The Gospel Lesson                                                      Luke 9:51-62

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to prepare for his arrival, but they did not receive him because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” And Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Sermon Text

The passage we read today captures what I believe is a moment of frustration in the ministry of Jesus. He is coming to the end of his earthly ministry, and the reality of the cross lingers darkly on the horizon. As Christ begins to make his way to Jerusalem, he does so knowing that the end of that path is the end of his life. Regardless of the eventuality of the resurrection, Jesus was going to face death in full, and that is not an easy cup for any person to drink. We are given an account of Jesus being denied entry into a town of Samaritans.

We are told they did not want him in town because he was going to Jerusalem. Why would that stop them from welcoming him? Some of them may have seen his journey there for his final Passover as a betrayal. He had led a long ministry of inclusion of the Samaritans, and now he was going to break bread with their oppressors. Maybe a more sympathetic perspective was in their mind, perhaps they knew Jesus was going to his death and they thought they could stop him by not offering a place to stay. Perhaps, most simply, they just did not like him.

Regardless, we see the disciples react to the news of their rejection angrily. They call for Jesus to send fire down from heaven to destroy the town. Jesus does not feed into their anger, but quickly shuts it down. The image the scripture draws a powerful image of Jesus’s frustration with his disciples. It specifically says he turns, in other words this is a discussion being had as they make their way down the highways of Judea. Christ, literally ahead of the offending disciples, spins around and stops their march to his own death. Luke does not record the words of his rebuke, but it should not be hard to imagine what Christ might say.

“What is wrong with you?!” He booms, “When have when been in the business of carpet bombing cities? When have you ever seen me, mistreated as I am, ever raise my hand to strike someone, let alone to kill?!” Christ, who has just told his disciples that they must take up their cross and follow him, is realizing that his entire ministry with his closest companions has not changed them, not fully, not yet. They are still clinging onto things that keep them from knowing the fullness of who Christ is.

The next few interactions Christ has with people that cross his path seem to reflect the general state of his ministry. People keep coming to him, but they do not know what they are signing up for. “I will follow you wherever you go!” is met with Christ’s harsh truth, “Unless you want to be homeless, then this is not the life for you.” When he meets someone who he sees is ready to join his ministry, he is told that he must first return to his family for his father’s burial. “The people you leave have no hope, and so they should be left to attend to the funeral alone. You have the duty, having seen the Kingdom of Heaven, to bring people to life!” Finally, someone sentimentally asks to be able to go home and tell their family goodbye, Christ responds, “If you have your doubts, then this cannot be the path you walk.”

I do not think that Christ was pushed over the limit, was speaking an unfiltered perspective. I am not implying Christ was flying off the handle as he walked the streets of Judea, but I do think that Christ’s hardest teachings were intentionally placed next to each other like this. We are meant to see Christ looking us in the face, and scolding us for our own failings, as much as we are supposed to hear the specific instructions he gave to specific people centuries ago.

Not every message from Christ was one of hope, at least not on the surface. When people realized what God had to offer, it was a serious matter if they turned their back on it. When his disciples desired to kill, rather than accept that they had signed up to die the moment they joined him – that was a serious sin. When he called someone to follow him, and they wanted to linger in town another week, Christ knew they were seeking an escape. When someone asked to go home before they followed him, he knew they did not truly wish to follow him at all, not without comfort at least.

In our own life, we will not often find an opportunity to do ministry like what Christ would offer. You are not present with Christ in the limited time he walked the earth if you serve Christ now. However, you are still bound to devote yourself to the work you agree to take on. When I took my vows to pursue the life of a minister, I gave up many rights and freedoms because of it. When a person joins the Church, they renounce evil and injustice and sin and all worldly inclinations. To follow Christ is to take up our cross, to serve our God without ceasing, to understand that we are made free only in joyful obedience to the one who calls us.

There is a time for words of consolation, for us to be reminded that God is a God of rest and a God who asks us to care for those close to us. However, that must be tempered with the harsh reality of the ministry we are called to. Christ was homeless, how uncomfortable am I willing to be? Christ suffered alone, am I willing to be lonely sometimes if it means spreading the Kingdom? Christ never moved from his path to his destiny, except to save others from themselves, how devoted are we to finishing what we start?

In the life of faith, I think that daily examen is helpful, not only to foster growth, but to acknowledge our sticking points. What have we been unwilling to give up for the good of the Kingdom, and ultimately for our own good.

