Finding Joy

  

Text: Isaiah 55:10-13

Focus: Joy

Function: To see Christ as the source of Joy

¹⁰For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
    and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
    giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
¹¹so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
    it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose
    and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

¹²For you shall go out in joy
    and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
    shall burst into song,
    and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
¹³Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
    instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle,
and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial,
    for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Good morning to the beloved children of God.

God is love, and God knows that love conquers our fears and gives us hope.

This passage, I believe, is talking about the hope we have in the Lord when we allow the joy of the Lord to wash over us.

So today we are going to look at some of the prophecies about Jesus in the book of Isaiah to paint a picture of what God is doing in the world through Jesus and us, his body.

Isaiah paints a picture of God’s provision for us in the rain and the snow as they give life to the planet and refresh us.

I get the picture of being in a warm summer shower and just letting the rain wash over me while I enjoy the feeling.

Isaiah, a prophet of the words of God speaks specifically of the Word of God coming from God and giving life to the earth.

In order to understand this passage, I want to take it in consideration with the first chapter of the book of John. John 1:1 says this: In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God.

And then John 1:14, the word becomes flesh in Jesus.

Jesus is the word of God.

This is a prophecy about Jesus, the God’s word made flesh.

Isaiah speaks often of the hope of God’s restoration of humanity. He gives us prophecies about the coming of Christ and how Christ will bring hope and release to those who are bound up in brokenness and poverty.

The passage speaks to us of God’s healing power to restore.

Jesus heals and has come to restore the world as Bishop N. T. Wright says to the right place. He comes to bring a form of justice fomented in love and forgiveness. We read about it in Isaiah 61:1:

¹The spirit of the Lord God is upon me
    because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
    to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and release to the prisoners,

Jesus read those words in the synagogue in Jerusalem and then proclaimed that Isaiah was speaking about him in this passage.

The mission of Jesus, what God anointed Jesus for, was to set us free.

Paul said that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

Jesus stands up and tells the crowd that his mission is to heal and restore people.

And Jesus calls us to do likewise and live for the healing and restoration of others.

Isaiah describes Jesus’ mission and then Jesus claims it for himself 400 years later.

And in our text for today, Isaiah says to us: Have hope, God’s plan for healing is going to work.

As the rain and snow refresh the earth, God’s plan with Jesus will work to restore all of humanity.

And it does work!

Look at 1 John 2:2. It says: He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

There are two groups mentioned in this passage who are saved by the cross: We believers and the rest of the world. Jesus paid it all for us on the cross.

But Jesus’ ministry was more than the cross. Jesus spent three years demonstrating God’s love for humanity, he taught us how to love others, he showed us how to love others and then he also spoke out loudly against the oppressive systems that were keeping the people in bondage.

He stood up to the greed of those who were profiting off of the people’s misery and they had him killed for it.

So the cross did two things:

He gave us salvation on the cross, and he gave us healing power through following his teachings.

This prophecy, we are studying today promises that Jesus’ mission will work and will indeed bring healing to the world. It is accomplished by following in the footsteps of Jesus, the Word of God who came to refresh and restore.

And I am a little bit different in my approach to the good news of Jesus’ healing power.

As I read that verse in 1 John 2:2, he speaks of how Jesus work for us saved not only US who call ourselves Christians but EVERYONE ELSE.

For me, the emphasis is on the fact that God did the work.

The word went forth from God and indeed accomplished its purpose.

On the cross, the last words of Jesus is “It is finished.”

God saved the world entire and left the Spirit of God inside of us, filling us as believers, to keep up the work of God healing and restoring.

We look for ways to join in partnership with our brother Jesus so that we too can be faithful witnesses to the love that God has for us in Christ.

And the second paragraph speaks of how the Spirit will be with us prospering our ways and giving us joy and peace in our Christian vocations.

I picture it as us in the power of the Spirit resisting with the power of love. Thereby, we dance upon injustice.

Imagine

  

Text: Acts 2:17-18

Focus: Imagine

Function: To help people see the blessing we got from Annual conference worship.

¹⁷‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
    and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
    and your old men shall dream dreams.
¹⁸Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
    in those days I will pour out my Spirit,
        and they shall prophesy.

Good morning to the beloved children of God.

