For the week of August 3 – 8th Sunday after Pentecost
Morning Prayer: God, our guide and our protector, as we gather today in Your holy house, open our minds and souls and hearts, that we may be inclined to hear the gentle direction of Your Spirit in our lives. Help us follow You as you lead us to the land You have created for us, where we may dwell with You and in You. Amen. (Discipleship Ministries)
Morning Hymn: #400 Come, Thou Fount of every Blessing
- Come, Thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it, mount of Thy redeeming love. - Here I raise mine Ebenezer; hither by Thy help I'm come;
and I hope, by Thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger, interposed His precious blood. - O to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love;
here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.
Psalm 77:11-15 (CEB)
11 But I will remember the Lord’s deeds;
yes, I will remember Your wondrous acts from times long past.
12 I will meditate on all Your works;
I will ponder Your deeds.
13 God, Your way is holiness!
Who is as great a god as You, God?
14 You are the God who works wonders;
You have demonstrated Your strength among all peoples.
15 With Your mighty arm You redeemed Your people;
redeemed the children of Jacob and Joseph.
Prayers of Intercession: Thank You, Lord, for hearing our prayers for those dear to our hearts. We now pray as You have taught us: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us, not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Offering spotlight: Thank you for giving to UMCOR and Mission Central. Both organizations have sent supplies and teams to flooded areas of our country in the past month.
This week $2,770.00 was sent to UMCOR and $60.00 was sent to Mission Central. Thank you for giving financially to provide relief and compassion in Christ’s name to those who have lost loved ones as well as homes and possessions.
Offering prayer: Holy and ever-present God, You call us to set our minds on things above, to let go of all that weighs us down, and to embrace the new life found in Christ. As we bring these gifts, shape our hearts in generosity, our hands in service, and our minds in faithfulness. May these offerings be used to transform lives, to build up Your kingdom, and to reflect Your love in this world. Keep us ever mindful that we give because You have first given so abundantly to us. In Christ’s name, we pray. Amen. (Discipleship Ministries)
Hymn of Preparation: #156 I Love to Tell the Story
- I love to tell the story of unseen things above, of Jesus and His glory,
of Jesus and His love. I love to tell the story, because I know 'tis true;
it satisfies my longings as nothing else can do.
Refrain: I love to tell the story, 'twill be my theme in glory,
to tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love.
- I love to tell the story; more wonderful it seems than all the golden fancies
of all our golden dreams. I love to tell the story, it did so much for me;
and that is just the reason I tell it now to thee. (Refrain) - I love to tell the story; 'tis pleasant to repeat what seems, each time I tell it,
more wonderfully sweet. I love to tell the story, for some have never heard
the message of salvation from God's own holy Word. (Refrain) - I love to tell the story, for those who know it best seem hungering and thirsting
to hear it like the rest. And when, in scenes of glory, I sing the new, new song,
'twill be the old, old story that I have loved so long. (Refrain)
Scripture: John 12:44-50 (CEB)
44 Jesus shouted, “Whoever believes in Me doesn’t believe in Me but in the One who sent Me. 45 Whoever sees Me sees the One who sent Me. 46 I have come as a light into the world so that everyone who believes in Me won’t live in darkness. 47 If people hear My words and don’t keep them, I don’t judge them. I didn’t come to judge the world but to save it. 48 Whoever rejects Me and doesn’t receive My words will be judged at the last day by the word I have spoken. 49 I don’t speak on My own, but the Father who sent Me commanded Me regarding what I should speak and say. 50 I know that His commandment is eternal life. Therefore, whatever I say is just as the Father has said to Me.”
Affirm your faith by reciting the Apostles’ Creed: I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord: who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontus Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried; the third day He rose from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. (UM Hymnal #881)
Message: Why does the United Methodist Church practice total inclusion to non-believers? Pastor Becky
We begin our August series of me answering your questions. I am so grateful for the questions that were sent in. They cover a vast spectrum ranging from worship, history, and scripture to the nature of the church. They're going to help us move forward in programming and study. They will help us identify who we are as a body of Christ.
So the question for this morning that we're gonna tackle, came to me as a question and then two follow up thoughts and I'll begin with the question. Why does the United Methodist Church practice total inclusion to non-believers?
The answer is grace. Inclusion is the practice, the manifestation of God's grace. At one point in all of our lives we were all non-believers. I know that this can be hard for some of us to hear, yet it's true even if we have been in church since birth. At some point, each of us came to faith in God by relationship with Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. We may have had this experience as a child in Sunday School or at camp. Maybe it was a convicting sermon or prayer in worship. Or, maybe, we experienced a revelation in the practice of mission or service. Yet not all of us come to faith as children. In our adulthood, we mark milestones or life events that cause us to interact with the church, for example weddings and funerals. These can be places where folks come to an intersection with faith. Even non-attending and non-believers interact with the Church.
In the course of our secular lives, we encounter non-believers and non-believers encounter us, and we are encouraged to display grace, God's goodwill, love, mercy, and compassion to all.
John Wesley espoused and taught grace as a progression of a relationship with God and toward God, being ever mindful that grace always begins and comes from God. We talk primarily of three kinds of grace: prevenient grace, justifying grace, and sanctifying grace.
