Live up to the Family Name

We are all familiar with George Washington. Less are familiar with John Adams, our second President and his wife Abigail. Yet they probably influenced the country more than George, for George died without children. You see, our children and grandchildren influence the world around us even more than we do. Look at the influence that the Adams, a strong Christian family,  - no, I’m not talking about the Addams family – what John and Abigail Adams’ family had on America with the following descendants:

John Quincy Adams, a Congressman and 6^th President

George Washington Adams, a member of the Massachusetts legislature

Charles Adams, a lawyer

Thomas Boylston Adams, a legislator and judge

Charles Francis Adams, Sr, a Congressman and Ambassador to England. His sons John Quincy Adams II, a lawyer, Charles Francis Adams Jr, a brigadier-general in the Union Army during the Civil War and president of the Union Pacific Railroad, Henry Brooks Adams, an author, Brooks Adams, a historian.

Other members of the Adams family included Elihu Adams, a Revolutionary war soldier, Samual Adams, delegate to the Continental Congress and governor of Massachusetts, Samuel A Adams, a historian and CIA analyst, John Doneley Adams, a politician and lawyer, Thomas Boylston Adams, an executive and writer, Charles Francis Adams III, Secretary of the Navy, and a mayor, Charles Francis Adams IV, first president of Raytheon, George Caspar Adams, football coach at Harvard University.

Historians agree that while John Adams gave the family its pride, connections, and early wealth, it was Abigail who gave the family a strong Christian faith, requiring the children to uphold the highest standards of ethics and morals. This, then, was passed down through the years, indeed for over two and a half centuries. Whenever the country needed strong, moral and ethical leadership, whether in government or business, a member of the Adams family stepped forward.

Did you notice that one of the men, Samuel A Adams, was a CIA analyst. He worked during the 1950’s and 1960’s, and was the analyst who discovered that military intelligence had underestimated the number of Vietcong and North Vietnamese soldiers during the Vietnam war. He insisted the truth be known.

In modern America, there are families who are known for certain things outside of politics. In St Marys, the Shouldis/Reckard family always own the leading store in town. The Gerbers are a family of dentists. The Ingrams are farmers and coaches. The White family are lawyers. Here in Cedar Grove, the Archer family runs the restaurant. When we know the family, we know something about a person. Family makes a difference.

Ancient Rome had such families also. Although the Caesar family is most known, the family who provided most of the early emperors, the Bruti family was considered more noble. Around 700 BC, the small democratic city-state of Rome was taken over by a man who become the king of Rome. A member of the Bruti family killed this would-be dictator. In 44 BC, when Julius Caesar made changes that would make him the dictator, the emperor of Rome, his friend Brutus of the Bruti family organized his assassination by the senators in Rome. It was what the Bruti family did – they destroyed dictators.

The ancients understood this family issue better than we do with our emphasis upon the individual. Latin, the ancient language of the Romans, talks about the genius of the family. It doesn’t mean they are particularly smart – it is related to species and genus. In Latin, the genius of the family meant that a particular family had a certain spirit, a certain behavior, a certain shared, common way of dealing with the world. In ancient Rome, this was so important that your family name came first – your given name was secondary. You were Wilson, Fred instead of Fred Wilson, because everyone knew that you were first and foremost a Wilson and only secondarily were you Fred. We still now recognize this today, don’t we? In politics, we know something about the men and women in the family when a politician reminds us that they are a member of the Bush family, the Kennedy family, the Clinton family, the Moore family. So what values are we teaching to our family members, our children and our grandchildren?

In our reading from Paul’s letter to theEphesians, Paul has been writing to Christians who lived in the city of Ephesus, a Greek town in southwestern Turkey. He has been comparing the Christians to the Gentiles, the non-believers who live around them, and he has told them to follow what they have learned and been taught about the truth that is in Jesus. They were taught to put off their old self so they could be made new in the attitude of their minds, to put on a new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. We have been called to become the adopted children of God – and therefore we must take on the character of our new family, following our heavenly Father and our eldest brother in their ways. Regardless of what our birth family taught us, we must learn to live as a member of God’s family today. We must live up to the name we have been given – Christian.

Paul tells us “I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.” Most of us grew up living in the world, doing the things that are common in the world, a world ruled by Satan. A few people were blessed to grow up in strong Christian families, where the ways of the world were rejected and strong Christian values instilled. What is your family background? How are you moving to learn what God would have His children value and replicate?

I have known some of these devout Christian families. Father and mother both insisted upon a strong Christian upbringing for their children. These children then went and passed on this heritage to their children. And I’ve been blessed to be present when members of the third generation were sitting around discussing their favorite devotionals, their favorite Bible verses, their latest God-sightings. I’ve seen these families whose parents made sure that God was by far the first and most important thing in their lives. Their parents attended church regularly, made sure that their children saw and heard them praying daily, the family discussed sermons and scripture at mealtimes and in the evening. And the result was a family that followed God’s wishes even in later generations. The result was a family that made a difference on this earth – and eternally.

I’ve also seen those who live in the futility of their thinking, as Paul would say. I’ve been around families who first and foremost discuss for hours the next WVU football and basketball seasons, who discuss the neighbors, the men and women at work, the antics of their neighbor’s cat. They can tell me everything there is to know about this year’s Ford and Chevy trucks, the characters of a particular soap opera, the special characteristics of this manager, that manager, this teacher, that principal. But they do not see God walking in their lives, they cannot hear God shouting at them to pay attention to what is important, they cannot recognize that God is trying to get them to focus upon where they will be in 50 or a hundred years, for they are doing little except playing Candy Crush Saga on their phones or gossiping about how terrible their lives are.

Paul would say to them – and us – “That is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. “ Most people, even today, have gone to Vacation Bible School and Sunday School. But, unfortunately, as a friend of mine asked me the other day, “Why is it that most Christians are taught 6^th grade Christianity instead of College-level Christianity?” Few people want to go deep, to study, to learn more than the basics. Most people stop when they “believe in God”, the simple existence of a god – but we never take time to put in the hours to understand what our God asks of us. After all, we care deeply about what our family thinks of us, what our co-workers and employers think about us. But what they think of us won’t matter in a couple hundred years, possibly in as little as twenty years. What God thinks of us will matter even in ten thousand years. And so we will start up our weekly Bible Study again on Tuesday evenings at 7 pm after Labor Day. We will begin in the Book of Joshua, studying the history of the Holy Land as the Bible tells it.

