of the resurrection that He experienced that first Easter morning. 
• We will not learn these things here on the front porch of His home. We must enter His home of our own choice, our desire to learn more of God, our wish to know the deepest secrets of Jesus. 

But this is a choice. Those who choose to follow Jesus completely will find they cannot turn back. As if we would ever want to turn back from the greatest beauty in all creation.

And so, expect Christ one day. Expect the physical resurrection of your body one day. You will walk once again and see God in your flesh. But also expect a great impostor of Christ one day. Learn to listen to the Holy Spirit and read your Holy Scripture, that you may become sanctified and not deceived. 

Practice your Christianity by loving others, doing acts of loving kindness, by giving to others, and most of all, by teaching others the Good News about Jesus Christ.

And you will obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, oh saint of God. Let the love of Christ and others fill your heart and life, beginning today. Become the Body of Christ, and say once more, as Job did:

But I know my living Redeemer,
and He will stand on the dust at last.
Even after my skin has been destroyed,
yet I will see God in my flesh.
I will see Him myself;
my eyes will look at Him, and not as a stranger.
My heart longs within me.

And you will obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Hummingbirds and Lepers

This summer, there has been a hummingbird who visited our back porch a couple of times a day. We had a hummingbird feeder – and we also had what she really liked, which were a certain type of petunia. She’d show up, dip from flower to flower, taking a sip at the feeder. Then she’d flit off.

I wonder – did her hummingbird brain have any idea about those flowers and that feeder that provided her with sweet food? Did she have any idea how they got there – who had gone to Lowe’s and bought them – how they grew in the first place and how the feeder was manufactured? Did she even connect my wife Saundra and I with the food? Of course, she seemed to tolerate Saundra if she sat still, reading on the porch, but if Saundra stood – or the black and white cat that walks around the neighborhood came onto the porch – the hummingbird buzzed off quickly. And I thought, how very like her most people are, always flitting around.

When the petunias died from lack of water, did the hummingbird just say, “oh, no petunias today!” Or did she think – “That evil cat must have taken them away.” Did she even connect it at all with my forgetfulness or my Saundra’s trip out of town?

Of course, you’ve probably seen the Facebook posting that is circulating about the young adult woman who is complaining about hunters, telling the hunters that they should never kill deer or turkeys or rabbits for meat, they should simply go to the supermarket for meat so no animals have to die. That is a hummingbird brain if I’ve ever seen one.

But the average person in the world around us is a hummingbird about the important questions of life. How is it that we’ve come to be? Why are we allowed to live? Where does our continued life come from? Who took away the sweet petunias recently which makes us have to work harder? Why has God allowed this country to change this century? Few people sit and think about these questions. Most simply flit about, taking the sweet dollar nectar from their work to pay their bills, not even considering that God might somehow be responsible for that dollar. Most people ignore God, perhaps even more than we ignore the latest headlines out of China – or even from Washington or Charleston. Most people simply are looking for the next petunia, the new hummingbird feeder in their life, the next paycheck, the next distraction from thinking. 

Luke 17:11-19

Jesus met with ten hummingbirds one day. They were disguised at ten men with leprosy, or, as our translation says, “serious skin diseases.” Because these men had skin diseases, the Law of Moses ordered them to stay away from everyone else, keeping their distance so they would not contaminate other healthy people. These lepers were even required to stay out of the Temple – and this meant that they could not make the sacrifices required to keep a good standing with God. Imagine not being allowed to go to church because you had a skin infection, in a time when it was believed that you must go to church and give at the altar to be right with God. Imagine that no one is allowed in your house, not even a doctor or a nurse. Imagine that you have to keep your distance from everyone, every day, and that it appears that it will be this way for the rest of your life!

The lepers yelled at Jesus: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” And He saw them and told them. “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”

By the Law of Moses, a man who is cured must go in front of the Jewish priesthood and show his clean skin and perform certain sacrifices. Then, and only then, he can be welcomed back into the community. Jesus ordered them to show themselves to the priests, implying they would soon be clean.

On the way there, they discovered they were healed, or cleansed.