Today, we are looking at the theme passage from last week’s Annual Conference of the Church which Carol and I attended.

There were a total of 5 worship services and all of them were inspiring and were centered on the theme: Imagine.

I love the idea of Imagine because I believe that is one of the places the Holy Spirit lives inside of us to give us hope in the power of what is possible by faith.

We don’t just imagine that God exists, we imagine what is possible because we live by faith in what God can do.

Our text points us to what God can do through the Spirit.

The passage is Peter trying to explain to the crowd what has just happened when the mighty wind shook Jerusalem and the tongues of fire fell on the 120 believers who were gathered together.

Peter repeats a prophecy from Joel chapter 2 telling them that this was simply God fulfilling God’s promise to us.

And he promises that we will have visions and dreams and then we will speak and bring those things about.

Imagine a better world and then commit ourselves to prayer and action to make it happen.

The visions and the dreams given to us are the leading of God by the Spirit in the hearts of God’s people and they can be wild.

I am reminded of a sermon I preached based on a sign at a Lutheran Church I drive by while Ubering. The sign says: “God’s Work, Our Hands” and Jody made us all little signs to hang on the wall depicting that phrase. Mine hangs on the wall just to my right of me when I am writing my sermons.

When we look at the way the Spirit empowers us according to 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12 and Ephesians 4, we see that God is the one who is at work in us.

Does that mean we won’t fail?

I imagine what it would be like to never fail. I don’t believe that is what he is talking about. He is talking about how God is the one who opens the doors and sets the circumstances right for us to do God’s work in our lives.

But that idea of never failing is there because God is the one who picks us up when we fall. As a matter of fact, when you read the stories in the OT of the people of faith, you see that at times they seemed to go backwards on their quest and God was behind it because God wanted them to depend on God’s power and not their own resources.

God is looking for willing participants in God’s plan.

When I think of God’s work and Our hands, I think of the willingness that we have to listen and do what we are feeling God is leading us to do.

I think one of the things that helped me see God at work in our church was listening to the stories of pastors from other churches that are similar to ours.

One preacher told us that it isn’t sour grapes to look at our size and wonder about what it means when we see mega churches with programming that fits every niche of their constituents so that people’s felt needs are being met.

He didn’t, and I won’t criticize the faith of anyone else either, because I believe that God leads us.

But he went on to talk of the love and community given to us by God in our smaller churches. More than that, he pointed out that we are a different people and that uniqueness makes us who we are and we should be happy because God is faithful and is working and does have a plan for us.

The motto of the Church is “Following Jesus, simply, peaceably, and together.” Even our motto reflects our need for community and the help and aid that we get from each other.

When Paul speaks of the moving of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12, he gives to us a body image. Let me read verses 12-13 and verses 25-26 from the Message:

^12-13You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. It’s exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.

^25-26The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.

Our community makes us grow.

And I believe God’s power is behind it.

And our text from the book of Acts is the prophecy about our power as a Church.

We dream of a better world and then we prophesy, or speak it into existence.

And in this day and age, the message of unconditional love for our neighbors doesn’t sit well when our neighbors are accused of being something different from us. We are told by the culture to hate the other side because they are destroying our values. We are told to hate those who while fleeing for their lives broke the law even though it was life and death for them. We are told it is okay to hate them.

But praise God it isn’t that way in our church. We are told to love those who are different from us. That is what community building is about and that is where the Spirit is moving and blessing churches.

The final message on Thursday, the speaker imagined Jesus washing Judas’s feet with both of them knowing that Judas was going to hand Jesus over to death. Jesus loved him till the end.

We are different from the culture, the world, around us.

The culture teaches us to arm ourselves and get revenge, that somehow more violence will stop violence. We have a better way, we love and forgive our enemies to the point of washing their feet.

I imagine the Spirit giving us that kind of power to love.

Freedom From Sin

  

Text: Romans 6:12-23

Focus: justice

Function: to help people see how doing justice brings salvation.

12-14 That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time—remember, you’ve been raised from the dead!—into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.

15-18 So, since we’re out from under the old tyranny, does that mean we can live any old way we want? Since we’re free in the freedom of God, can we do anything that comes to mind? Hardly. You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it’s your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you’ve let sin tell you what to do. But thank God you’ve started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!