Paul teaches us more about our new, Christian family identity. He says, “You were taught to put off your old self which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires.” We are being corrupted, we are being rusted, decayed, turned into rot. The world around us has hired some of the highest paid minds in the world to develop advertisements, entertainment, games, gadgets, and distractions which have no other purpose than to take our minds off of the most important things – Jesus, God, Holy Spirit, and what they ask us to do in this world until we move to the next world. That is what Paul means by deceitful desires – those desires that the world suggests are important – iPhones, cars, vacations, travel, beautiful faces and bodies. The world’s desires are deceitful, for they never give us lasting fulfillment – they promise but do not give us the joy, the security, the love we are looking for.

My wife Saundra has a beautiful artistic touch. She loves beautiful things, beautiful furniture, beautiful homes. But she has stopped watching HGTV because she has found that all that channel does is stir “deceitful desires”, a desire to live in a beautiful home in Hawaii, a want for expensive décor, a dissatisfaction with the beauty that is around us. So she has followed Paul’s advice to “be made new in the attitude of her mind and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” It is better to create beauty and enjoy the beauty that God gives us, than to desire beauty that can only be had through material wealth. My son Andy, who has recently moved fifteen miles south of Elkins, sent a text the other day which read something like this, “You know, I’m blessed to live in a place people pay thousands of dollars to visit for a week a year.”

You see, we were not created to consume as the world would tell us. We were created to create beauty and righteousness and holiness.

Paul tells us that “We are to be made new in the attitude of our minds, and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

To all who listen, it is apparent to me that we of this generation have been given a great gift. God sent COVID came to us and stopped us from living the dead lives we had been traveling upon. Some God took directly to Heaven; to the rest of us, God has given a great chance to start again, walking upon the living path of holiness, leaving behind the world that was before, leaving behind the meaningless things that Satan gave us as toys to distract us from eternal life, putting down the worthless pursuit of wealth, of ambition, of stuff that will decay quickly, so that we might live closer to God, walking with Jesus, listening to the Holy Spirit, and changing the world back toward what God planned in Eden.

Many will go back to the old ways of death and competition. But for those who will listen to the Holy Spirit, a new way beckons. What do you need to change about your life that will draw you closer to God, will give you joy, will make your life more beautiful and worthwhile? Will you walk upon this new holy path to a beautiful future with Christ?

Paul tells us the way: “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.” This, you see, is how we develop righteousness and holiness with each other. We must speak to our neighbors. I read an article the other day that reported upon studies of people who spoke to strangers. Both the people and the strangers reported great happiness that came from these conversations. For people like to be noticed, to be treated as people instead of human-looking robots, to be humans instead of just decorations on the street which people walk by. Speak to strangers and make friends, giving yourself joy and spreading joy in the process.

But what about those in the world who destroy, people who destroy those who are creative, people who make fun of goodness, people who are always biting and cutting and making digs at us? Paul has advice regarding these people for us also.

“In your anger do not sin”: How do we do this? Anger is under our control. In particular, our reactions are under our control. We can return a biting comment with a nice complement, we answer a putdown with a lift up for the other. Where people would tear us down we lift them up so they eventually will feel foolish tearing down the only person who treats them well. And eventually, even those who are slow and have trouble noticing things will notice the difference. Mind you – it may take decades for them to come around. But we are fighting for eternal souls – ten years is nothing in the race we are running, in the battle we are fighting. “Stranger Danger” is advice for three-year-olds in a large, faceless city – it is not Christian advice for adults in a medium-sized town who would know joy.

Paul tells us “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” You know, the best way to overcome our anger with others is to let our anger turn to pity. Look at the nasty, spiteful person with pity because you have a calmness inside that they do not have. For we have the advantage of knowing that we shall live forever – while the man with road rage, the woman who is so upset with the grocery store, the troublemaker who is always complaining – they think they have to win today – we know that we win in the end. So have pity upon them instead of anger. We will look back in five hundred years and laugh at their intensity over such trivial matters. That is the peace of Christ working wonders as our eternal, Christ-given perspective takes hold.

Paul tells us that “Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.” We share so others will see the calmness and joy in our souls, our understanding that dollars and food and clothing and cars and phones and other stuff are just stuff that decays – but eternity is made of relationships and love and peace.

Years ago, my son and I stopped in town to walk to a store. I left the windows down with my Bible laying in the back seat. He asked, “Dad, shouldn’t you roll up the windows and lock the doors? Someone might steal your Bible.” I said, “If someone steals my Bible, they probably need it more than I do. Relax.” He is now a pastor who is generous with time and money.

Paul tells us “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Oh no! Paul is getting personal with us, isn’t he? Does your speech build others up or tear others down? Most people know that if you gossip about others, you will gossip about the person you are talking to. So when you speak, think a few times about how to phrase things – if you are speaking to the person in front of you, build them up, focus upon what they are doing right – do not focus upon what they’ve just done wrong – they know. This particularly applies to teenagers and young adults. Point out what they are doing right – and they will do more of it and eventually run out of time to do the wrong things.

If you speak of others not present, speak in such a way that those not present will be grateful when word gets back to them. Build others up, particularly those who attend or lead this church. Remember that other people are always watching and listening – particularly children and people who are watching to see if you as a Christian behave as Christ has asked us to behave. And, of course, you and I know that we try to improve, but sometimes the world comes out of us and we say the wrong thing.  

Paul reminds us not to grieve the Holy Spirit – do what the Spirit asks, do not oppose the Spirit. Paul continues: “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

Perhaps this is the most important. While we would love to all become perfect, never saying an unkind word, never making a mistake, never hurting another, we must remember that each of us does make mistakes. And so, when someone says something mean, something unkind, when someone hurts another in this body of Christ, we simply turn to each other and say, “I guess he’s having a bad day. Let’s forgive him and pray for him.” And that, my Christian friends, is how we handle things because our heavenly Father has forgiven us far more often than we have to forgive each other.