Just one of them turned around and gave glory to God. Just one of them fell on his face before Jesus. Just one of them thanked Jesus. And this man was not even Jewish, but was a Samaritan, whom every Jew of the day knew were dirty, no-good, not to be trusted. What group of people are your personal Samaritans?

Jesus looked around and said to the crowd. “Didn’t I clean ten men? Where are the other nine? Didn’t any of the others return to give glory to God except this foreigner?” The rest, you see, had continued on their way, looking for the next petunia with their hummingbird brains.

Then Jesus told the man in front of Him this – and listen carefully to Jesus. “Get up and go on your way. Your faith has made you well.” Jesus doesn’t say “I have made you well” or “God has made you well”. Jesus says “Your faith has made you well.”

And so there is something about this faith that heals us. There is something about recognizing that Jesus has the power and the love to heal us that heals us. In some way, when we recognize that Jesus is truly the Son of God, God walking on this earth in some complicated way, something eternal flows from God through Jesus to us, even though we have never seen Jesus or been touched by Jesus. These men were not touched by Jesus – but this one man connected with Jesus spiritually. He gave thanks and glory to God – and thanked Jesus, falling on his face before him in worship as a slave would do to his owner who held life and death over him. Have you done this with the God that has healed you?

What was the problem with the other 9 men? Were they just rude, not knowing to thank Jesus? I don’t think so, for I’ve seen many other people who were raised to be polite – and yet did not thank God when God did miraculous things for them. I think there is something much deeper, something which we are mostly never taught, something that Christian parents must teach their children for them to survive in a non-Christian world.

These men, like the hummingbirds, did not think about the world around them. They simply accepted the sweet nectar of healing and went to the next petunia. "Some flowers have nectar and some don’t. Just keep moving and look at any attractive flower." That is how they - and most of us - lived their lives.

Folks, it takes training to see the hand of God in the world. It takes training to recognize what is simply an event of the day – and what is God’s hand helping us out. Most people don’t thank God for the miracles they receive each day because we don’t see God buying the petunia, putting the petunia on the porch, watering the petunia, shooing away the cat, and they don’t even see God sitting the chair watching us.

One of the reasons we have "joys and concerns" is to help us who are hummingbirds be taught by those who can see God’s hand in action to see the great works God does for us each day. Parents, tell your children of the great stories that are told here each Sunday – of the recoveries from cancer, the wrecks narrowly missed, the wonderful coincidences that happen when God brings us together with another person, like last week’s story of Saundra meeting my fifth-grade math teacher and the church roof.

When I was about 8 or 9 years old, my father began selling truck toppers in St Marys. Since he worked shift-work, about one Saturday a month, we’d travel to Fairmont to pick up several toppers on our trailer. And because this was before new Rt 50 was finished, we’d go to New Martinsville and travel to Shinnston. Left and right and left and right, then right and left and right and left. You've traveled that road! And every few miles, Dad would say, “There’s another groundhog!” and point. I missed most of them because I couldn’t see them quickly enough. But eventually, I learned to spot them even quicker than he could.

God sightings are like those groundhogs. We have to train ourselves to see the hand of God in action. And we have to train our children to see God in action. For when you’ve seen God in action enough, no amount of attack by the anti-Christian forces of the world will overcome what you’ve seen happen and know was a miracle.

But the key to seeing God in action is to look with the eyes of our heart and spirit. For, like a superb writer, God likes a good story – and God wants to be the hero of the story, either by direct action – or by putting God’s chosen man or woman in the heart of the action.

But to see with the eyes of our heart and spirit, we must learn to be alone with God. Yet, we don’t want to be alone with God, do we? We have places to go, people to see, games to watch, work to do, activities and entertainments. We never liked sitting and thinking and doing homework in school and we don’t want to do it today. Because it is… boring?

Or is that really the problem? After all, if we go into our room alone, just ourselves and God, aren’t we in a room with the two most fascinating personalities in the Universe? God – and ourselves?