Now, the word of caution here is that God does not ask us to give up our family or our other responsibilities. “But the man who was burying his father! And the one who was not allowed to go home!” In one case the father was dead and in the other the man was not told he could never return home, just that he needed to leave town now. More than that, Christ specifically forbids us from using God as an excuse to abandon our familial responsibilities.[1] When I speak of giving up for God, I mean giving up the comfortable parts of life, not just the ones that free up time for ministry. Invariably, those who give up on their family to pursue “ministry,” do so because they think ministry is easier than family life, and they would rather do one as a free person than the other with limitation.

What we need to do, in examining our life and the way we live it, is not to look for excuses or easy ways out. We have to look into the face of Christ, to pray earnestly, and acknowledge that the God we worship is a homeless God. Not once on earth did Christ seek to settle, as soon as he could go on the road he did, and that path led him straight to his death. If we worship a God who gave up all comfort for the good of the people who misunderstood, hated, and ultimately killed him, what can we do to even partially account for the ways we worship our own interests in place of him? If I must stand before Christ and give a full account of my life someday, I hope it is not of the many missed opportunities I had to serve Christ, but that were too inconvenient for my life to pursue.

I do not write these words to criticize any one of their readers. I am guilty of ever crime I have written of within this text. The knowledge of that guilt compels me to ask others to name it too. We do not have to be trapped in our own sin, to be lost in complacency which we call “comfort,” or “life as it is.” We can accept the cross Christ offers us, to give up our desire for vengeance and comfort and a status quo that ultimately benefits us. Let us love radically, sacrificially, and ultimately in a way that resembles the God we serve. – Amen.

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[1] Mark 7: 9-13

The Epistle Lesson                                                           Galatians 3:23-29

Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be reckoned as righteous by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

Sermon Text

 Here we are, at the end of this long road. It has been four short years, and yet in those years we have achieved much. The Spirit of the Lord is at work, and the Spirit of the Lord will not be quenched. For my final message, I wanted to look at Galatians and see just what God asks of us in being born again in Christ. Firstly, though, I wanted to go back to the beginning, to the first message I shared with you all. On July 4^th, 2021, I concluded my sermon like this:

“We must love Christ, and not only do so with our words, but in our every action. Christ calls us today, asks us to love him with all that is within us, and if we truly wish to say that we do. We must then take a step out from ourselves and care for this broken world. The flock is all around us, let us tend it well.”

For you Temple folks, our first message together ended like this:

“This is the day that the Lord has made, and we will rejoice and be glad in it. Today, and always, Methodists are one people, and we will show the world what power that unity can bring.”

Service, Unity, and the particular Methodist configuration of a Charge – these ideals are foundational to the work of the Church. Each of them helps us to live out the love that Christ has given us, called us to embody, and sent us out into the world to become in every way we possibly can. We are one people, we are sent to love and care for all people, and we are given a story to tell the nations that can change everything for everyone.

We talked recently about the way in which the Pentecost removed barriers of separation between the people of the world, but ultimately the Pentecost was a single moment in history. Though the Spirit continues to work within us, the particular miracle of glossolalia which allowed the disciples to preach to people of all nations is not a common manifestation of the Spirit’s power. Something deeper than miraculous translation has to shape how we as Christians live out our calling to be one people. We have to become a family.

Every person who calls upon the name of Christ is no longer primarily identified by their circumstances or background, but by God’s parenthood over them. Through Christ’s work we have been made into children of God, siblings therefore of Christ. The Spirit has taken hold of all who believe, transforming people from all times and places into one people, Christians are siblings in the same divine family. This truth should transform every aspect of our lives, because like all aspects of the Gospel it demands we see things differently than we do now.

Paul was a radical about his perspective on Jewish and Gentile relations of the early church. Though he was an observant Jew, and Acts tells us he maintained his devotion to Judaism his whole life, he was willing to allow far more latitude than others did. While saying his Judaism was, “an advantage,” he also saw it as a secondary status to his identity as a follower of Christ.[1] Likewise, he saw little issue with former pagans maintaining some of their practices, as long as they did not cause other people to mistake them for pagans.[2] This contrasted the decisions of the Early Church in various circumstances, who took more moderate stances on some of these issues.

Yet, most radical of all was Paul’s assertion that every aspect of a person was secondary to their faith. “Man or woman? Who cares, they are a Christian. Jew or Gentile? Who cares, they are Christian. Slave or free? Who cares, they are a Christian.” We could augment this in our daily life in a thousand different scenarios, but the truth remains the same. For the Christian, looking at our siblings by their secondary characteristics should be treated for the ridiculous thing it is. We are all one in the faith, all united as one family, why do these other features matter?