We remember that Jesus said to forgive each other seventy times seven times, for that is what is meant to be kind and compassionate to each other, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave us. This, my friends, is probably the key way in which we Christians should differ from the people of the world around us – we know we should forgive, while others are pride-filled because they never forgive. And so we shall be forgiven by God, while those who do not forgive will not be forgiven. Forgive all people, especially those of the body of Christ, for they are trying to improve. Forgive those outside the body, for they often don’t know a better way.

This is what it means to be adopted sons and daughters of God, members of the family. This is how we live up to the genius of our family, the spirit of the Christian family.

In your small family, Mom, Dad, children, it will help if you will decide what your family is all about. My family is about spreading the Gospel to others. Some of my children are very much following this idea, like how Andy is a pastor. Others are quieter about it, like our daughter Jessie quietly shares sermons with her friends and coworkers. Yet all understand that we are about the business of God. What is the mission of your family?

The head of the family sets the tone for this. Grandfathers, you set the tone for the children about what is important. Fathers and mothers, you also set that tone. If you attend church every Sunday and bring the children, they will decide that church and God are important. If you go to church once a month, but make it to the campsite every Sunday, they will decide that camping is most important. By your actions you set the tone – you teach your children what is important. Is it football or the Gospel? Is it fishing or mowing your lawn? Fathers, Grandfathers, mothers, grandmothers – you are teaching the younger generation today by your words – but more so by your actions.

Perhaps you have never or rarely been to church. Now is the time that you can set an example for your family. This is the year when you can show them what is critical. For what you do is more important than what you say.

We believe that our attention towards God is most important, for when we reach old age, when our bodies wear out, when we close our eyes for the last time, the Mountaineers won’t be able to help us, our fishing tackle won’t give us eternal life, our lawn mowers won’t be there to carry us into Heaven. All that will count is whether or not we have a personal relationship with the Son of God. All that will count is whether or not we have spent enough time with Jesus that He looks at us and says, “Glad to see you. Come home to me.”

Amen.

Response Hymn – I Need Thee Every Hour 397

Benediction: May God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit fill you and guide you this week, that you may do the will of God. Be blessed!

Closing Song – TakeTime to be Holy 395

Bread of Life

 About a week ago, Saundra made some olive bread. It is a sort of soda bread with black and green olives embedded. Wonderful stuff. It takes us back to the time when every home baked bread, had olive trees, pressed their own olive oil. In short, it takes us back to the time of Christ in the eastern Mediterranean area.

In America today, our bread is made using hard wheat, a type of wheat that contains much gluten, the protein that helps bread dough stick together. If you’ve ever eaten gluten-free bread, it is made from other grains like barley or millet. And because they don’t have gluten, the bread is crumbly. It falls to pieces easily. And because we have such a large area in the Middle West which is ideal for growing wheat, and because we have such good transportation systems, few people grow their own grain, or even bake their own bread, preferring to buy bread in loaves at the store that is baked in regional bakeries from cheap, but good wheat flour.

But in the Holy Land in those days, bread was made from many different grains, because different grains grow better in different places. Buckwheat, Teff, millet, sorghum, barley, spelt, wheat, oats, rye, sesame, bulgar, farro, einkorn, Khorasan, flax, And in the Middle East, there are dry places and wet places, high altitude areas that get very cold and windy, low places that stay warm and humid, rocky soils, sandy soils, fine black soils and red clays. Each of these places best grow different grains – and since everyone had to live off the grains they grew and the transportation systems were so poor – think donkey carts – bread was different from town to town, even from household to household. But everyone ate bread because it was the cheapest source of calories, in a time when everyone worked at hard, farm labor and used twice the calories we do today. Bread was the basis of life in the Holy Land.

You see, the diet of that day was very restricted. Bread was the basis for every meal. Olives were available in season and they were pressed for their oil, which was used for cooking as well as burnt in oil lamps and used to keep germs out of wounds. Dates and figs were eaten fresh and dried. There was no corn, no sweet potatoes, no pineapple, no strawberries, few types of squash or beans, for all of these foods were native to the Americas and had not yet been taken to the Old World – the “corn” talked about in the Old King James Version refers to wheat, which is what the  word “corn” still meant in the early 1600’s.

No, in the Middle East grew some basic melons, pomegranates and peaches, but not apples. Grapes were grown widely and wine was made to preserve the sugar content as alcohol. Chick-peas  were the most common legume, butter and cheese were made from milk, honey was harvested from wild hives. Goat and mutton were the most common meats, as well as cattle for the wealthy. Pork was forbidden, as was shrimp and non-fish seafood. The most common vegetables were members of the onion family, very little other vegetables were eaten. But the most common foods were bread, meat stew, olives, grapes, dates, figs, wine, and milk products.

You know, in most places, there is a starch which is the basis of our food. In southeast Asia, it is rice. In Central America, it was maize corn, In Ireland it was potatoes until the great famine when the potatoes fell victim to fungus. In the tropics, it is cassava and tapioca, which are roots. In northern Asia it is noodles made from wheat flour. In Italy, it is pasta, which is made from durum wheat dough which is pushed through molds and dried to become pasta. And through the Middle East, through Europe and America, Australia, and New Zealand, it is wheat bread.

In the holy land, the most common form of bread is what we today call sourdough. In sourdough, a bit of natural yeast is left in the dough. Additional flour is added to a bit of dough left over and allowed to rise overnight. The yeast grows and produces carbon dioxide bubbles which rise the bread. In the morning, most of the dough was then baked to form small loaves or possibly what we call pita which are then filled with a meat and vegetable mixture. But a bit of the wet dough was kept, protected and allowed to act as starter for the next day’s bread. It was considered miraculous that the dough would rise, almost like a living thing – which, we now know, it was with the yeast growing inside the dough. The yeast was a leavening agent, which comes from very old words meaning “lifting”. The yeast, though, requires hours to work it’s magic. If there is no yeast, the bread simply forms crackers, known in Hebrew as “Matzo”, which is of special note around the time of the Passover, because the Israelites had to leave Egypt so quickly the bread could not rise.

Last week, we saw Jesus feed the five thousand with five barley loaves and a couple small fish. He then walked across the lake, catching up with the disciples in the middle of the lake. Our reading this morning continues the next morning as the crowd awakens and realizes that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, so they got into the boats and went to Capernaum on the other side of the lake looking for Jesus. I’m so glad we don’t have to row across a lake to find Jesus.