19 I’m using this freedom language because it’s easy to picture. You can readily recall, can’t you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing—not caring about others, not caring about God—the worse your life became and the less freedom you had? And how much different is it now as you live in God’s freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness?

20-21 As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn’t have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you’re proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end.

22-23 But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.

Good morning to God’s beloved children! Remember, the world entire is beloved of God.

I find this passage of scripture to be very interesting and very often taken out of context and then exaggerated in importance.

Part of the exaggeration is preaching the focuses on avoiding sin rather than preaching the focuses on the power of the Holy Spirit to live the way Jesus wants us to live, in freedom from the power that sin has over some people’s lives.

We have the passage without a description of sin. Growing up for me it was cussing, smoking and drinking. But that is not what sin is.

My theology professor at my conservative Bible college described the root of sin as selfishness.

When I read that passage and I read slaves of sin, or, instruments of unrighteousness, depending on the translation, I take it to mean slaves of self.

We are called to live in community and selfishness destroys the bonds necessary to make community foster.

And he speaks of righteousness often in the English versions of this passage. However, the word of righteousness should be translated as justice. Or doing the justice that the prophet Micah said should hallmark the believers life. (Micah 6:8) It is one of my life’s verses: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good and what the Lord requires of you: Do justice, love mercy and walk with God in humility.”

I mentioned how this passage gets taken out of context and misused. And it has to do with that Greek word, Diakonos, the word for justice but translated in the English bibles as righteousness.

There are two different ideas contrasted in the erroneous interpretation and the way it was written in the original language. If we are slaves of righteousness, then we are slaves of what we believe. If we are slaves of justice, then we are slaves of doing justice, or doing the right thing: always. It is consistent with the gospels. Christ preached about what to do, not what to believe.

That is why we Brethren focus on the sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7. In the sermon, Jesus outlines how the righteous, or just, people live. He tells us what to do.

Jesus, and the early Church focused on proper action, not proper belief.

Their first action was to give up everything they owned and form a commune so that no one lacked the basic necessities of life.

And that demonstrates their level of commitment to purging selfishness from their lives.

Now, I’ve been scared by the preaching of this passage because there was another misbegotten idea associated with the concept of being righteous and what he means by death.

When he says that the wages of sin is death, he is not talking about hell here. Let me say that again. He isn’t talking about hell.

He is talking about how selfishness destroys. He is talking about a path to a whole and healthy lifestyle by living the way of Jesus. It is the way that Jesus commanded us to teach to others so that generosity would spread into wholeness and restoration. Death is the opposite of that wholeness and restoration.

Selfishness destroys the common good. Jesus condemned the rich fool for hoarding his grain, which would drive up the price of grain and make him more wealthy while others suffered. The way of the world says that is smart business. But it is selfish.

Look at the planet and the lack of concern for the environment.

I vividly remember visiting lake Erie as a young child and the beach was covered with thousands of dead fish killed by a giant algae bloom and seeing the damage of corporate pollution. I asked my mom about it and she said that the Bible says that in the end the land will be filled with pollution and this was the sign of Jesus coming but we didn’t need to worry about it because we would be raptured before it happened.

It was a vivid example of how Greed caused death.

You know that I am green, I drive an electric car and I installed solar panels and don’t use straws at restaurants and all that stuff. But it isn’t because I am a liberal. I learned in my conservative Bible College biology class that God has given the planet to us to tend, not exploit, and we sin by ruining it.

And it gets ruined for the sake of the greed of the few over the health concerns of the many.

It is unjust and unrighteous. That is the sin he is referring to. Most of the evil described by Jesus is systemic evil. Systems meant to keep the poor in poverty so that the rich can enjoy their own greed.

So when he talks about sin, he is talking about things that destroy the good that God wants for all of humanity since Christ came for all of humanity.

The death referred to is us losing out on the abundant life that following Jesus brings.

God doesn’t want us living by focusing on avoiding sin. Don’t worry about it. We are free indeed. God wants us living to do good for others. Doing that destroys the selfishness that hinders the beloved community Jesus died to create.

By the power of the Holy Spirit we learn to overcome our selfish tendencies and live for the good of the world.

