Hyde Park United Methodist

This is All Saints’ Sunday, traditionally the first Sunday of November, in which we join with Christians around the world in remembering the life, legacy, and impact of the saints who have gone before us. This text from Ephesians comes from the lectionary, and Paul reminds us of the blessed privilege it is to be a follower of Jesus. In Christ, we have been given a glorious inheritance of God’s love and grace, which has been handed down to us from our spiritual ancestors. It is now our turn to exhibit that same faithfulness, so that we can both experience and share the hope of God with the world.

In this moving passage from 1 Chronicles, David leads the Israelites through the power of his own generous example. God called the people to gather together the materials necessary for the building of the grand Temple, which David’s son Solomon would be entrusted to construct. The lavish, ornate materials necessary to build the Temple would come from the Israelites themselves. In other words, the Israelites already had all that was necessary to build the Temple; they just needed to surrender it over to God in an act of generosity.God is calling our church to do amazing and mighty things in the future. What is amazing is that God has already given this church the means to accomplish our calling. It is simply in the wallets and hands of our people, awaiting an obedient and generous offering of our resources over to God. We have everything we need. We just need to give it to God.

Paul’s letter to the Galatians offered practical guidance on how to live in peace and harmony despite the cultural forces that would pull the apart. The instructions build to the fifth and final chapter, in which Paul boldly and plainly asserts that each Christian can play a role in building the kingdom simply by watching their own behavior: avoid the desires of the flesh, and live out the fruit of the spirit. We remember that whenever the Holy Spirit is mentioned in the New Testament, it is never solely for the benefit of an individual; it is always for the benefit of the community. The fruit of the spirit – and specifically, generosity – is always for the purpose of building each other up and extending the reach of God’s love to more people.

The work of missions is tiring, difficult work at times. You may feel exhausted and worn out, in need of encouragement. Or maybe you are wondering what God has called you to do in the world. Derrick Scott from Campus City to Wesley in Jacksonville, FL encourages us to embody the Holy Spirit, practice repentance, and live into our ordination as people called to serve God.

This is simultaneously the easiest and hardest of the Great Commandment. It is one thing to love God, which we can render easier in our minds as simpler to do. But to love someone we can see, with consequences that we can more readily experience, that can be harder. Especially if that person is, in our minds, harder to love. But there is a reason that this is the ultimate conclusion of the Great Commandment. Loving others as ourselves is not only easier, but possible, when we love God with our whole being. It is the fruit that we can bear when our heart, soul, mind, and strength are right with God.

Paul’s letter to the Philippians tells us that whatever we do, we should do it for the glory of God. Every action, every moment of rest, every initiative we take, ought to be done through the filter of loving God and others. To do otherwise is to miss the mark, and it might even mean sin. The beauty of the Great Commandment is that it understands that none of these four aspects of our being (heart, soul, mind, and strength) can be offered to God in isolation. To give God our whole activity, it requires a matter of the will (mind) and purpose (soul) and passion (heart). God really requires (and deserves) everything we’ve got.

Faith and reason are not contradictory. Religion and science, long considered opposites, are actually complementary. As Christians in the Wesleyan tradition, we believe that “reason” is one of three primary ways we interact with and understand the authority of scripture. Loving God with our minds also means allowing room for doubt and questions. Our minds, after all, have a finite capacity in terms of understanding an infinite God. So embracing mystery can be a worshipful acknowledgement of the grandeur and majesty of God.

We often think about soul as something separate from our bodies, but what if is more than that? Explore how to fully reflect the breath of God in the way we live, finding alignment with the way and will of God.

When the Bible refers to a person’s heart, it is not just talking about the muscular organ in our bodies that pumps blood. Kardia is the Greek word for heart and refers to a person’s whole being. In a biblical sense, giving God our heart means allowing God to work in the most private and protected areas of our lives. It also means surrendering to God our honest and raw emotions, both the positive and negative feelings, but also the deeper ones like passion and longing. Ultimately, to trust God with our innermost emotions is to give God the whole of our being.

We conclude our series “Questions Jesus Asked” with the very first question Jesus asked in the gospel of John. In this passage, some followers of John the Baptist expressed an interest in learning more about Jesus, whose ministry John had been preparing the world to receive. The disciples of John approached Jesus with curiosity, humility, and openness, and discovered that Jesus was ready to meet them right where they were. Likewise, God is honored by our earnest seeking, and we can approach the faith wherever we are, without having to have it all figured out. We can have our questions, doubts, and hurts from past faith experiences healed and transformed by the grace of God. 