They asked Jesus, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”

Jesus, as usual, doesn’t answer their question directly, but deals with the real issue – why the people were looking for Him. He said, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.”

In other words, Jesus said the crowd had followed Him because they saw Him as their free lunch. Despite the miracle of the feeding of five thousand, they simply saw Jesus as a free lunch. Which is a warning to those of us today who would establish regular free community lunches – there is more to do than simply provide the food for the body. If we establish give-way programs, we must provide spiritual food as well as free physical food to accomplish God’s will. As Jesus went on to say,

“Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”

The normal food we eat can spoil, but there is food for our soul that lasts to eternal life. Perhaps Jesus is giving us a metaphor here, that His teachings are food for our souls that will feed our souls and lead us to eternal life. The crowd certainly understood this to be metaphor, an analogy, for they immediately changed their line of questioning.

“They asked Him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” They wanted to know what they had to do to be right with God.

And Jesus responded with “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

The crowd understood He was talking about Himself as the one God had sent. So the crowd asked for proof. “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do?” They wanted proof that He was sent by God. Then they suggested, “Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat’” quoting our Psalm for today.

But Jesus understood that they thought Moses had given them the bread, for it is very easy to think that Moses had some special magic. Jesus wanted to turn the attention to God – and to Himself. He wanted to turn from the man who stood in front of the burning bush to the God who was in the burning bush, the great “I am that I am”, which is the name God gave to Himself.

“Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who give you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and give life to the world.”

Jesus was pointing out that life comes from bread – on this they all agreed. But Jesus also wanted to remind them that there is ordinary bread, which would mold – and special bread from God, which gave life to the world.

Jesus said, “It is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

They responded, “Sir, always give us this bread.” They were probably still thinking of manna, they were still looking for a free lunch. They still were thinking about their tummies, when Jesus hit them with the zinger. We went

Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life.” Jesus intentionally used the “I AM” phrase, which was not commonly used in Israel, because that was the name of God. Jesus applied it to Himself. And then He explained further, “Whoever comes to me will never go hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

What Jesus was saying here requires some more background. The Apostle John gives it to us at the beginning of his Gospel when he tells us that the Christ was the Word of God. John tells us that everything that was made was made through the Word. So if the Christ was the Word of God, then everything made was made through Christ, who is the Word of God.

So God initiates the Creation, and Jesus forms the Creation. It is as though there is a water system which has high pressure water, and there is a man standing there, controlling and directing a hose through which that water flows. God the father is the water system, while Christ is the man directing the hose.

And this includes the creation of life, and sustaining that life.

We think that if God walked away from the Universe, everything would continue onward for a while, perhaps slowly falling apart. But that is not true. God is actively maintaining the Universe. If God walked away, the Creation would disappear faster than a video game or a TV show disappears when the electric power stops.

Life is the same way.

In fact, life must be sustained.

We all know that people die when they stop eating. It takes a while, but they die. Bread sustains life.

Now remember when Jesus said, “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” The men of Israel and us have often assumed that this is a metaphor, an analogy that the “food” the Son of Man – Jesus – gives us is His teachings.

But what if that is not a metaphor, but Jesus means this literally.

On the night of the Last Supper, Jesus passed around a loaf of bread which was shared, and he said, “This is my body, given for you.”

What if He was serious and literal about the need to eat the Communion bread which Jesus gives us to gain eternal life? What if that bread somehow was spiritual food for our souls?

We do not believe that this bread during Communion is the literal physical body of Jesus, but we don’t believe it is just bread, either. We believe that when we eat this bread and drink this juice, we are somehow spiritually connecting with Jesus, that He is present here with us, that these elements somehow help give us eternal life. Although different groups of Christians will disagree about the exact meaning and purpose of Communion, almost all groups of Christians agree that it is very important to participate in Communion regularly. The founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley, felt it best to join in Communion everyday if possible.

And so, I ask you to look today at these elements in a different way today, not as just a piece of bread and a bit of grape juice, but truly as if Jesus has given them to you, touched them with a bit of His glory, brushed against them with His essence, put a bit of His eternal nature into them. Look and believe that these elements are one of the ways that Jesus gives His grace to us, leading us to an eternal life with Him one day.

Buying Bread

Well, today we begin our revival. It’s been a long, hard time during COVID, but this is the day we begin to take back the world for Jesus Christ. This is the day when we reach out to the sad, the lonely, the people who have been stuck in their homes with no one to visit except Netflix, Disney, and the other television services, their Facebook friends, and the UPS and postal delivery people. Today is the day when we remind people how much fun it is to gather with other people to learn about Jesus, to praise God, and to feel the power of the Holy Spirit flowing from one person to another.

We will have congregational singing, gospel music from excellent musicians, and two great speakers each evening. This evening we begin with Jessica Simons, a young mother who has worked long hours in fast food, but also discovered that she can speak to people about how Jesus has always been there for her. After Jessica, we’ll have my son Pastor Andy Boley, a young pastor based at Beverly and Mill Creek, just south of Elkins. Andy is 23 years old and is starting his 5^th year in the pulpit – but he also is an Eagle scout and well-known to many of the scouts who went through Camp Kootaga over the last ten years as their wilderness survival instructor.

Tomorrow evening, we’ll have my wife Pastor Saundra Boley from 7^th Street UMC – she’ll tell it like it is about God’s love and what God asks of us. Pastor Rick Haught of Kanawha UMC will then speak, reminding people why they need Jesus in their lives.

Tuesday evening, I’ll speak with a fact-based sermon explaining why we trust the New Testament accounts of Jesus, ideal for that science or engineering skeptic you know, and then Pastor Andy will be back with another passionate sermon.

Wednesday evening is the Kid’s Revival, starting at 5:30 with spaghetti and hotdog dinner for children and parents, a game for the children and parents, and then while the children have further activities, I’ll lead the parents in a time together.

By the way, if you are worried about driving after dark, we should finish up around 8 pm each evening – and sunset isn’t scheduled until about 8:45 pm, so you’ll have time to drive home in the daylight.

What does Jesus ask of you during this revival time?