The Cost of Discipleship

  

Text: Matthew 10:24-39

Focus: discipleship

Function: to assure people of the power of the Holy Spirit in conflict

²⁴ “A disciple is not above the teacher nor a slave above the master; ²⁵it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!

²⁶“So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered and nothing secret that will not become known. ²⁷What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. ²⁸Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. ²⁹Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. ³⁰And even the hairs of your head are all counted. ³¹So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

³²“Everyone, therefore, who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven, ³³but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

³⁴“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword.

³⁵For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law,
³⁶and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.

³⁷“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, ³⁸and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. ³⁹Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

Good morning to all of you, the beloved children of God.

Today, I am going to be dealing with a pretty difficult passage of scripture.

It is a call for us who have experienced God’s healing love through Jesus to live our that love for others instead of merely for ourselves.

He starts the passage talking about the power of criticism. He speaks of how they use name calling to minimize the wonder and power of his work among them. Jesus’ teaching and popularity threatened the way things worked in their society and instead of listening to Jesus and learning from him, they choose their own power and greed and tried to minimize his teaching with these insults.

It is the way of politicians to criticize those who oppose them with name calling. We see it played out to the extreme in our current political climate.

I think one of the saddest things about today’s political discourse is the way some Christians have sunk to the same level. We see it modeled by people we are supposed to revere and we fall back into the world’s ways instead of the way of love.

But we can take heart because Jesus told us to expect criticism for doing things his way instead of the worlds way of selfishness and greed. This passage warns us that there are those who are going to reject what we have to say and the way that we live. More than that, he goes on to talk about exposing the things that are covered up. He tells us to speak truth. He tells us to speak truth to power. Jesus tells us that worldly power is going to oppose what we are teaching as Christians. I guess it is somewhat comforting to know that the Lord understands when we are criticized for living the way we do.

And the comfort gives them the preparation for persecution.

I see Jesus introducing another theme in this passage. I don’t think the audience got it.

He tells them to take up their cross and follow him. This is new because up until then, he hadn’t talked about his cross and his eventual execution for standing up to the powers that be and exposing their greed for what it was.

I wonder how the twelve reacted to this revelation? He tells them to follow him and be like him and expect to be treated like him and then he tells them that they are going to crucify him. And then he tells them to take up their own cross and follow him likewise. I wonder if that scared these twelve special men.

He is giving them the call to discipleship. And he tells them that following him is a serious matter requiring faith, or trust in him.

That is why he tells them not to fear people, but to trust in God whose promise is to provide for us. God cares for us and desires that we walk in this life by faith.

And the faith we have is to work out in our lives this different way of living that Jesus is teaching.

The different way of living is through the promise that God God cares for all the living, especially us who are created in their image.

So, here is the passage so far. Jesus warns us that we are going to face persecution for living the way we are called to live. And then he tells us not to fear people but to rest in the provision of God. God is faithful.

Having said that to the disciples, and then us, since Matthew recorded it for us, he reiterates the command to be bold in the face of opposition.

And I see a formula for that boldness. He said when we confess him before others, we will be confessed into the presence of God.

By promise, God will give us the strength when we are opposed by the world for our values to speak the truth to the powers that refuse loving others and the command to care for them as well as we care for ourselves.

He goes on to tell us that the division between these two ideals is a cultural war that Christ began. I hate to use the word: war. But Jesus describes it as bringing a sword instead of bringing peace to the culture around us.

I read this quote from Thomas Merton: “I have come to think that care of the soul requires a high degree of resistance to the culture around us simply because that culture is dedicated to values that have no concern for the soul.”

This passage opens my eyes to remind me that living for Jesus is something that God is doing in us through the power of the spirit inside of us.

The battle between good and evil, between greed and love, lies right inside of us and Jesus calls us to live out the light of God by the way that we love others.

And he calls us to do it with boldness.

I wrestle with the political divide in this country. The rhetorical tactic of name calling and lying about those who disagree with us is sin. We must not lower ourselves to that level.

But, we must not be silent as well. Jesus calls us to boldness. Our most powerful speech is in our actions and reactions to people who are different from us.

May God give us the grace, love and mercy to follow Christ and welcome the stranger.

