Sunday, March 02, 2014

sermon, "So What Makes Us Methodist?", by Ray Foss, Grant Memorial United Methodist Church, Presque Isle, ME, March 2, 2014, Transfiguration Sunday

Grant Memorial United Methodist Church
Presque Isle, ME
Sermon series on book
Christianity's Family Tree: What Other Christians Believe and Why
Chapter 8: “Methodism: The Extreme Center”
March 2, 2014
So What Makes Us Methodist?”
by Raymond A. Foss, Certified Lay Servant
(Stetson Memorial United Methodist Church
Patten, ME)

Scripture:       
-          Matthew 17:1-9 (Transfiguration)
-          Ephesians 2:1-10 (Saved by Grace)

Today is Transfiguration Sunday, when we rejoice at the moment when Christ was burning with fire from the presence of God descended upon him. He was “strangely warmed” by the fire of God on the mountaintop (Matthew 17:1-9) just as Moses was so long before on Mt. Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments from God (Exodus 24:12-18) and as John Wesley was at Aldersgate Street on May 24, 1738 (but more on that in a few minutes).

Our scripture today is from the Revised Common Lectionary (Matthew 17) and from the bedrock of our faith as Methodists (Ephesians 2).

We’ve come full circle in looking at Christianity’s family tree, in starting with the one church, the Way, where all were simply Christians, and looking at the many branches of our Christian Family Tree: Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Lutheranism, Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, Baptists, Pentecostalism, and today Methodism.

We will finish as members of the United Methodist faith, looking at Chapter 8 of Reverend Hamilton’s book. Chapter 8 is entitled, “Methodism: The Extreme Center”, based on the statement by Bishop Scott Jones.

“In the Christian faith, there are people who are extreme right and people who are extreme left. But whether it's clergy clothing or how our services of worship are conducted or how we read the Bible, we tend to be people of the extreme center. The extreme center means that The United Methodist Church at its best is conservative in some areas and liberal in other areas. We don't fit a stereotype very well. […] We see the value of both sides and try to carve out a position, whether it involves theology or social justice, that embraces the whole gospel.”

I laughed when I read that, because I can relate. Sometimes it is hard to know what we believe in, because we truly are a big-tent church. We have some very different political stripes. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Vice President Dick Cheney and former President George Bush are all Methodists.

They certainly don’t see eye to eye on many things. But that is what makes us stronger, more faithful servants, what makes us better Christians. We have learned the art of compromise, when compromise wasn’t a dirty word. We have learned to work together. That is how we can live out our call to live out the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20 in the world, for a purpose, to transform the world. We aren’t just in the pews or in small groups, but they too define us.

At our small group Spirit Study last Wednesday I mentioned that I would be preaching here this morning. Some of the members of the group remember when Reverend Herman Grant, was the pastor in Patten (from 1957 to 1961) after he was here for many years. They told the story of how he was true to our faith, being actively against changing Patten from being a dry town to serving alcohol.

Reverend Adam Hamilton included this Notable quote on page 93 of Leader’s Guide to this study

“We are at our best when we are listening to other people and learning from them. . . and asking the question, “What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus Christ here and now in this place?” We do not necessarily think we have it all figured out. We look to other denominations as places where good ideas can come from.

And Reverend Adam Hamilton stated on page 122 of the book,

“What I value most about Methodism is its attempt at holding together so many seemingly disparate ideas and practices:

1.    the emphasis on both the social and evangelical gospels;
2.    the linking of God's grace with a call to holiness and good works;
3.    the coupling of personal, passionate experience with a serious intellect;
4.    the love of both liturgy and simplicity in worship; and
5.    Wesley's firm belief that God is sovereign and yet has given human beings free will, inviting all to receive God's grace.
6.    These beliefs are not necessarily unique to Methodists; many of the families of faith we have studied share them. But for United Methodists these polarities tend to be one of the defining characteristics of their faith.”

So what makes us Methodist?     

We are in that tension between the poles of the many other branches of Christianity’s family tree. We believe in personal holiness and social holiness.