No, it isn’t the boredom. It is the fact that when we are alone with God, God asks us to look at ourselves and tell Him what we see. And we don’t like what we see, especially compared with God who is sitting across the room. We are dull, lazy, evil, ashamed of our past. We want what we should not have, we don’t want to do what we should, we have no power compared to God, no goodness compared to God, and no worthwhile goals when we put our lives up against God. And so we want to leave our room quickly and get away from our conversation with God – or we fall asleep because, honestly, we’ve been distracting ourselves so much from our thoughts and conversations with God that we’ve worn ourselves out trying to stay away from that conversation.

Blaise Pascal, the famous French mathematician and theologian who lived in the early 1600’s and invented the mechanical calculator, thought often about these issues and concluded:

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Try it. Learn to just sit and think and have a conversation with God for ten minutes – few can make it an hour. No phones, not even a book. Just yourself and God in conversation.

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

It is in our room, alone with God, that our hummingbird nature comes out. But it is in these alone times that God can pour great gifts of grace to us. It is here when we sit and think about our lives, our dreams, our goals, and what God has given us that we can take time to see what we need to change – and what we’re doing right. It is here, sitting beside the path of holiness, that we can decide which way to walk down the path, a chance to think about where the next petunia will be located that God has set for us. It is a chance to look for where the cat will be hiding, ready to pounce on us. It is a chance to meet the God who set up the world for us to grow in.

John Wesley spoke of “means of grace”. Today, we often call these means of grace by a different name. We call them “spiritual disciplines.” The means of grace or spiritual disciplines are methods where we can receive gifts from God, so I prefer "means of grace".

We’ve all seen or played games like “Candy Crush”, where there are gifts awaiting the player at different points. Life is like that – God has placed gifts in our world for us. And doing certain things will give us more gifts.

For example, there are gifts to be had by reading our Bible. Some think of it as a chore. But actually, if I told you that there is a code in every chapter in the Bible which is worth a hundred dollars, would you read the Bible more? There are gifts buried in every chapter, even in every verse.

There are gifts to be found in church attendance. Every Sunday, we receive gifts from God, either in the sermon, the readings, the songs, or just in the conversations and prayer requests of the people around us. You've been a way for God to gifts to other people today. You just didn't realize it.

Today, I’ve been talking about the spiritual discipline or means of grace known as “Time with God.” It is something more than prayer, for it is two-way prayer, a conversation time. We ask something of God and God asks us to look inside ourselves. And when we look inside ourselves, we receive gifts from God. A good way to start this, especially if we have had a difficult time in our past, is to ask God, “God would you show me the truth about my situation?”

I’ll be talking about more means of grace over the next few weeks. And, in general, let me say that the means of grace that least appeals to you is probably the one you need to attend to the most, for that is where the most gifts from God are waiting for you.

Parents – teach yourself how to hold to these means of grace – and teach your children at the same time. The younger the better – if a child cannot read, then read the Bible to them. If they can barely read, have them read the Bible to you – get a modern translation like the Holman or the CEB or the NIV so they can handle the words. As they get older, have them read a chapter and then discuss it with you or in a group around the table. Our goal is to help them understand that the answers are with God – and not with their worldly friends.

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Pascal must have had a five-year old, don’t you think? But his comment applies to children and the average adult, and even to the greatest dictators of the twentieth century. What would the 1930’s and 1940’s have been like if Adolph Hitler could have sat quietly in his room alone?

So many people have the urge to travel, the urge to do something else, the urge to go somewhere different. But the problem with this is that where ever you go, there you are. Where ever you go, you are there. And that is what is most unsettling, for most of us, deep down, don’t like the people we are. That’s why we try to divert ourselves from ourselves, that’s why we have to talk with others, that’s why we watch television, scan our emails and Facebook, strive for new experiences, new restaurants, new toys, new, new, new. We can’t stand to be alone with just ourselves and God for the next ten minutes, let alone for several hours.

Yet one day, we will stand alone in front of God. God will keep us there long enough for us to weep. And we all will weep in shame, for we will truly see how much we have missed the mark. Yet, for those who follow Jesus, we will also weep with gratitude, for we will truly know the love that saved us from the fiery pit. So why not begin to heal, by standing in front of God alone today and asking for the truth which will heal us? Alone, this week, speak with God, do not ignore Him, but stand, sit, lie on your bed, kneel, and ask Him to speak truth to you about your life…where it’s been, where it is, and where it is going. And listen for healing words from the loving God who created you and still loves you deeper than you love yourself.