Finding the Kingdom

  

Text: Matthew 9:35-10:8

Focus: Kingdom

Function: to help people see that transformation is here and now

³⁵Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness. ³⁶When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. ³⁷Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; ³⁸therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

10:¹Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. ²These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee and his brother John; ³Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus; ⁴Simon the Cananaean and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

⁵These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not take a road leading to gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan town, ⁶but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ⁷As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ ⁸Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.

Good morning to the children of God who are loved and will never be forgotten by God.

I titled the message this morning: “Finding the Kingdom” because the kingdom of God seems to be an elusive idea for us.

The word Gospel means Good News. And the good news, the gospel, according to Jesus is that the Kingdom of God is here and now.

He wasn’t talking about heaven.

I believe that the phrase: “The Kingdom of God” refers to the reign of God in the lives of people.

Jesus spoke often of the kingdom, especially right before he was murdered when Pilate examined him in John 18 and 19.

Jesus informed Pilate that God ultimately places people in power and does so to accomplish God’s purpose on the earth. Jesus told Pilate that Pilate was being used by God to fulfill God’s plan and that the guilt for his sentencing did not lay on Pilate’s account.

Jesus forgives him just as he forgave from the cross. He forgave those who killed him. And that forgiveness is inspired by the Spirit of God bringing God’s reign into our hearts. God’s kingdom in our hearts changes us.

Jesus informed Pilate that he was indeed the king of a spiritual kingdom and that he was sent by God.

Pilate believed him and was afraid to pass sentence, but gave in to the political pressures of the day.

Pilate’s acquiescence to their demands highlights the contrast between the kingdoms of men and the kingdom of God.

Pilate gave in against his own conscience for political expediency. And Jesus, who died for our sins, was actually the victim of a state execution to silence his alternative approach to economics by sharing and caring for people who are suffering instead of merely caring for ourselves. Jesus addresses the problem of greed and scarcity with a message that upset those in power who were getting rich off of the working class’s misery.

They killed him for taking a stand against greed. When I see the billionaires competing to see who can be the first trillionaire, I realize that we are worshiping money in this country. You can’t serve God and money. I realize we need the same kind of prophets today. But instead, our culture honors the uber wealthy as heroes of capitalism while billions of people live in poverty right under their noses and they don’t care.

They killed Jesus for saying this about the wealthy because he exposed their greed.

So, you might be wondering what this has to do with finding the kingdom. Well, these verses in John 18 and 19 describing in detail Jesus’ encounter with Pilate represent to me, a shift on the entire book of John.

On Palm Sunday, the crowd worshiped Jesus we believe because they thought that he would start an effective and miraculous military campaign against Rome and set them free.

And it isn’t really until the 18^th and 19^th chapters of John where according to John, Jesus exposes the true nature of the kingdom of God.

He makes it clear that God’s kingdom reigns in the hearts and minds and spirits and souls of those who trust Jesus.

It is a spiritual transformation that Jesus is bringing to us.

And in today’s passage, where Jesus gives the disciples power to do the same miracles that Jesus was doing, he tells them to proclaim that God’s kingdom is here and now.

God’s kingdom is already here.

When Jesus saved us, he saved us spirit, soul, mind and body. His salvation brings the power of healing through trusting his way of loving others and resting in the fact that God provides for us.

We are the kingdom of God.

And I heard a Brethren preacher foment a different idea based on the actual word: “Kingdom.’

She said, what if we dropped the G and called it the kindom. We are Kin. We are a family of God. We are the children of God and we are connected by the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Christ created everything and permeates everything. Nature, science, the arts, even we ourselves.

There is no where that we can go where we can get away from the presence of Christ.

And Christ wants us to live in a way that brings the Christ’s healing power to the broken world.

In our passage, Jesus gives supernatural power to the apostles and sends them out on a journey to proclaim that God’s Change for human culture is here and now.

And it is the positive, energetic power of God to transform. At this point, the apostles were still pretty green because it was the beginning of the ministry. And Jesus, even though they don’t know what they are doing, anoints them with power to do this short term mission. He is showing them what is possible when they trust Christ.

He is showing them the power or authority they have as members of God’s kingdom. We have the power to change ourselves and our culture.

We are the kingdom, the kindom, the family of God with God’s presence empowering us.

The Power of Mercy

Text: Matthew 9:9-13

Focus: Mercy

Function: To help people give up judging others.