We love God with our whole beings,

1.    with our Minds, our Intellects, with Reason
2.    with our lives, our Experience
3.    with our liturgy, our order of worship, our Traditions, and above all,
4.    we look to Scripture, to the divine word of God to guide our lives

We study the Word, we come together in accountability groups, we pray, we fast; but we also come together to serve, to go out into the world, to be Christ’s hands and feet, to build schools and hospitals, to run soup kitchens and food pantries, and all the other active ministries of the church.

Sometimes we are a little more conservative in our worship than some would like, lacking “Enthusiasm” or passion in our worship but we do burn with the fire of Pentecost. We too can glow as Moses did on Mt. Sinai (from Exodus 24) or as Christ did on the Transfiguration (from Matthew 17:1-9).

I once was asked by one of the members of the Trustees at one of our former churches about how he could do one of the Stewardship Minutes, as he had never left the church, was never a Prodigal Son, his family had always been Methodist.

He was sort of like the older brother of the Prodigal Son story. He was so blessed, never to have been in that far off country, never envying the pigs eating the pods while he was starving. He didn’t have the epiphany moment of the Prodigal, of that born again moment. In some ways, it is like the story of John Wesley himself.

John Wesley, the founder of our faith, was an Anglican Minister all his life. He, like Martin Luther (as was discussed in the Chapter on Lutheranism), was seeking a different relationship with God. He knew in his head about God, about being saved, about God’s mercy and grace, but it hadn’t traveled down to his heart yet. He even tried a stint in the America’s as a missionary in Georgia.
         
Then, everything changed on May 24, 1738. Let me read from John Wesley’s journal for that day. 

“In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

From then on, he was a changed man. He now knew Jesus in his heart, not just his head. Soon, in the Spring of 1739, he would begin preaching outdoors primarily, not bound by the walls of the Anglican church. He is said to have ridden by horseback over 250,000 miles all across the British Isles. He was the Billy Graham of his day.

John Wesley was asked why people came to hear him preach. Wesley said, “I set myself on fire and people come to watch me burn.”

Wesley taught, and we still do today that we are saved not by our works but faith and the grace of our Lord. We are healed of our brokenness by the free unmerited gift of God as our scripture from Ephesians 2 states. But, once we are saved, we are to live out of faith.

Wesley broke down grace into three concepts, of Prevenient Grace, the grace of God that surrounds us and woos us before we believe; Justifying Grace, that grace which falls upon us when we are born again (just as Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:1-7), when we are saved; and Sanctifying Grace, the grace of God that goes with us as we walk in faith, seeking to live out our days ever more faithful to God. Wesley called that “moving on to perfection”.

Wesley, and we to this day, seek to bring others to the saving grace of Christ, to transform the world by service activities, and to revitalize the church by challenging each of us to walk more closely with God.

Reverend Hamilton closed the section on Methodism with the following:

“United Methodists invite other Christians to listen to and learn from one another; to recognize that truth is often found most fully not on the extremes, but in the center; and to pursue the life of faith by maintaining a balance between grace and holiness, intellect and emotion, evangelism and social justice.”

I end with this prayer for all of us, as Methodists and as Christians first and foremost. Let us pray:

May we all burn like the Transfigured Christ, the strangely warmed John Wesley; may we seek to move from grace to grace to grace drawing every closer to the way of Christ, the way of the cross, the path to our living God; may we seek to bring others to Christ, to share the message of our risen Lord; and may we strive to use all of our gifts and talents to be the hands and feet of Christ here upon the earth, sharing love to our neighbors as we are called to do.

Amen.
March 2, 2014
Transfiguration Sunday
Ephesians 2:1-10
Saved by grace not by works
Matthew 17:1-9
Transfiguration
John Wesley conversion – May 24, 1738
Sermon series on book
Christianity's Family Tree: What Other Christians Believe and Why
Chapter 8: “Methodism: The Extreme Center”
and sermon So What Makes Us Methodist?”
by Raymond A. Foss
Grant Memorial United Methodist Church
Presque Isle, ME
March 2, 2014

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