Pisgah United Methodist Church
Sunday, May 20, 2012
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Stay in Love with GodJuly 31, 2011 Kingdomtide 7
John 21: 15-17 , plus Mark 12: 28-34 (Jesus gives the greatest commandment.)
Today we are up to the 4th and final installment in our series, Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living. This morning we will be looking at the 3rd of the Three Simple Rules, "Stay In Love With God." As you know through the last 4 weeks we have been involved in a sermon series which has been based on the great commandment given by our Lord Jesus Christ and found in Mark 12:28 – 34. The series is also based as you will remember on the General Rules which are found in the United Methodist Book of Discipline (¶ 103).
Jesus when he was asked by the scribes which commandment is the most important of all, Jesus answered them with these words: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. The second one is this: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these."
Three Simple Rules that we've been looking at have been simplified by Bishop Ruben Job, in his book: Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way Of Living.[2] Bishop Job has rendered the great commandment of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the General Rules for living as Methodist Christians, found in our United Methodist Book of Discipline into three rules:
1. Do No Harm
2. Do Good
3. Stay in Love with God
This 3rd and last rule, stay in love with God, though it sounds simple is not quite so. To stay in love with God means something different to each one of us. All of us have been on particular journeys that are unique to us as individuals and our relationship to God. I would venture to say that all of us who are here today want to be in love with God, to be used of God, and want to share our life with God and those around us. We want to follow the three simple rules we've learned.
But being, and staying in love with God is not ever easy. We have come to a time in history when our lifestyles are competing with our relationship with God. We know how important it is to stay connected to God, and we also know how difficult it can be.
Our Scripture lesson this morning details the story of Jesus and his disciples when they were together for one of the last times. On this particular morning, the disciples had been out fishing all evening without catching anything. A lot had happened to them over the last few weeks, Jesus their leader, their friend, and their Lord had been taken from them and killed. And though they had seen him, talked to him, and even touched him after he was resurrected, their lives were still chaotic.
The Scriptures do not tell us exactly how the disciples were feeling, because the scriptures concentrate mostly on Jesus and the gospel. But we can use our imaginations, contemplate how we might have felt had we been the disciples. We too may have wanted to have life return to normal, to go back to the occupation that we knew. In this case and for these disciples it was fishing.
One of the Bible stories in our VBS was the story of Peter and his worry and concern over whether Jesus would forgive him for his denials when Jesus was standing before Pilate, and the Jewish council. The person playing Peter at VBS gave me and the children insight into how Peter might have felt, particularly after Jesus' death and resurrection. He gave us insight into how Peter was worried, felt guilty for having betrayed the Lord. He gave us insight into how Peter felt about his sin.
At VBS Peter asked the children what they thought about whether Jesus would forgive him or not. He asked them whether he should approach Jesus or not, whether he should ask Jesus to forgive him or not. The children assured Peter that Jesus would forgive him.
The story we have this morning shows that indeed Jesus gave Peter ample opportunity to be redeemed. Peter had denied his Lord 3 times just as Jesus told him that he would. And Jesus also asked Peter 3 times if Peter loved him.
Just like Peter, all of us have times of defeat, times when we know all about the sins we've committed, and we like Peter, we may also worry whether we can be forgiven. Our children would say of course, Jesus will forgive us.
To stay in love with God means that we continue to know and to exercise the opportunities we have to be forgiven. John Wesley had a special word he used in describing the opportunities we have to connect and reconnect with God. The word is a bit antiquated: ordinances. Most of us when we think of the word ordinance we think of rules, or city laws, or that sort of thing. What he meant by ordinances was what we would call today: spiritual disciplines.
John Wesley gave these spiritual disciplines as ways for each of us to connect with God.
· Public Worship
Lord's Supper
· Private and Family Prayer
Searching Scriptures
· Bible Study
Fasting
· Sharing
Spiritual disciplines are things that we can actually do that are healing and life-giving to us. We receive spiritual strength when we pray together or alone. These things, which John Wesley often also called, the means of grace, are central to our faith. They keep us in touch with the presence and the power of Jesus Christ in our life. If you are like me, when I am failing to keep up my practice of prayer, coming to worship, reading my Bible, and participating in communion I begin to feel… well, just… wrong.
