Episodes
Sunday Sep 15, 2013
Seeing through the eyes of Christ
Sunday Sep 15, 2013
Sunday Sep 15, 2013
Rev. Dean Snyder
Galatians 3:23-29
Gal 3:23 Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. 24 Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.
Several years ago when our daughter was living and teaching in Guatemala and we were visiting her, we spent a day with David Young, a member here at Foundry, who was working in the U.S. embassy in Guatemala at the time. We traveled to the far north of Guatemala to the mountains to meet with a group of Methodist pastors and leaders there.
They were native people who spoke a native language so we needed two translators …. one to translate their language into Spanish and another to translate Spanish into English for us. It was a slow, long, good conversation.
Their Methodist church in this particular community had a number of congregations. They had a medical clinic and a dental clinic and schools and a housing repair program and more.
During the conversation, I asked the pastors if they had grown up Methodists. The answer was no. Why had they become Methodists? I asked.
Through the slow process of dual translations, the most senior pastor answered that they had become Methodists because the other churches there focused only on saving souls.
It is important to care about souls, he said, but Methodists also care about minds, bodies and spirits. We wanted to be part of a church, he said, that cares about life here and now as well as after death … that cares about health, education, and community as well as the salvation of the soul.
All the others in room energetically nodded their agreement and they felt so passionately about it that they began to talk faster than the translators could translate.
They knew why they were Methodists.
The Methodist movement that began in early 18th century England was influenced by a Presbyterian preacher named George Whitfield. Whitfield was a great orator, and he drew large crowds. He was an early practitioner of something the British called field preaching … which was preaching in an open field to whatever crowds would come.
It was George Whitfield who talked his Oxford University classmate and friend John Wesley into joining him in field preaching to the coal miners of Bristol.
John Wesley was not the orator that Whitfield was. But John Wesley had a vision Whitfield did not have.
In addition to seeing souls to be saved, Wesley saw minds to be educated, bodies to be healed, and spirits to be liberated from addiction and shame.
The Methodist movement that Wesley built did not focus on preaching alone. It also focused on literacy, on education, on vocational training, on health education and health clinics, on support groups (some say the precursor to AA), and even on micro-lending to help people start small businesses.
This is what Methodism is at its best … new life and new possibilities for the whole person, soul, mind, body and spirit.
We are studying our Foundry church values right now.
Our board spent a year listening including our leaders day earlier this year when 70 or so leaders of ministry teams and small groups gathered to talk about what makes Foundry …. Our core values.
The board developed eight core values which you will find on your bulletin and on our website.
So we are looking at each core value and we are looking at our ministries teams that actually do the ministry of living out our core values and we are inviting everyone to think and pray about joining a ministry team that will support your growth in faith and discipleship.
Last week we talked about how our life together is shaped by the way Jesus showed us the heart of God. We want to learn to think like Christ.
Today our core value is humanity. The core value says: “We honor humanity as well as divinity. We believe all people are children of God, and we treat them that way.”
There are two things I want to suggest about this value.
The first is that it is good to be human and all that comes along with being human. One of my favorite passages in the Bible is from Hebrews, chapter 2, which says because we are flesh and blood, Jesus took on flesh and blood so that he could be in community with us. And then Hebrews adds: “It is clear he did not come to help angels but the descendants of Abraham [and Sarah]. (Heb. 2: 14-18)
Our human condition, our human bodies, our human minds, our human spirits are not bad things that we should be ashamed of or want to escape.
Christ wanted every human being to thrive as a human being. To be physically healthy. To be intellectually alive. To be enthusiastic about life. To be part of meaningful community. To have the opportunity to contribute to the larger whole.
It is good to be human.
Much of the ministry we do here at Foundry is intended to help people do very human things like eat, wash, have a place to live, and a community to be part of.
All of human life – birth, growth, learning, sexuality, reproduction, work, love, politics, commerce, industry, struggle, aging … it is all good!
We do not want to become angels. We do not want you to be an angel. We want to live human lives in human community with Christ who became human so that he could hang with us. He did not come to turn us into angels but to teach us how to be fully human.
We care about human existence on earth … the quality of life available to every person.
So the first part of the value is that we honor humanity … yours, mine, theirs. You don’t have to be an angel. It is okay to be human.
The second part of this is that we see every human being … every person … as a child of God. In Christ’s eyes, there is no foreigner.
Our scripture from Galatians this morning talks about the relationship between baptism and inclusion.
I want to say again this morning a word about the Methodist understanding of baptism and why we practice the baptism of children as well as adults. I think this is an important symbol.
Some churches do not baptize children. They practice what they call believer’s baptism. You can only be baptized if you publicly affirm that you believe in the teachings of the faith. Young children ==babies—obviously cannot recite the Apostles’ Creed.
The symbolic meaning of believers’ baptism is that we begin life outside the circle and, when we reach maturity, we need to decide whether we will step into the circle or not.
John Wesley taught Methodists to baptize children because he believed we all begin inside the circle. He taught that we might choose to step outside it, which is an interesting theological debate.
But we all begin inside the circle. We baptize babies because we all are inside the circle. You don’t do something to get i9nsidre the circle. We all begin already inside the circle.
Some of the ministry teams here at Foundry that best articulate this core value of honoring our humanity and seeing the child of God inside each one of us are our support ministries.
I want to mention this morning three support groups or networks here at Foundry.
One is our Depression Support Group where people who have experienced depression meet to encourage and support each other. Logan Alley (9:30) Amy Van Arsdale (11:00)
We also have a Transition and Loss support group for people experience loss and grief. You can ask Jeffrey Dietterle (9:30 and 11:00)
We also have a Cancer Support Network -- Chuck Hilty (11:00)
Last Lent, we were having a series of interviews with people engaged in ministry here at Foundry. On Easter Sunday Chuck Hilty shared a testimony about his experience with prostate cancer. After the service, Greg, a visitor from Ohio who happened to be in town and heard our bells and came to worship with us, approached Pastor Dawn and shared that he had prostate cancer and was going to have surgery in the coming weeks. Dawn connected Greg with Chuck. Folk form our cancer support group rallied around Greg and provided support through emails, cards, and calls. Greg actually came back to Foundry in June and brought his family with him. He wanted to his family to meet the cancer support group before he went to surgery.
If you have experienced depression or loss or cancer, considering joining one of these ministry teams. If there is a support group you’d like to help begin, let Pastor Dawn know.
We are all children of God. Each one. We share a common humanity. Each one.
The first property that Methodist owned was a vacant building in London. It had been a cannon ball factory and there had been an accident, an explosion, and the building had sat empty for many years.
John Wesley and the Methodists bought it and repaired it. For 38 years it was the center of Methodism.
John Wesley wanted a factory because he did not just want to have space for worship. The building included a chapel, but it also included a free school, a dispensary, an almshouse for poor widows, and a loan society, and more.
Because John Wesley and the Methodist care not just about saving souls but also about saving minds, bodies and spirits.
Oh, the name of that building where Methodism started, the
old canon ball factory? It was called the Foundry. Foundry Chapel.
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