On this particular day in our reading, Jesus was ignored by 90 percent of the men he healed. They did not think, they did not ponder what God had done for them. Perhaps in some way, that day, the man who came back was healed in a deeper way than the other nine. There is that implication in the text. He came closer to Jesus than the others, who had been healed at a distance. He came to Jesus’ feet.

But why did the one man come back? Because he was thoughtful, realized that this healing meant Jesus was particularly close to God, and that God must be involved. It took a bit of thought. And it took realizing that the hand of God had been present. And so he spent time with Emmanuel, God with us, the part of God who walked on earth, Jesus. He came close. And he was healed by his faith.

Look around you today as you go home or out to eat. Where is God working in your life? And take a few minutes this afternoon. During halftime of the game, turn off the television, sit quietly and ask God – what do I need to be doing with my life?

You will receive another gift – a gift of healing.

I think my friend the hummingbird has gone south for the year. She seems to like the eighty and ninety degree weather much more than the sixties and seventies we’ve been having. For her little body needs that warmth and gets cold quiet easily. She needs to feed on sweet nectar every couple of hours, or she will literally starve to death, so she can’t wait for the flowers to die back before she heads south. She has to stay in the warm sun where the flowers grow. Imagine always living where the flowers grow. Is that what Heaven is like?

There is a BBQ place in rural Georgia, between Atlanta and Augusta where many stop in. Outside the restaurant, there are a dozen hummingbird feeders. And so outside the restaurant, there are often 30 or 40 hummingbirds. Such a beautiful sight. But that is just a rest stop for my hummingbird. She is headed to the Caribbean, or even Mexico. It’s hard to believe that such a little thing can cross the Gulf of Mexico, but they have to stay in the warm sun where the flowers grow.

And so it is almost time to take the feeder inside, clean it out, and put it in storage until next spring. It is almost time to move the petunias inside so we can enjoy them past the frost.

Will my hummingbird friend return next year? They commonly live three to five years, and have been known to live ten years. And so I have hope to see her next spring. Perhaps one day, like the single leper, she will return and thank me for the food I’ve provided when the warm sun returns and the flowers grow.

Until then, as the days lengthen and the holidays approach, take time to sit with God, alone, and talk. Don’t buzz from flower to flower, but sit and talk with God. You might be surprised.

Perhaps one day, like that leper, we will take time to come to the altar and thank God for all that God has provided us. Perhaps we will even spend hours alone with God, talking with the One who loves us more than we love ourselves. Maybe that time will be soon, for the winter of our lives is coming – and we may not be able to find enough sweet nectar. But it is nice to know, that by following Jesus, we will find ourselves one day in the land with the warm light of God glowing on us – and beautiful flowers growing around us.

A History of Methodism Thought

We know the story of the Garden of Eden, how we were given firm instructions not to eat a particular fruit – we could eat any other fruit, but not that particular fruit, how the serpent played on Eve’s vanity, telling her that she could be like God if she ate the fruit, how she and Adam both ate the fruit and were kicked out of the beautiful garden to wander the earth, subject to becoming captive to sin and evil. Sin and evil have made people captive since then. We remember that story, right? 

Amos 6:1, 4-7; 1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31

A year or so ago, the news told the story of a family whose children had been raised in captivity. They were locked in the house, never allowed to go out, sometimes tied up, chained or caged. These children were prisoners in their own home. Eventually, though, one of the girls escaped and the authorities freed the children. It was only then that they began to truly live. I only hope that they learn to live free in Christ.

It reminded me of a story my wife told about a place she worked at which made made IV bags. They kept a group of test rabbits on site to inject with samples from the IV bags – nothing deadly, they just needed to make sure the liquids were safe for people, so they made sure the liquids were okay partially by taking samples and injecting the bunnies. One night, the power went out at most of the plant, so a group of workers, including Saundra went to see the bunnies.