The world, of course, does regard people by their race, their language, their background. Indeed, the Church is not forbidden from celebrating differences in our midst either. I can tell you that the Thai Baptists I knew were very different form the African Methodists or the Black Baptists, but all were Christian. Primarily and fundamentally, they were people of God. I could celebrate the fact each brought something unique to the family of God, while not ranking them based on which I found most palatable to my sensibilities. All were equal in dignity before God, and all of them had something unique to offer to the Kingdom.

Acknowledging that the Church, in all its diversity, is still one people united in God’s family naturally changes our perspective of other people too. It should not shock you, but the truth that unites all of us as Christians is freely offered to everyone. Therefore, all people can have a place at the table of grace, and therefore we are called not to regard anyone as more significant than anyone else. James puts it well, saying, “My brothers and sisters, do not claim the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory while showing partiality.” In his context, James was talking about treating rich, respectable people, as more important than the poor. In our own life though, we show favoritism is so many ways.[3]

We are such a bisected culture, dividing over everything we possibly can. We cannot live in such a way, especially not in the Church. Yet, we are as factious as anyone. I saw at General Conference how people lied and ranted and railed to try and tear down the church, and I came home to people trying to do the same thing in Clarksburg! Differences of opinion on implementation of policy is natural and good, but what we try to do in our infighting is fundamentally wrong. Whispers convey more questions and rumors than frank and up front conversation brings truth. Hatred brews in the judgmental eyes we cast across sanctuaries and across aisles – literal and political.

The future of the Church must seek to end hierarchy outside of administrative necessity and it must acknowledge diversity as real, present, and necessary. We as a Church have members who are gay, who are straight, who are trans, and who are cis. Why not see in that the work of God bringing us together to something more? We have people of various political leanings. Why be silent on our diverse opinions, when we could in love work for a better future for all, through honest discussions with one another? Everyone in this pavilion, everyone who will receive this in a letter, who will read it online, all are called by the same Spirit – God has called us all to be one family together. I think we should embrace that family identity all the more, to see no more difference between ourselves, and to in all things, prioritize the divine image within one another, above and beyond any artificial distinction of merit or worth we have invented.

Christ has called for an end to difference, not that we all become uniform, but that we all become one. I hope that these churches will continue to embody a future focused upon that idea. Put your arms out, embrace your neighbors, and find that all of them have something deep inside – the image of God imprinted upon their hearts. Let the Spirit flow from you to them, uniting you, strengthening you, and ultimately saving us all. Let today, the end of one era of the church, mark the birth of a wider, more lovely one. Let today be the day we commit ourselves to greater love, to greater service, to be the family of God in every way we can. – Amen.

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[1] Romans 3

[2] 1 Corinthians 8

[3] James 2:1-13

The Epistle Lesson                                                                  Romans 5:1-5

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Sermon Text

We are blessed as Christians to profess that Christ is our king, our God, and our ruler in every aspect of life. We are blessed as well to have a heavenly Father, somebody who watches after us in every aspect of life, to make sure that we as people bound by our limited human form still know the parental goodness of something that is greater than ourselves. Likewise though we are but physical bodies, we are allowed, through the visitation of God’s Spirit, to be blessed with a spiritual nature as well so our worldly nature. Slowly but surely, every aspect of ourselves is transformed from fleshly thoughts and fleshly nature to a spiritual nature binding together our physical form and our spiritual.

As Christians, we can proclaim this faith because we believe in the Holy Trinity. We profess that God is three persons and that those three persons somehow are one united being whom we call God. Though there are complicated formulas to explain this – things that talk about light, and the source of light, and the warmth of light; or else the roots of a tree, the tree itself, and its branches – the essential nature of the Trinity is that it is mysterious. We do not exactly know how God exists in three persons and yet is one God, but we know that it is true. We are blessed as God’s children to be in on this secret and to enjoy the benefits that come from it.

As I have already said in my introduction, we experience three unique ways in which God loves the creation. Lately, it has been put forward that God acts as the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of all things, with each person of the Trinity somehow taking on one of these aspects. However, we are misguided if we think that each person of the Trinity only has one job. While it is true that the Spirit has unique work, as does the Father, as does the Son in God’s economy of grace, God only acts in the world as a united force. More than that, God cannot be limited in any way. God is free because God is freedom.