Let’s take a look at our scripture and see…

In our first reading today from 2 Kings4, about 700 years before Christ, Elijah the prophet has already been taken to heaven in a fiery chariot. He left his mantle of leadership to Elisha, another great prophet who did even more than Elijah. There was a group of a hundred men. A man brought twenty barley loaves and some grain. The barley loaves were apparently small loaves, not nearly the size of our standard bread loaves. Elisha said to give it to the people and let them eat. But Elisha’s servant questioned this, asking how he could set just twenty loaves before a hundred men. But Elisha replied that the Lord said, “They shall eat and have some left.” And that is what happened.

Why is this important for us today? Why are the catering arrangements of a meal 2700 years ago worth including in scripture and teaching today? Perhaps it is because, even in the church, we often think that our efforts are all that matter. We forget that God and the Holy Spirit are with us.

I once led a church that had forgotten this. We had planned a community meal – notice it was not a “fellowship meal”, but a community meal. Yet, the women heading the meal came to me, upset that I had advertised the meal broadly throughout the community. “We can’t handle more than about ten extra people!” they said to me. “We wish you hadn’t advertised.” They needn’t have worried. No one from outside the church showed up. God does not bless those who don’t want to be blessed and believe that God can bless them.

On the other hand, I once was involved in a funeral dinner at Saundra’s church. They only had three women – including Saundra – who were physically capable of preparing the food and serving it. The funeral was for the matriarch of a large family – The family was large in numbers, plus most of the members, male and female, were 6 foot tall and 300 pounds in size. The three women all made several dishes, but it was not going to be enough. In fact, Saundra, who was leading the funeral, had prepared a couple of extra deserts the morning of the funeral before getting ready to rush out. We struggled to get a plan to deliver the food to the church. Just as Saundra was about to leave, one of the other women called to say that a large restaurant in town had called her to ask where they could deliver the catered food for 50 people that the owner was donating. God had the meal completely under control. There were leftovers – but not many. You see, that particular church had the idea that they would do what they could to serve the family – loving others was what was important to them – and to God.

They are the same church that received a $9500 grant for a new roof after struggling to raise $2000 over the previous 6 months through fundraisers, since their average weekly donations only totaled about $300 per week. God is more concerned with our attempt than with our capacity.

700 years later, the episode of Elisha and the 20 barley loaves was repeated for a much larger group of people who were following Jesus. There was a large crowd that followed Jesus around because of the healings that He performed. According to the Apostle John, Jesus looked up and saw the large crowd coming toward Him. He turned to Philip and asked, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” There were about five thousand people. And John says that Jesus asked Philip to test him even though He knew what He was going to do. God still tests us.

Philip responded with a quick calculation. “We’d need over six month’s wages to buy enough food.” It was sort of a statement of how impossible it was. They’d need about $10,000 – way too much.

Andrew pipes up, helpfully, “This boy has five barley loaves and two fish. But they won’t go very far in this crowd!”

And imagine that I turned to you right now and said, “You have three hours. Please prepare food for five thousand people.” It was that sort of request. So let’s do some quick calculations, and put together a McDonald’s fish sandwich, with two slices of bread and a quarter pound of fish. So that means we’ll need 10,000 slices of bread – at 20 slices per loaf, that’s 500 loaves of bread, and 1250 pounds of fish. I suspect that even today, you couldn’t round up that much food from all the grocery stores in Parkersburg on 3 hours notice.

Jesus just says, “Make them sit down.” The disciples had no idea what Jesus was going to do, nor how He would feed the people, but they trusted Him. They had faith in Jesus. So they did what He asked.

He took the loaves and the fish, gave thanks, and distributed them. Twelve baskets of fragments were leftover. And because of this, the people thought back to Elisha and the miracle where twenty loaves had fed a hundred people. Barley loaves. And in front of their eyes, five barley loaves had stretched to feed five thousand people. For most of these people, Jesus had established His credentials as a prophet who was even more powerful than Elisha. In fact, a group was about to come and make him king by force, so He left them and went off by Himself.

If we have faith, if we want to accomplish a mission that is acceptable to God, God will provide the resources, stretch the resources, accomplish the mission. For God created an entire planet – surely God can find some Bibles, some registration forms, enough money to pay for another broadcast. Where so many churches go wrong is assuming that it is all up to us. No, it is up to us to do the right thing, even to just attempt the right thing. God will accomplish the mission through us – and the people he sends to help us, like the owner of that restaurant who donated the food for that dinner, even without being asked, and without knowing about the tremendous shortage of help at that little church.

As many of you know, I once owned a small business where we bought inkjet ink in five gallon barrels, repackaged it into pint bottles, and sold it on the Internet. People could buy our ink for $34.95 a pint and refill their cartridge about 10 to 15 times, using a simple squeeze bottle with a blunt needle. Our business grew quickly. I challenged my 17-year-old warehouse guy – how will you operate when this business grows from a half dozen orders a day to 60 orders a day? It eventually grew to 80 orders a day, many of those orders being multiple pints, w, 4 or even 8 pints in an order. He kept up because he also could dream. He reorganized the shelves; he rearranged the packing table. He began coming into work two hours earlier so he could work faster in cooler temperatures. And he kept up with the work as we grew by dreaming about how to handle more and more orders. Eventually, this high school kid left us – he decided to go to college. And we missed him – but he had learned to dream big with us.

We each need to be thinking about our part of this church dream we have. How will we have church when our attendance doubles, quadruples, grows to be ten times what we have today? How many services will we need? How many people will need to be helping with children? How many people will need to teach Sunday school? How many people trained in the audiovisual booth? God will provide if we are looking forward to the dream, a dream where more and more people understand the love of Jesus and become regular followers of Him, and lead more and more people to Jesus.

The feeding of the five thousand was not the only miracle that would happen to the disciples that evening. They got back into the boat and set sail for the opposite shore of the lake. A strong wind came up – they rowed about 3-4 miles in the dark. Suddenly, they saw a figure walking toward them – it was Jesus walking on the water, headed toward the boat. They were terrified! But Jesus said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” They wanted to help Him into the boat, but suddenly the boat reached the land on the other side of the lake.

When the disciples followed Jesus, it was one amazing thing after another. They had all heard about Elisha feeding the hundred with twenty loaves, so they knew that prophets could stretch food. And so, they probably thought that the five loaves and fish could be stretched a bit, perhaps feeding fifty men. But Jesus far exceeded what they expected.