Beautiful white bunnies in 2 foot cages. One of the men who worked in the area took a bunny out and put it on the floors. “Oh no! it’ll run away!” Saundra said, having seen many wild bunnies when she grew up in the mountains. But it didn’t run away. It hopped 2 foot, turned, hopped 2 foot more, turned, hopped 2 foot more, did it again and sat right there. It had been taken out of the cage – but it limited itself to the dimension of the cage that was there in its mind.

This is the way life is before we meet Jesus. We are slaves, prisoners, unable to truly live. Even after we are freed from our enslavement to sin, we still go through life in a cage that is in our mind. When will we learn to follow Jesus to total freedom and become the men and women that God truly planned for us to be? This is the purpose of following the path of holiness that God has designed for us.

Our reading today from Luke is less well-known than most. Jesus is telling a parable, an educational story. Jesus tells the story of two men – an unnamed wealthy man who wore purple clothes – the most expensive garments of the day – and had large feasts served to him every day. Notice that this wealthy man flaunts his wealth - and he ignores his neighbor. He doesn't harm him - he just ignores him.

The neighbor was a poor man named Lazarus who was covered in sores. Note that this is NOT the Lazarus that Jesus resurrected, the brother of Mary and Martha. This Lazarus was simply an unknown beggar who lay at the rich man’s gate, awaiting the scraps from the wealthy man’s table. Notice that the wealthy man has apparently ignored Lazarus’ condition, even though the man begs at the gate to his house. To further emphasize Lazarus’ terrible condition, Jesus says that even the dogs would come and lick Lazarus’ sores. The dogs showed more compassion on Lazarus than his wealthy neighbor.

Poor Lazarus died and was taken by the angels to be with Abraham. The wealthy man also died and was buried. Notice the difference in Jesus' wording.

The rich man finds himself in Hades, which is the name of Hell used in the Greek language. There, he looks up and he could see Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. And so the formerly wealthy man prays to Abraham to have mercy upon him and to send Lazarus to him to give him just a drop of water because the flames have him in agony. He wants Lazarus to serve him.

But Abraham tells the man, “Child” – notice he calls him “Child”, a measure of the wealthy man's immaturity. "You got your good things during your life and Lazarus got evil during life. Now things are reversed.” But even more so, there is a great chasm, a valley between the wealthy man and Abraham so no one can pass between the two.

So the rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus to the rich man’s father’s house to warn his five brothers. Once again, he wants Lazarus to serve him.

But Abraham tells him that they should listen to Moses and the prophets. The rich man says “if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. “

And Abraham replies. “No, they won’t be convinced even if someone rises from the dead”.

Look what we see here. We have a man who is flaunting his wealth and man who is suffering. The rich man goes to a fiery hell and the poor man goes to be with Abraham, clearly in a pleasant place.

They can see each other and speak – at least in this parable – remember that it is an educational story, and doesn’t necessarily mean that those in hell can see those in Heaven. They find out their end is permanent – don’t count on someone in Heaven to rescue you if you are in Hell. In fact, Abraham shows a certain wisdom. If you won’t listen to Moses and the prophets – in essence, the Old Testament – you won’t listen even if someone comes back from the dead.

So how do we end up with Abraham and not with the wealthy man in Hell? What is necessary for us to go to the “Good Place” and not to the “Bad Place”? (And yes, I’ve watched the TV show.)

To understand salvation, I’d like us to go back in time to the early church and work our way forward.

In the Book of Acts, we see the early church growing like gangbusters. They grew rapidly, probably because they heard passionate testimony from the 120 or so people who followed Jesus the last year or so of his life on earth, the men and women who had seen Jesus die and then saw him alive. Paul tells us that over 500 people actually saw Jesus alive after that first Easter. The followers of Jesus were passionate and serious, joyful and loving. They received the Holy Spirit and tried to do what the apostles told them Jesus wanted.

Over the next decades, those original witnesses died, and so the New Testament was written to preserve what Jesus had said. Soon, simple creeds were appearing which helped people remember what was important. The earliest which had widespread usage we know as the Apostle’s Creed. Later, the Nicene Creed was adopted because it was more specific. Both Creeds are commonly used among many Christians of different backgrounds - not to replace the Bible, but because they are much shorter, easily remembered synopsis of belief.