The Trinity then is not something by which we define God. We do not say God is three persons and therefore we know exactly how God works and in what exact ways God does this and to whom God is willing to serve. Instead, what we are given is the simple truth that God, in this singular multiplicity, loves us in every way possible. through every means possible, as the three persons of God’s singular self. Are we all thoroughly lost in the weeds? Are we ready for a bit more of a concrete discussion of what God’s work?

In the time before Christ came into the world, God’s people only knew of God as God the Father. While it is true that the Spirit was the one mediating discussions between God and God’s people, there was no talk of God as multiple persons, only as God being a single person. When we hear in the Shema, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God! The Lord is one!” That is not any sort of complicated statement about the Trinity, that is simply the view of Moses as he spoke  to his people. Even the one closest to God, Moses, the giver of the law, did not fully understand the triune nature of God.

It was only through the revelation of Christ’s incarnation that we understand that there are in fact three persons of God. Christ the eternal Word of God preexisted everything and through him all things were made, (we talked about this just a few weeks ago.) The Spirit of God speaking through and to the prophets was alongside God and God’s people through every moment of eternity. God the Father, a spiritual person somehow overseeing and yet coequal with these other two persons, all together are called “God.”

As we read our scripture today, we see a Trinitarian argument about what it means to be saved. Paul tells us that, because Christ came and lived and died and rose again, we are now no longer enemies of God, but at peace with God. All those sins that we had committed against God’s divine majesty every aggressive impulse we had against each other no longer has to be the thing that defines us. Now we are granted this new status under Christ we can become children of God and as children of God we are able to develop a new way of understanding life. The hardships that we face no longer have to be overwhelming because God who suffered alongside us has proven that we can somehow find in suffering a way to grow forward. We know that even those parts of suffering that are irredeemable at least have God’s solidarity alongside us through the person of Christ to comfort us in the midst of hardship.

Through this understanding of the world, we can develop virtue in a way that we would not be able to otherwise. Rather than being overwhelmed by a world that is broken we are instead able to accept the broken parts of it as a consequence of the world as it is and grow our own souls and our own communities to be closer into alignment with the world as it should be. This transformative approach to the trouble of the world allows us to see God doing something new even in the midst of a world that has been broken from the very beginning. When we acknowledge that the broken state of the world is a consequence of sin the trouble that we face in that world allows us to see why it is necessary to be more holy and to understand that holiness ultimately comes from helping others in the midst of this broken world.

The final thing that Paul speaks of in this part of the epistle is about how we are able to do all of this because we receive love through God’s spirit pouring that into us. It is hard to overstate how much of the work of the church comes down to love. It is a word that is cheapened in our own culture something that we use to describe any great affection for things as minimal as a certain kind of hot dog to as incredible as the love between family members friends and of course God for us. Scripture also struggles to capture this using different words in different contexts to give slightly different flavors to the kind of love that we experience. Ultimately love cannot be summarized in a singular word, but it must be experienced and the many different colors that it gives to the world around it.

Eager to understand the work of God whether we put it in trinitarian terms or just speak of God in terms of the singular and understand that there is something a bit more complex to it if we really sit down and think about it. If we are trying to understand how God works in the world we do so from the basis of a being that has loved since before anything existed. The father has always loved the son has always loved the spirit and so on and so forth in the infinite combination of their trinitarian relationship. When the creation was made God did so out of love and crowned that creation with the ultimate object of God’s affection human beings. To understand the work of God we must understand love.

This coming Saturday I will stand with a family as they join another family and we will proclaim the importance of love as something that does not envy or boast as something that is patient and kind that does not keep record of wrong of something that is infinite and that is expressed best and the simple sacrifice of oneself for another. Oftentimes love is seen as most profound in marriage or else and the love between a parent and a child the truth is though that the most profound love there is, is always between God and us. All other loves draw inspiration from God’s love for us, and all other loves are secondary to it. If you want to understand the work of the Trinity you must first understand love and there is no greater love than the love that God showed us in Christ presence upon this world dying for us while we were yet sinners and then the visitation of the spirit which is continually with us gifted to us to sanctify us and connect us to God and to one another. As is always the case it all comes back to love and today I ask you people of God to recover your first love to recommit yourself to God in every way that you can so that in all aspects of life you may see the benefits that come from knowing God the father the son and the Holy Spirit and that God’s continual love for you.

The Gospel Lesson                                                                   John 17:20-26

“I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

“Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.”

