Episodes
Sunday Sep 08, 2013
Having the mind of Christ
Sunday Sep 08, 2013
Sunday Sep 08, 2013
Rev. Dean Snyder
Philippians 2:1-8
Phil. 2:1 If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, 2 make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.m
During the past year –more than a year—our leadership has been asking the question: what are Foundry’s core values?
Every congregation should know what its particular calling is … some people call this a mission.
You will find Foundry’s call statement or mission statement on the cover of our program every Sunday. We at Foundry are called by God to deepen faith through transcendent worship and challenging study, to create engaged community through inclusion and caring, and to transform the world through active service and prophetic leadership.
This is our calling as a congregation.
Every congregation should know what its goals are: Our goals are to reach more people, deepen our fruits, and transform the world.
And every congregation should know its core values – which are the principles it follows in living out its call and reaching its goals.
So we’ve had discussion here at Foundry, including last year’s Leaders’ Day, in which lots of us have been involved in discussions about what our core values are and our board has put them into eight affirmations.
We want to talk about each of these –one per Sunday—for the next two months.
But we want to do more than talk about them. We want to ask how we can live them out more clearly and effectively. So we are calling this teaching series “Finding your Path.” We want to invite each and every one of us to choose a value that especially speaks to us and figure out how to take a step in living out that value in our life together as a congregation more clearly.
The first core value we want to talk about today is: We believe in Jesus Christ. Everything we do begins with Christ. Let’s try to unpack this carefully.
Let’s begin with what I said a couple of Sundays ago at Abby and Jacob Salkind-Foraker baptisms. Abby and Jacob are being raised in a family that is committed to teaching them both Judaism and Christianity.
To use the name of Christ is not to diminish other religions. Christianity at its best has always taught that the Christian faith has truth sufficient for salvation but not exclusive truth. Another value on our list says that we believe that we can learn from science, scholarship and other religious traditions as well as from our own Bible and Christian tradition.
So to say we believe in Jesus Christ and that everything we do begins with Christ is not to say that we are closed to truth wherever we find it.
Here is what this core value is trying to get at.
Several years ago we worked with some very bright people to redesign our website. I don’t think we were their easiest client.
They were trying to help us get clarity on how to brand ourselves. Every time they suggested an adjective for us. I would end up replying, “Yes, that’s partly true but these other adjectives are true as well.”
But you’ve got to communicate who you are clearly they’d say.
The compromise we came up with you will find on the Who We Are section of our website/. It is really quite a good statement but the first words are “Foundry is a historic, progressive United Methodist Church …”
The word I struggled with is the word “progressive.” Yes, in the way it is understand, I suppose we are a progressive congregation … if progressive means supportive of social justice and inclusion.
My struggle was that we are not progressive for the sake of being progressive.
We are progressive and inclusive and socially engaged and interested in science and other faiths because the teaching of Jesus and the biblical story take us there.
How could we read the story of the Good Samaritan and not care about so-called undocumented people? How could we hear Jesus say “in as much as you have done it to one of the least of these,” and not try to end homelessness? How could we hear Jesus say, “Let the children come to me and do not hinder them,” and not care about the cradle to prison pipeline? How could we hear the resurrected Christ say to Peter in the book of Acts, “Don’t call that which I have made clean unclean” and not affirm marriage equality?
The thrust of the biblical story from the freeing of the Hebrew slaves to the prophetic challenge against oppressing the poor, to the teachings of Jesus to the inclusion of the despised gentiles in the early church of Jesus Christ to the vision of the Kingdom of Heaven in the book of Revelations is the story of growing inclusion, justice, nonviolence, freedom, equality and abundant life for everyone.
We don’t believe in those things because they represent the agenda of one political party or another, because they represent one economic philosophy or another, because they are communicated by one cable news network or another, we believe these things because they are at the heart of the biblical story, because they are the heart of the life, teachings and example of Jesus Christ.
The Apostle Paul sets the bar for us in Philippians 2:5 – “Let this same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…”
Think with the mind of Christ. Think as though you were Christ.
Don’t just quote Jesus. Don’t just ask “What would Jesus do?”
Learn to think with the mind of Christ. Do a mind melt with Christ!
One of the things that has made the church so timid in our time is that everybody seems to need a verse of Scripture to quote to justify mission and ministry.
Should we support immigration reform? Should we care about the environment? Should we fully include and affirm LGBTQ people? Should we be in conversation with Buddhists, and Hindus and Moslems?
Everybody is looking for verses of Scripture to support their position. What verse can I find to allow me to do this or that tells me I shouldn’t?
No. Have this same mind in you that was in Christ Jesus! Learn to think with the mind of Christ.
We should be able to do ministry without a proof text.
We have a ministry team here at Foundry that goes back to 1982.
On October 31, 1982, the Community Mission, headed by Gwen Galloway and Nancy Schaefer, began making sandwiches for the homeless. They did it because Martha’s Table needed food to feed hungry people. They started with 250 sandwiches a month. Then 500 a month. Then 500 twice a month. Now Sandwich 1000 makes a thousand sandwiches the first and third Wednesday evening every month.
Nobody quoted a proof text from the Bible. No one researched whether Jesus would have used baloney and cheese to make sandwiches. No one debated whether kosher laws were still in effect as to what meat should be used in the sandwiches.
Gwen and Nancy saw a human need and just addressed it. That is what it means to think with the mind of Christ.
Nancy O Neal is here (at 11)
Our ushers here at Foundry provide a ministry of hospitality. They help make sure everyone is welcomed here. (Jean, Barbara, and Mike) Tracey Collins gathers teams every Sunday to make sure everyone is helped to find rest rooms and the Sunday School for their children and a place to sit and help getting to communion.
No one researched whether there is a verse of Scripture in the Bible instructing us to have ushers. Our ushers simply think with the mind of Christ. People need \support and help to feel welcomed and at home here.
Our goal is to think with the mind of Christ.
Now admittedly, in order to do this, we need to study Christ. We need to study the Bible. We need to pursue a spiritual relationship with God through Christ. We need to be constantly examining ourselves as to whether our thoughts and feelings are Christ-like.
But as Peter Storey reminded us when he spoke here at Foundry this July, after Jesus’ death and resurrection the apostles opened the church to gentiles who had previously been excluded without proof texts or chrislogical studies. They did it because they had been with Jesus for three years and they had come to think like Jesus and they were convinced that Jesus would exclude no one … no one.
We want to be a church where everyone can grow as followers of Jesus. On our website you will find a listing of Foundry ministry teams. Teams in the areas of Hospitality and Care, Challenging Study, Social Justice, Worship, Music, Operations, Support Services, and Financial Services – all ways people here live out our path of following Christ.
We are inviting everyone to consider taking the next step in your path by engaging in one of these ministries.
Let me tell you that I am more concerned that we think with the mind of Christ than that we be Christian. Being Christian has become a way of building walls between us and people who use other labels like Buddhist or Hindu or agnostic or nones.
I don’t think Christ cared much about labels. I think he did care about justice and inclusion and valuing all people and wanting all people to know they are a beloved child of God.
So when someone tells you Foundry is liberal, tell them we are trying but we probably aren’t as liberal as Jesus yet. When someone says Foundry is radical, tell them we are probably not as radical as Jesus yet.
We are just trying to think like Jesus and that makes us liberal, progressive, conservative, evangelical and charismatic.
And I invite you to go to lour website and find a way to take a step further along your spiritual path. Join a ministry team, sign up for a class, join a small group.
Let’s learn to
have the mind of Christ.
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