The church grew and eventually the elders in five cities began to lead the church in different regions. Jerusalem for obvious reasons, Antioch from where Paul and Barnabas and Silas were sent on missionary journeys, Alexandria, the center of learning in Egypt became a center of Christian study and teaching, Constantinople became the capital of the eastern Empire, and, of course, Rome was the capital of the Western Empire. Eventually, Rome tried to push its weight around, and there was a split between the Eastern churches and the Western Roman Catholic church, the Roman “Universal” church, for that is what "Catholic" meant in the language of the day. "Universal". This split occurred around the year 1054.

Things continued in this way until the 1500’s, when new churches split from Rome. The Lutheran church in northern Germany and Scandanavia, the Anglican church in England – eventually known in America as the Episcopal church, the Reformed and Presbyterian churches all spun off of Rome during the 1500’s. 

Another important group were the Mennonite churches, named for Menno Simons. It is from the Mennonites that the Amish split off a hundred years later. It was the Mennonites who, for the first time, rejected the baptism of infants and insisted that only adults were candidates for baptism. For 1500 years, the various churches had held that infants not only could be baptized, but should be baptized. For 1500 years, the various churches had held that baptism was legitimate by sprinkling, by pouring, or immersion. Now, the Mennonites, the Amish, and the modern Baptists began to insist that only immersion baptism of adults was legitimate, contesting a tradition that dated to the First Century AD and had been supported by both Eastern and Western and Protestant churches.

All of the new churches saw themselves as reforming a Catholic church that had gone wrong. They all went back to the Bible to try to understand what was the right answer about how to end up with God and not go to Hell. Wars were fought, because the people of the day understood that the answer might be very important for themselves and their children, their grandchildren. They wanted to get it right. They felt they had to get it right and so were willing to die in war over this.

In the 1700’s, many new churches were formed, but for the sake of our story, I’ll focus upon two men, John and Charles Wesley. The younger man, Charles was a poet – you will see many of his 4000 hymns in our hymnal. Older brother John was an highly educated, intelligent, immensely practical man, educated at Oxford, who didn’t care about many of the traditional issues of theology – John just wanted to understand how to ensure people avoided God’s wrath. John wanted to make sure people did not go to Hell. John wanted to make sure his followers were okay with God. So he began a renewal movement for the Anglican church, the Church of England, the church that we know in America as the Episcopal church. His followers became known as Methodists.

He walked outside of the church and began to preach at mines, at factories, and in city parks. He took the people who came to him and organized them into weekly classes that met on Tuesday, Wednesdays, or Thursdays. In these classes, they studied the Bible and helped each other stay on the straight and narrow. If you had a drinking problem, the men in your class would help you stay sober. If you had a problem with cussing, they’d help you keep your mouth shut. If you grew depressed or sad, they’d cheer you up. And if you refused to follow the straight path, after warnings, they’d kick you out. If you came back, they’d put you in a backsliders class. For the Methodists that the Wesley brothers founded were serious about Heaven.

What was their Method and path? Let me compare it to competing views. And please note that I am simplifying a bit, but not much with these views.

At the time and today, the Catholic church said that salvation comes only through belonging to the Catholic Church and taking the seven sacraments beginning with baptism, for that was how you joined the church. All of the new churches rejected this view, for Martin Luther had pointed out that Paul’s letters talk about faith in Jesus Christ being the critical idea to avoid Hell, not the works performed by priests.

At the other extreme was the view of the group who became known as "Free Will" Baptists. These people believed at the time and today, that you must be in a state of grace, a state where your sins have all been confessed before you die. To this group, the man who gets the piano dropped on him must not cuss before the piano kills him, or he will go to Hell. It is like walking a tightrope over Hell.

At still another extreme was the view put forth by the group that would become known as the Southern Baptists. Here, they believed that a public profession of faith in Jesus was necessary, that baptism was only a public announcement of whose side you were on, and that “once save, always saved.” Nothing more than your original public profession of faith was ever required to avoid Hell, no matter what you believed or did later in life.

