UNITED

 

Friday, June 10, 2022

Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God.  Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.  Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace.  For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future.  There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all.  

Ephesians 4:1-6

There is a lot said about the need for being united as families, friends, citizens, churches, all the myriads of groups, organizations, and, in short, members of the human race.  There is also much written and spoken on the topic of how to achieve that in any culture.  The Apostle Paul’s words to people he loved dearly, the believers at Ephesus, contain the key to unity, a singularly-effective habit for cultivating unity…he encourages them to always be humble and gentle, patient, and magnanimous. 

This describes the character of those who are easy to be around.  The opposite of this would be bragging, raging, intolerant, and selfish.  And when you unpack it that way, easy to be around and difficult to be around are not hard to distinguish.  The former is a calm ride through a quiet park on a Sunday afternoon; the latter is a wild-ride on a carnival roller-coaster.  It’s hardly necessary to say it, but, while the latter may be more exciting, the former promotes peaceful ability to think.

Jesus put an eternal view on unity.  In fact His priestly prayer for each of us centers on how important God views our unity:

“I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message.  I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you.  And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.  “I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one.  I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.  John 17:20-23

Each of the characteristics Paul lists in his encouragement towards unity for the Ephesian believers (and us), humble, gentle, patient, and magnanimous, are the personal traits we are to cultivate – it has nothing at all to do with telling the other person how to behave, or faulting the other person for destroying unity.

Edgar Cayce put it this way: 

For You Today

Guess I’ll work on my patience today…gently…that would be magnanimous!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road with Jesus; have a blessed day!  

[1] Images:  Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

Annual Conference 2019 Lake Junaluska, NC - Part 1

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Friday, June 21, 2019

Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God.  Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.  Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace.  For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future.  There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all.  Ephesians 4:1-6

Arriving at Lake Junaluska is always a joy.  There is so much that is welcoming about this place.  June’s normally hot weather in the Triad is replaced by cool, bordering on chilly evenings and the lake waters, surrounded by mountains develop those cooling breezes.  

The mountains proclaim the glory of God’s handiwork while the Rose Walk has a special beauty which only our loving Father could bring forth.  These all speak of the hospitality that awaits by the staff of this wonderful place, smiles and cookies greet you when you walk through the door.  And all that pre-shadows the collegiality that awaits as you bump-into old friends and are introduced to new.

Of course, there are a few moments that wait for you that are less special; they do, after all, demand your credit card.  And there are those inevitable lags in some of the plenary sessions where Roberts Rules of Order are given a higher place on the agenda than Genesis through Revelation!  This is when the petitions hit the floor.  Petitions divide the assembly between humanish-created factions, the current names are progressive, centrist, and traditionalist.

As I reflected on the petitions that will get an up or down vote this Friday I’m reminded that the resolutions/decisions that come out of the voting process really do divide the body.  It depends upon which side of the “winning vote” you stood.  The question is always asked:  How can anything that divides believers be good?  And the thoughts took me to recalling that Jesus himself

Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth! I came not to bring peace, but a sword.  Matthew 10:34

There is nothing that divides like a sharp sword.  That is, next to the division that is coming some day in Heaven, when Jesus divides the sheep on one side and the goats on the other.  This is the shadow of the supreme eternal division between Heaven and Hell.  By the very definition of petition, resolution and rules, division is not always bad; not if God is making the decisions.

For You Today

Join me as I run the list of stuff I’m grateful is in my life today:

     ·      Lake Junaluska is a great place to have time away from what you usually do, time to reflect and put things in perspective in a magnificent setting.

     ·      I’m reminded (and humbled) by all the Methodist clergy, laity, and worship experiences that surround and support me and all point to how blessed I am to have a place to serve God with all I’ve got.