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you… are you kidding me, Jesus?  But the truth, Jesus is not kidding.  Indeed, he is prescribing an ethic of generosity for Christians living in a hostile world.  Hope you’ll join us this Sunday as we ponder the question: Who will you love?

This was one of Jesus’ most famous and most important questions: What does it profit a person to gain the whole world but lose their soul? The answer, of course, is that nothing is worth compromising one’s faith, integrity, or conviction. God desires nothing less of us than the full and complete surrender to God’s will. Anything we hold onto for ourselves will not last. But everything we yield over to God will make an eternal impact in the countless lives who come after us. And who doesn’t want to touch eternity in this way?

In Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount, he offers the same teaching as that in Matthew: Do not worry. God’s got this. If God is able to care for the flowers and the birds, who do not worry one day to the next about their provision and security, “how much more” does God care about us? It is the promise within that famous equivocation that we often take for granted. Flowers and birds might not worry because they are not conscious of the choice they have to make not to worry. We, however, have a choice. And rather than choose to worry, we can surrender ourselves to God and know that God is always by our side, providing for our every need.

This passage is Matthew’s version of Jesus calming the storm. As the disciples were cowering in fear over the wind and the waves, Jesus seemingly rebukes them for their lack of faith. If we are honest, we would have very much the same reaction that the disciples did. We evaluate with our senses the conditions of the world, and come to a reasonable conclusion about the threats that are present around us. But Jesus calls us to extend our faith past our senses, and take heart in the presence of God. Trusting in God’s presence and power enables us to overcome our fears and alleviate our anxieties.

The Transfiguration of Jesus serves as the hinge or pivot point in Mark’s gospel. There are the teachings and miracles of Jesus that take place before then, followed by the predictions of Jesus’ death and promise of resurrection that take place after. Directly preceding the Transfiguration is an important conversation between Jesus and the disciples, whom Jesus asks about public opinion. Only Peter appears to answer the question correctly: “You are the Messiah.” That response is the key in Mark to understanding fully what Jesus came to earth to do, and is the gateway to eternal life. It is also the most important question we have to answer in our own lives.

David is nearing the end of his life, and he recognizes that because of his warlike nature, God has forbidden him from building the Temple. His final words therefore not only seal his achievements and summarize his life, they also serve as a transition to Solomon and his reign. More significantly, in the next chapter, David decides to build an altar of praise and confession to God, praying for an end to the plague. That act of contrition cements that location as the very place where the plague would stop and where the Temple would eventually be built. This story reminds us that God always has the bigger picture in mind. Where we see defeat and despair, God sees resurrection. Where we see an end, God sees a transition into a bright future. Where we see only the limits of our existence, God sees the enduring legacy that we can leave behind.

The very first thing we learn about David is that he is a worshiper. From his days out in the field to his final years on the throne, he worshiped God. Worship should be a whole-life expression for us, too. Many of the Psalms are attributed to him, and in them we see the intersection between human pathos (the breadth of the human experience) and divine pathos (the purpose and will of God). In 2 Samuel 6, we see David’s actions in relation to the entrance of the ark of the covenant. He exhibited a free-spirited, wholehearted praise of God, caring little of what people thought of him. His primary focus was on pleasing and thanking God. That can be a model for how we come to worship and express our praise to God.

David’s hubris and his inability to practice self-control led to his greatest downfall. He committed adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah. But his downfall began even before these events occurred. It began with his arrogance, his delusional belief that he was the source of his accomplishments and could therefore acquire and achieve anything he desired. He was so blinded by his delusion that Nathan’s indictment of him caught him completely off guard. Sin is like that. It convinces us that we are better than we are, and lures us away from vigilance and trust in God.

Every quintessential hero story has a “rite of passage” moment, in which the hero explodes onto the scene with a captivating, high-profile achievement. This is what the story of David and Goliath is. It is a story of good vs. evil, underdog vs. oppressor, hope vs. despair. David was able to conquer Goliath because of God’s presence and power. But even before that, he exhibited bravery based on his remembrance of what God had done for and through him in the past. We can learn how to conquer all that threatens us, by trusting in the same God who saw us through in the past.

Peter is one of the more notable figures in the New Testament, in part because he represents us so well. Like him, we are impatient, ambitious, and think more highly of ourselves than we ought. It often got him into trouble. John’s gospel ends with a powerful, private conversation between Jesus and Peter, in which Peter gets a second chance. As a result, he preached the sermon of his life and became a pivotal figure in the birth and development of the church.