When they traveled across the lake, they probably figured that Jesus would catch up to them the next day after walking around the lake. After all, the lake was only about 6 miles by 9 miles, an oval. Many people walked around it. But Jesus exceed what they expected by walking across the lake. When Jesus was arrested, beaten, and executed, the disciples knew He was dead. They probably expected to take some of His teachings and perhaps become rabbis, teachers, themselves. It would be a living; a couple of them may actually have planned to create a movement that might grow to a few hundred people.

But Jesus far exceeded what they expected when He came back to them alive again. There were even two disciples who walked with Him, not knowing who He was, to the village of Emmaus, 6 miles outside of Jerusalem. When they went into an inn to get supper, Jesus indicated that He would have traveled further, but stopped with them. Isn’t that always the way it is with Jesus? Jesus’ plans and dreams for us go further than we want, than we dare, than we plan for. And, of course, isn’t that because He can tap directly into the power that created the Universe?

Yes! We just need to be reminded that Jesus has that power and then we aren’t surprised when He does miracles when He is present.

But, you know, the Holy Spirit can tap into that same power that the Holy Trinity has. Remember God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit? That’s why Jesus told the disciples that “wherever two or three are gathered in my name”, we can ask anything in Jesus’ name and it will be done. With, of course, the requirement that this be something that God deems good and wise.

The Apostle Paul understood this and tried to explain it to the Ephesians in Chapter 3 of his letter to them. He prayed that the Ephesians – and us who are reading the letter – “being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Then Paul wrote: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

There are three requirements for Christ or the Holy Spirit to do something for us. Let’s take the example of growing this church and leading other people to come to the saving grace of Jesus. First, He must have the power. Clearly Jesus and the Holy Spirit, as part of the Holy Trinity, have the power to lead people to Jesus, just as Jesus had the power to multiply the bread and fish to provide enough for five thousand people. The people are all around us – can Jesus and the Holy Spirit lead them to us? Of course.

The second requirement is that Jesus loves us and the people enough to lead those people to us. The love that Jesus has is far deeper and wider than the love we have for other people – we see that daily when people we have great difficulty loving are led to Christ, accepting Him into their hearts, and turning their lives around to follow Him. So does Jesus have the power? Yes. Does Jesus have the love for people to lead them to Him? Yes, of course. And if you are not currently a follower of Jesus, does He have the love to accept you as a follower and the power to turn your life around. Yes. There are so many examples of men and women whose lives have been turned around by Jesus after the most terrible crimes, the most horrible sins, after being so distant from God they could never find their way back alone, that the issue is never really at doubt. I personally know a man who used drugs, sold drugs, beat up people, stole, and yet Jesus and him found each other, and he is now a pastor, a successful pastor, leading others to the Jesus who found him and loved him. So, yes. Jesus has both the power and the love to turn your life around.

And so the third requirement remains. We must give permission, and we must want, we must desire Jesus to come to us and Jesus to lead others into our church. Whenever Jesus and the Holy Spirit deny a prayer, if we will think carefully, we’ll recognize that either our prayer was for something that would not be good for us – or it was a half-hearted prayer. What’s an example of a half-hearted prayer?

“Lord, help me to lose weight!” Oh, we want to lose weight, but there are only so many ways to lose weight – we either have to stop eating the ice cream and mashed potatoes and cheeseburgers and steak and drinking the soda and sweet tea – or we have to vastly increase our exercise in stead of sitting on the couch – or we will need to become sick. Jesus always works through the natural processes and Jesus always asks permission. If we don’t want to cut back on the eating, or exercise more or get sick – or if we really don’t want to become a smaller person because we feel powerful when we weigh more – then Jesus knows we don’t really want to lose weight. And the same thing applies to prayers to remove an addiction, we need to actually walk away from the good feelings that led to the addiction in the first place. It applies to prayers to get out of debt – we need to stop spending or we need to work more to get out of debt, and few people want to do that. Jesus will not grant a half-hearted prayer – only a sincere prayer.

And with churches who want to grow, there are often people in the church who don’t care about the people dying without Christ in the neighborhood, there are often people who are more concerned with their comfort than the comfort of visitors, people who want new visitors but who never greet visitors, people who want everything in the church to stay the same, people who want other people in the church to do the outreach. I knew a man who said he didn’t want his church to grow, he just wanted the church to hang on, barely surviving until his funeral. I knew an entire church whose idea of outreach was to send 20 or 30 letters each September to people who had left the church 20 years earlier, inviting them back, but who would not even speak to the neighbors who lived beside the church, yet they wanted the church to grow. Really?

The third requirement for Jesus and Holy Spirit to grant a prayer, you see, is that the prayer both be good for us and we actually are willing to do our part working toward the prayer’s success. We have to passionately want the prayer to be granted. And then it will be granted.

And so, this morning, as we start the process of trying to grow back this church to recover after the long year of COVID, I ask you – are you willing to do your part in growing this church? Will you contribute the funds that are needed? Will you greet the visitors that arrive, help them feel comfortable, become their trustworthy friends? Will you teach children, will you help the mothers feel good about their children and the burdens of family life, will you demonstrate how fathers should become the spiritual leaders in their families? Will you step forward and give of your time and skills and special gifts and witness to what Jesus has done for you? In short, will you be a good Christian to all who come near us in this church and in the community?

Tonight, as well as Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings, we will have Revival speakers and revival music. The kid’s ministry is restarting – we could still use a couple of more volunteers to help. The first weekend of September we’ll have the big rummage sale. Assuming God keeps the COVID virus away, we’ll continue to reach out – every week, many, many people hear us on V96.9 FM and online through the Facebook page and the website. We are beginning to truly reach out to people. We are at the beginning of a great work of the Holy Spirit in our community. Each of us can be a part of this great work. You have a flyer in your hands – call or speak to several friends, family, and neighbors, inviting them to the Revival, offering to pick them up, offering to help them with their children, do whatever it takes to bring them here over the next few evenings.

Today, I’m going to ask for your deep, passionate prayers to support this outreach. No half-hearted prayers, please! Pray strongly. Tonight and tomorrow, I’ll ask you to continue praying, and to work hard to make new friends of all who visit us.

