19th Sunday after Pentecost
October 26, 2014
Deuteronomy 34:1-12; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew
22:34-46
Our
Old Testament reading this morning is about a season of change in the life of
God’s people. Moses had been the leader
for over 40 years, as the Israelites left Egypt after the plagues and wandered
in the wilderness for 40 years. Now the Israelites are at the border with the
promised land. They are about to
physically enter a new phase of their life together. And Moses dies. In addition to being in a new place, they
also have a new leader, Joshua. Israel
is about to start their next chapter in a new place and with a new leader. Their history even continues in a new book,
moving from the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, to Joshua. Likewise, this church is at the beginning of
a new season. I am your new pastor and
we are beginning a new chapter in the life of this community of faith.
There
is a saying attributed to St. Benedict: “Always we begin again.” As an individual Christian and together as a
church, each day we again choose to follow Christ and live how he wants us to
live. It may not be a conscious decision
for many of us, it’s probably an old habit or something we wouldn’t ever
consider not doing. However, as Methodists we believe that you
can lose your salvation, you can backslide.
It’s not once saved, always saved.
Each day, whether consciously or not, we choose to live how God wants us
to live, we choose to become the church God is calling us to be. And, as Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians, God continually examines us to see if
we are living according to his ways and growing closer to him. If God is always with us, like we said last
week, it’s foolish to think that he’s not paying attention to what we’re doing. And so God tests our hearts and examines our
motives. This is there in verse 4 in the
present tense: God tests our motives, God examines our hearts. This isn’t just a one-time evaluation and
we’re done and always good to go and never change. This is on-going. The Christian life, both individually and as
a church, is a journey, it’s on-going, and we don’t arrive until we come to the
very end. We’re never done growing and
becoming more like Jesus on this side of heaven. God continually calls us to live obedient and
holy lives, putting our first loyalty in him.
And he checks on us to see if we’re doing it. Psalm 139 even ends with this request: “Examine me, O God, and know my mind; test me, and discover my
thoughts. Find out if there is any evil in me and guide me in
the everlasting way.”[1] The Christian life is
something we do every day, it’s a lifestyle we choose to follow each day and
each time we gather together, and the only way we can even come close to living
like Christ, is with his help. And so we
ask God to continually examine us, not as an invasion of privacy, but to help
us along the journey.
One thing God tests is to determine if our goal is to please him, and not people. If you focus on trying to please other
people, you’ll always be running after the next new fad, following the crowd,
and never quite sure who you
are. One of the hit movies this year
was “The Lego Movie,” the story of Emmet Brickowski who is thought to be the
“special,” the one destined to save the Lego universe. Emmet is an unlikely hero, because he is just
plain ordinary, uncreative, always follows the rules, and always trying to get everyone
to like him. When good cop/bad cop
interrogates him, he’s shown footage of his coworker who says “All [Emmet] does
is say yes to everything everyone else is doing.” Part of the story is Emmet’s character
development, from being a yes-man, trying to please others, to thinking for
himself and doing things on his own. Our
goal in this life is not to live to please others, or even ourselves. Instead, as Christians, our goal is to please
God in all that we think and do.
When we’re trying to please God, when we’re trying to
live according to his will, when we’re trying to lead a life worthy of his call
on our lives,[2] then we become what God created us
to be, fully alive. And my question is,
are we fully alive as a church? Are we
becoming more like the community of faith God created us to be? Paul specifies that pleasing God means that
we’re not greedy; we don’t hoard what we have.
Instead, we are generous and graciously share with others. We don’t use flattery, but instead talk
plainly, and don’t try to manipulate anyone.
We don’t demand special treatment or praise; we don’t deserve anything for our status because
the status that matters is that we are all children of God and the church is
Christ’s body. The only praise we seek
is God saying “well done, good and faithful servant.” Will he say that to us? We don’t cave in to
what people want or what we want unless it is also what God wants. It is his will we are trying to follow, not
our own and not someone else’s. Someone
else may speak God’s word to us, and then our spirit will know with the Holy
Spirit that it is indeed something from God.
We must be careful to discern, working out with fear and trembling, what
the good and perfect will of God is. One
way to measure it is to remember that the goal of Christian living is to build
up the body of Christ, to build up the Church, to build up one another and help
each other on this journey. This is what
God calls us to do and we are never done doing it.
We live to please God by obeying the greatest
commandment, and the second greatest one that is like the first: “You shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your mind. And you shall love your
neighbor as yourself.” By putting loving
God first, everything else falls into place.
If you love God, then you keep his commandments. If you love God, then you know that
everything you have is a gift from him and you return to him the first fruits
of what you earn. If you love God, then
you not only say it, but you show it in your actions. If you love God, then you also love yourself
and you love other people and you love the church. This doesn’t necessarily mean liking
everything other people do or everything the church does, but it does mean
treating each person as a child of God and treating the church as Christ’s body,
with respect, with kind words, building up one another and not harshly
criticizing. This is a love that does
not manipulate, that is limitless, and is unconditional, just like God’s love
for us. God’s love doesn’t end, no
matter what we do. Nothing can separate
us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
It is a love based on commitment, where each day we again choose to be
committed to Christ, to his ways, to sharing his love with everyone we meet. We show this commitment through our actions:
through how we treat each other, through our words, through our tithes and
offerings, and through how we act as the Church.
At Charge Conference I shared the analogy of
fishing. Jesus told some of the earliest
disciples, who were fishermen, to follow him, and he would make them fishers of
people. Now, this may sound obvious, but
fishermen don’t usually like the bait they use to catch fish. For example, raise your hand if you enjoy the
taste of earthworms. As we fish for
people, what attracts others to Jesus may not be what attracts us, and that’s
okay. There are some changes coming up,
and you may not like all of them, because it will be different. However, things are due to change. One person told me that they don’t want to stay
stagnant, and that’s good, because if we stay stagnant, then we’re not becoming
more like Christ. And we have not
reached perfection yet. So, how we act
as the church doesn’t change. Loving God
and our neighbor doesn’t change.
Striving to please God doesn’t change.
But how we go about it, and what it looks like, may be a little
different. However, as we continue to
show God’s love, as we continue to be God’s people in this place, as we enter
the next phase of our life together, we know that God is with us, examining us
and our actions, guiding us, correcting us.
Always we begin again. The
Christian life is a journey, and each step is not the same.