Prevenient grace is the grace that goes before us. The grace we live in before we really have any idea that we are in need of grace. It's the grace that draws us near to God. It enables us to respond to our sinfulness and rely on Jesus for forgiveness and salvation in this world, for the world to come. This is the grace that is available to everyone because of God's actions towards all creation in the gift of Jesus Christ.
Justifying grace is the grace of forgiveness. All have sinned and fall short of God's glory: Romans 3:23. God gives us the grace to make us right, to justify us with God. Within this justification process, God begins aligning our lives to God's original design for us, before sin distorted us. God gives us the knowledge, the truth, that Jesus died for me. It's an intimate knowledge of a relationship between us and God. We can look in the mirror and honestly and wholeheartedly say Jesus died for me. With that knowledge, we move into a closer relationship with God in response to the love poured out for us before we were even who we each are. It’s a personal knowing.
Then we come to sanctifying grace. This is the grace of becoming more and more Christ-like. It's about holiness, not a high and mighty holiness, but a life seeking the sacred and behaving as one belonging to a Holy God. It is not a moment of arrival that we are finished and seen completely Christlike. It's the beginning of our journey, enabled, supported and encouraged by the Holy Spirit to respond to God in all the facets of our lives.
It's in sanctifying grace that we engage the means of grace. The places where we will encounter God's grace so that we can grow toward holiness of hearts and life. It is what John Wesley describes as a mature faith.
The United Methodist Church lives this out, understands the means of grace through four ways: acts of worship, acts of devotion, acts of justice, and acts of compassion.
When we look to acts of worship, it's the attending Church where we come in fellowship to sing, praise God, hear scripture, preaching and teaching. Where we acknowledge ourselves as part of a body of Christ that makes up a larger body of Christ. We make offerings of all of our resources, of all of the things that God has given us, our talents, our time, our presence, our witness, and our finances. It is in gathering together in worship, we receive and participate in the sacraments of Baptism and Communion. Being reminded of who we are and to whom we belong.
Acts of devotion are our private prayer times. The time that we spend studying the scriptures in small groups. Times that we spend studying the scripture in devotion. It’s sharing our testimonies of where we've seen God in the world and how being in relationship with God has changed our lives and the lives of the people around us.
Acts of justice are working toward the elimination of the isms like sexism and racism, ableism and ageism and classism; the ideologies in the world that pit one group against another. Additionally, acts of justice are advocating for marginalized people, for the poor, and for the disenfranchised.
Acts of compassion are the hands-on work that are closely related to the acts of justice. It's caring for those in need. It's feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and sheltering the homeless and caring for the sick. And it's also mucking out flooded basements and building ramps in order to help folks stay in their homes when they're no longer able to climb the stairs.
We practice inclusion so that no one is cut off from grace. Because we are benefactors of a grace that we cannot earn, a grace that we don't deserve, yet God provides it. Because we are a witness, as the Church, of God's love and God's grace. We offer that to everyone. Because we need to be mindful that the body of Christ isn't ours. It's not something we possess; it is something that we belong to, that belongs to God. Grace is God's gift. We are in no position to judge as to who receives grace and we are taught never to hinder another from coming into the grace of God.
Along with the question there were two follow up statements and I wrestled with these. The first statement is: The Kingdom of God excludes non-believers. There’s a lot of dimensions to that statement. What exactly is a non-believer? Are you looking at those that don't believe in Christ, don't believe in God? Because if it's a matter of believing in Jesus, we look to our Jewish brothers and sisters because God has included them within the realm of salvation. What do we do about those people that have never heard? That would mean that God created people merely for destruction and that does not align with what we believe when it comes to how we're created. Additionally, if we're looking at the cutoff being a hard non-believer, what do we do about children? The other nuance is whether you speak of the Kingdom of God on earth or the Kingdom of God in eternity, because either way it is still a matter of grace.
The last statement that follows is: Therefore Christianity cannot be totally inclusive.
That may be, when we look at the tenants of our faith and the parameters in which we see those of us that espouse Christianity. Yet we can't put those parameters on another. Nor do I have any confidence in being the one who decides who is and isn't included in a judgment that is reserved for Jesus. The other part of that would be that I don't know that there is such a thing as Christianity in the Kingdom of God, if we're speaking of the spiritual realm. I don't know that there are segregated neighborhoods in heaven. This is where the Jews are, and this is where the Christians are, and here is where the Muslims are, as we share in faith that stems back to Father Abraham. I base that upon looking at the Lord's Prayer through the lens of Matthew’s gospel that calls us to pray that on earth it would be as it is in heaven. And in heaven there would be unity, not a division.
We include those who don't believe as we believe because at any moment the Holy Spirit can convict and convert and change a non-believer into a believer. We live within the hope and the optimism that all would come to know and rely upon Jesus for forgiveness and for salvation. Amen.
Closing Hymn: #378 Amazing Grace
- Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.
- ‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed.
- Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come;
‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.
- The Lord has promised good to me, His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be, and long as life endures.
- Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail, and mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess, within the veil, a life of joy and peace.
- When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’d first begun.
The blessing: May the Lord bless you and keep you and make His face shine upon you this week.