     ·      And, frankly, I’m thankful for the treasurer of our church who will reimburse me for the expenses of being here this week; because that reminds me my church understands the importance of it and backs it up with generosity.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Russell Brownworth photo     Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©

Walking the Walk

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SERMON VIDEO HERE

Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God.  Always be humble and gentle.  Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.  Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace.  For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future.  There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all.    Ephesians 4:1 - 6 ^(NLT)

With God, it is always true that before the blessings come there must be a change in attitude and actions.  In short, we can never expect to see the hand of God bless our individual lives, or our corporate church fellowship, until there is warmth of spirit towards God and each other. 

Paul's words here describe outward actions, but they flow from attitudes within. 

Notice the actions Paul wants us to examine -- He wants us to build the body of Christ by being the unified body of Christ.

Building the Body of Christ requires Keeping Unity in the Body

Everyone who has accepted Christ has been placed in the body of Christ.  It's a true saying about that body:

Everyone who belongs to Jesus belongs to

    everyone who belongs to Jesus.

We are called by Christ into one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith.  We were called into a created unity of the body of believers. 

That unity is so important.

Christ did not die so the church could be torn apart; He died so the joy of abundant life would gather His family together around the throne of God in joyful celebration. 

What is so unique is that we had nothing to do with it – it was all the grace of God, and He puts us together.  And the way He puts us together is in unity.

It’s an old story, but it ties up what I’ve been talking about.  In a small, mountainous county-seat town there lived a man who had a really old, worn-out truck.  He used the truck to go back and forth to work at the plant on the other side of town. 

The truck was so ready for the scrap heap it could hardly climb the hills, but did just fine going down the other side.  The man had learned to race down one hill to get a running start to get up the other.

One day he got a late start and was hurrying to work.  As he approached Main Street he groaned, because the circus had come to town, and the parade of elephants, joined tail-to-trunk-to-tail was tying up the intersection he needed to cross. 

In a split-second he remembered the newspaper ad for the circus said there were 7 elephants; he had already seen 4 pass the intersection between the bank and the hardware, and that meant there were only 3 left. 

It was then he got the bright idea that, if he could time it just right, after that seventh elephant, he could zoom through before the clowns followed…and he could make work on time.

So he timed it, gunned the engine and arrived at the intersection just after the 7^th elephant cleared the bank….just in time to smash into the eighth elephant the circus had just bought.  He wrecked the truck, broke both legs and his collar bone, and the elephant died.

A few weeks after he got out of the hospital he got a bill from the circus for $5 million dollars.  He called the circus manager and screamed, hey…I know I owe you for that elephant…but $5 million? 

Mister, said the manager, you don’t understand…those elephants were connected tail-to-trunk; when you killed that last elephant you jerked the tails and trunks out of the other seven; they ain’t no good for circus work no more!

Now, we, as the body of Christ are just as connected, but we are not perfect, and we are bound to break that unity.  That's why Paul talks about the way we act – so that if the unity is broken, it can be restored. 

Many churches have union – and no unity.  It’s like two cats with their tails tied together; there is union, but precious little unity.

How do you do it? 

How do you keep the unity of spirit; and how can you get it back if it's been broken?  Paul gives us a road map.  The way to keep, or regain unity of spirit in God's local church is with humility, patience and – in some instances – just plain putting up with each other's faults (the Bible word is forbearing). 

And you’ve got to wrap it all up in plenty of forgiving love.

Notice one thing – Paul's exhortation here is to keep the unity.  It is always much easier to keep things, than to regain lost things. 

That’s one of the reasons Paul spends an awful lot of time talking about our words and actions in his letter.  Words spoken and actions taken are powerful.

Words, like feathers from a pillow scattered into the wind, are tough to recall. 

Words and actions that affect others, good or bad, are like the toothpaste you squeezed onto your brush this morning; they come through a one-way door. 

Once they're out, the damage, or healing is set in motion. 

Keeping unity means choosing

wise words that help,

kind words that heal,

good words that build.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!

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[1] By Andrew Bowden from London, United Kingdon (Another walker!, via Wikimedia Commons