⁹As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

¹⁰And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. ¹¹When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” ¹²But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. ¹³Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

Good morning to the beloved children of God.

This morning we are going to look at Jesus’ attitude toward us and toward the people that at times we are tempted to judge.

I believe in the positive, encouraging, enabling and transforming power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We have access to that power at all times, especially since we changed our lives to follow the love and leading of the Spirit.

And that Spirit helps us to overcome the temptation to be less than loving towards others.

What I am saying is that I don’t like to focus on the negative, the sin that is sometimes prevalent in our lives because as we are living by faith and trusting that loving others, sometimes sacrificially, leads us to the place where God can use us to bring about the beloved community that Jesus preached.

And I find a lesson in this account from scripture about the calling of Matthew the tax collector.

Of the 4 gospels, only 2 were written by the apostles, Matthew and John.

All of the other books of the New Testament are written in Greek, the trade language of the Roman empire, except for Matthew, which was written in the language that Jesus actually spoke and then was translated into Greek.

Matthew was very familiar with the Jewish religion and customs.

And that makes him interesting because he was a tax collector. Tax collectors were generally hated by the Jewish population for two reasons. The first being that the Israel was occupied by the Romans who taxed them heavily so that maintain their domination over them. The people were suffering in slave like conditions. So, the Tax collectors were seen as collaborators with the occupying force. They were the reason why the people were miserable.

And then it got worse. The Tax collectors skimmed off the top of the revenue collected, so they collected even more than required and there wasn’t anything the people could do to resist.

Therefore, Tax collectors were set apart and hated by society.

And Jesus offends the crowd by sitting down at dinner with a group of them.

In the context of that hatred, Jesus comes along preaching righteousness. But the righteousness that Jesus preaches is different than the code of ethics that the religion dominating the land provided.

In the midst of their poverty and limited resources, Jesus comes along and teaches them to in faith share from their limited supply because God is the one who provides for them. They are called to rest in the love and provision of God in the midst of their struggles. We rest in God who provides for us.

I have seen that happen in Tijuana Mexico with Bittersweet ministry. It is a mission that helps displaced women with families by doing exactly what Jesus taught. The women live by gleaning recyclables off of the city dump site. So Bittersweet joined with a day care for the children while the women work the mountain of trash. The women take turns working and scavenging and share what they glean in common. It as what Jesus taught.

And this new teaching was powerful and it connected with the common people. It gave them hope.

But generosity with mercy is as important as generosity with resources.

When we live by faith we trust God to care for and lead others out of their own issues. It isn’t our place to judge others.

Jesus eats with the tax collectors who represent the epitome of the suffering that the Jewish people are experiencing. And in so doing he shows us the power of mercy.

I will jump to what is perhaps a familiar story from the NT. Jesus and Zacchaeus, another tax collector. This is when Jesus was famous and before the authorities tried to silence him. He enjoyed a huge public presence with crowds pressing in to see him. Zacchaeus a short man climbed a tree to see. And Jesus notices him and asks him feed Jesus.

Jesus asks him to serve Jesus. Jesus places himself at the mercy of Zacchaeus.

And Zacchaeus responds by changing his wicked ways and offering restoration of what he stole.

Jesus takes this sinner and asks him to serve Jesus while he is still a sinner.

Jesus asks him to be part of the movement before the man has a change of heart.

It is the request and the confidence placed in him without judgment, an act of mercy, that transforms the tax collector.

Before, I have mentioned Bittersweet ministry and Gilbert Romero’s conversion.

It is a modern day example of how mercy transforms.

Gilbert didn’t have any interest in Jesus when he met the granddaughter of a Brethren preacher in the Watts district of LA. He asked her out and she said, “Only if you come to church and meet my grandpa.”

When he did, she told grandpa that he was a musician. She didn’t mention that he was selling dope. Now Gilbert is an accomplished musician and has a very good band which we will hear at Annual Conference this year since he is on the ballot for moderator elect.

And Grandpa, hearing that he was a musician asked him to lead music in worship.

Just like Zacchaeus who didn’t know God, God reached out to him and used him with the Spirit and Gilbert was hooked on Jesus.

You see, when we give mercy, it is the power of the Holy Spirit at work within us to lead and call people into this place where they can know God and be healed by the Spirit.

 

Let us give up judgment for mercy.