I’d like everyone here today to come forward to the altar rail. You don’t need to kneel – you can stand if you need to. But when we all come to the rail, I’d like to hear everyone saying a prayer for the success of the revival. May many people and children come to Jesus. May some of them choose to come back and attend this church regularly to learn what it really means to become a Christian. May others be healed from the spiritual wounds that have happened to them over the years, particularly the year of COVID. May new, deep friendships be made. Pray for whatever and whoever you think needs a prayer. You can make the same prayers at home listening or in your car.

On Sunday, August 1, we will break bread together for Holy Communion, joining together with our new friends. Pray that there will be many of them.

And if you’re already here, come forward to the altar rail to pray for your peace, your rest, your healing – or pray for the peace, the rest, the healing of another person, a friend, a relative, a neighbor. Come forward to support another person and help them with their burdens. Come to the altar rail as we sing.

Amen!

Post-Sermon Song: Let us BreakBread Together 618

Benediction: May God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit fill you and guide you this week, that you may do the will of God. Be blessed!

5 Closing Song  - To God be the Glory 98

Go and Praise God all week long!

Two Peoples Become One

After 9/11 we were living on the east side of Atlanta, operating our online ink supply business. We sold pint bottles of inkjet ink for $34.95 and shipped them all over the world. Almost every day, Saundra and I were on the phone from 9 AM to 9 PM – and then someone from California would call as we walked out the door to go home twenty minutes later. Every week we struggled to make payroll and pay our suppliers and every month we struggled to pay the rent on the office, warehouse, and our home. It was a time of great stress.

We finally moved from Atlanta to Lowell, OH, to a home overlooking the Muskingum River, putting the office and the warehouse within 100 feet from our house. Our costs dropped tremendously, and I remember many evenings that summer walking home and sitting on the front porch for a couple hours, watching the river flow. It was a wonderful time reconnecting with God. It was a time of peace, a time to re-evaluate life, a time with family.

I remember one evening watching the dogs play. We had a ten-year-old Border Collie, a female long-haired chihuahua, and she had 6 month-old puppies. And they played on the front bank, chasing the border collie up and down the bank. We watched until the fireflies came out, laughing at them, watching our three kids who were at home play with them. It was a great evening. We’d never had that in Atlanta. Peace and family. And the river in the background.

We spoke about the early part of Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church last week. The Apostle continued in this letter, first to thank the Ephesians for their faith in the Lord Jesus, and their love for all God’s people. He prayed that the eyes of their hearts would be opened so that they would know the hope to which God had called them, reminding them of the mighty power of God with which God raised Jesus from the dead.

Beginning in Chapter Two, Paul reminded the Ephesians that they – and all of us – were dead in our sins, in the ways we used to live, following the ways of the world. We were all deserving of God’s wrath, but “because of His great love for us”, God made us alive with Christ solely by God’s grace, the gift of God. Our contribution is simply to have faith, which is also given by God. “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Now, at the beginning of our reading in verse 11, Paul turns his attention to those of us who were formerly Gentiles by birth. “Gentiles” are people who are not Jewish. The word comes from the Hebrew term “goy”, which means a “nation”. The “goyim” were those who belonged to the nations of the world. This entered the Latin language and became “gentilis”, meaning “clan or tribe”

We are the Gentiles, for we are Gentiles unless we have Jewish parents. Paul points out that we were once separated from Christ, AND excluded from citizenship in Israel. We were foreigners to the covenants of the promises made to Abraham and his descendants, the Jews. Therefore, we were without hope and without God in the world.

To Paul, all the world was divided into Jews and Gentiles. The Jews were given promises by God through an agreement, a covenant made between God and Abraham, the ancestor of the Jews. That covenant was renewed between God and the Israelites at the time of Moses. God agreed to be their God, protecting them and supporting them, increasing their numbers, while the Israelites agreed to worship God and follow God’s Law, given through Moses.

The Gentiles were everyone else. The various clans and tribes of Gentiles, from Romans to Egyptians to Canaanites to Chinese to Germans to Russians to Persians to Scotts and Irish and English to Africans all chose to worship their own gods or no gods, which ranged from idols of wood and stone, carved by human hands to simply ancestors who had become legendary to perhaps even fallen angels who had set themselves up as gods and goddesses. But it was clear to Paul – and any good Jew, that Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was the only God.

Until God sent part of Himself to earth as Jesus the Messiah, the Savior, the Christ – the words all mean much the same. And through the blood sacrificed by Jesus the Christ, all of us Gentiles who once were far away from God have been brought near.

Behind this section is a history of persecution, discrimination, and warfare. For in the Roman Empire, the first true Emperor, Augustus Caesar, who had been Julius Caesar’s nephew Octavian, won the Roman throne in the years-long civil wars after Caesar was killed in 44 BC. Augustus then promoted Julius to be worshiped as a god. Octavian, as Julius’ adopted son, then took on the title of Divi Filius, or Son of the Divine – or, as it may also be translated, “Son of God”.

And so, Augustus and his officials began to spread word around the Empire that all citizens who wished to remain in good standing must bring a coin and bow at the feet of a statue of Augustus in worship. The Jews would not do this – and since they represented about 10% of the Empire’s population and were prone to rise in revolt when pushed to worship the Emperor, a compromise was reached – the Jews would pay the price in coin, but did not need to bow in worship – in return the Jews would not revolt over this issue. The Jews were also exempted from military service and generally allowed to follow their customs.

However, customs led to many disagreements. Imagine inviting a Jewish man to your home for a meal. He would not come, because you probably would serve pork, maybe shrimp or lobster, maybe even horsemeat, none of which a Jew could eat. You probably would not wash before eating – which Jews were commanded to do. As a good Roman pagan, your home would probably have in the corner a small shelf devoted to small statues of your favorite gods or goddesses, again offensive to the Jew. And if he explained why, you would likely be offended – after all, would you remove the cross from your wall so as not to offend a visitor simply because they did not believe in Jesus?

Despite the larger Empire-wide decrees, locally, there were arguments, fights, and riots by and against Jews, which had the effect of creating a distrust between the Jews and the local Gentiles.

And so Paul begins writing of the peace of Christ in verse 14. “For He himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations.”