When we are devoting ourselves (devotions) to taking time to be with God, then it is in the presence of God that we learn to trust God. During those moments we become filled with greater wisdom and knowledge about God. And when we sacrifice our time, our energy, our life, then God has opportunity to transform us.
I want to tell you a story about a man whose name is Brennan Manning. You may know him for his writing. He has written over 15 books, of which I guess his most famous, would be The Ragamuffin Gospel. Manning was born in Brooklyn, New York where he grew up went to high school and college, enlisted in the US Marines and fought in the Korean War. When he came home from the war he found himself to be restless and searching for "more" of life. I guess you would say he was searching like many of us have in our lifetimes.
Manning was not a devout Christian at the time, but he felt God's call on his life, and one day as he was meditating on the cross, he had a powerful experience where he felt the total love of Jesus Christ. He was converted to a life of service to God from then on. He entered St. Francis seminary and was ordained as a Franciscan priest. And for many years he lived that life in service to God and to others.
Now most of us would certainly believe that such a person would never have struggles with doubts, confusion, and certainly he would never fall out of love with God. But that is just what happened to Brennan Manning. When he was first converted, he knew the love of God, and he was in love with God. But as the years went by that love began to fade.
Manning became like many people do a religious yet empty man. He began to realize that not only did he not feel love from others or from God, he rarely felt anything at all. Manning reached a point in his life when he realized that from a very young age he had begun a journey to not feeling. He writes in his book, Abba's Child, these words:
When I was 8 [years old], the imposter, or false self was born [within me] as a defense against the pain [I had felt over a traumatic experience I'd had]. The imposter within whispered, "Brennan, don't ever be your real self anymore because nobody likes you when you are. Invent the new self that everybody will admire and nobody will know." So [Manning says] I became a good boy-- polite, well mannered, unobtrusive, and deferential. I studied hard, scored excellent grades, won a scholarship in high school, and was stalked every waking moment by the terror of abandonment and the sense that nobody was there for me.[3]
What Manning was describing was a feeling that many of us have, that God truly cannot love us, because...we are not perfect. Certainly God cannot love me, cannot truly, really, forgive me. Many of us like Manning develop a false front, a false self, a person we hold up in front of our face like a mask, one that is always smiling.
Or we may have once been truly on fire, truly passionate about God in our relationship with God, but somewhere along the way we faltered in our commitment, in our spiritual discipline; we became like Peter and even denied the Lord, once, twice, who knows how many times.
Unfortunately, the false self that Manning birthed for himself could not protect his heart forever. He reached the point where he broke.
It happened on the 10th day of a retreat, where he had much spent time alone with God. Manning says, "on the 10th day of my mountain retreat my tears erupted into sobbing... I came out of hiding. Jesus pulled down the false self, the ruse of perfectionist performance, and [I was] forgiven and free... For I knew, that I knew, Someone was there for me."[4]
All of our faith journeys are usually typified by series of starts, missteps, forgiveness and restarts. I know that that has been true for me. But what I have learned is that when I try, when I make a commitment to devote myself to the spiritual disciplines of connecting with God, things begin to change. I begin to change, peace returns, and that need to please others is replaced by my desire to trust God.
How about you? How long has it been since you truly felt that passion you felt when you first believed in Jesus Christ? How long has it been since your heart felt completely peaceful and comforted in the presence of the Lord? Before we can stay in love with God, we must first be in love with God.
Peter, in his desperation, said to the Lord, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Peter's words were true. The Lord above all knows everything about us. The Lord knows our greatest joys and our deepest, darkest thoughts. But, the good news is, we like Peter will always have an opportunity for a 2nd chance. We have a 2nd chance, to turn to the Lord; to start over, be forgiven, have our heart healed, to love God again with the deep passion we once felt.
As we end this series today where we have talked about the Three Simple Rules: Do No Harm, Do Good, and Stay in Love with God, I would like to offer all of us an opportunity to recommit our lives to God. Maybe you're here today and you know that God is calling you to a greater purpose in your life. The opportunity to live life as the Lord Jesus Christ has commanded us to is always upon us. We always get a second chance to be in love with God. Amen.
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