But John Wesley thought carefully about salvation and developed what is probably the deepest view of salvation going.

First, Wesley said that we are totally depraved at birth and do not want to know God. We are all born in rebellion to God. But God goes before us and puts people in our path to lead us to Him via Jesus – perhaps our parents, our schoolteachers, friends, and acquaintances. John and Charles’ mother Susanna did much of this for John and Charles. Then God leads us to the point where we are given a gift of salvation – we can accept this gift of salvation or reject it, God has put it on the table in front of us. Nothing we did brought us this gift – it has nothing to do with how good we are or how bad we've been – we are all bad in God’s eyes, but he offers us the gift for us to accept or reject. It has nothing to do with anything we've done or anything other people have done. The offer of the gift is completely because God is generous and loving.

If we accept the gift, God justifies us, declaring us not guilty of the sin of rebellion, of treason to God. We may choose to be baptized – or our parents, being older and wiser and followers of Jesus, may choose for us to be baptized in the same way they choose for us to be inoculated against deadly diseases, they may choose for us to be baptized to receive the Holy Spirit and be inoculated against death. For that is the primary purpose of baptism, it is the laying on of hands to receive the Holy Spirit, our Guide through life who changes our heart and allows us to desire good and to follow Christ. Our heart is changed through baptism and God's action upon us. Not our action: God's action.

And then, God begins to work upon us to help us become the blossoming Christian, like a tulip bulb that is beautiful when still closed, but is even more beautiful later in its life as it opens up. We learn to follow the gentle voice of the Holy Spirit, to follow the Word of God who is both Jesus Christ and the Holy Scripture, and we begin to follow the path of holiness and we blossom.

Two mistakes are often made by people.

There are those who believe that God has no further requirements other than a profession of faith and all is right for ever more. That is like saying that a baby must just be born to be alive. Yes, this is true - yet if a baby refuses to eat, to learn, to walk, to grow – it will not have a fruitful life. It must grow and learn to run! God wants us to have a fruitful Christian life, and so He asks us to learn to walk the path of holiness so that we can become fully mature Christians who can run! This is why we come to church and why we study, and why we attend Bible studies. This is why we should never settle for simply professing our faith.

The other mistake is to believe that Christianity is all about adhering to a particular set of moral laws. That is not Christianity – that is what it means to be Jewish. We learn to follow certain laws because that is how we saw Jesus doing good to others and worshiping God the Father. But the laws are not as important as learning to act as Jesus would act. Jesus broke traditional interpretations of the laws of Moses by healing on Sundays. Instead, He always did good. Focusing upon the Law, the Torah, the Mishnah is learning to be Jewish, not Christian. Following Christ’s example and being guided by the Holy Spirit to do good is what Christianity is all about.

As John Wesley came to the end of his life, his movement began to come from England to America. And so, he appointed two men to lead in America. Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury. These two men brought together the Methodist clergy in America in Baltimore at Christmas time of 1784. It is from them that the American Methodist church grew. There was another man at that conference who would be very important, Phillip William Otterbein. Otterbein and Martin Boehm founded the United Brethren church, using a German translation of the Methodist Book of Discipline for German speaking Christians in America.  Also working along the same lines in the American German population was Jacob Albright, who founded the Evangelical Church in the early 1800’s.

Eventually, the Methodist church split over the power of the bishops into the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Protestant church, and then into northern and southern branches before the Civil War over slavery. But they came back together in 1939. In 1946, the United Brethren and the Evangelical Church came together to form the Evangelical United Brethren, the EUB’s, and then combined with the Methodist church to form the United Methodist Church, for they had the same basic beliefs throughout the years since Otterbein, Coke, and Asbury had all come together in Baltimore in 1784. (By the way, the United Brethren split way back in 1875 over a constitutional question, that’s why there are still United Brethren churches around who are not part of the United Methodist Church.) And there are also Wesleyan Methodists, Free Methodists, and Evangelical Methodists, all of which trace their roots, like the Methodists and the EUB back to John Wesley’s ideas about salvation. We have to search carefully and be quite picky to find things the Methodists believed that were different from what the EUB believed, because both groups followed the Wesley’s ideas from the beginning. They merged because they were already close cousins.