Sermon Text

The final message that Jesus gives to his disciples before he is arrested is what we read this morning. Like most parts of John it uses many different words to describe similar concepts building a complex argument that makes it a bit difficult, especially outside of its original language, to understand exactly what Jesus was telling his disciples. The talk of an appointed time finally coming for Christ to be glorified, and for his glory to somehow move from him to his disciples, mixes with the harsh reality that in the chapter before this he shared his final meal with them and in the chapter after this he will be taken and arrested so that he may be crucified within a day.

Farewell addresses throughout scripture tend to have a lot of important information given. We see in the final message that Moses has for the people of Israel in Deuteronomy, a restating of the law making sure that they remember the journey they’ve been on and, more importantly, what they must do when they enter the Holy Land. Likewise, we’re given the farewell addresses of several kings, and prophets, and leaders throughout, always with some eye towards the future, and often with an ominous tone to them a realization that just down the road is a new trouble that the people are going to have to face. Yet on the eve of Christ’s sacrifice, not only for his people but for all people, we see him give a message of hope, and a message more so of enablement. They are about to receive one thing that will make them able to do something impossible till then.

If we look at what our scripture is telling us perhaps we will be able to understand that we are inheritors of much more than just a tradition a set of beliefs and ideas, we might just understand the fact that we are inheritors of a powerful ministry that sets in motion God’s redemption of the world.

Reading through the book of John there are considered to be two “books.” They are not actually two separate books within the gospel but they are two different ways in which Jesus is being portrayed for the people of God. The first recounts Christ as a teacher, capturing the teachings he gave to the disciples. The second recounts the signs and wonders that Christ took part in. In one place we find Christ calling himself the good shepherd, in the other we see him turning water into wine and healing the sick and the dead. In his work on this earth, Christ secured his identity as God in human form, the one who had come to redeem our broken work. Christ the teacher and Christ the worker, brought God’s presence into this world.

Jewish Philosopher of Religion, Abraham Joshua Heschel, describes God’s “glory,” as a visible sign of his presence in the world. Christ, in his submission to die at the hands of Rome and at the will of his enemies, fully embodied the character of God and therefore was fully glorified in having accepted this death. The resurrection, when Christ appeared in perfected glory to his disciples, was the sign that sealed and proved his glorification to them, but the second he set his face toward death he embodied the sacrificial nature of God, that defines God’s presence in the world.

Christ gives his disciples the same glory which Christ has received. God’s presence will soon be defined, not by the physical person of Jesus, but by the Spirit acting through his disciples. The disciples then have a responsibility, to love as Christ love, sacrificially acting on behalf of others so that everyone may see what God is like. We are defined as Christians, you see, only by those scant few beliefs that are tied up with the person of Christ. All other aspects that define a Christian are found in their living out Christ’s call to serve one another as Christ served them. To give, even to the point of death, to see that others can know the goodness of God.

In our life, so obsessed with comfort, are we able to understand what sacrifice means? Maybe for our children, maybe for someone we truly care about or respect, but can we really imagine sacrifice for someone for whom we have no stake in their life? This is a question we have to be willing to ask. Christ explicitly says that any person is capable of helping their friends and loved ones, but it takes a person truly blessed by God to go beyond – to help strangers that will never pay them back in any way.[1] Yet, that is the exact ideal we are called to pursue. We are all asked to give of ourselves, so that other people may find their way to peace and to God.

This invades every aspect of life. C.S. Lewis wisely said that the mark of Christian charity is that a Christian will give until they are living like someone in a lower income bracket.[2] If you live as comfortably as any person making as much as you do, then are you really serving God? Or your own interest? I think this equation ties into more than just money. Are you spending as much time in leisure as other people? Surely some of that time is better served helping other people… When is the last time we truly invested our time in volunteer service? Surely some of the time we spend staring at our phones is better served reading scripture or useful books or else in prayer. If we are spending our time, like any old person would, can we truly say we are living in Christ’s call to share in his sacrificial glory?

I believe that we are called to share in God’s glory, and that that glory is shown in our willingness to give of ourselves for others. I believe this, because Christ showed it to us. Take up the challenge then, and accept into yourself the glory of a life living sacrificially for Christ. Live a life for others, and accept that in doing so you have secured the life eternal for yourself. – Amen.

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[1] Matthew 5:46-48

[2] C.S. Lewis, “Social Morality,” from Mere Christianity. In The Essential C.S.Lewis. (New York, New York: Schuster & Schuster, 1999.) 318

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[1] Matthew 5:46-48

[2] C.S. Lewis, “Social Morality,” from Mere Christianity. In The Essential C.S.Lewis. (New York, New York: Schuster & Schuster, 1999.) 318