The early church in Ephesus, like many early churches across the Eastern Empire, held members who had been raised Jewish – and many members who were formerly Gentiles and pagans. In the church meeting, there would be a former Roman soldier who had previously sacrificed cattle to Mars, the god of war – and a woman who had been a temple prostitute for the goddess Diana, and a man who had grown up reading the books of Moses and avoided pork his entire life. Can you imagine the tensions that lie under the surface? Can you imagine the tension when the Roman soldier suggested everyone getting together for a pig roast? And I’ve seen churches fight over the color the walls should be repainted!

And so Paul points out the advantage of worshiping Christ together, “For He himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace.”

And believe it or not, this peace happened. The Christian churches gradually grew, and even began to flourish. Oh, there were fights – Paul’s letters are documents of making judgments about those arguments. But in general, coming to know and understand what Jesus offered put all those other arguments into perspective.

Early on, while living and teaching in Antioch, a large city which is today just southeast of the northeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea, Paul and Barnabus took a visit to Jerusalem to get a ruling on how Jewish a Gentile needed to be to become a Christian. The principal issues were over circumcision and the dietary rules. Naturally, Gentile men thought that adult circumcision was going to far. The Council of the Apostles in Jerusalem agreed. They judged that the leaders should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who were turning to God. They sent back a letter (which is found in Acts 15) by Paul, Barnabas, Judas Barsabbas, and Silas, which read, in part:

“…It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.”

Paul saw that Jesus’ sacrifice upon the cross reconciled both Jew and Gentile to God through the cross and this put to death their hostility toward one another. As Paul said about Jesus, “He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peach to those who were near. For through Him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. “

Despite the deep disagreements about cultural issues, Jesus’ sacrifice brought the Jews and Gentiles together, even though both thought their way was superior to the way of the other, and both often felt looked down upon by the other. They recognized that Jesus had shown them a superior way to both cultures, for He had died for all, something neither side would have even considered doing.

So what does this have to do with us today? Have you ever noticed that today, in the society of the world around us, there are people we call Christians – and people we call “non-Christians”? There are many parallels between the Jew/Gentile issues of Paul’s time, and the Christian/Non-Christian issues of today. Let me make it clearer to you.

Imagine that you are a Christian inviting a non-Christian over for dinner. You’ll probably not have beer at the table – at least that is what the non-Christian will expect, and so he won’t bring a bottle of wine or a case of beer. Your language will probably not use certain words – at least, that’s what the non-Christian will expect, and so he’ll be embarrassed if he uses those words – or you’ll be offended if he continually uses those words. He may be expecting to dig right into the food; you’ll be expecting to wait until grace is said. You’ll find you watch different television shows, different movies, read different magazines, do different things in your spare time. You’ll probably have different political opinions, especially on social issues.

Can you see why there might be disagreements, arguments, and misunderstandings between the Christian and the non-Christian?

And yet, the same basic dynamic is still there. Jesus died for all of us, Christian and non-Christian. All who see this and choose to follow Jesus come under His protection, for He has shown us all a better way. It doesn’t matter if we were born to Christian parents and baptized a few days later – or if we are 70 years old and have never set foot into a church, Jesus still died for all of us and offers us the gift of eternal life. We just have to accept His gift and, as Paul says, we will no longer be foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household. This church, you see, is not a building, it is not even an organization, but it is an organism growing up from a foundation established by the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone and seed.

Just as a building goes together piece by piece, not instantly at once, but gradually over time, so we all together are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

The church is an organism, not an organization, not a building. It grows and changes over the years, the decades, the centuries. Think about the trees in your yard. They were planted years ago. They grew. Their roots found rocks in their way – some of which they simply moved out of the way, some of which were too big to move, so the tree grew around those rocks.

And like all organisms, the church needs different nutrients to grow – different types of people. We are not like a Taco Bell franchise, controlled from corporate, all looking the same, the same size, the same menu. No, every church is different, made of different sorts of people, and what brings us all together is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the cross, which has us working together despite our differences in politics, in wealth, in background, in speech, in appearance. Christ pulls us together – and we learn to live a different way than we lived when we were in the world.

Instead of living and fighting alone, we join together. Instead of struggling alone, we struggle together. Instead of trying to each carry heavy burdens, we carry those burdens together. Our coming together and asking for help from Christ is not a weakness, it is a strength, for we have learned our limits and where to get help we need. And Christ shows us His strength – and we learn our particular strengths as we help others.

Our Gospel reading happens in the week after the execution of John the Baptist by King Herod. We forget that several of Jesus’ disciples had been followers of John the Baptist. We forget that Jesus was John’s cousin. And so, after the word came that John had died, the disciples were upset. So Jesus said to them, ““Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

For the struggle to survive in this world is difficult. Every day is difficult. Every day people grow more aware they need help. Every day, we lose jobs, we lose friends, and we grow exhausted. We need a safe, quiet place to step back from the world around us. But the answer isn’t sleep or video games or more television. The answer isn’t in alcohol or food or other chemicals. Those all simply isolate us and depress us.

You may be working a job, a job with hard manual labor. You need rest, and a time to exercise your mind.

You may be an engineer or a lawyer, you may be running a business, a business with great stress that you carry alone.  You need friends who aren’t fellow employees.

You may be a health care worker, a nurse, a doctor. This has been a terrible year – you’ve seen disease, you’ve seen death, and you’ve worried about your family. You need a safe place where life is talked about, not death. You need to remember the good in the world, not just the ugly.

You may be a teacher or a parent feeling ripped apart by the last year. You need great healing and a chance to speak with other adults.

And so I say to you who are listening, as Jesus did, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

Come away to spend an hour or so, once a week, sitting among people who will become your friends, who will share your burdens, who recognize the sacrifice that Jesus made, and are grateful for that sacrifice. Come to Jesus and be taught many things. Come to Jesus and be healed here at Cedar Grove United Methodist on Rt 47, just beyond WVU-Parkersburg. Our live service this week is at 10:30 AM.

And if you’re already here, come forward to the altar rail to pray for your peace, your rest, your healing – or pray for the peace, the rest, the healing of another person, a friend, a relative, a neighbor. Come forward to support another person and help them with their burdens. Come to the altar rail as we sing.

Amen!

Benediction: May God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit fill you and guide you this week, that you may do the will of God. Be blessed!

5 Closing Song – They’ll know we are Christians by our Love 2223

Go and Praise God all week long!