Back to our shared Wesleyan view of salvation:

Imagine you are walking along and you are led down a path to a gate. This is God’s "pre-event" prevenient grace leading you to the gate, which is your declaration that you believe Jesus is the Son of God, that He died on the cross and came back to life, and that He loves you and has the power to give you eternal life. There is a Person waiting there at the gate to walk with you and guide you the rest of the way. Maybe your parents introduce you to the Person – maybe you go through the gate before you ask for the Person. The introduction to the Person is baptism. But the Person is the Holy Spirit, who will walk with you and guide you down the path for the rest of your life.

And as you walk down that path through the woods of life, sometimes the path will be clear, sometimes the path will be hard to see. You will often be on the path, you will often step off the path. But as long as you are trying to follow the path – and remember to listen to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and read the Word of God, which is the map to the path - you will eventually get back on the path and safely reach your goal. It is only when you walk off the path and no longer care about following the path that we would say you have lost your salvation. It happens, but not to people who are trying to follow Jesus. If you are worried about your salvation, you have not lost it. It is only when you tell Jesus and the Holy Spirit to get lost that you become truly lost again. It happens, but rarely. It takes another choice. As St. Augustine said, “Have hope – one of the thieves on the cross went to Heaven. But don’t presume – one of the thieves did not go to Heaven.”
Back to our story of the wealthy man in hell and poor, suffering Lazarus who is with Abraham in a pleasant place. Lazarus was a relatively common name, the name being a transformation of Eleazar, one of Aaron’s sons who became high priest. 

Yet what happens soon afterward Jesus told this parable? A real man named Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha dies from sickness, Jesus then raises him from the dead about two weeks before Jesus goes to Jerusalem, where Jesus is killed and then is raised from the dead. Yet we find few repented because of Lazarus, just as Abraham said. In fact, those who plotted to kill Jesus expanded their plot to include killing Lazarus if possible. But they were not successful in this.

Many years later, Paul wrote to Timothy, his protege about these things, the trade-off between godliness and wealth, between losing our faith and doing good:

6:6 Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment;

6:7 for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it;
I’ve never seen a U-Haul behind a hearse. Have you?

6:8 but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.

If we truly love God, that is all we need. This was St. Francis’ rule – The Franciscan monks worked for their daily bread, clothing, and a place to sleep. But they didn’t take money, because then they would trust in their money for tomorrow instead of God.

6:9 But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

6:10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

Shall I list the famous Christians who have been snared by their love of money, of fine clothes, of large mansions, of the need to bring in constant donations for the television ministry?

6:11 But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.

Righteousness – being right with God. Godliness – imitating Christ. Faith – trusting in God. Love – caring for and helping others. Endurance – continuing through difficult times. Gentleness – interacting through soft words and touches rather than through harsh words and violence.

6:12 Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
Remember the day you were baptized! Look back at the things you declared!

6:13 In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you 14 to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which he will bring about at the right time--he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. 16 It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

6:17 As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.
And so I speak today to us who are rich, for each of us is wealthy beyond the dreams of any person from the time of Jesus. Don’t be stuck up, don’t trust in your employer or your 401K or social security, but trust in God instead.

6:18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, 19 thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

And so I remind us of Paul’s words. Do good. Be rich in good works. Be generous and ready to share so much that people will find us remarkable.

You see, my friends, God richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. We do good, so that we may take hold of the life that really is life.

Like the bunnies that Saundra saw at work that night, God has taken us out of the cage. This is what the purpose of the path of holiness is. We must learn to hop down the path, learn to run free, run to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness – all those good things that were the birthright of people before the Fall in the Garden. Godliness – truly, we can be like God in our attitudes toward others – but we can achieve this only in a good, wholesome way when we bow down to the true God – God the Father, God the Son who is Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Spirit.

And so, let us follow the Word of God and listen to the Holy Spirit. Let us believe that Jesus has the love and the power to save us, and let us accept the Holy Spirit through baptism, that we and our children may live forever. Is there a good reason to wait? I can’t think of any.